Monte Clark Gallery – Toronto is pleased to present a CONTACT feature show of new work from Stephen Waddell entitled INHABITANTS.

In this new work, Stephen Waddell continues his exploration of the tension inherent in photography between a documentary approach and something seemingly more contrived. His work settles in the space of ambiguity between these two poles, employing a poetic sensibility to weave both elements into a single image. In doing so, Waddell offers the viewer something that is immediately accessible in its frankness and apparent veracity, but is also (undeniably) resistant to the notion of its encapsulation of the whole truth. These images remind us that while as observers our hand in the creation of what we view is always implicated, our eye is never the creator itself, but is merely a witness. In this way, Waddell’s work presents instances of truth, while also pointing beyond themselves to something hidden. Waddell here echoes Russian filmmaker Dziga Vertoz, creating what he calls the casting for his own epic film (albeit one that he will never make). 

Waddell’s picture of a man sitting in his car with the door swung open, his foot placed between the curb and the car, suggests an indeterminate duration. The man in the car appears locked in the present moment by his own fatigue, uncertain, and perhaps unknowing of what will happen next. Over the course of looking at the photograph, this uncertainty arouses an ambiguity and sense of enigma that unfolds from it, holding us in thrall, much like the subject himself.

Stephen Waddell (born 1968, Vancouver, Canada) received his M.F.A. from the University of British Columbia, and has exhibited at galleries and institutions including Monte Clark Gallery in Vancouver and Toronto; The Vancouver Art Gallery, Espai d’art contemporani de Castelló in Castello, Spain; Kunstforum Baloise in Basel, Switzerland and C/O in Berlin. Waddell’s works are included in the Armand Hammer Collection in Los Angeles, and the permanent collections of the Vancouver Art Gallery and The National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. Hunt and Gather, a book of Waddell’s work, was released in 2011 from Steidl Publishing in Germany. The artist lives and works in Vancouver, Canada.