The Art Gallery of Bancroft presents the art of Peterborough artist John Climenhage, in an exhibition focusing on that most Canadian of spectacles: the dynamic motion of ice hockey.

For over 20 years I have been considering the implications of quantum physics and modern philosophies as applied to painting and it’s 60,000 year old tradition, and within these explorations the subject/object of hockey has been a recurring theme for me. Ultimately, a painting is on it’s own. An experience.

I offer the following notes for extra consideration, though they are in no way meant to justify the works. The paintings are to be enjoyed as they appear. And hockey is just a game.

“Space does not represent any property of things in themselves, nor does it represent them in their relation to one another. That is to say, space does not represent any determination that attaches to the objects themselves, and which remains even when abstraction has been made of all the subjective conditions of intuition.”    –  E. Kant

“We must abandon our faith in perfect simultaneity: the assumption that two events can be said to happen at the same time. Multiple observers experience their own present moments.”     – A. Einstien

These paintings are an exploration of the invention of geometry we constantly participate in. No absolute position, or singular vantage point, is possible, according to quantum mechanics, as the observer is part of both the observed and observing universe.

By unsettling/dislocating the vantage point of traditional perspective (Euclidian geometry), and introducing simultaneous multiple view points and “arcs of observation”, the ideas and experiences of space(s) are questioned and re-oriented towards a more inclusive and cohesive/coherent entry point for Being.

When we watch a hockey game, we participate mimetically. We attempt to BE the play/players. We become the game we are creating. We anticipate/intuit/predict/deduce/win/lose along with the actual players.

These paintings take coincident account of simultaneities both through synchronous time (the relations between co-existing elements), and diachronous time (an evolution of visual fragments through historical time).