The Shape Of Undoing
My main concern as an artist has been ways of seeing. Across all of my work I have used different
techniques to move away from the information world of photography and into the interior world,
toward a visual language of openness, abstraction and poetic distance.
The Shape of Undoing is perhaps my furthest reach into that idea so far. Working from LiDAR
scans, I move inside the image and forage for landscapes found nowhere else. They look familiar
and unknown at the same time.
Is clarity and certaining coming into focus or being released from our grasp.
My early training was in exactness. In my career I printed for West Coast masters such as Ed
Ruscha and Kelly Wood, and I learned how completely a photograph can be controlled and how
much it can aim to tell you.
What interests me now is relief from information. Searching for that poetic space, which opens us.
Where meaning can change and deepen with each viewer and with time.
What remains is room to see.
-LJP
Laura Jane Petelko, born in Toronto in 1972, is a Canadian photographic artist renowned for her emotive sincerity and intimate subject matter.