Installation view of Witch’s Fingers by Sean Jena Taal. Courtesy of the artist. photos by Blaine Campbell.
SEAN JENA TAAL
Witch’s Fingers
8 JULY 2023 - 29 SEPTEMBER 2023
Sean Jena Taal’s drawings and sculptures of caves utilize a network of physical, fictional, and psychological spaces best described by the grotesque. The grotto, or the grottesca, previously described hidden, underground caverns such as crypts, but over time, the grotesque began to refer to that which is distorted or macabre. Like the grotesque, Taal’s detailed graphite drawing and a new series of sculptures balance depictions of natural cave formations with the potential for the sinister and the unseen to reside within.
Working primarily in exacting graphite drawings of cave interiors, for Witch’s Fingers, Taal also exhibits a new series of rocky clay and resin sculptures as they form into body parts of hands, fingers, and legs. Created to imitate the limestone depositions of flowstone, stalactites and stalagmites, these sculptures also suggest a state of pareidolia, or the perception of human features where they do not exist. These half-formed bodies not only resemble how a cave wall may look like a face in the dark but suppose the cave as its own living body, with skins of regenerative rock and fingers that drip and dangle.
Within the depths of White Scar Cave in Ingleton, England, lie The Witch’s Fingers, a stalactite formation that trickles limestone into yellowed, spindly fingers. Cave formations often take on colloquial supernatural names such as “Hell Cave” or “Devil’s Throat”. This naming convention suggests that amateur explorers are more likely to believe that the emergence of these rocky bodies have mystical or demonic origins rather than emerging from the slow deposition of calcium carbonate. Buried in subterranean worlds, Taal’s meticulous caves are grotesque bodies of mystical origin—evolving hybrids of stone, water, force, and time.
Curated by Adam Whitford, Interim Curator
Sean Jena Taal makes drawings that poke at the dichotomy of comfort and discomfort, belief, and alienation, seduction, and disgust. Aiming to blur lines and create uncertainty, Sean uses the visual language of spaces, bodies, pareidolia, and the build-up of layers. Through fictionalized cave spaces, he questions what's looking back from the depths and what forms grow and survive in hostile spaces. Sean holds a BFA from the Alberta University of the Arts (2015). He has attended the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design New York studio residency program (2012) and the Gil Artist Residency program in Akureyri, Iceland (2022).
SAAG Library Gallery: The Gallery presents exhibitions as in-situ interventions within our Library. The Library Gallery 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 Gallery’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.
We acknowledge the support of the City of Lethbridge, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.