For most of us, wallpaper is simply the background to our daily life, a riot of retro colour unearthed during a reno, or perhaps a whimsical pattern to spruce up a boring powder room. And, says artist Elana Herzog, “we don’t usually associate it with fine art.” Now, Herzog wants to change that assumption with a new show at Koffler Arts that includes wallpaper-filled works spanning 35 years of her prolific, acclaimed career along with some new site-specific installations.
Herzog was born in Toronto, but has spent most of her life in Brooklyn, where she has exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum and Museum of Arts and Design and scored a Guggenheim Fellowship. Now, she’s thrilled to be showing in her hometown. “At this point in my life it felt right to revisit this connection to my family’s past: the place and community in which my father was rooted and where I was born.”
Herzog has long been fascinated with wallpaper. She remembers visiting a friend’s house when she was in her early teens that featured wallpaper with red flocking on it. “My parents would have hated that, but I loved it,” she says. Wallpaper is where the human hand meets the mass-produced, Herzog says — and she is very interested in that meeting point. Here, she combines familiar materials in unexpected ways to make two- and three-dimensional forms: “I use a lot of textiles and other domestic and building materials to make work that is raw, visceral, intimate and tactile.”
Stapling. Ripping. Cutting. Sewing. Screwing. Attaching things to one another. Attaching things to the walls and ceiling of the gallery. So many different acts go into a Herzog installation. “I use a lot of textiles and other domestic and building materials to make work that is raw, visceral, intimate and tactile. Some of my pieces are made primarily by adding materials, and others by taking away materials, always leaving a residue of the process,” she says.
She doesn’t have a favourite piece in the show; each installation is important to her in some essential way. “It’s very meaningful for me to see pieces from the 1990s in the same room as pieces from the 2020s. It’s very autobiographical in that way,” Herzog says. “One piece leads to the next, and it’s those relationships that create the vibe of the show,” Herzog says. “Ideas generate other ideas.”
The show runs until May 11 at Koffler Arts, 180 Shaw St.
Colour your own world with these exciting patterns from Canadian wallpaper brands
In bloom
Printed Decor Boho Blossoms wallpaper, from $8.50/sq. ft., printeddecor.com
This self-adhesive wallpaper is both dark and delicate, with its moody charcoal background but sweet peachy-pink flowers.
Into the woods
Wallpaperonline Acadian Forest wallpaper, from $3.69/sq. ft., wallpaperonline.ca
Forest bathe in any room in your house with this made-in-Vancouver peel-and-stick pattern.
Groovy, baby
Timberlea Interiors Midnight wallpaper, $105 (8-ft.x2-ft approx.), timberleaco.com
Customize this peel-and-stick retro graphic print with one of 71 available colours.
Sweet as pie
Wynil Pie wallpaper, $145 (9-ft.x2-ft approx.), wynil.com
Canadian artist Kate Golding designed this deliciously whimsical pattern of nine kinds of pie.
