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The Art of Fugue- Tim Lee at Illingworth Kerr Gallery @ ACAD by Andrea Williamson Two weeks after receiving the $50, 000 Sobey Art Prize, Vancouver's Tim Lee was in Calgary to represent his show Remakes, Variations (1741-2049) at the Illingworth Kerr Gallery. The show, curated by Reid Shier, is composed of two mirrored (bi-focal) rooms, which revolve around constellations of related performances and recordings, originals and reproductions. Taking a page from piano legend Glenn Gould's book (literally as well as figuratively), Lee's show reiterates Gould's conviction to make every performance new, to reinterpret historical artworks, and to compose new works out of existing material.
Right away, the criticism of an artist's intention to simply recreate or quote from another artist's work- whether the "original" artist is a rock hero, dj, conceptual artist, stand up comedian, or Baroque composer- needs to be addressed. Remakes centres on this very question, or sets up chronologies where a cultural mirroring has happened prior to and beyond Lee's work. The complimentary instances are Steve Martin replaying the role of Monsieur Clouseau originally performed by Peter Sellers in the Pink Panther, and of Glenn Gould recording in 1955 and re-recording in 1981 Bach's Goldberg Variations originally composed for harpsichord. In the liner notes to Lee's double 7" vinyl recording (for left and right hand) where he structures the Goldberg aria out of parts that the untrained pianist can manage, Lee writes: How experimentations that culminate as new standards with renewed histories should not remain stable but continue to alter themselves over time: living in a state of perpetual flux; constantly shifting and changing; continually, repeatedly and endlessly... 1 Tim Lee revisits Bach's music and Steve Martin's evolving character through processes of skillful reproduction (meticulously timed video edits, and impossible photographic illusions requiring mirrors, engineering and photoshop) to scope out the deceptive but connotative feel of modern media images and sounds. At the same time, his remakes re-contextualize familiar identities within contemporary art practices, exploring new notions of cultural literacy and cultural drift.
Lee's C-print self-portraits titled Untitled (Pink Panther I, II, and III) are hazy and/or fractured images of the artist, mediated through countless frames (the artist's glasses, a zoom lens, a Nikon camera's internal mirrors, Dan Graham's reflective outdoor pavilions, a magnifying tool...) and through numerous layers of signification (such as the tilting of his camera referencing the diagonal image of Martin on the cover of Time, and the image of Lee physically reflecting off of Graham's work.) These clues lead to the assumption that Lee situates his elusive self somewhere between conceptual artist, riddler and comedian. He alternately asks, "how are you perceiving this," "isn't it tricky?" and "isn't this fun?" In the context of a contemporary art exhibit, where autonomy and novelty typically drive the artist, Remakes puts forth the idea of a single cultural machine, of non-linear time, and of a creative stream where individuals work to articulate different facets of the same raw material towards complex cultural diamonds. Formally, Lee's work employs geometrical and mathematical alterations such as flipping, mirroring, rotating, multiplying and simplifying, which are the same techniques used in Bach's art of fugue writing, and in Steve Martin's comedic strategy of inverted logic, mimicry and playful variations on a theme. These techniques result in pleasant surprises of innovation- like a pop tune's familiar but fresh resonance. Justin Hoffman writes that "the de-hierarchization of our culture counts as one of the most important challenges of contemporary art production" 2 and Lee's work discovers an inclusive history, making connections between various forms of cultural production that at first seem disparate, employing humor and familiarity to reach across social and political strata. ----------- 1Lee, Tim. Performance for Two Record Players. « Ill omens: Adrian Stimson's Old Sun | Home | Shotgun-Review.ca Launch » |
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