Alex Bierk: A Thin Place presents paintings that begin with a photograph capturing a contingent, unrepeatable moment — what philosopher Alain Badiou calls the Event. Working through the Old Masters' grid technique, Bierk allows the mechanical process to distract the conscious mind while the unconscious enters the work as an inarticulate excess that illuminates from within. The resulting paintings — often of older automobiles, simultaneously contemporary and historical — function as portals to a world made invisible through habit, pulling viewers into the same labor of working through that produced them. Bierk, who serves as a city councilor in Peterborough, Ontario, extends this visibility into civic life.
