THERE ARE NO WALLS, ONLY SHIMMERING MEMBRANES | MORGAN MELENKA

03.07.2021 to 12.09.2021

Morgan Melenka’s intervention into the architecture of the Art Library uses Formica-clad columns, mirrors and a printed floor pattern to contemplate the simulations of our built environments. Formica laminates used in countertops and cabinets are created when sheets of kraft paper are injected with resin and cured. Formica is a hardened, printed image able to take the appearance of materials we consider strong or valuable. The revelation that the sturdy maple present in our interiors is actually a flimsy printed image becomes an unsettling glimpse into the simulations of our everyday environments.

There are No Walls, Only Shimmering Membranes uses different editions of Formica, adhered to a line of column-shaped cutouts. The column as an architectural element has its own sense of self-importance. Their use in Neo-Classical architecture associated them with an austere, rational grandeur that continues to proliferate through suburban porches and garden centres. Like a stage-set, the columns fool viewers from a distance. They appear to be stone supports holding up the weight above them but like other decorative architecture, their functional and material trickery is revealed up-close.

Formica is just one example of how notions of authenticity are destabilized by the constructed environments that surround us. Melenka looks to Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas who coined the term Junkspace to replace architecture as the built product of modernization. Junkspace is what remains after modernization has run its course, a proliferation of low-grade purgatories where the simplest walls must be replaced with “…shimmering membranes frequently covered in mirror or gold.” If, as in the Neo-Classical period, architecture embodied social mores, Melenka’s Formica columns are an architecture for the waste, reproductions, simulations and projections of wealth that we hold dear.

Curated by Adam Whitford

SAAG Art Library Project | Begun in 2020, the SAAG presents exhibitions as in-situ interventions within our Art Library. The Art Library Project features a diverse selection of artworks and mediums from regional contemporary artists. Artists are invited to think of the library as a unique exhibition context by investigating the SAAG’s programming around readership, publications, and its place within Lethbridge’s historic Carnegie library which opened in 1922. Artists are encouraged to consider the physical architecture of the library and its material holdings, responding to a broader and generative idea of what a library might be, as they change and adapt to new forms of knowledge production.

Morgan Melenka engages with sculpture and printmaking as she reproduces, modifies, and misuses familiar architectural forms and materials to engage with the world of generic public architecture. Fantasy and illusion are created through improvised construction and facades composed of printed imitations. She is based in Edmonton AB and received her MFA from NSCAD University in 2019.

This exhibition was made possible with funding assistance from the Canada Council for the Arts, Alberta Foundation for the Arts, and the City of Lethbridge.

Image: Morgan Melenka, (mirror, polish, echo), Formica, particle board, mirror, and ink on paper, 2021. Courtesy of the artist.