Multidisciplinary artist Karen Trask holds a BFA and an MFA in visual arts. Comprising prints, videos, sculptures, installations, artist’s books, and performance art, her work can be found in major collections in Canada, England and the United States. In 1989, she won the Premier Prix Abitibi-Price at the Biennale du dessin, de l’estampe et du papier du Québec, earning the Prix UniMédia at the same event in 1997. Regardless of discipline, all of her pieces revolve around words: texts that have been pasted to one another or arbitrarily combined, at times torn into shreds, woven together or wound into ribbons. Trask also transforms them into nests and spheres, as seen in Petit Larousse illustré (1983), which was made with the pages of the 1973 Petit Larousse illustré dictionary. Like Marcel Proust, whose unique writing process inspired her to create a “bed of words,” she is constantly in search of lost words and transposing them into three dimensions.
SEE:
« Dualities » by Karen Trask, ESPACE #32, p. 22.
« Karen Trask : Touch Wood—Touchez du bois » by Julia Blushak, ESPACE #64, p. 41.
« Sculpt Words and Language, Place Words in Space » by Serge Fisette, ESPACE #78, p. 10.
« Karen Trask, L’espace infini du rien » by Manon Tourigny, ESPACE #103-104, p. 57.
