“The excitement, for me, lies not in reproducing something I can see, but in revealing the imperceptible (and maybe only the imagined) using the physics of light and time and darkroom techniques.”
Kostuik Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition of photo-based artwork by Canadian artist Dianne Bos from two recent bodies of work. By using objects and the photogram technique in the darkroom, Bos adds a poetic dimension to her new images, making visible ordinarily invisible transactions such as exhalation, transmission, photosynthesis, and regeneration between the human and natural worlds.
Biodiversity Bos pushes her experimental themes by using analog photographic processes to explore contrasts and echoes between the designed worlds of botanical gardens, biodiversity gardens and the natural environment. Her use of low tech photographic technologies prevents this from becoming a strictly documentary project, since these techniques heighten the dreamlike, magical or even chimerical quality of her work, sometimes seeming to make the invisible visible.
Herbarium Photo(synthesis references the collecting of dried plant specimens for scientific study. Bos turns her own herbarium into a photo album by using sunlight to impose images on plants. The resulting chlorophyll prints are made using the chemistry that is naturally at work in the living plant. Is is the ultimate sustainable photographic process.
BIOGRAPHY Over the past 40 years, Dianne Bos has continually explored motifs such as galaxies and constellations, European interiors with light portals (such as windows or doors), figures presented as light apparitions and plant images. In pinhole photography, light passes through a tiny aperture to alter the chemistry of photo paper or film, much as light triggers photosynthesis in plants. Long exposures record a passage of time. Bos is known for her museum exhibitions featuring handmade cameras, walk-in light box installations, and sound pieces. These tools and devices formulate and extend her fascination with journeying, time, and light-forms.
Based in both Ontario and Southern France, Bos has been called Canada’s “queen” of pinhole photography. Multi-talented, her art practice and interests extend into a variety of creative fields including being a lead singer and keyboardist for several bands. Her photography has been used on several vinyl, cassette, CD and video releases in Canada, USA, and Europe, and she has written and photographed for contemporary garden and design magazines. Along with Canadian museum and corporate collections, elected collections of Dianne Bos works include the Official Residence of the Canadian Ambassador for France, the Canadian Embassy in Belgium, and the Department of Global Affairs for NATO in Brussels.