Wednesday, September 9, 2020

Heidi Meixner: UNMOVED MOVERS: THE MOVE TOWARD, AWAY AND THROUGH

10 September 2020 now extended until 29 October 2020, 7pm!
Virtual launch 10 September 2020  

“When the soul wants to experience something she throws out an image in front of her and then steps into it. ” 
                                                      – Meister Eckhart

The sun, like the hub of a wheel, is an unmoved mover. The centre is static yet the perimeter rotates and the result is that we trundle – or even fly, as the case may be – onward with a cosmic momentum. The Aristotelian theory of the “unmoved mover,” which some dismiss as absurd, puts forth the idea that for every motion there is a mover and that at the mystic centre, the original mover is still. This concept speaks to the experience that the inanimate objects and images around us, occupying a seemingly static existence, can animate shifts and changes within our consciousness.
 
Rituals are created and performed in order to facilitate transformation. A “wünshelrute” (wishing rod), dowsing rod or witching rod is an instrument used to locate subterranean sources of water. In water witching, when someone suspects a valuable source lying beneath, a ritual search or sacred sourcing is performed to locate and move toward that which could nourish and sustain.
 
In A Dictionary of Symbols, J.E. Circlot writes “to leave the circumference for the centre is the equivalent of moving from the exterior to the interior, from form to contemplation, from multiplicity to unity, from space to spacelessness, from time to timelessness.” Unmoved Movers is an inquiry into the perennial and regenerative nature of symbols that are revitalized with each contemplation and explores the idea of symbol as “mover.” 
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A body of waterThe many within the oneTowards centreDarkness & light, EnergeticsTowards expansion, Her proliferated reflections and The Braid are a series of painted papier-mâché witching rods that rest at the edges of the gallery, leaning with upward reaching arms, poised for conduction. These sculptures take the forked form of a Y, a symbol that has been associated with the sacred feminine and evokes both celebration and connectivity. 
 
Cotton fabric is pulled in measured loops through a woven backing to create the hooked rug. Here, at the edge of things is a two-part textile work that suggests adjacent thresholds or portals. Sun wheel and Nyx explore the collectively experienced transitional spaces of sunrise and moonrise and welcome contemplation of the liminal spaces occupied in the everyday.
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Heidi Meixner works in sculpture, painting and textiles. Her practice is inspired by folk art and traditions as well as alternative philosophies. Through slow-process materials and techniques, she explores the relationship between ritual and the everyday as an antidote to the pace and modes of engagement in contemporary culture. She is continuously drawn to the soft, versatile and buffering nature of textiles and is motivated by the vast history and contexts of fibre art. She lives on the traditional unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations known as Vancouver, B.C. In 2009 she received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in visual arts from Simon Fraser University.