is a knot helpful
Eli Bornowsky
Jessica Stockholder
October 31–December 13, 2025
The opening reception is Thursday, October 30, 6–8pm
A knot is a line turned back on itself. A two-dimensional gesture becomes a spatial configuration, perhaps even unfolding temporally as we follow its arc from beginning to end. Whether formed by hand or through circumstance, a knot interrupts the flow to hold materials together through tension. Making use of lines, knots, and tangles, artworks by Jessica Stockholder and Eli Bornowsky draw connections across symbolic and material realities, tracing the entanglements through which perception takes shape.
Egg tempera paintings by Eli Bornowsky depict fragments of procedural tessellations. Cropped into square dimensions, the geometric compositions could extend infinitely beyond the picture plane. For the artist, whose practice often draws on optical effects derived from mathematical systems, geometric operations are a way to problematize artistic self-expression, engaging instead with the physical manifestations of algorithmic logic. For instance, Bornowsky employs ‘space-filling curves’ and ‘random walk algorithms’ to determine the distribution of colour across tiles. Both describe the wandering path of a line: one continuous and exhaustive, the other partial and unpredictable. Within these parameters, Bornowsky’s brush follows similar trajectories—looping, meandering, and doubling back—revealing the restless motion of his constructed process. By merging geometric precision with intuitive improvisation, his paintings explore the knot of structure and chance, where each brushstroke translates mathematic procedures into laboured rhythm.
For Stockholder, however, knots and lines serve as ways to cohere and compose dissimilar materials. One could imagine a random walk algorithm, more literally applied, carried out in the aisles of a hardware store or the heaps of a recycling depot. Because the daily experience of mass-produced goods is a sensation without sensitivity, Stockholder’s through-lines act as guides amidst the chaos of our post-industrial existence—a way to connect the dots across ambivalent constellations of meaning. Her compositions emphasize formal resemblances in order to contest taxonomies contrived through language, organized by function, or filtered by retail value. The result can be dizzying, as one is forced to reconcile bungee cords, rubber mats, and a travertine sink, as in Vanishing Point (2025) for example. Yet, Stockholder unifies such dissimilar surfaces with swaths of painted colour, inviting the viewer to consider each metonymic microcosm that signifies consumer desire, overseas labour, and the tangled logics that govern everyday life.
Similarly, Bornowsky’s paint reaches across tiled surfaces, using ‘pattern matching’ to orient each unit within the context of its tessellation. These illustrative rules end up resembling iconographic arrows or fragments of typography—as in the quantum of happiness enjoyed by a country’s inhabitants and the means of its future improvement (2025)—bridging the abstractions of mathematics and semiotics. The character of his paint further strengthens these knotty overlaps. Egg tempera is an ancient picture-making technique, which the artist employs alongside equally ancient earth pigments, steering mathematic connotations away from abstract objectivity and toward something meditative or embodied. Each brushstroke accumulates without ever achieving full opacity, leaving behind traces of finite labour even as the image gestures toward boundless repetition. Other pigments are chosen for their elementary nature: cadmium, titanium, and zirconium are all periodic elements, molecules that cannot be broken down any further—and yet, there is no limit to what can be built from their permutations.
Instead of stretching paint across a primed surface, Stockholder applies colour directly upon manufactured plastic and metal artifacts, which selectively spills over onto the gallery wall. These works are decidedly unframed—except when they reflect the architectural environment in which they are contained. In Cargo (2025), even language is reduced to material, the syntactical line of a sentence disrupted and reconfigured to produce new meaning through paraleipsis. Whenever her material seems to resolve into a singular identity, the artist cuts it off, instead focusing on blurred overlaps rather than clean separations, just as Bornowsky’s patterns seem to revel in the absence of a standardized grid. As still over time (2025) reaches beyond the gallery walls, we glimpse that each artwork’s framework is contingent: a knot of supply-chain relations that, if unraveled, would implicate the entire world.
The artists’ overlapping tactics of ‘picture-making’ give both practices a metonymic quality. Whereas metaphor operates through resemblance—one thing standing in for another—metonymy depends on adjacency and material connection. Stockholder literally draws lines across what we call nature and society, each hooked terminus acting as an anchor that clasps nearby objects in a continuous chain. Bruised Elbow (2025) features elemental copper and an amputated tree limb aligned with a plastic food tray. What do they have in common but everything? The tree evokes nature, yet this tree was cultivated, replanted among others to replenish clearcut tracts, while plastic has become ubiquitous within so-called nature. Her practice insists that there is no raw material from which to construct—only matter already shaped by culture, industry, and environmental pressures. Bornowsky’s work asks similar questions, to different effect. How can we conceive of infinity from within our decidedly finite perspective and existence? The procedurally-coloured, aperiodic patterns that comprise his work are subject to multi-stability—which is the optical condition of having several likenesses at once. For Bornowsky, multi-stability is universality, the common denominator of dissimilar perspectives is their difference and their ongoing interpretability. In this way, both artists’ works entangle the viewer, drawing us into a chain of causality that unfolds in simultaneously material and symbolic dimensions.
The eponymous question of the exhibition, is a knot helpful, cannot be resolved, even as the knottiness of contiguity cannot be denied. If a knot is helpful, it is only to us as individuals of limited perspective as a way to trace the connections between microscopic elements and global supply chains, between the human hand and the arc of history. A knot ties the world together, however provisionally, reminding us that every loop of understanding contains its own tangle.
Closed for installation
The gallery is currently closed for installation, reopening Thursday, October 30, 6–8pm with is a knot helpful
featuring Eli Bornowsky and Jessica Stockholder. The exhibition will run October 31–December 13, 2025.
Ron Terada
CANADA
Light Years
November 1, 2024–November 2, 2025
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto
—
VANCOUVER
Still
September 6–October 18, 2025
Catriona Jeffries
*PRESS*
CBC Arts
Brian Jungen
USA
TREES NEVER END AND HOUSES NEVER END
June 28–October 2025
Sky High Farm, Germantown
Fictions of Display
June 29, 2025–January 4, 2026
MOCA, Los Angeles
Where I Learned to Look: Art from the Yard
March 6–July 26, 2026
Fine Arts Centre at Colorado College, Colorado Springs, USA
—
CANADA
SPORTS SPORTS SPORTS
March 8–September 21, 2025
Art Windsor Essex
From Sea to Sky: The Art of British Columbia
November 13, 2025–May 18, 2026
Audain Art Museum, Whistler, Canada
—
CHINA
15th Shanghai Biennial: Does the flower hear the bee?
November 8, 2025–March 31, 2026
Power Station of Art, Shanghai, China
*AWARD*
The Audain Prize for the Visual Arts
*PRESS*
The Creative Independent
The Globe and Mail
Vancouver Sun
Nation Talk
Artforum
The Art Newspaper
Tanya Lukin Linklater
CANADA
Luminocity
October 18–25, 2025
Kamloops Art Gallery, Canada
Kinesthesia: Body as Form
October 25–December 14, 2025
Surrey Art Gallery, Canada
We who have known tides
November 7, 2025–April 12, 2026
Vancouver Art Gallery, Canada
—
USA
bison bison (dance_hum for dirtbath)
September 13–October 25, 2025
Dia Chelsea, New York
Indian Theater: Native Performance, Art, and Self-Determination since 1969
June 5–September 21, 2026
SITE Santa Fe
—
UK
My grandmother is my school: Ancestral Lines and Embodied Knowledges
November 14–16, 2025
Tate Modern, London
*PRESS*
Something Curated
Flash Art
Liz Magor
USA
Separated by Location
June 28–October 26, 2025
The Campus, Hudson, New York
—
CANADA
a matter of time
July 17, 2025–July 5, 2026
Winnipeg Art Gallery
Edge Effects
September 20, 2025–February 15, 2026
Gibson Art Museum, Burnaby
—
CHINA
*PRESS*
Flash Art
Abbas Akhavan
CANADA
Omay, Djamal, Albert. hiver 1982; Lights In The City 1999
May 18, 2023–2026
Dazibao Satellite, Montreal
Presence
June 26–November 9, 2025
Contemporary Calgary
—
VANCOUVER
One Hundred Years
September 5–December 7, 2025
Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery
—
UK
Gathering Ground
January 29, 2025–January 4, 2026
Tate Modern, London
—
CHINA
—
ITALY
Geoffrey Farmer
CANADA
Geoffrey Farmer: Phantom Scripts
October 2, 2025–February 2, 2026
Audain Art Museum, Whistler
Duane Linklater
USA
Duane Linklater: 12 + 2
September 12, 2025–January 24, 2026
Dia Chelsea, New York
Native America: In Translation
May 22–November 3, 2025
Asheville Museum of Art, Asheville, USA
Where I Learned to Look: Art from the Yard
March 6–July 26, 2026
Fine Arts Centre at Colorado College, Colorado Springs, USA
—
AUSTRIA
Exhibition History
Ceal Floyer, Adam Shiu-Yang Shaw, Ron Terada, Ian Wallace
Still
September 6–October 18, 2025
Rebecca Brewer and Veit Laurent Kurz
Locus Amoenus: Extinct Flame
July 9–30, 2025
Ron Terada
You Have Left the American Sector
May 1–June 14, 2025
Liz Magor
Arrange Your Face
April 26–June 28, 2025
Nairy Baghramian, Matt Browning, James Carl, Devon Knowles, Clémence de La Tour du Pin, Liz Larner, Christina Mackie, Liz Magor, Ellen Neel, Jessica Stockholder
Slow Looking
February 15–April 5, 2025
Abbas Akhavan, Rochelle Goldberg
Disembody
November 30, 2024–January 25, 2025
Valérie Blass
When I feel shy
September 19–November 16, 2024
Sonya Kelliher-Combs
remnant
September 19–November 16, 2024
Brian Jungen
Flagpole
April 17, 2024–2025
Duane Linklater
cache
April 6–June 28, 2024
Andrea Carlson, Chukwudubem Ukaigwe, Eli Bornowsky
No Exit
February 1–March 16, 2024
Elizabeth McIntosh
Real Relationships
December 1, 2023–January 20, 2024
Ron Terada
BBQ Beer Freedom
September 28–November 18, 2023
Judy Radul, Andrew Yong Hoon Lee, Steven Cottingham
Where the echoes cannot end
September 15, 2023
Steven Cottingham
Chain–link
July 21, 2023
Brenda Draney
Unfinished Business
May 26–July 8, 2023
Damian Moppett
Half Life
March 24–May 6, 2023
Rebecca Brewer
Eidetic Cloud
January 27–March 11, 2023
Tanya Lukin Linklater
breath ,’ echo
November 12, 2022–January 7, 2023
Jerry Pethick
‘How specialized are our interpretations of the world?’
September 16–October 29, 2022
Janice Kerbel
Speech! Fight!
Speech! Fight!
May 28–June 25, 2022
Valérie Blass, Laurie Kang, Christina Mackie, Liz Magor
Do Redo Repeat
March 19–May 7, 2022
Brenda Draney, Tanya Lukin Linklater
The best stories I know come from late night car rides or kitchen tables.
January 29–March 5, 2022
Raymond Boisjoly
🕸Some Number of Things🕸
November 6–December 18, 2021
Abbas Akhavan, Geoffrey Farmer, Rochelle Goldberg, Kapwani Kiwanga, Duane Linklater
Unseeable
Sept 18–Oct 23, 2021
Charmian Johnson
May 29–July 3, 2021
Ian Wallace
In the Museum
April 10–May 22, 2021
Damian Moppett
Vignettes
February 13–March 27, 2021
Liz Magor
Downer
December 5, 2020–January 30, 2021
Duane Linklater
primaryuse
October 24–November 21, 2020
Elizabeth McIntosh
Mom or Mother
September 12–October 10, 2020
Valérie Blass
La poudre aux yeux: Of smoke in mirrors
May 23–June 27, 2020
Ashes Withyman
Some kind of doctor receiving thunder
February 8–March 14, 2020
Abbas Akhavan
They asked the fox, “Who is your witness?”
He said, “My tail.”
November 23, 2019–January 18, 2020
Christina Mackie
September 21–November 2, 2019
Rochelle Goldberg
May 25–July 20, 2019
gatekeepers
Abbas Akhavan, Valérie Blass, Raymond Boisjoly, Rebecca Brewer, Trisha Brown and Trisha Brown Dance Company, Chris Burden, Raven Chacon, Geoffrey Farmer, Hanne Darboven, Marcel Duchamp, Kasper Feyrer, Alex Frost, Cynthia Girard-Renard, Rochelle Goldberg, Dan Graham, Brian Jungen, On Kawara, Janice Kerbel, Christine Sun Kim, Duane Linklater, Tanya Lukin Linklater, Christina Mackie, Myfanwy MacLeod, Liz Magor, Elizabeth McIntosh, Damian Moppett, Stephen Murray, Kate Newby, Jerry Pethick, Eileen Quinlan, Judy Radul, Aurie Ramirez, Rob Renpenning, Marina Roy, Kevin Schmidt, Nick Sikkuark, Michael Snow, Ron Terada, Calder Tsuyuki Tomlinson, Ian Wallace, Nicole Wermers, and Ashes Withyman
Unexplained Parade
February 9–May 11, 2019
Judy Radul
Words No Pictures Pictures No Words
May 11–June 16, 2018
Kasper Feyrer
Background Actors
March 16–April 21, 2018
Rebecca Brewer, Rochelle Goldberg, Charmian Johnson, Christina Mackie
Nature
January 26–March 3, 2018
Elizabeth McIntosh
ISLANDS
November 17–December 22, 2017
Ron Terada
TL; DR
September 15–October 28, 2017
Elizabeth McIntosh, Monique Mouton, Silke Otto-Knapp
May 26–July 8, 2017
Ian Wallace
Street Floor Table Page Wall Canvas, 1969–2017
March 31–May 13, 2017
Ashes Withyman
Bullae
March 10–18, 2017
Geoffrey Farmer
The Big Kitchen
January 14–February 25, 2017
Rebecca Brewer
The Holding Sky
November 12–December 17, 2016
Raymond Boisjoly
September 16–October 29, 2016
Damian Moppett
May 6–June 25, 2016
Liz Magor
March 5–April 23, 2016
Brian Jungen
January 22–February 27, 2016
Valérie Blass
To only ever say one thing forever the same thing
November 21, 2015–January 9, 2016
Janice Kerbel
Score
September 12–October 24, 2015
Liz Magor, Jerry Pethick, Ron Tran
A view believed to be yours
May 15–June 27, 2015
Myfanwy MacLeod
TELL HER NOTHING SHE TELLS ALL
March 21–May 2, 2015
Ian Wallace
The Construction Site
January 17–February 28, 2015
Duane Linklater
But the sun is up and you're going?
November 15–December 20, 2014
Ron Terada
Jack
September 19–October 25, 2014
Jerry Pethick
Where sidewalks leap upon the table: works on paper 1966–2000
May 24–June 28, 2014
Rebecca Brewer
The Written Face
March 29–May 10, 2014
Geoffrey Farmer
The Grass and the Banana go for a walk
February 8-March 15, 2014
Ashes Withyman
Household Temple Yard
November 26, 2013–January 11, 2014
Damian Moppett
Salute
September 20–November 2, 2013
Brian Jungen, Duane Linklater
Modest Livelihood
June 7–July 20, 2013
Andrea Büttner, Joëlle de La Casinière, Ashes Withyman
April 26–June 1, 2013
Raymond Boisjoly
March 1–April 13, 2013
Liz Magor
I is being This
November 16–December 22, 2012
Christina Mackie, Jerry Pethick
Bigger than a book, wilder than a tree
September 14–October 27, 2012
Judy Radul
April 27–June 9, 2012
Kasper Feyrer
Alternatives and Opportunities
March 2–April 14, 2012
Ian Wallace
Masculin/Féminin
January 13–February 18, 2012
Ulla von Brandenburg, Guy de Cointet, Geoffrey Farmer, Janice Kerbel, Daria Martin, Judy Radul
People Things Enter Exit
October 28–December 10, 2011
Ron Terada
Jack
September 3–October 8, 2011
Robert Kleyn
Works 1969–1983
May 20–June 25, 2011
Arabella Campbell
March 25–April 30, 2011
Alex Morrison
February 3–March 12, 2011
Brian Jungen
November 19, 2010–January 15, 2011
Kevin Schmidt
September 17–October 23, 2010
Damian Moppett
The Sculptor’s Studio is a Painting
May 21–June 26, 2010
Geoffrey Farmer
The Surgeon and the Photographer
January 29-March 6, 2010
Myfanwy MacLeod
Gold
November 6–December 12, 2009
Ian Wallace
Works 1970–1979
September 18–October 24, 2009
Brian Jungen, Rebecca Belmore, Myfanwy MacLeod, Kevin Schmidt, Alex Morrison, Sam Durant, Ron Terada, Geoffrey Farmer, Jin-me Yoon
Loaded
May 15–June 20, 2009
Christos Dikeakos
March 26–April 25, 2009
Ashes Withyman
Uncertain Pilgrimage
January 15–February 14, 2009
Jin-me Yoon
October 30–November 29, 2008
Jerry Pethick
September 12–October 11, 2008
Ron Terada
May 23–June 28, 2008
Germaine Koh
April 11–May 10, 2008
Roy Kiyooka, Damian Moppett, Jerry Pethick, Ian Wallace
Process as Work
February 29–March 29, 2008
Kelly Wood, Monika Grzymala
January 18–February 16, 2008
Alex Morrison
November 23–December 22, 2007
Ian Wallace
October 18–November 17, 2007
Judy Radul
September 7–October 6, 2007
Arabella Campbell
June 8–July 7, 2007
Brian Jungen
April 27–May 26, 2007
Sam Durant
Scenes from the Pilgrim Story: Natural History
March 16–April 14, 2007
Damian Moppett
Progress in Advance of the Fall
January 19–February 24, 2007
Isabelle Pauwels
November 25–December 22, 2006
Geoffrey Farmer
Airliner Open Studio
October 21–November 18, 2006
Kevin Schmidt
September 9–October 7, 2006
Ashes Withyman, Jacob Gleeson
St. George Marsh
August 24–September 1, 2006
Christos Dikeakos, Geoffrey Farmer, Arni Haraldsson, Brian Jungen, Roy Kiyooka, Germaine Koh, Myfanwy MacLeod, Damian Moppett, Isabelle Pauwels, Jerry Pethick, Judy Radul, Kevin Schmidt, Ron Terada, Ian Wallace, Jin-me Yoon
274 East 1st
June 3–July 8, 2006
Christos Dikeakos
November 25, 2005–January 16, 2006
Alex Morrison, Isabelle Pauwels, Frances Stark, Johannes Wohnseifer
And to stop you interfering, I shall have to dematerialize you again
October 13–November 19, 2005
Geoffrey Farmer, Brian Jungen, Germaine Koh, Myfanwy MacLeod, Damian Moppett, Alex Morrison, Ron Terada, Ian Wallace, Kelly Wood
Mix with care
July 5–September 24, 2005
Ron Terada
May 20–June 25, 2005
Arabella Campbell, Neil Campbell, Ron Terada, Ian Wallace
Painting After Poverty
April 8–May 14, 2005
Sam Durant
Color Pictures
February 25–March 2, 2005
Germaine Koh
Shell
January 14–February 19, 2005
Roy Kiyooka
Open Window on a Slow Train
December 2004
Jin-me Yoon
Fugitive
October 22–November 27, 2004
Myfanwy MacLeod
Don’t Stop Dreaming
September 10–October 16, 2004
Artist Curating Artists:
Damian Moppett curates Allison Hrabluik and Zin Taylor
May 28–June 26, 2004
Geoffrey Farmer
Every Surface In Some Way Decorated, Altered or Changed Forever (Except the Float)
April 7–May 15, 2004
Artist Curating Artists:
Myfanwy MacLeod curates Kyla Mallett
February 11–March 13, 2004
Damian Moppett
1815/1962
October 30–December 6, 2003
Carsten Höller, Cameron Jamie, Jakob Kolding, Myfanwy MacLeod, Kyla Mallett, Valérie Mréjen, Isabelle Pauwels, Raymond Pettibon, Ron Terada, Lawrence Weiner, Erwin Wurm
Seethe
September 10–October 25, 2003
Iain Baxter, Geoffrey Farmer, Roy Kiyooka, Germaine Koh, Myfanwy MacLeod, Ron Terada
I Sell Security
May 29–August 16, 2003
Kelly Wood
Black Plastic
April 11–May 17, 2003
Ian Wallace
February 28–April 5, 2003
Alex Morrison
Housewrecker
January 17–February 22, 2003
Allyson Clay
November 29–December 21, 2002
Ron Terada
September 6–October 12, 2002
Germaine Koh, Alex Morrison, N.E. Thing Co., Ron Terada, Ian Wallace
Signage
June 8–August 31, 2002
Christos Dikeakos
March 21–April 20, 2002
Germaine Koh
March 8–April 13, 2002
Brian Jungen
February 1–March 2, 2002
Geoffrey Farmer
Catriona Jeffries Catriona
September 9–October 9, 2001
Myfanwy MacLeod
Miss Moonshine
September 7–October 6, 2001
Geoffrey Farmer, Germaine Koh, Myfanwy MacLeod, Damian Moppett, Ron Terada, Jin-me Yoon, Kelly Wood
Supernatural Fairytales (Pink Island)
June 8–August 25, 2001
Ian Wallace
My Heroes in the Street
March 9–April 14, 2001
Jerry Pethick
Traverse
February 19–March 3, 2001
Roy Kiyooka
Filmic Works 1978–1980
November 30–December 21, 2000
Arni Haraldsson
Jerusalem
September 8–October 14, 2000
Iain Baxter
Vacuum Forms
April 27–June 3, 2000
Damian Moppett
Impure Systems
February 4–March 11, 2000
Ron Terada
Jeopardy Paintings
November 1999
Ian Wallace
Street Works 1969–1995
Part I: 1980–1982, March 1999. Part II: 1969–1999, April–May 1999
Ian Wallace
Chopaka
April 1997
Jerry Pethick
Gobi Clone
March 1997
