Robert Flack:
Eternal Trandscendent
Documentation by Toni Hafkenschied
Curator
Art Gallery of Guelph
September 12, 2024 – December 15, 2024
Drawing from the Art Gallery of Guelph’s permanent collection, Eternal Transcendent highlights a selection of photographic works by Robert Flack (Guelph, 1957-1993). Flack’s images manipulate representation through analog processes, superimposing photographs with drawn symbols and coloured gels. Produced after his HIV seroconversion, these assemblages demonstrate attentiveness to bodily transformation and the more-than-corporeal in a moment in which Flack was coming to terms with his own mortality. Faced with the failure of his own body, the artist turned to ideas of transcendence, envisioning a spiritual realm where he no longer needed his physical form.
This is the second solo exhibition of Flack’s work at the Art Gallery of Guelph, and the first since his passing in October 1993. In this re-presentation of these artworks, and in remembering Robert Flack and his prolific body of work, his undying energy is transformed, manifesting within the regenerative power of his photographs.