Exploring the value of the handmade in a digital era, Lauren Schaffer’s Space is the Place borrows forms and techniques from mass-manufacturing to create a mysterious lamppost-like structure whose function and purpose are not entirely certain. Although much of the structure appears prefabricated, portions of the fibreglass bear the marks of hand-carving, attesting to a level of human involvement and care inconsistent with mass-production. Culling from design sensibilities of the recent past, Schaffer’s sculpture interrogates the everyday forms we consider contemporary, and plays with the usefulness of objects installed in public space. Questioning the “look” of contemporary things, Schaffer questions, by extension, the ways we imagine and envision the “look” of the future.
Biography:
Lauren Schaffer is an inter-disciplinary artist from Montreal, now lives in Toronto. She received her BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and her MFA from Concordia University. In addition to exhibiting across Canada, she has work in the public collections of the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Crane Canada Ltd. and several private collections. Lauren has received grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Quebec. Her film, “a blind” was awarded ‘Best Experimental Film’ at the 2015 Toronto Urban Film Festival. Her Kinetic Sculpture and Experimental Film Project conducted with Withrow Public School was selected as one of the finalists at the TIFF Jump Cuts 2012’s Young Filmmaker’s Showcase. Lauren was artists-in-residence at NSCAD University during the Summer of 2010 and more recently with her youth art program, Click Camp, at the Artist’s Newsstand Collective’s Chester Subway Station kiosk. Lauren is an instructor for OCAD University’s Continuing Studies Department and Seneca College’s Department of Arts Fundamentals.