If I can’t practice, I can’t practice. If I’m hurt, I’m hurt. Simple as that. It’s not about that at all. But it’s easy to talk about and sum it up when you just talk about practice; we’re sitting here, and I’m supposed to be the franchise player, and we’re in here talking about practice. I mean, listen, we’re talking about practice. Not a game! Not a game! Not a game! We’re talking about practice. Not a game; not the game that I go out there and die for and play every game like it’s my last, not the game, we’re talking about practice, man…But we’re talking about practice, man. What are we talking about? Practice?...We’re talking about practice, man! We’re talking about practice! We’re talking about practice...We ain’t talking about the game! We’re talking about practice, man!

—Allen Iverson, May 7, 2002

Valérie Blass, Laurie Kang, Christina Mackie, and Liz Magor each exploit iteration and duplication—in their processes, in the distinct individual works they produce and in their overall “practices.” In the past three years, we have collectively and individually shared the experience of extended routine in relative isolation, altering our understanding of time and making the act of repetition an integral concept in our lives. In dialogue, each artist here uses the iterative as a generative force.

Valérie Blass’ most recent works repeat forms, materials and perceptual strategies, yet remain distinct, with each work building on and jumping off to the next. Mixing “real” objects and their copies, the mimic and the mimicked stand with and upon each other. Our perception is questioned in her use of doubled objects and surfaces, along with changing natural and cultural patterning, their camouflage confronts our visual presumptions.

Two large scale works of Liz Magor from the early 2000s also challenge our viewing experience. Each sculpture takes advantage of casting as a multistage process, revealing the simulated object while exposing the real. From the hollow nature of cast sculpture, the work’s interior is used not just as a purely formal or perceptual phenomenon, but points to the psychological potential of an internal volume and its related human behavior. But still, that which is hidden continues to be only partially revealed and reiterated.

The most recent works of Laurie Kang articulate the potential of recurrent materials, compositions and related techniques as analogous to the body and its processes. Kang expands upon the cultural specificities and future potentials of found objects by using digital and analogue sculptural and photographic technologies. By altering scale, multiplying an object and shifting its physical composition, the natural, the industrial and the overlooked are embodied and experienced anew.

Less explicitly referential is Christina Mackie’s watercolour work, a medium she has consistently returned to, here with a focused series that have been described as “emotional landscapes.” While her expansive, multi-medium practice builds upon both scientific and natural processes, this work draws a correlation from the intangible human internal experience to the tangible nature of colored pigment suspended in water, drying on paper. While echoing substance and scale, the work floats between abstract to potential representation. In an expression of the inexpressible, the works accrue significance together through time and iteration.