Between futility and utility: Lisa Turner questions modern society

Alberta print-based artist Lisa Turner brings Toronto gallery Open Studio a fresh perspective of the modern world. The exhibition, entitled Shelf Life, looks at the mass consumption and materialistic culture of today's Western world.
Turner begins with various images that are pulled from Google that she reworks and recombines, in order to create prints of new, oddly familiar consumer products. The exact function of these hypothetical products is often not apparent, and is - in fact - not the point. She comments on the usual mass produced objects, found in department and dollar stores everywhere, that seem to be more aesthetically interesting than actually useful. Here, futility seems to outweigh utility, where the value is constantly decreasing, to the point that it's often no longer cheaper to replace parts or refill components, but to purchase a new item entirely.
These images of product amalgamations that she creates are then printed on canvas or paper, using silk screening methods for the works in this exhibition. Numerous multiples, which are the various prints that are made from the original image, are occasionally displayed alongside each other, which becomes reminiscent of one's typical department store experience.
"I guess I really love the technical aspect of [silk screen printing], but I also think that the multiple is extremely important in my work. I've noticed through different series of print works that I've created, the multiple has always been used as a means to convey the message, and not necessarily just to have say five or 10 of that impression," said Turner.
Although Pop artist Andy Warhol was the first to use the multiple in a significant way, and is someone who Turner draws from procedurally, she looks more to pop-surrealists for inspiration in regards to the content of her work.
"There's definitely a relationship to Warhol for sure. I don't think that I was necessarily looking at his work, per se. Just more and more the connections of screen printing, or using the multiple, or thinking about consumerism," said Turner.
Pop-surrealism is significant in its combination of relevant topics with distorted or fantasy based objects and scenes. Turner's created objects, which fluidly combine various products, appears to be much in the vain of pop-surrealism, where the objects are simultaneously both usual and unusual. As well, she creates subtle distortions in various silk screen prints of the image, so that when multiples are seen together, the whole work becomes more interesting.
"That was definitely a conscious decision to print those bottles at different varying colours. I wanted to just play with the values, so that some would start to be more noticeable than others, and have those slight variations," said Turner. "I think your eye leads around to all the lighter bottles, so instead of just seeing a mass of all these bottles that look almost identical, this helps for the viewer to move around it."
Here the aesthetic concerns meet the conceptual in such a way that she has managed to address both through each method. The work presented in Shelf Life manages to combine these concerns successfully, while leaving the work open and ambiguous enough to not be didactic. Important issues are addressed in such a way that the viewer is allowed to reach their own decision, while being entirely impressed by a strong body of work.
The exhibition runs from Jan. 14 to Feb. 20, at Open Studio - located at 401 Richmond Street W., Toronto.