Scott Rogers' "Wireframe"at Stride Gallery, 8 January - 13 February 2010

Upon opening the sticky door to the Stride Gallery I realized the space was empty, as if I had accidentally visited in between exhibitions. Rogers was inside the seemingly bare space and invited me in explaining that he was just 'doing some patch up work' in one corner of the room where I thought maybe there was a small object that he was kneeling over. After peaking around him I still couldn't see anything that he could be fusing with. Following his invitation, I closed the door from the harsh outdoors of the bright Calgary afternoon and was suddenly immersed in a pitch dark gallery space with glowing crisp lines forming a framework that highlighted all the contours and details of the space that I had been totally unable to perceive in my first scan of the gallery. What was invisible upon my tentative entrance into the space was at once revealed and demanding my attention.

Wireframe installation Image courtesy of Stride Art Gallery Association.

In Wireframe, the gallery becomes the artistic focus through Rogers' organization of the space: highly reflective photo-luminescent tape running along the baseboards, tracing the chequered ceiling pattern, announcing the pipes protruding from the ceiling and walls, bringing attention to the electrical sockets and the few small holes to be found along the wooden floor boards. From these basic tracings that created an astounding effect of illumination while at the same time maintaining a pitch dark environment, there was a disappointing lack of detail that came from what Rogers chose to indicate with his tape and what I would hope could have been parsed from the unique character of the space (assuming the space is unique enough to require this sort of activity). In fact, my questioning of the amount of detail that was presented through the tape's decided placements comes out of a short discussion I had with Rogers in the space (after blindly reaching out to shake hands and introduce myself to him as he held a glowing grocery bag of extra tape he had been using for patch-ups; floating eerily in the abyss). There were a couple of random pieces of tape - one located on the ceiling, a couple along the walls - which Rogers said represented points of damage to the surface of the gallery's interior. With so few notable points of damage, which I argue would also be the potential points of interest, I ask myself what else is at play in Wireframe, other than the creation of a cool immersive video game? The points of damage - such as the small holes in the walls and the floors - were created from previous exhibition installations that required some destructive and permanent interventions into the space. Although it's fun to peer into the floral-shaped cut-outs in the floor, these qualities reminded me of other older gallery spaces I had visited that also had mysterious holes through their floors and walls, which I always assumed had been created by former proprietors (like convenience store owners or salons aestheticians) who needed to run a cord for an appliance into whatever access point lay below. So if these indications aren't towards difference and uniqueness, they instead may offer memories of sameness.

By calling attention to the architecture and the scratches on the wall, Rogers told me that he wanted to record and present the history of the use of the Stride Gallery main space. If the space isn't necessarily that interesting, with few notable narratives, then why make it the focus? If the action of highlighting the character of the gallery is also to waste the space or to comment on the history of the space's use by invasive physical objects, there needs to be more involved than the action of highlighting the baseboards, the doorway and a couple holes in the floorboards. My inclinations towards discussions of institutional critique or site-specific installation fall flat with this example, although I cannot deny the visceral pleasure of the immersive video game environment that Rogers mentions within his artist statement along with the indications towards other spaces that I have visited that I found interesting because of their imperfections, no matter how subtle.

Glenn Ligon: The Death of Tom and Untitled (Minnesota Massacre)

Illingworth Kerr Gallery, October 9 - December 12, 2009

Glenn Ligon
Death of Tom
2008
Photo: M.N. Hutchinson, Courtesy Illingworth Kerr Gallery

Exhibited at the Illingworth Kerr Gallery, Death of Tom had a distinctly different feel than the MOCCA version I saw in 2008. Dominating the entrance of the IKG space stood an enormous black box clad in tar paper, with an elusive, melancholy piano tune emanating from its innards. Through heavy black curtains one entered the box, encountering the dim, spare interior. The floor was carpeted with soft, dark pile. The walls were painted black plywood, the ceiling a drooping shadowy fabric. This temporary cinema/shack formed the container for a single-channel projected video (transferred from 16mm to DVD) scored by acclaimed pianist Jason Moran. The video consists of the remaining visual signature of a film (shot previously by Ligon) that intended to recreate a scene from an early twentieth century 'Tom Show' film by Edwin S. Porter. A 'Tom Show', for those who are unaware, was a form of popular stage play performed in the United States from the 1850's to the early 1900's based on the book Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Importantly, 'Tom Shows' were performed by white actors who played African-American characters while wearing blackface makeup.

For Ligon, the 'Tom Show' clearly presented an opportunity to interrogate and potentially reclaim racist representations of African-American culture. But by chance, the results of Ligon's re-creation were almost entirely lost in the development process. Thankfully, rather than scrap the film, Ligon saw an opportunity to expand the connotative possibilities of the project by presenting the film in its inchoate state. In Death of Tom this failure of representation suggests that the film itself is trying to come to grips with it's own controversial past, tentative and reluctant to coalesce into distinguishable forms. The result was a complex and mesmerizing installation. Where once a re-created scene of a racial insensitivity appeared, now only remained a subtle palimpsest. At times the distorted suggestion of a human body entered the frame, or the title sequence emerged from a cloud of grey. The piano melody waltzed and drifted, seeming to seduce and mourn the celluloid fog of almost-becoming or approaching rigor mortis. The audience became witnesses and voyeurs to this non-spectacle, straining to see through the mists, while collected together as an arbitrary community within the black box.

Glenn Ligon
Death of Tom
2008
Photo: M.N. Hutchinson, Courtesy Illingworth Kerr Gallery

Standing in stark contrast to the black, laconic box of Death of Tom was Ligon's equally ambitious and ambiguous installation Untitled (Minnesota Massacre). Sealing off the back of the gallery, a tall white edifice blocked all hope of entrance. The only access point above this bulwark was a stairway leading to a small platform on which audience members could stand and view into the rest of the work. Within the off-limits space (that suggested observation platforms, anatomy theatres, pioneer forts, and other panoptic systems) were found a selection of paintings from the collection of the Glenbow Museum arranged on portable carts. These large, crudely painted panels depict all manner of horrific atrocity supposedly perpetrated by 'Indians' upon settlers. The paintings, formerly part of an early moving picture show, were created in response to an uprising by Sioux in southern Minnesota in the mid-1800's. Functioning as fetish and propaganda, the panels were once used to stir outrage against first nations people. Nowadays, the panels are kept in storage at the Glenbow, due to their potential to stir up different forms of outrage.

Glenn Ligon
Untitled (Minnesota Massacre)
2009
Photo: M.N. Hutchinson, Courtesy Illingworth Kerr Gallery

In Ligon's installation the contentious paintings were removed from direct view and sorted unceremoniously, suggesting objectivity and simultaneous inaccessibility. What was to be made of this separation? Oddly, by removing our ability to access the contested works, Ligon increased their visibility, drawing them into the field of our experience through a peripheral point of view. In so doing, the artist created a transitional space within the IKG, in which the paintings resided between institutional storage and public display. Through this presentation Ligon invested the works with the context of both scenarios, while raising questions that could not be posed in either an archive or traditional exhibit.

Glenn Ligon
Untitled (Minnesota Massacre)
2009
Photo: M.N. Hutchinson, Courtesy Illingworth Kerr Gallery

With both Death of Tom and Untitled (Minnesota Massacre) Ligon created a paradoxical reminder that the past is perpetually retained even if it is obscured from view; at times arising from ether to articulate the screen of our repressions, at others arriving at our gates as criminal and victim, colonizer and refugee. Each installation produced reflections on the act of looking itself, and how this activity is both perceptual and socially constructed; inscribed within multifarious contexts, hierarchies, and discourses. Above all, the works carved spaces within them that defied appearance, preventing direct access to their content, while drawing attention to the armatures that support and condition our attempts to rationalize history through specific narrative forms. If a critical position is to be gleaned from the works, it is perhaps that systems which produce and historicize representations for public consumption (be they cinema, theatre, visual art, museums, or art galleries) are never simply what they appear to be. In this way Ligon suggests that If we are to look at these systems honestly, we must investigate the invisible spaces and histories that they sequester from view, and express these non-sites through the very limitations of sight itself.