Faculty of Art

Cross-Disciplinary Art: Life Studies

Chris Leithead

Wave 2: Column 09/2021-12/2021

A daily archive of headlines and columns from The Toronto Star newspaper

“Wave 2: Column 09/2020-12/2020 (Column…) is a process-based work, where every morning between 09/2020 and 12/2020, I imprinted from a select page of The Toronto Star Newspaper on a fresh layer of rubber latex. Over the duration of the work, this created a steadily growing, deepening archival column. A circular puck of latex about the size of an outstretched hand and the colour of a dehydrated urine sample, in its current state Column... is less than an inch thick. The surfaces and depth of the column are imperfect. Along the side we see a seam of tiny bubbles, marking an imperfect boundary between layers within this singular latex object. A wavy texture can be seen beneath the top surface. Upon closer inspection, these waves are comprised of the building of many discrete rows of text, waving with the rotational variation of each layer.Created durationally in an additive layering process, with each layer of latex I imprint text from the day’s edition of The Toronto Star newspaper, in a relationship which becomes one of co-production. From its top view, we get hints of contents which will never be fully knowable to the viewer. The round shape of Column... provides me no rigid orientation from which to print the text upright, and with each layer I am attempting to reorient to the previous path, slanting and straightening, leaving behind a queer, disorienting wave. Column... carries within it a record of my orientation over time, which as with the embedded ink is a record observably present, yet ultimately inaccessible to the viewer.”