"Testing"
Jaq Chartier

• January 9–February 17, 2005
• Opening Reception, Thursday, January 12, 4:30-6:30 pm
  Gallery Talk by the artist, 5:15 pm
• Brown Bag Lecture, Monday January 9, 12 pm
  Jaq Chartier: “Testing on Sunspots”

All events take place:
U-M Institute for the Humanities
Osterman Common Room, 0520 Rackham
915 East Washington
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1070
www.lsa.umich.edu/humin
humin@umich.edu
734 936-3518

Gallery hours: Thursday & Friday, 12:00-8:00 pm and by appointment
Curatorial tours available and groups are welcome
Free and open to the public

Seattle artist Jaq Chartier explores and tests the passage of time, and the effects of sunlight on systematically organized stains. With great precision, in a laboratory-like manner, she observes and measures her experiments, controlling variables, recording data, and comparing visual transformations.

This unusual artistic technique using time, sun and vibrant colors, results in paintings that preserve the characteristics of organic matter: they never settle down, they keep changing and take on a new appearance each day, as they fade over the years.

Chartier’s stains are metamorphoses. They trick us, pretending at first to be static, revealing only over time their ever changing nature. In doing so, these works take on philosophical dimensions. The confidence and repeatability seemingly demonstrated by the scientific approach is consistently challenged by the unavoidable action of time.

It is then easy to see in these Rorschach-like blots not only an intellectual challenge, but also an emotional invitation to reflect upon changes, repetition, losses and discoveries.

This exhibition is presented in conjunction with the University of Michigan College of Literature, Science and the Arts Winter 2006 semester theme, “Explore Evolution.”