The new exhibition “Forest Station” will allow Modern Fuel visitors to take an International art tour without leaving Kingston. The work of both artists exhibiting, Yvette Poorter and David Ross, reflects their wandering ways and their worldliness. The work in this exhibition is linked through the humorous and poetic use of the forest as a location for a creative wonderland.

With “Knock on Woods,” Rotterdam-based artist Yvette Poorter has created a nomadic version of the previous, and sedentary, residency projects she has organized. Knock on Woods International Residency is a para-site that consists of a rustic tent-cabin and a forest of tree-flags, offering a respite for interested artists from the hectic and bewildering process of globalization. Functioning as a sculpture, an architectural intervention, an archive, a series of collaborations and a traveling circus, “Knock on Woods” is a state of mind. After a number of European stops in Holland, France and Portugal, Poorter is now finishing the process of touring the project to a number of galleries and sites in Canadian cities. Having visited Open Space (Victoria), the Helen Pitt Gallery (Vancouver), Mercer Union (Toronto), and articule with Quartier Ephemère (Montreal), Yvette’s project makes its final Canadian stop this summer in Kingston. From the 9th until the 12th of September it will be in the yard of the Artel, and documentation of the project, including work produced by its Kingston participants, will be on view at Modern Fuel beginning at the opening on the 13th, when Poorter will give an in-depth presentation.

David Ross’s “Self-portrait of the artist in Japan: Magic mountain. Hiroshima mon amour, Of floating weeds and seven other stories…” continues in the vein of his previous autobiographical installations such as “Autoportrait en Nature Morte a Kelowna.” In Ross’s installations the various elements combine to create a forest of signs, all of which accumulate and appear to grow organically, crowding the space with formal networks that must be navigated by and pieced together by individual viewers. Quilts are featured throughout the installation and are a key metaphor for the artist’s process: from traditional art materials, to social interactions and personal experiences, to cultural surroundings as fragments that can be considered and recombined in order to create an artwork. “Self-portrait of the artist in Japan: Magic mountain. Hiroshima mon amour, Of floating weeds and seven other stories…” symbolizes Ross’s experience of Japan, where he has lived for the past two years.