CHRIS SHEPHERD

Incomplete Architectures

“One is continuously encountering construction when walking, cycling, or driving in the city. It seems like new projects are always underway, and the bigger the place, the more prolific the process. Demolition and rebuilding are part of a perpetual cycle that plays out on every street; construction is the life blood of the city, the respiration of urbanity.

This boundless development is intrinsic to city life; it blends into the day to day and becomes almost invisible. Hundreds of building sites are planted in our subconscious, where they live quietly like the autonomic functions of the body. Like the vital acts of breathing, or the beating of our hearts, construction is an essential part of the life cycle of a city.

Incomplete Architectures uses materials, process, building and development to study ideas of change and impermanence, and the effect they have on us.  It attempts to arrest the endless activity of the city and capture small moments of stillness, sandwiched between the immediate past and the near future. These moments are stunningly beautiful and remarkably affecting in their simplicity. They are traces of what has occurred, and what will be.”

Incomplete Architectures is being exhibited at Bau-Xi Photo Gallery in Toronto in December 2018.

Installation shots.