David R. Harper: MIDNIGHT

David R. Harper’s exhibition MIDNIGHT is a profound exploration of stillness rendered in material form, including glasswork, weaving, embroidery, and a monumental installation of more than 10,000 ceramic birds. 

MIDNIGHT is the culmination of Harper’s nine-year meditation on a single form. His durational and repeated use of the bird acts as a conduit to process the weight of time passing, and the tenuous relationship between accumulation and deterioration. Shaping and re-shaping the bird forms became a central act in Harper’s studio over the years. The routine, and reverence, provided a sense of comfort for the artist, as he relied on the process in times of grief or creative pause to stave off the anxieties and uncertainties inherent in the experimental nature of his practice. 

As the birds piled up in his studio, a new narrative began to take shape and the work became bigger than him, bigger than the reason he began it in the first place; it started to live a life of its own. The production of ceramic birds became a way of transforming complex thoughts into tangible objects. Each form became a marker of a lingering thought, like an idea you can’t shake, or a memory that grounds you in times of anxiety. They collectively articulate the movement between feeling overwhelmed and feeling at peace and give shape to the non-linear nature of time and memory, demonstrating the intimate relationship between an artist and a process.   

Harper’s elaborate installations are truly awesome in their detail, scope, and scale. His caring and attentive approach to artmaking yields elegantly unfolding narratives on grief, belonging, beauty, angst, and longing. His exhibitions are comprised of hundreds of individual components, employing both traditional and non-traditional materials, such as embroidery, ceramic, glass, and casting dehydrated milk, bone, and charcoal. For more than eighteen years, Harper has forged a path dedicated to experimentation by fostering a unique relationship with craft processes. From embroidery to taxidermy and ceramics to stained glass, his comprehension and adept understanding of material is unparalleled. MIDNIGHT highlights this distinct material language, his rigorous investigations of presence through absence, and his empathetic curiosity of the human condition with a self-reflexivity and tenderness that is refreshing. It is a monument to slow and steady production, and a continuous distillation of his practice.    

MIDNIGHT is curated by Suzanne Carte, Artistic Director/Curator at the Art Gallery of Burlington. The exhibition is generously sponsored by Alinea Land Corporation. 

The AGB is supported by the City of Burlington, Ontario Arts Council, and Ontario Trillium Foundation. The AGB’s learning programming has been sponsored by The Burlington Foundation and the Incite Foundation for the Arts.