Drained Rainbow, 2023 by Rhonda Weppler + Trevor Mahovsky

Materials: Cut and folded photograph. Framed.

Dimensions: 14 x 11 x 1.5 inches

Estimated Value: $350 | Reserve Price: $250

Courtesy of Susan Hobbs Gallery (Toronto).

About the artists:

Rhonda Weppler  (b. Winnipeg)  + Trevor Mahovsky  (b. Calgary) are New York- and Toronto-based artists who have worked collaboratively since 2004. Both artists hold mfa degrees from the University of British Columbia, where they met in 1996. They have exhibited in galleries and museums internationally, including the National Gallery of Canada, Vancouver Art Gallery, LABoral in Gijon, Dos de Mayo in Madrid, the Power Plant in Toronto, Musée d’art Contemporain in Montréal, Tokyo Wonder Site, and loop-raum in Berlin. Their work is represented in public collections, including the Musée d’art Contemporain de Montréal and the National Gallery of Canada.

Description of work:

Purchased on eBay, this used watercolour set is flayed open, offering a trace of the life of its past owner at the same time as it exhibits its own depletion. Even as the worn-down paint pots attest to the passage of time, the splatters of colour, once fluid, prove to have foreshadowed the freezing of motion achieved in the presented photograph. The partially cut out lid is bent forward to produce an easily exposed illusion suggesting re-entry into the world of things. Yet this folding also reminds of the already material quality of the printed image itself. As this watercolour set—itself a tool for representation via transitions between states of stability and fluidity—is used, digitized, resold, printed and physically manipulated, there is inflection and crossover regarding the ways it might be thought of in relation to documentation, illusion, image, objecthood, movement and stillness.