For an audience accustomed to seeing work that is pared back and minimal, that deals in subtle colors and hard to detect architectural alterations, Simple Functionalism, an installation by Garry Neill Kennedy at the Walter Phillips Gallery, still leaves very little for the eye to cling to. The only occupant of the large white room (that in the past has had many different shapes to accommodate its extremely varied contents) is an official, though dated-looking brown desk towards the entrance. The desk is sufficiently official that at first glance it might seem like the gallery attendant's desk, except for the presence of a second desk of a more contemporary style, complete with gallery attendant, outside the entrance of the gallery space.

Relieved of its usual trimmings, which vary from paintings to sound installations, the qualities of the building itself are revealed. The nature of the apparently neutral space begins to emerge, the aesthetic choices still present and active in the room become evident, especially in the brown desk.

If this was 1981, this unmasking of the institution, a revelation similar to Dorothy's discovery of the man behind the curtain, would be where it ends. This, after all, is a Garry Neill Kennedy exhibition, and institutional critique is what he is known for. It is, however, 2008 and Simple Functionalism seems more than a little empty, not only because this type of grand gesture, leaving the gallery empty to reflect on the institution, has the feeling of a rebellion belonging to another time. The show taps into a feeling of emptiness in part because it is a double. The current Simple Functionalism is a twin: a recreation by Kennedy, at the invitation of the Walter Phillips Gallery, of a show 27 years earlier in the same space.

As may be the case with all twins, the resemblance is deceptive. What is important about the current manifestation is not only its new context, as the institutional change that has occurred is obviously emphasized by the recreation of this piece, but also the relationship that now exists between the two exhibitions. If the new show seems empty at first, it is because the real significance of this new exhibition does not come principally from what is present in the gallery space, but exists somewhere stretched between the two pieces, in a kind of time warp.

If the format of institutional critique twists the exhibition to reflect upon the space and context it inhabits, then it should come as no surprise that this method also tends to relate back to the artist using it. Garry Neill Kennedy is widely considered a foremost Canadian conceptualist, a distinction never left behind when discussing the work, especially its newest permutation. This emphasis on Kennedy's significance to the Canadian art scene as well as his reputation as the infamous president of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, leading the college during his time as president to become Canada's leading institution for art education, seems to go hand in hand with any discussion of Kennedy's work.

Because of the importance Kennedy's work accords to the context of its production, it cannot be without significance that in the 27 years that separate and also define the Simple Fuctionalism exhibitions, the tone of his work has changed. At the time of the first presentation Kennedy's work often took on this introverted model of critiquing the institutions in which he exhibited. Pieces such as Recent Plants, which showed in 1980 at Mercer Union Gallery in Toronto, were clever and self-reflexive, turning the art world back upon itself, analyzing his own situation.

Since then, much of Kennedy's work has grown beyond producing art about art, addressing a greater global context such as the 2008 work presented in Beijing I don't want to pay the full price. Kennedy's newer work also touches on many political issues, as with his 2008 work, this time in Halifax, The Colors of Citizen Arar. The work has become more active, more direct, covering the walls in bright colors and making bold statements.

It is this change, this shift in Kennedy's work but also in the art world at large, that the new Simple Functionalism takes on. The walls of the gallery do feel empty but this time it is less because they are unveiling the unseen institutional structure and more because they are loaded placeholders. The significance of the work is not easy or quick to obtain, it stretches back and beyond the current contents of the gallery, existing between the present manifestation and the one that has passed.

All images credit Laura Vanags.

Walter Phillips Gallery