I am a Handyman | Hal Fortin
What utility can we find in vestiges of the past? This question shapes Hal Fortin’s interdisciplinary practice and its distinct sculptural language, punctuated by humour, dream logic, and the rhythms of domestic labour. Working with second-hand materials that are both inherited and found, Fortin moves fluidly between repurposing originals into sculptures and reproducing them through printmaking. Responding to surfaces marked by time and absence—stained, mended, cleaned, sanded, shedding, scraped, pierced, and peeling—the exhibition repositions objects as sites where histories accumulate, revealing both care and neglect.
An assemblage of unstable forms, the would-be furnishings and tools that comprise I am a Handyman are as strange as they are familiar. While they relate to the body at the domestic scale, they unsettle expectations of function, deflating under the pressure of usefulness. In the process, Fortin’s work considers our shared fate with objects and invites viewers to reflect on their relationships with everyday materials.
This exhibition represents the culmination of two years of work in the University of Guelph’s Master of Fine Arts program. The Art Gallery of Guelph’s annual exhibitions of graduating MFA students are presented in conjunction with the School of Fine Art and Music at the University of Guelph.
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