WORK, works by Angela Grossmann

Angela Grossmann, Work, 2021, Mixed Media on Paper, 48 x 31 inches, $10,500

Angela Grossmann, General Strike, 2021, Mixed Media on Paper, 55 x 35.5 inches, Edition of 15, $1500 each. 5-15 available

Angela Grossmann, Snap, 2021, Mixed Media on Paper, 31 x 22 inches, $7,750 SOLD

Angela Grossmann, Paperboy, 2020, Mixed Media on Paper, 33.5 x 22 inches, $7,750

Angela Grossmann, Little Waiter, 2019, Mixed Media on Paper, 58 x 30 inches, $10,500

Angela Grossmann, Mother, 2021, Mixed Media on Paper, 41.5 x 22 inches, $10,500

Angela Grossmann, Schnapps, 2020, Mixed Media on Paper, 46 x 22 inches, $7,750

Angela Grossmann, The Academic, 2020, Mixed Media on Paper, 48 x 23 inches, $10,500

Angela Grossmann, Blue Boy, 2021, Mixed Media on Paper, 40 x 26 inches, $10,500

Angela Grossmann, Cadet, 2021, Mixed Media on Paper, 32 x 22 inches, $7,750

Angela Grossmann, Baker, 2020, Mixed Media on Paper, 31 x 24 inches, $7,750

Angela Grossmann, Young Socialist, 2020, Mixed Media on Paper, 35 x 22 inches, $7,750

Angela Grossmann, Young Mother, 2020, Mixed Media on Paper, 48 x 22 inches, $7,750

Angela Grossmann, Lifeguard, 2021, Mixed Media on Paper, 40.5 x 24 inches, $10,500. SOLD

Angela Grossmann, The Apprentice, 2020, Mixed Media on Paper, 44 x 28 inches, $10,500

Saturdays and Sundays, April 17th through May 23rd

Suite 110 - 1529 West 6th Avenue, Vancouver, BC

11:00AM - 5:00 PM

by appointment only between April 17th and May 23rd. contact poiesiscontemporary@shaw.ca

“WORK”, works by Angela Grossmann explore the subject of Labour, it’s history, it’s changing nature, our essential need of it, and possibly most pressing in our current time, it’s precarity. Throughout her career Grossmann has sought to re-dress injustices in the social fabric by transforming historic photography intended as a means of social control into images of empowerment. Grossmann works with images of the marginalized, the misunderstood and dispossessed from a deeply “feminist” point of view. Her Criminalsre-purposed mug-shots into grand portraits. Her Models of Resistancetook exploitive photographs of young women posing in low rent motel rooms and turned them into images of emancipation. Grossmann’snew body of work carries on this position. WORK brings to the fore our relationship to our jobs and our struggle to move within its social confines when expressing our identity, desires, and individuality, “the who we are through what we do.”

The re-make is at the heart of her undertaking.Grossmann has snipped, torn and pasted together her archive of anonymous snap shots creating what appears as a collapse in time. In doing so, she has brought the past to bear on the present in an effort to make a better future.

Clothing and uniforms have traditionally acted to categorize us, to allow recognition—from maids to generals we instantly recognize these social codes and act accordingly. Some of Grossmann’s workers present a sense of pride, confidence and assertiveness in their chosen jobs. For others, Grossmann has captured the resentment that is felt working a daily routine that furnishes few rewards. However, Grossmann’s workers defeat any simple understanding of the assumption of pre-determined social roles that occasion the adoption of dress codes or even the feigning of employment duties.Grossmann accomplishes this feat through her uncanny ability to create believable characters that point out the un-self-conscious ways that the work we do determines our being.