Sylvan Hamburger

Aural Bodies features the monoprints of a deconstructed violin and grand piano. Beyond repair, the dismantled instruments were collected, their surfaces inked and pressed onto felt cloth to create new compositions of form and colour. Alongside assemblages of piano parts, the printed impressions allude to human forms. Like a soft bruise, the imprinted felt holds the gestural marks of the artist’s hand used to press and transfer ink from the instruments to the cloth. Created for the lobby of the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, Aural Bodies plays with moments of resonance and discord amidst the surrounding architecture: piano tops shatter, violins flop, and felted hammers play the walls. In upholding the traces of these instruments, Aural Bodies reimagines the poetic possibilities contained within their discarded surfaces.

Aural Bodies is currently exhibited at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, Vancouver BC.

Dear Beloved features a coded correspondence between St. Michael’s Printshop (St. John’s, NL) and Malaspina Printmakers (Vancouver, BC) through an exchange of maritime signal flags printed from the floors of both studios.

Vancouver-based artist Sylvan Hamburger monoprinted a series of coded signals from the textured floorboards of St. Michael’s Printshop, a former sail-making workshop on the Atlantic, during his visiting artist residency in October 2021. Upon returning to Vancouver, Sylvan printed corresponding signal flags from the cement flooring of the Malaspina Printmakers studio, located in a former industrial block by the docks of Vancouver’s Grandville Island. The resulting prints were exchanged and hung at each studio where the inked traces of the printing process remain visible on the corresponding floors.

Using the International Code of Signals, the flags can be deciphered into abbreviated instant messaging phrases that express feelings of flirtation, desire and loss. At a time of increased communication yet growing isolation, Dear Beloved looks to foster a relationship between the Atlantic and Pacific print centres, engage their histories, and examines the peculiarities of attempting meaningful connection over distance.

Cranky features the monoprints of a decaying punt found near Eastport NL. Dating back to 1955, the punt was built by farmer Alfred Squire (b. Salvage, NL) to collect capelin fish as a fertilizer for his fields. During a month-long artist residency in Terra Nova National Park in conjunction with The Rooms Museum (St. John’s), Sylvan inked and hand pressed the boat’s textures onto linen at the old farm as well as at the local school where Alfred’s great great-grandsons study and helped print the punt with their classmates.

The resulting monoprints hung in various outdoor locations along the east coast of Newfoundland, including the old mill in Glovertown, the Factory Museum and Union House Arts buildings in Port Union, the Eastern Edge Gallery building in St. John’s, and the coastal trail in Terra Nova National Park.

A collaborative installation with the Lim Sai Hor Kow Mock Association and VALU CO-OP. The exhibit included oral history videos with Lim Association Members set among frottage architectural rubbings of the association’s historic building. Member-drawn calligraphy of the Lim surname (which loosely translates to “forest”, as pictography made up of 2 trees/wood symbols) was screen-printed onto the backside of each rubbing. Born from an intergenerational and cross cultural collaboration, the exhibit invited audiences to experience the living history of an important heritage site in Vancouver’s Chinatown neighbourhood.

Created and presented at the Banff Centre for the Arts in 2019.