Rhonda Weppler and Trevor Mahovsky are a Vancouver-based artist duo, and among the most exciting young artists to emerge in Canada in the last decade. Although they have been working together only since 2004, they have already exhibited their work extensively across the country and internationally in Vancouver, Toronto, Halifax, Montreal, Nagoya, Berlin, Siena, Seattle, and elsewhere. Sculptors, Weppler and Mahovsky are known for replications or alterations of everyday objects, such as styrene coffee cups, take-out chicken containers, cars, facial tissue boxes, cigarettes, and other hallmarks of our consumer culture. Their work draws from both minimalist and Pop histories, while displaying a distinctly contemporary, critical conceptualism.
In the construction of their work, Weppler and Mahovsky use simple and everyday materials, such as plaster, tinfoil, resin, paint. They obscure the difference between the negative and positive presence of an object by, say, painting the resin “negative” copy of tin can silver, to resemble a real tin can (made by using a real tin can as a mold), or painting the top of a solid plaster styrene coffee cup dark brown, to resemble coffee. Sometimes the colour added to an object is simply a visual pun: red stripes on a plaster cast of a paper chicken bucket instantly recall Kentucky Fried. The artists call this “an impoverished or minimalist tromp l’oeil.”
Although the precise content of their show in Kamloops is yet to be determined, Weppler and Mahovsky will present many of their smaller sculptures, along with at least one larger, “collapsing” sculpture in the form of the car. In tribute to the car culture of Kamloops that brings us such events as Hot Night in the City, Weppler and Mahovsky will wrap a vintage car belonging to a local resident. The exhibition will be accompanied by a full colour catalogue.
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