Shotgun-Review.catag:,2010:/42010-02-28T20:35:12ZReviews of Contemporary Art Exhibitions and Events in Alberta, Canada
Movable Type Pro 4.23-enScott Rogers' "Wireframe"at Stride Gallery, 8 January - 13 February 2010 tag:www.shotgun-review.ca,2010://4.4812010-02-26T23:45:44Z2010-02-28T20:35:12ZUpon 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...Ginger Scotthttp://practiceart.blogspot.com
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.]]>
POLAROIDS: Attila Richard Lukacs and Michael Morristag:www.shotgun-review.ca,2010://4.4792010-01-25T05:02:50Z2010-01-26T00:33:56Z A travelling exhibition that began at Vancouver's Presentation House, POLAROIDS: Attila Richard Lukacs and Michael Morris, has arrived at Calgary's Illingworth Kerr Gallery until March 13. Members of the Calgary community may remember Attila Richard Lukacs' immodest public 'lecture'...Mikhel Proulx
POLAROIDS: Attila Richard Lukacs and Michael Morris, has arrived at Calgary's Illingworth Kerr Gallery until March 13.
Members of the Calgary community may remember Attila Richard Lukacs' immodest public 'lecture' given some years ago when he -stark naked- presented a slide-show of his tropical mother-son vacation to a piercing metal music accompaniment.
Lukacs returns to the college with artist/curator Michael Morris to present hundreds of Polaroid studies -created as reference images for paintings- made in Vancouver, New York and Berlin between '86 & '96. They depict milky images of Aryan-looking men striking all but pornographic poses.
Attila Richard Lukacs, 12 Polaroid photographs, Courtesy of the Artist
At times reserved or demure - or, contrastingly, outright violent, the photographed subjects are scrupulously lit and composed - sometimes in reference to art historical imagery, and nearly always trashy, obscene - and downright sexy.
Organized by model and shoot (a setup decidedly arising more from curator Michael Morris' own archival fetish rather than Lukacs' studio practice) the display cases exhibit a finite stance or clinical display - neither representing the photographs fittingly. Morris' own selection and composition process is documented in video and projected (rather redundantly) near the east-gallery back wall.
The exhibition also brings in Attila's sculptural work made for the 1992 Documenta IX in Kassel: Eternal Teahouse (Pissoire) recalls the public toilettes that one would find in Berlin before the automated lavatories of modern-day Germany.
It is an embrace of a cultural recollection and gay nostalgia for public pissoirs and cottages where private (if scatological) manly affection existed just beyond the public eye in sanctioned meeting places reserved for men.
Attila Richard Lukacs, Eternal Teahouse (Pissoire) 1992, Installation shot at Documenta IX in Kassel. Image Courtesy of Diane Farris Gallery
The historical homosocial environment emblemizes Lukacs' fantastic world - a cultivated sexual landscape where women are (nearly) absent (one panel in the East gallery shows, to my surprise, photos of a girl who could have -half a century earlier- been one of the Hitlerjugend). As one girlfriend remarked to me after seeing the exhibition - it is a constructed plane that, like in the use of the conventional hetero-male-gaze, excludes women as a potential participant in spectatorship.
Admirers of Attila's earlier work will recognize some of the models from his large-scale, tar-covered and gold-leaved Caravaggist canvases. They are known for their heroic, homoerotic depictions of pedestrian labourers, hunk skinheads, obedient soldiers and beefy construction workers
Attila Richard Lukacs. One and many stretched bei Tyler (Diptychon). 1992. Oil on canvas. Each signed and dated "Berlin '92" on verso, one titled. 83x83" Images Courtesy of Diane Farris Gallery
Replete with political tensions and erotic fury, they describe hyper-masculine societies and radical gay subcultures. Without locating itself as anything expressly identity-based or as 'gay-issue' art, Lukacs' work manages to take on a sexual-political assertion by virtue of its relatively radical content.
As Earl Miller has contended of his work - despite being apparently apolitical in approach, through the investigation and representation of his own life and desires "...the work takes on a position of resistance. The apolitical nature of the work becomes accidentally subversive". It's here that we can locate Lukacs' practice as particularly Queer (denoting not necessarily a sexual proclivity, but, as in the sense of Leo Bersani, an active political resistance to ideological norms).
LOVE IN UNION: Amorous meeting, 1992. oil on canvas 118.8x79" Courtesy of Diane Farris Gallery
During the gulf-war, for example, he created a series of paintings describing the life and management of military cadets - ambiguously obedient drones in situations of rigorous rituals. It is through the cadets' indefinite relation to portrayed authority that a rift is opened in the hegemony; we are exposed to the formative elements of their strict dressage.
Attila Richard Lukacs, Gemini, 1990. Oil and gold leaf on canvas 106x76" Courtesy of Diane Farris Gallery
Lukacs, himself a military-school alumnus, seeks to undermine authority and expose oppressive ideologies through image-making. In doing so, he enters constructed political situations with paid models that often border on exploitation itself. As the story goes, his models were often hired hookers - often hustled with the money that Lukacs himself made by walking the streets
In the unclothed and abrupt display of these Polaroids, we are given a glimpse into the psycho-sexual setup wherein Lukacs captures the models' awareness of being unsettlingly transformed into an image. Polychrome fingerprints dotted and smeared in oil at the edges, the objects reveal themselves as entities in the oeuvre of Lukacs' performance-based socio-sexual inquiries. Equally a study in desire and spectacle, his photos are evidence of a performative examination of complex power-relations and objectification.
Attila Richard Lukacs, 12 Polaroid photographs, Courtesy of the Artist
Morris apparently met Lukacs in 1985 at the celebrated 'Young Romantics' exhibition at the VAG, where Attila exhibited alongside his 'Futura Bold' confederates Angela Grossmann, Graham Gilmore, Derek Root and Gen-X harbinger Douglas Coupland.
When Lukacs moved shortly thereafter to Berlin his relationship with Morris evidently ripened: there the two, in faggy Greco-Roman mentorship tradition, discussed art and history and went to the public museums in Berlin to study the masters. Morris takes credit in edifying his pupil on the chiaroscuro techniques of Caravaggio1.
It feels fated to draw a parallel here to George Platt Lynes and his gay art gurus -curator Monroe Wheeler and writer Glenway Wescott- who similarly gallivanted in Europe as expats in the thirties and forties. Lynes' most erotic studio-shots, sadly, were notoriously destroyed by him just before his death. The dreamy photographs taken by Lynes have entered the history of gay iconography: not necessarily through the depiction of sexual acts, but through the performing of homosexuality.
George Platt Lynes, Untitled Nude Study
In a similar way, Lukacs performs his Queer identity, and exposes social currents not of discrete gay cultural forces but of emergent Queer voices over the last thirty years. His presented gaze (read, 'gays') reveals a subversive underworld of Queer image and desire.
Perhaps for Lukacs the photos are a type of Queer Lacanian mirror, which supports an authoritative, epic and desirable self-image. It allows a (wary) relationship between the ego and the body, and also between the real and imagined. This echoes the deliberate tension between the real and fantastic we see in his canvases, and also recalls the idealization of 'Nordic' perfectionism in Nazi Germany.
Attila Richard Lukacs, Alex With Skull, 12 Polaroid photographs, n.d. Courtesy of the Artist
This problematical idealized beauty, for Lukacs, is linked to the political, anarchic energy of skinhead neo-Nazis and anti-fascists alike: the evolution of the iconography progressed into diverse subcultures - both exhibitive of hyper-masculinity. The fetishization of this imagery seems to stem from Lukacs' attraction to the radical and sexual energy that defined the anarchic Berlin he encountered just after the fall of the wall.
His formal explorations arise from the sexual tension of objectified erotic forms, and the macho agency of butch, Queer subcultures. The Polaroids are the unadulterated vantagepoint from which we witness his performative play with power-roles and political structures.
Straddling the threshold between sexual vigor and irate hostility, Lukacs' practice is the uneasy setting where masturbatory-fantasies meet history-painting.
Mikhel Proulx is an artist and cultural worker.
He lives and works in Banff.1This definitive pictorial practice of Mannerist and Baroque canvases gives dimension and weight to painted forms suggested by gradation of value, and intense contrasts between light and shadow - a tenebrous technique that Lukacs has unquestionably refined.
Bersani, Leo. Homos. Harvard, 1995
Lacan, Jacques Le séminaire, Livre I: Les écrits techniques de Freud (texte établi par Jacques-Alain Miller), Paris: Seuil, 1975.
Miller, Earl. "Accidental subversives." C Magazine 29 (Spring 1991): 23-27.
Phelps, Robert, with Jerry Rosco, ed. Continual Lessons: The Journals of Glenway
Wescott, 1937-1955. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1990
Pranger, Brian. The Arena of Masculinity. London: GM, 1990
Wescott, Glenway; Wheeler, Monroe; Crump, James; Pohorilenko, Anatole; Lynes, GP. When We Were Three. Arena Editions, 1998
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Art in the Age of Mechanical Toy Makingtag:www.shotgun-review.ca,2009://4.4782009-12-22T22:26:51Z2009-12-22T23:03:26ZChris Millar is a creator of self-sustaining worlds. His latest work "Bejeweled Double Festooned Plus Skull for Girls" is a magically suspended toy-making bubble hovering over China. The complexity of the multi-level, Escher-like space of staircases and flip sides is...Andrea Williamson
Photo Courtesy of TrepanierBaer Gallery, John Dean
Even though I was essentially a giant looking in on the house/factory, I couldn't observe the whole picture. The culture on the hovercraft was too complex for my ad hoc anthropological skills. I think this is what makes BDFPSFG so grand of an art experience. Even though the clues are all laid out in immaculate plastic detail, you could probably look at it forever.
That said, when I talked to Chris and he (or his finger) walked me through the rooms of the factory, I couldn't believe that I didn't get the story myself. The factory is an organic entity that processes sheets of plastic into flat templates that are folded into skulls, decorated, packaged and dropped down to earth. Each stage in the process has its own station or room, and there are also living spaces for the end of the workday or breaks. It's easy to see once he points it out, how this factory works. It's funny that this mini scheme looks functional, even the infinite staircase seems structurally believable.
Photo Courtesy of TrepanierBaer Gallery, John Dean
The reason I couldn't see the progression of the skull toys was that there were too many excessive objects in the way. I wonder if Millar has created a fiction based in the reality of his own studio. He likes people who collect and accumulate stuff. He also says he doesn't like to over think what he is doing when he is making a piece. It needs to be spontaneous, he says, and he might chicken out if he thinks about it. Perhaps another reason Millar doesn't think too hard about what he is doing is that he can't think straight with all the stuff around. But also, could he make this kind of work without that environment of material surplus? In a way, Millar is revealing his artistic process in the narrative of the piece.
Photo Courtesy of TrepanierBaer Gallery, John Dean
Another idea coming through in the piece is nostalgia for being a kid in the 80's and 90's. Millar says it was important to him that the sculpture didn't look like a dollhouse. To me, it looks like a Lego apartment kit (for girls). The boy Lego kits were usually castles, boats or space ships. The girl Lego kits were apartments, horse ranches and vacation resorts. The kind of toys I grew up with would have been the same as those of Millar's childhood: neon, plastic, realistic, detailed, and most importantly, non-computerized. The toy skull-making factory is completely mechanical, harking back to the industrial age before lasers and microchips (not to be confused with micro nacho chips.) In such a world, materials are tangible, space is needed for construction, and things are put together slowly. Here is another instance of the artist (intentionally or accidentally) making a subject of his process. Painters and sculptors value the material, the consuming work, and the handcrafted. They may also, like old toy makers, feel threatened that their medium of choice is outdated in an age of digital technologies.
Facing the threat of an obsolete art practice, Millar has worked out a theoretical epoch for his painting practice that he calls "post-interesting painting." He says that he isn't concerned with progressing the conceptual territory of painting. He is instead working with "bad concepts" such as "possessed chip bags, cool machines, and loud music." Purposely focusing on "bad concepts" takes away the pressure to solve the big problems of life, love and truth through art. Millar would rather stick to his own world, as a political stance, whether it is reclusive or not. He considers how to proceed and what he can make that is well crafted and humorous. Next he will ease himself back into painting from sculpture by creating a dedication on the back of the canvas. Knowing how you work best, your limits and how to take the pressure off at first: these sound like good concepts. ]]>
Bill Rodgerstag:www.shotgun-review.ca,2009://4.4772009-11-27T03:59:32Z2009-11-27T04:44:41ZThe books we encounter and live with, particularly the antique or flea-market find, eventually take on a knowingness and even a gaze. These books not only link to the past but link to the moment of the find, unexpectedly reactivating...Kim Neudorf
Studies in Citizenship echoes the ceremonial, austere presence of his chosen subject: the early 20th century reference book for rural Canadians. These books evoke a "rigor of self-reliance", declaring themselves through modest covers and "self conscious and distilled" titles which suggest the boundaries and necessity of their contents. Rodgers' antique books as subject act as link between early communities' collective, industrious use of knowledge, and a history of painting devoted to the materialization of daily vision.
On the main wall of the gallery, Rodgers has installed a grid of eighteen paintings of books which appear to be painted from observation. Given their original books' earnest titles like "Songs of Service" and the accidentally droll "What and How", these books suggest both a general and moral toned approach to instruction. Each painting's details of book-cover tones, textures, and even weight, are vividly rendered while placed in the center of a white ground in contrasting painterly strokes which glint like velvet in the light. The manner in which Rodgers has rendered the intense detail of aged cloth and tiny worn patches suggest decades of intimate handling. This brings to mind James Elkins' writing on portraiture, wherein paint, colour, and light both embody and caress the subject, evoking the artist's labour and devotion.
In an interview, Rodgers spoke of using a realist style of painting the books as a result rather than a deliberate effect, wherein he intended to show "a scientific place rather than a human space." His decision to place the book subjects in the center of a painterly white expanse was meant to heighten the presence of the books, as well as to avoid the narrative of a "sentimental domestic setting". This formal strategy guides the viewer's focus from the book as image-icon to the book as painted space. Rodgers also speaks of his antique book subjects as having been "archived" in the space of painting. This is an interesting link, as both painting and archive are ideal spaces for close study and an inherent transformation of the subject through re-visitation.
The word "rhyparographer" is spelled out upon a found-object piece of carefully arranged painter's tools, fragments of textured glass, and staggered CDs, all positioned upon a simple black shelf. Of the arranged objects, the artist explains: "The tools, and yes Dixie Chicks, represents a mode of translation from the object (still life) to painted image without the aid of photomechanical/digital reproduction." Various dictionaries define rhyparographer as "the painting of mean, low, or trivial subjects", and Rodgers cites the use of the word from writer Norman Bryson, who has written extensively on the history of the still life and its influence within Modernist painting. In an essay exploring the genre's early role in the work of Cotan, Caravaggio, and Chardin, Bryson writes of the artists' shared intentions of conveying "forms so copious or prolix", their vividness would short-circuit viewers' automatic tendencies "to screen out the unimportant and not see, but scan" [1].
Two sets of companion pieces hang opposite the book paintings. These nine drawings and nine smaller versions of the painted books are presented behind heavily textured glass, which blurs and refuses a clear view of each painting or drawing. Rodgers asserts: "in this instance, I put into question the meaning of our desire to see more clearly. The 18 book paintings are declarative in extreme: "this is what I see"; the works under glass ask the question:" is this what I see?"" While the glass freezes these works into a hounds-tooth pattern or mimics the liquidy shift of Photoshop smear, its strategy of obfuscation frustrates rather than retains seduction of the desiring eye.
In contrast to the coolness of the companion pieces, the book paintings seem to assert their presence in excess of an exercise in defamiliarizing the layers of vision.
Reaffirmed in the paintings' exquisite skin is the intimate architecture of close looking. The antique book cover as subject gives the paintings a strangeness which book designs of the later 20th century, meant for cheaper, quicker digestion, would have lacked. What Rodgers calls the "prime object" sense of the books becomes the element which separates the paintings from mere optical cleverness. This gives the work a presence and subtlety often lost on the immediacy of nostalgic kitsch or the slick special effects of the contemporary trompe l'oeil.
Works cited:
[1] Bryson, Norman. Looking at the Overlooked: Four Essays on Still Life Painting. Harvard University Press, 1990. Page 65.
*all images courtesy of Skew Gallery]]>
If Women Ruled the World: Judy Chicago in Threadtag:www.shotgun-review.ca,2009://4.4712009-10-27T22:34:04Z2010-01-25T18:04:02ZIn the recent history of feminist art in North America, fraught as it is with controversy, tension, and cognizant dissent, artist Judy Chicago has gained a reputation as a maverick. She is represented in the pages of canonical art history...Tabitha Minns
Judy Chicago has gained a reputation as a maverick. She is represented in the pages of canonical art history largely by her controversial project, The Dinner Party. At the time of its debut in 1979, many critics and even fellow feminist artists objected to the heavy-handed imagery (vaginas on plates) and the universal representation of female experience; critiques that Chicago has received throughout much of her artistic career. This monumental work in ceramic, needlework and other craft celebrates female achievement with decorative place settings around a large triangular banquet table. Now on permanent display at the Brooklyn Museum's Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, The Dinner Party is a testament to Chicago's controversial contributions to feminist and post-modernist art. If Women Ruled the World: Judy Chicago in Thread is a collaboration between Toronto's Textile Museum of Canada and the Art Gallery of Calgary to bring together the first ever survey of Chicago's needle and textile art. Curated by Toronto-based artist and curator Allyson Mitchell, it is an ambitious attempt to provide a broader perspective on Chicago's life and work and to situate it within the context of second-wave and contemporary feminist art.
The galleries of the Art Gallery of Calgary are well-suited to the display of Chicago's monumental tapestries and textiles works. The large space and open-concept floor plan of the first floor allow her expansive tapestries room to breathe and to be in dialogue with works on the other floors. Characteristic of Chicago's oeuvre, the works gathered in this show are simultaneously celebrations of the joy and lamentations of the agony of femininity and humanity.
Judy Chicago, The Creation, 1984. Collection: Audrey and Robert Cowan. Photo copyright Donald Woodman.
Not skilled in needlework herself, Chicago relies upon groups of hired women to complete many of her projects, not only for their skills but for their personal experiences and knowledge.1 Marianne Elder, Senior Art Curator at The Art Gallery of Calgary states that the show "looks beyond the relationship of these works to Judy Chicago's legacy as a feminist artist...[to] the manner in which her desire to engage viewers in ideas of equality and community have changed and progressed."2 In keeping with this impetus, the Interpretive Centre on the mezzanine level of the gallery focuses on Chicago's technique of collaboration and cooperation. The space displays information about Chicago's desire to foster and sustain a community of women artists and cultural producers. The foundation of these communities is the desire to convey important social messages through images. Together these communities reveal conviction, faith, and sense of purpose in realizing such painstaking and time consuming projects as Chicago's textile works.
Judy Chicago, Earth Birth, 1983. Collection: Through The Flower. Photo copyright Donald Woodman.
Perhaps the most transparent collaborative process is found in the works in the Top Gallery. The labels credit each artist, describing their contribution to the work in detail. All from the late 1990s and 2000, these works address a wide range of themes; racism, religious conflict, globalization, famine, poverty, healthcare, the environment, family. However, the Top Gallery feels like an afterthought; tacked on to the more cohesive display of monumental tapestries downstairs. The works here feel a bit marooned at the top of two flights of stairs, separated from the three open-concept floors below by a closed staircase. As a case in point, I overheard one misled viewer brush them off, commenting to his companion that, "These aren't her works," before heading back downstairs. The Top Gallery also houses the accompanying group exhibition, She Will Always be Younger than Us. This show of new feminist work articulates a dialogue between young female artists and feminist foremothers such as Chicago. It is an appropriate yet underemphasized counterpoint to the monumental solo retrospective. The works that fill the top floor, She Will Always be Younger than Us and Chicago's later works, are somewhat removed from the experience of the works in the three larger galleries below; the overall impression conveyed by these three more prominent spaces is the monumentality of the artist-genius, albeit reworked in vaginal and feminist iconography. The monumentality of the main spaces seems to overpower curatorial intentions -best articulated in the Top Gallery- to provide a broader perspective on Chicago's collaborations and feminist community.
Judy Chicago, Birth Tear, 1982. Collection: The Albuquerque Museum. Photo: Through The Flower Archives.
Granted, as curator Allyson Mitchell points out, needlework is traditionally used to teach girls to think small, "Chicago's work turns this sentiment on its head, reorienting craft as a means to imagine other worlds, to foster dialogue and to engender community among its practitioners."3 Although daunting, perhaps it is not too much to ask of viewers to explore the quiet corners and nuances of Chicago's monumental vaginas and goddesses; and the initimacy of the Top Gallery. The feminists of the 1970's took the credo of core femininity as a reaction against a history of male iconography. While such universalizing has since come under attack in favour of more carefully nuanced understandings of the body and sexuality, as I sat in a quiet, meditative corner of the gallery contemplating Chicago's "Birth Tear/Tear" (1985) I began to see the power of starting from personal experience and trauma as a means to reach out to all those who are suffering; to be a voice for all those who have been silenced. It is in such quiet corners, including the documentaries on Chicago's life and work, that the show succeeds in deconstructing the conception of Chicago's work as essentializing. Such spaces cast light on her life and worldview and trace the evolution of Chicago's vision over a 40-year career that is well worth celebrating.
1. Allyson Mitchell, "A Call to Arms," In Exh Cat. When Women Rule The World: Judy Chicago in Thread, Toronto, Textile Museum of Canada; Calgary, Art Gallery of Calgary. 2009: 16.
2. Marianne Elder, Senior Art Curator, The Art Gallery of Calgary, "If Women Ruled the World: Judy Chicago in Thread," Exhibition Catalogue insert, When Women Rule The World: Judy Chicago in Thread, Toronto, Textile Museum of Canada; Calgary, Art Gallery of Calgary: 2009.
3. Mitchell, 2009: 18.]]>
Canadian Contenttag:www.shotgun-review.ca,2009://4.4702009-10-17T03:25:50Z2009-10-17T04:12:09ZToronto painter Kim Dorland recently showed Calgary viewers his latest paintings from a residency in Emma Lake, Saskatchewan. The glowing paintings showed off well in the natural light of Skew Gallery. Canadian Content is Dorland's third solo exhibition at Skew,...Andrea Williamson
Canadian Content is Dorland's third solo exhibition at Skew, where he was first introduced to Calgary in 2005. Dorland's paintings are well known in Canada and abroad for their push and pull between representation and abstraction using a bright palette and thick paint, and for their melancholic yet mundane subject matter.
With past series like Over the Fence from 2007, Dorland worked from photographs of suburban life from around Alberta and Saskatchewan, where he grew up. At the Emma Lake Workshop, Dorland found he enjoyed working directly from nature: "The challenge was to make paintings that weren't too beautiful. Working with nature - especially in such an amazing and pretty place like Emma Lake can be very awe inspiring and I had to force myself to avoid being seduced by beauty and make works with a certain kind of psychology to change the tone of the works."
Dorland imbued these plein air studies and larger landscapes with a narrative about Tom Thomson, arguably Canada's most famous painter. With the addition of scenes from the painter's mythical life and mysterious death, the paintings begin to take on a darker tone.
He speculates in the paintings "Seconds Before" and "July 8, 1917" what really happened the day of the painter's death at a lake in Algonquin Park. In "Seconds Before" Thomson's tiny silhouette emits a stream of pee off a boat in the middle of the lake. The painting's apparent humor is nuanced by sympathy when taking into account Dorland's respect for Thomson. Says Dorland, "He should have lived longer so he could make more paintings - his death was a tragic loss for this country."
Dorland pays homage to Thomson by emphasizing techniques common to both artists such as the thick painting technique and the red or high chrome under-painting, as well as representing subject matter such as pines, canoes and lakes from Thomson's well-known oeuvre. However in classic Dorland style (not seeing the forest for the trees), we find graffiti on tree bark and bottles on the ground leftover from bush parties.
The Canadian Content paintings resemble Anselm Keifer's or Eugene Leroy's paintings in their sculptural dimension although they retain a clear cut representational quality through contrast and decisive strokes. Masses of paint made from scrunched up layers of thin acrylic paint or globs of oil are fixed or nailed to earlier layers. It's not unusual for Dorland to find the paint fallen off the canvas onto the floor in his studio. Dorland has always used excessive paint to confront the viewer with the reality of the medium. He says, "The vocabulary of paint is always in my work - I'm always looking to push the material in new, interesting and often extreme ways. It's the most challenging and interesting part of what I do - How to make the material define subject, create narrative, and also open up its own discourse all at the same time."
Looking at how material defines subject in this body of work, there's a connection between the mounds of thick black oils and fluorescent strokes or backgrounds, and a chemically devastated or "psychically charged" landscape. But there is also a distinctly Canadian heritage of landscape painting that the artist wants to explore: "We love thick paint. Lots of paint piled up on little wood panels depicting heroic landscapes cover our national museum walls. I wanted to find a way to use this regional dialect in my work because it's problematic and beautiful at the same time." Dorland's twist on the heroic landscape tradition is the inclusion of people and their mark on an otherwise beautiful thing. ]]>
Fictitious Devicetag:www.shotgun-review.ca,2009://4.4542009-10-03T01:33:33Z2009-11-03T19:55:37ZDraw softly and carry a big brush. In Mark Mullin's current solo show, Fictitious Device, the artist puts a new spin on Theodore Roosevelt`s Big Stick Ideology. Mullin`s diplomatic wanderings are into unknown places, unrecognizable worlds. His arsenal is limited...Viviane Mehr
Fictitious Device, the artist puts a new spin on Theodore Roosevelt`s Big Stick Ideology. Mullin`s diplomatic wanderings are into unknown places, unrecognizable worlds. His arsenal is limited only by what appears to be an endless creative imagination. As artist and instructor at the Alberta College of Art and Design (ACAD), Mullin has established himself as a formidable presence. These latest works are engaging meanderings into a fictitious space of Mullin's making. The artist himself speaks of abstract art as a form of visual fiction.[1] In these paintings and drawings he succeeds in creating a captivating visual narrative that poses more questions than it answers.
The main floor of the gallery houses five new paintings. "Gadgetry" (78"x66"), has a strong connection with Mullin's earlier works sharing their ultra bright palette and thickly applied paint. The snail trail squiggles, the woven brush strokes, the bold solid shapes are all here but the large circles are making an exit, visible only in part at the bottom of the canvas. There is an aura, a blurring that is something new for Mullin. "Gadgetry" is a transitional piece with flavours of both his old and new work. In a broader sense all of these paintings are about transition, transformation, evolution, morphology; this is the central character in the artist's narrative. It is exciting work to see and equally exciting to see Mullin stir his own pot, so to speak, despite his undeniable successes.
The remainder of the paintings fully embrace his new direction. "Loomings" (78"x66") is a case in point. Here Mullin shifts his palette, mixing greyed down colours that create a more ominous effect. These smoky, subdued choices are laid down in loose, thin strokes. The result though still bold, is more of a smoulder than a chemical explosion. There is a romantic bravado in these images, something important is happening but its identity is beyond recognition.
The lower floor of the gallery houses Mullins drawings. Descending the stairs is like entering a sanctuary. These are delicate works. Drawn with a light hand they are almost invisible from across the room. For the artist they were akin to creative foreplay. Mullin took his work out of the studio and into the clean environment of his home to make these drawings. There, with pen, pencil crayon and water colour he created these delicate worlds. Though they preceded the paintings, for him they are documents that record the conclusion, the finished forms at the end of the transformation.[2] Like the paintings, they are fictional musings, composed of billowing piles of ovals with random distortions. Looking at "A Gentle Architecture" (32"x47") the viewer becomes involuntarily engaged in a veritable where's Waldo, seeking out the whimsical variations. Is that a cow's udder? As the title implies there is the suggestion of architecture here, a detailed diligence, a slow building up but biomorphic branches attach the ovals in a manner evoking something more organic, spaces that have been formed rather than constructed.
Together with Mullin's paintings, these drawings create a narrative that questions what is real, that pushes the limits of what is known and familiar. If visual abstraction is a fictitious device, it would appear that Mullin has managed to grasp it even more successfully than he did before.
All images courtesy of the artist.
[1] Mullin,Mark. University Art Asscociations Conference in Montreal, Quebec. "Imaging Risk". October 2001.
[2] Mullin,Mark. Interview. 01 Oct.09.
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The Circus and the Wishing Welltag:www.shotgun-review.ca,2009://4.4282009-09-28T16:36:48Z2009-09-29T02:37:24ZSince I grew up as an only child until the age of eight, this often left me to my own devices in terms of entertainment. In the years that I waited patiently for my parents to conjure up a playmate...Erin Belanger
Kristi Malakoff.
While it certainly doesn't hurt, you don't have to be a hard-core day-dreamer to have appreciated Malakoff's recent exhibition The Circus and the Wishing Well, which just closed at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery in Lethbridge. The expansive body of work exhibited here struck a fine balance between saccharine nostalgia and darker impulses, and was so eclectic that there truly seemed to be something for everyone. From a tower that references an old Islamic mosaic style constructed from fruit loops, to the teensy paper scenes created entirely out of stamps from the German Democratic Republic. Malakoff's work draws unexpected materials and subject matter together, layering her ideas, and reveling in the complexities created by these dueling forces.
The artist believes that duality is the reality of the world around us, and finds inspiration for her art practice in this: "An idea/object/concept usually contains its 'opposite'. Many people are quite absolute in their thinking, and try to keep all their categories separate. I can understand the need to do this, as the world can be pretty overwhelming. Unfortunately/fortunately, the world is much, much more complicated and interconnected than this." The Circus and the Wishing Well juxtaposes sunny narratives such as "The End of the Rainbow," a large scale scene of fantastical creatures comprised from thousands of pictures of flowers, with those of considerably more menace exemplified in "Resting Swarm."
"Resting Swarm" is constructed from 21,000 pictures of bees, painstakingly cut out and installed in a corner near the entrance of the gallery. Despite being made of paper, the cumulative effect of all 21,000 bees arranged in the corner is quite life-like, and according to gallery staff actually frightens those suffering from deadly bee sting allergies.
As one could easily surmise from such a methodically executed and labour-intensive process, the materials Malakoff uses to make her work are of central importance. Malakoff explains that while it is important to her for the work to look good, the choice of materials is based upon a conceptual approach. Often each material carries with it a private meaning for the artist. While the aptly named "Untitled (Fruit Loop Tower)" is at once an exploration of Islamic design elements and a formalist experiment to see how the materials would respond to being used this way, the popular cereal embodies a personal contradiction for the artist: "It was my favorite cereal as a child, which I was never allowed to eat except on my birthday. As an adult, I am horrified that somebody actually markets it as a food product. They don't ever go bad, and even the mice won't eat them."
In a similar vein, the artist explores her love/hate relationship with the glitz, glam, and seediness of Las Vegas with her version of the sign from the Stardust Casino. "Stardust" is lovingly re-created from the Cold-War era version of the famed sign with tissue paper, combining a "little-girl craft" aesthetic with the hedonistic mythology of Vegas. The use of the iconic Stardust sign, which became a symbol of Las Vegas, creates a work that is not easily categorized as either entirely positive, or completely negative.
Enamoured with "movie magic", Malakoff endows each of her installations with all the trappings of a stage set. This is a very deliberate decision on the part of the artist who explains: "I like the feeling of knowing something is fake, but yet letting myself get caught up in the experience anyhow." Well you and I both, Kristi. While I know it's just part of my own make-believe world, most days given the choice I would probably run away with the circus. But of course I live in the real world - filled with bills, deadlines, and obligations. All of which combines to make the world Malakoff constructs with her artwork even more alluring. With the help of your imagination, this is a world where fantasy comes to life - if only for a little while.
--
The Circus and the Wishing Well ran from June 27 to September 13, 2009.
All images are courtesy of the artist.
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Shell Shock and Compassion Fatigue -- "Diabolique: Part 1"tag:www.shotgun-review.ca,2009://4.4262009-08-18T02:59:35Z2009-10-06T16:00:13Z On the front of the Regina Public Library, across the several glass panes of its facade, float numerous line drawings. At first glance, they resemble graffiti and evoke the scrawlings on restroom walls: their forms are childlike and clumsy,...Lee Hendersonhttp://www.noattainment.com
On the front of the Regina Public Library, across the several glass panes of its facade, float numerous line drawings. At first glance, they resemble graffiti and evoke the scrawlings on restroom walls: their forms are childlike and clumsy, but their lines are obviously created by an adult who knows how to manipulate a drawing implement with heavy strokes and constant pressure.
The drawings are by Romanian artist Dan Perjovschi, and that constant pressure is found not merely in their formal characteristics but also in their behaviour as drawings. They provide no break for the viewer, no linear narrative or flow on which to rely, so they behave almost like anonymous dispatches on a large, public bulletin board. They often address the space neutrally, as mass-media and advertising tend to do, occasionally breaking form to confront both the viewer and their situation directly. On the door to the building is one that says "CONGRATULATION YOU ARE ENTERING A LIBRARY"--upon entering, I was surprised to see them again, every bit as legible as before, reflected by the building's second set of glass panes on the other side of the foyer.
Entering the space further, one encounters the Dunlop Art Gallery and the body of the exhibition, a set of works hung largely in accordance with typical museum practice and subsequently in sharp contrast to Perjovschi's markings and Bogdan Achimescu's innumerable sketches elsewhere in the building (titled *stan).
Strolling among the works in the exhibition, I was struck in particular by my desire to quickly categorize each work as either a confession of personal trauma or a fantasy of vicarious trauma. Subsequently, I found myself thinking back to Tim Etchells' faux-manifesto of performance called On Risk and Investment, in which he says: "I ask [of the artist]: 'Are you bound up with this?' 'Or is it the shape of a passion and the noise of a politics?' 'Are you at risk in this?' That's all I want to know."
What I mean is that some of the works are raw, base expressions of resentment, disappointment, or anger such as Balint Zsako's white-on-black works. Comprised of what are perhaps the most obvious of war-related forms from the last 50 years (prisoners awaiting execution, a helicopter, a skeleton, etc.), as drawings they are direct and indelicate--guileless. There is some additional content, though, present in the process of their creation, in that Zsako makes the drawings using ink on a film negative, and then enlarges the image onto photographic paper, inverting its tones. Zsako, therefore, undermines his own presence and proposes his own futility as an artist; where he has made a mark is precisely where the surface remains unchanged.
But consider this attitude in relationship to Fawad Khan's wall-spanning Datsun Sunny Dissonance and the confession/fantasy binary I saw throughout the show comes sharply into focus. Khan's painting of a bursting Datsun taxicab is constructed, and obviously so, with the negative context and consequences of a car bomb nowhere to be seen. The flameless, bloodless, bodiless explosion looks almost fun, and recalls comicbooks in its visual style and vocabulary (complete with trajectory lines for the various fragments flying around). The camo-patterned strands extending out of the top of the car resemble legs less than they do the air-filled vinyl tube-men used to advertise auto dealerships. The work therefore seems to propose, in its fantastically harmless explosivity, a kind of Terrorism Lite--all the excitement of a car bomb with none of the side effects.
Another of what I would term the more vicarious works in the show, Douglas Coupland's Gorgon dominates the exhibition space as an eight-foot assemblage of oversized toy soldiers. The soldiers are frozen in a kind of endless mélange/mêlée, torsos combined and legs protruding in all directions. Within the library, children seem immediately drawn to this particular piece; as I stood in the space, a trio of boys rushed exuberantly towards it, unaware of any menace or controversy proposed by the work. I remain skeptical that any such content is indeed present to begin with, however, as the work seems to rely upon familiarity and affect without actually proposing anything substantive. Within the child-riddled context of the library, though, the work sways towards a dialogue of fragility and the work of art--my first thought at the running boys was not that they might be harmed, but that they could easily damage the fiberglass sculpture.
To the side of Coupland's work is Dana Claxton's Gunplay (Part Two), a video in which the artist repeatedly pulls the trigger of a brightly coloured toy gun. Addressing directly the convolution of fantasy and reality vis-a-vis conflict, the work transforms the threat of violence to one of mere annoyance (try as I might, I was unable to ignore the incessant clicking of the plastic gun while looking at the other works on display). Gone from this work are the rage and demand of her earlier video I Want To Know Why (1994), as Claxton now addresses the camera coldly but with a hint of mischief, or perhaps of mock displeasure.
Where vicarious trauma and visceral loss fused for me, though, were in the three included pieces of Nancy Spero's War Series (1968). Spero's raw treatment of her brushed media and the lack of pretense in her iconography express a shattering disillusionment like no other works in the exhibition, and evoke a Käthe Kollwitz-like grief. Although Spero observed the distant war in Vietnam that inspired this series only through the television and news media, there is an immediacy to the artist's stroke that suggests that she was deeply affected--even personally traumatized--by the conflict of others.
The exhibition as a whole jumps from specific war to general conflict, from the aggressor's guilt to the victim's loss, and from slick, sexy-but-detached art pieces to deep and meaningful engagements with the subject. After spending time in the gallery, I had the sense that I had been turned around and toyed with--that any linear argument or narrative, or even a consistent thesis, that I could have expected from this kind of exhibition hadn't appeared. But then, in an exhibition about conflict and turmoil, what would be the point of peaceful consistency?
"Diabolique: Part 1" runs from July 17th to August 30, 2009 at the Dunlop Art Gallery in Regina, SK -- "Diabolique: Part 2" runs from September 4 to October 18, 2009
Curated by Amanda Cachia
___
Images:
1 - Dan Perjovschi's drawings sprawl across the front of the Regina Public Library
2 - Balint Zsako, Untitled, 2008 (detail)
3 - Fawad Khan, Datsun Sunny Dissonance, 2009
4 - Douglas Coupland, The Gorgon, 2003 (detail)
5 - Dana Claxton, Gunplay (Part Two), 2007 (detail/video still)
___
Lee Henderson is a contemporary artist and essayist from Saskatchewan.]]>
places left behind: new work by Kayla Blincowtag:www.shotgun-review.ca,2009://4.4142009-07-04T21:35:12Z2009-07-06T14:49:40Z I became acquainted with Kayla Blincow over eight months ago, but it was not until I saw places left behind: new work by Kayla Blincow that I felt I really got to know her. As Gallery Assistant at the...Tabitha Minns
places left behind: new work by Kayla Blincow that I felt I really got to know her. As Gallery Assistant at the Walter Philips Gallery, The Banff Centre, I saw Kayla often in her role as Studio Work-Study in the Department of Visual Arts; she was usually quiet and reserved. Nonetheless, Blincow presents in places left behind three beautifully intricate bodies of work that are disarmingly personal, open, and self-reflexive.
Upon entering the small space of the Other Gallery I was immediately struck by the sculptural works whose dramatic, curving lines and thick filigree of steel work filled most of the floor space. But what really drew me in was the title piece: a collection of about forty-five 5"x 7" digital prints on vellum paper arranged in a single row around three walls of the gallery. Interspersed among these images were related fragments of text printed on small squares of paper.
Blincow confided in me that the project arose from a desire to reflect on the idea that by constantly photographing life events, one is never actually experiencing them, but distancing oneself from them through a camera; what is known in cultural studies as the "tourist gaze."1 Though Blincow lived in Tacoma, Washington for four years, during the latter two years she rarely photographed events because she wanted her experience there to be genuine. For places left behind she revisited and documented old haunts to develop an analysis of nostalgia and memory. To this end I think the work functions brilliantly on both a personal and broader social level. The work is dense in visual material, personal and cultural philosophy, and arising themes and issues.
Tacoma became known as the "City of Destiny" during the prosperous years following its designation as the Northern Pacific Railroad's western terminus in 1873. Like many cities in America, it suffered a decline in the mid-20th century due to factors such as suburbanization or divestment, recently, however, it has seen a renaissance.2 This familiar pattern of growth and decline in urban centres leads to the kind of collective romantic nostalgia in which Blincow participates and relates to the viewer through her narrative.
Blincow's relf-reflexive acknowledgement and critique of nostalgia echoes Christopher Lasch's writing on the difference between nostalgia and memory:
The emotional appeal of happy memories does not depend on disparagement of the present, the hallmark of the nostalgic attitude. Nostalgia appeals to the feeling that the past offered delights no longer obtainable...Memory too may idealize the past, but not in order to condemn the present. It draws hope and comfort from the past in order to enrich the present and to face what comes with good cheer.3
At the same time, the work exhibits an overarching ambivalence towards nostalgia: Blincow gleans comfort from past memories, yet she embraces -albeit with cynicism- the sense of loss that ultimately gives rise to nostalgia. Blincow explained that, for her, beauty is an endearing sorrow for something tainted to which we nonetheless retain an unwavering attachment; there is beauty in deterioration and destruction because they give things life. By artificially preserving things that are assigned value, Blincow believes that they are emptied of the very life that makes them attractive. Yet the impulse remains to document, preserve, and to remember with nostalgia.
As a port city and the western railway terminus, Tacoma is a city of movement and transience. It is fitting that Blincow should have her first solo show in Banff; a place also defined by transience. Originally from Colorado, she has had temporary residences in Western North America and Europe. As curator Candice Hopkins writes in her 2007 essay "On Nomadism," "Banff, through its history as both (temporary) home to the Ktunaxa, Secwepemc and Hopi, and its present use, enacts what Carol Becker so poetically observed as the difference between first world nomads and third world nomads; those who travel because they can and those (refugees and migrants) who travel because they have to."4 Blincow is among those for whom travel is socially or economically essential due to the increased normalization of migration in the context of capitalist models of wealth distribution and a rising global economy. Blincow's work invites us to critically consider the environmental, cultural, and psychological effects of such transience.
The second body of work in the exhibition, Blincow's large-scale steel sculptures, comments on effects of urban nomadism on the natural world, and more broadly on the relationship between humans and nature. These four undulating figures are made of ¼" steel rod, hand-cut into 2 or 3 inch pieces and then welded together into hexagons to form dynamic, organic honeycomb structures. The honeycomb pattern and labour-intensive process reference the transience and temporality of bees hives; bees build beautifully intricate, architectural forms through painstaking physical labour and then abandon them to natural cycles of (re)use and decay.
Contemporary nomadism parallels the bees' temporary dwelling strategy, but too often the urban spaces and rural dwellings of the first-world nomad neglect to emulate the synergy with the environment that beehives demonstrate. Within the context of Banff National Park, this contrast becomes particularly poignant. The delicate alpine ecosystem of the Rocky Mountains and the Bow Valley sees millions of tourists travelling through each year. Blincow invites us to consider the ramifications of the park as a place of artificial preservation and tourism rather than a system of painstaking, organic building and natural deterioration. The contrast of steel as a building material with the natural substances of beehives, underscores this discrepancy.
The third work explicitly emulates the synergy of beehives with the environment in its process and aesthetic. The title of the work, Return, signifies Blincow's philosophy of allowing natural deterioration to take its course. In its first phase, Return was an arch built of white linen, wood and found fallen branches. The piece was installed outdoors and allowed to deteriorate for five months. Blincow then dissembled the arch, breaking the lumber and branches into pieces. In its final phase, the piece entered the gallery. The cloth strips were hung on the wall with the broken structural elements piled on the floor beneath them. This ensemble is accompanied by intimate black and white digital print photographs documenting the arch in its assembled form.
Hanging in the gallery, the white cloth is marked with wispy, dripping brown lines moving delicately across the bright white fabric; tidemarks created when moisture from rain, melted snow, and dew mixed with dirt particles and wood fibres, migrated across the fabric, and was deposited in rust-coloured rivulets and undulating lines.The markings take on their own beauty in the story they tell; they read as a signifier of what the object once was and the process of deterioration that it went through.
The overall effect is to evoke something that was once beautiful and functional turned to a pile of detritus; like finding a lost toy or cherished object lying on the ground during a spring melt. Together the works in Places Left Behind embody the mixed feeling of nostalgia and comfort that comes with such a discovery. With this group of work, Blincow invites us to reflect on the rhythms of life and decay; migration and transience; and memory and nostalgia that mark the urban and rural spaces we call home.
Kayla Blincow's steel sculptures are installed on the Ceramics Deck, Glyde Hall, at The Banff Centre.
places left behind ran from 18th to 24th May, 2009.
1. For example, the work of Canadian artist Jin Me Yoon addresses the tourist gaze. Also, see, Lynda Jessup, "The group of seven and the tourist landscape in Western Canada, or the more things change..." In Journal of Canadian Studies, 37.1 (Spring 2002): 144-79. Or Mike Crang, "Picturing practices: research through the tourist gaze," In Progress in Human Geography, Vol. 21, No. 3, 359-373 (1997).
2. City of Tacoma website (Accessed 12 June, 2009).
3. Christopher Lasch, The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics, New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1991: 82-3.
4. Candice Hopkins, "On Nomadism," In Campsites, Exh Cat. Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff, Alberta. 2007: 23.
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Once Upon a Time... there were two writerstag:www.shotgun-review.ca,2009://4.4112009-06-18T05:21:17Z2009-07-03T00:14:42ZIn near total darkness, the Walter Phillips Gallery seems huge and impenetrable like never before. The space is painted black, carpeted and seemingly empty - save the projection work by British artist Steve McQueen, Once Upon a Time. Images are...Anthea Blackhttp://lookingforloveinallthewrongplaces.ca/
Once Upon a Time. Images are glimmering in the distance and a soundtrack of indistinct speaking echoes through the space. The projections become fully visible on the gallery's furthest wall after our eyes forget the light of the afternoon outside and adjust to the dark expanse.
McQueen introduces his work using the familiar first line of many a fairytale, "Once upon a time," as the title. The story itself goes back to 1977, when NASA worked with Carl Sagan and a committee of 6 others to select images, diagrams, sounds, music and greetings to be included on a phonograph record aboard the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecrafts. The compilation, called the Golden Record, and the messages it carries to our neighbours out in the universe, are still hurtling through space today.
This slideshow features the entire index of images from the Golden Record, including a wide pan of our planet Earth and the Milky Way, an inventory of modes of transportation, various mathematical equations, diagrams of the human life cycle, and picture-perfect landscapes. For 70 minutes, the images cycle at the same maddeningly metered pace with a soundtrack of glossolalia superimposed by McQueen - by now, readers of Shotgun-Review.ca and Prairie Artsters will be familiar with where we are, and what we're doing there - and walking out is not an option. For me to abandon this work would mean loosing the challenge, but in a broader sense, leaving the installation before the cycle completes would be like turning one's back on human civilization.
McQueen's renaming suggests that the original is a fiction or a fairytale, something that starts innocently enough, but comes with a moral message embedded in the telling, and gains even greater poignancy in the re-telling. By showing the Golden Record under this new guise of storytelling, he invites our speculation about the original work.
As a record of human activity on the planet, the original selection of images is shockingly affirmative - it shows the many areas of human progress, innovation and the miracle of our natural capacities as living, breathing, breeding creatures. Many images of natural spaces are populated only by evidence that humans have been there, peacefully toiling away: lighthouses, simple dwellings and cultivated daffodils. Architectural feats of the Great Wall of China, the Taj Mahal, the Sydney Opera House and the UN Building are also represented in quick succession. Here, these iconic places are haunted by the specter of way too many Hollywood movies, and they seem to pronounce: Oh alien race, please don't destroy us! We are the fruits of human ingenuity and labour!
In retrospect, we see that the Golden Record shares its year of realization with several other monumental works of science fiction. 1977 is also the year in which Isaac Asimov founded Asimov's Science Fiction magazine, Steven Spielberg made Close Encounters of the Third Kind and George Lucas launched the Star Wars empire that would become one of the highest grossing movies of all time, and arguably the most influential in terms of its impact on popular imagination. It is from this blockbuster era of science fiction that NASA's Golden Record materializes. But even by 1976, the relationship between popular science fiction and the 'serious' stuff happening at NASA was already well established: its important test spaceship was christened "Enterprise" with cast and crew of the Star Trek television series attending.
Where the Golden Record significantly departs from other science fiction of the period, is in the radically different relationship that it proposes with whoever is 'out there.' Many of the other narratives from that time imagine vast destruction at the hands of the spacefairing strangers who the Golden Record seeks to address. If the alien beings that dwell in our imaginations and on our movie screens ever get hold of the Golden Record and figure out how to play the damn thing perhaps they'd be more benevolent.
US President Jimmy Carter certainly hopes so in his contribution to the original disk: "We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination, and our good will in a vast and awesome universe."
Even in Carter's era, the trouble is infinitely deeper than it appears in the heavily edited Golden Record. Perhaps the mood of NASA's compilation will inspire understanding from an alien civilization, rather than the kinds of destruction that we as human beings have ravaged on each other and our planet. The question is: do we really deserve good will?
So let's presume for a moment that the audience isn't 'out there' somewhere, but instead, as McQueen has implied, here: in the gallery. The exhibition context allows us to see how the snapshot of our civilization circa 1977 seems to have been cleansed of all the things we don't like about ourselves. Missing are the images of genocide committed against First Nations peoples, of the charred bodies of Hiroshima, the results of radioactive fallout from Chernobyl. In three decades since, our record hasn't improved much. Now, we have a few more genocides, the tar sands, and gigantic piles of technological waste from the first world leaching toxic waste into the rivers - and bloodstreams - of people halfway across the world. In this act of making our experience of the world legible to others, and our complicity in this rosy view, we're also committing massive self-deception.
Perhaps we must look to McQueen's observations about his gut-wrenching film Hunger, for the complex psychological wrestling with our darker sides that the Golden Record seems to avoid at all costs. Of the film, he says, "certain things that I was interested in were not recorded in history books, that [is] what intrigues me more... I am more interested in things between the words." Or in the case of Once Upon a Time: the things between the pictures. The re-presentation of these specific pictures gives us the opportunity to read between them, to critique ourselves at a precise moment in history, and challenge the original document - not as a universal study, but as a piece of fiction.
Very short cat naps provide some relief from the meditative cycling images and audio track's frantic lullaby, and Once Upon a Time seems all the more like a far-away dream that fades in and out of focus as we try to decipher it.
--
Anthea Black is co-editor of Shotgun-Review.ca
Image credits:
Steve McQueen, Once Upon a Time, 2002 Sequence of 116 slide-based colour images through a PC hard drive and rear-projected onto a screen with integrated soundtrack, 70 minutes. Images courtesy: Marian Goodman Gallery, New York
NASA, The Golden Record, 1977
NASA, The Shuttle Enterprise,The Shuttle Enterprise rolls out of the Palmdale manufacturing facilities with Star Trek television cast members. From left to right they are: Dr. James D. Fletcher, NASA Administrator, DeForest Kelley (Dr. "Bones" McCoy), George Takei (Mr. Sulu), Nichelle Nichols (Lt. Uhura), Leonard Nimoy (the indefatigable Mr. Spock), Gene Rodenberry (The Great Bird of the Galaxy), and Walter Koenig (Ensign Pavel Checkov). 1976
--
Image credit information updated July 2, 2009.]]>
Steven McQueen, Once Upon A Time. Walter Phillips Gallery. April 25 - July 5, 2009. Reviewed by Amy Fungtag:www.shotgun-review.ca,2009://4.4052009-06-08T20:15:08Z2009-06-18T17:07:27Z Please refer to this article for the set-up. In Once Upon A Time (2002), UK/Amsterdam-based film/video artist Steve McQueen revisits a fairy tale narrative of epic proportions. In 1977, a team spearheaded by NASA and American astronomist Carl Sagan...Amy Fung
Please refer to this article for the set-up.
In Once Upon A Time (2002), UK/Amsterdam-based film/video artist Steve
McQueen revisits a fairy tale narrative of epic proportions. In 1977, a
team spearheaded by NASA and American astronomist Carl Sagan took on the
grand and presumptuous task of assembling an archive of images and
sounds to represent the scope of human civilization. Launched aboard the
Voyager spacecraft, which after thirty years in space, theoretically
remains the farthest human-made object from our planet, Sagan's
selection for this archive could potentially stand as the sole story of
humanity.
The Golden Record, as it remains known, contains 116 images, along with
natural sounds such as whales and thunder, and greetings recorded in 55
languages by men and women, along with official greetings by then-newly
elected American President Jimmy Carter. McQueen, who continues to
subtly devastate our presupposed notions of image as truth,
reappropriates all 116 original images for recontextualization. Rather
than standing as an emblem of humanity's complexities and achievements,
O.U.A.T takes the same set of images, and forces a contemporary
meditation on the evolution of individual ego and collective alienation.
Viewed today, Sagan's record reads as the ultimate token of
self-aggrandizing myth making. Very actively choosing to represent the
story of the world beginning with human beings as the absolute central
focus of the planet, the record's American-centricism simply cannot but
reveal itself through what has been chosen as the most important factors
to communicate and remember. The elements and environment appear under
complete resolve and human control; images of the natural world are
branded with a scale in the metric system, magnifying species to
designate each image back to human relation. Within the representation
of human civilization, issues of race, sex, gender, and class appear to
harmoniously co-exist together. Any historical markers such as
territority, religion, and other traits of culture and ethnographies
become interchangable or simply non issues.
There is a closed system of narrative storytelling, focusing blindly on
the organization of humanity with no self-reflexivity or irony. A
section of images on the evolution of housing and architecture first
shows an image of a dark man building with bricks. The image is in mid
shot, with the half wall of bricks and mortar and his face dominating
the frame. Its relation to its surroundings is unexplained, communicating
very little beyond its relation to the next image of finished houses
built of different materials on the other side of the world.
Transitioning into ever more complex structures jumping time and space
to exterior far shots of the Taj Mahal and Sydney Opera House, McQueen
emphatically points to the problem of non-contextualized image
signification. Each image does not speak to each building's function,
history, or place. Assembled together, it is taken for granted that
through image alone, a viewer will be able to configure human logic
based on sequential image-based narration. Only, what do these images
signify to people, not even alien life form, but people living outside
of the Western culture? Human achievements, in this light, ultimately
require and uphold knowledge of codes and egos that only reinforce the
system that doles its praise and value. Presenting the images as a
lulling slide show, a form that is more conducive to pedantic
storytelling of yesteryears, McQueen attempts to open up the system by
re-engaging us with these highly socialized and standarized images of
normal human beings, who are mostly white, and male, reproduce, harvest,
build houses, play cello, and barbeque.
Situated a top Tunnel Mountain Drive at the Walter Phillips Gallery, the
solo exhibition of O.U.A.T. marks one of the more memorably pilgrimmages
to Banff. The setting plays a far greater influence for this work
especially, as visitors to the WPG make the effort and trek for an
experience of art, which for the lack of a better description, is an
affect that moves and arrests both thought and emotion. Completely
taking over the entire space and transforming the multisectioned room
into a cave, the space itself becomes an integral factor in the
experience of the show. With a single long bench amidst a sea of
carpeting and a luminous floor to ceiling screen, the viewer is forced
into an immersion of image and sound within a relaxed setting. Taking a
moment to first adjust to the slow flickering light of images in
transition, the dull song of imperceptible noises, reminiscent of human
voices speaking one after the other in an indistinguisable language
begin babbling into rhythm with the slow cyclical effect of the rotating
images. While McQueen has retained Sagan's choice of images, he has
converted the audio of greetings spoken in 55 languages into glossalia,
or more commonly known as speaking in tongues. Trance-inducing in pace
and tonation, with the slow transition of sequential imagery, glossalia
invokes mental states of fervor, where the mind supposedly shuts down to
a pre-linguistic state as one is overcome.
Sagan's project was deemed visionary at the time, as a gesture of human
greatness for alien communication, but also fulfilling the role of time
capsule for future generations. Situated in its history, human
civilization, most notably, American civilization, was at an ideological
peak. At the forefront of the space race, the United States's was the
first country to put a man on the moon, which when read from a
postcolonial lens, streamlined inito Sagan's mythologization of the
human race through an Americanized-centric narrative. As a blank slate,
here was the opportunity to communicate and fabricate the story of human
beings. Only, there were no images of famines, wars, or even natural
disasters recorded. The intersectionality and complexities of humanity
were classified rather than abstracted. The inherent problem of Sagan's
record is its hegemonic positioning, especially from a country that
played a pivotal role during one of the bloodiest eras in human history.
McQueen's title plays up the moral-laden narrative that told the story
of earth as it once was. Only as an critical comment less than thirty
years later, it remains clear the repercussions of ideology continually
reverberate.
Cross-posted with Anthea Black on Prairie Artsters.com June 8, 2009
- A.F. Edmonton]]>
It's a small big worldtag:www.shotgun-review.ca,2009://4.4032009-06-03T20:14:32Z2009-06-03T22:44:11Z Landscape art as an umbrella category for any art form depicting or concentrating on scenery cuts out a big chunk of the substance of art history whether it involves sculpture, architecture or landscape painting. Why is landscape continually so...Andrea Williamson
Yi-Fu Tuan has explored throughout his career. Each artist in the exhibition At Variance, in interviews with Erin Belanger and in keeping with Lucy Lippard's well trusted definition, has defined "place" as a complex network of influences- terrain, routines, artifacts, people, politics-which are continually reshaping each other.1
Marcy Adzich's sculptures offer imaginative land/sky/toy-scapes. It's like gazing in on a multi-level dollhouse or the world of a snail riding on the back of a mossy turtle shell. Adzich is interested in the transition of scale when "space becomes small enough to be an object, and objects become large enough to be considered space."2 Although Adzich's constructed spaces are too small to enter, they are large and replete enough to still be considered a "place." If our eyes can "feel" or distinguish different touches and surfaces through tactile memory as some architects insist, just by looking at the sculptures we can imagine being an inhabitant in them. She uses hobbyists' miniature grass, fences and trees to cover bloated surfaces made of paper mache or mylar balloons. Their forms often resemble round animal bodies and parts such as a moose antler, a duck, an udder, a swan and even a platypus. Once more, these organic forms resemble hills, cliffs, plateaus and other relief covered with mini trees, spray paint textures of land and sky, and tiny wood shingles or bricks.
Dead Swan by Marcy Adzich. Mixed Media. 2008.
Adzich references 17 C still-life paintings which embraced the piling up of ripe "stuff" including food, hunting game, house ware and flora in the foreground, with undulating vistas in the background. These historical still life paintings conflated the ideas of land and objects the way that contemporary roadside bargain tables and flea markets offer a slightly different array of knick-knacks and historical artifacts depending on where you are on the map. For instance, the pieces of wood cut furniture, party balloons, ribbons, tissue paper and fake flowers in Adzich's pieces suggest a setting for celebration, a basement party, or a parade float somewhere in Canadian cottage country. The artist's sculptures are micro landscapes that put the viewer in the position of "outside looking in" on a world separate from them. But the paradoxical element is that the artificial landscape of the piece is made on the surface of what in our real environment, is as small as an object. Together, they question whether we prefer being separate from our environment, looking in on it, or if we immerse ourselves in material culture in order to identify with "place" and feel integrated into the scene.
Christine Cheung also considers metaphorical or fictional places in her acrylic paintings and asks whether place is necessarily different for every individual. Although she developed the works in different locations such as Indonesia, Hong Kong and Calgary, she is aware that places are not definite things in themselves, and chooses to find instances where different histories and cultures blend in one place, requiring new hybrid definitions. In this way, she chose to paint a scene outside her hotel window in Indonesia, of the local Chinatown, which to her, seemed to evoke a Japanese atmosphere or aesthetic. The Circle Game looks at a group of figures in school uniforms, some with hijabs, holding hands in a courtyard. The headscarves are described in quick white circles leaving the paint underneath to convey an invisible face. Despite their various dress codes the children all blend together resembling Matisse's dancing figures. This was another scene Cheung captured in Indonesia where Muslim and non-Muslim school children were learning a game. Painting from various sources or memories, leading a diasporic lifestyle, and finding instances where markers of the local are misplaced and confusing, has allowed Cheung to probe a "type of estrangement or reconciliation with the place we are seeing and what we would like to see."3
Surrey - Waiting for it by Christine Cheung. Acrylic on canvas. 24" by 20"
Most of the paintings in the show convey a sense of fluidity, drifting, disappearance, and becoming in Cheung's layering of washes of blue's, whites, and watery colors. Sometimes she will use a thick stroke or drip of paint for compositional dynamics. These marks obliterate what's underneath, as decisions are made when mapping out the place, whether or not a painted gesture (indicating signs, trees or buildings) belongs. Writer Yi-Fu Tuan, mentioned earlier, distinguishes art alone as a "surrogate place" which offers a subjective grasp, or stable hold on ideas of home which in reality are changing, ever more global centers or "non-places."4 Cheung hopes that her art may be able to occupy a "place" where people feel neither totally united nor separated by culture.
Howe's work Bow River Topograph takes a distant perspective on the process of how space is made into place. From an aerial view, the viewer stands above stacks of white office paper arranged in a grid on the floor. The packages are unopened, unaltered except where Howe has cut the twisting, looping trace of the Bow River. Here, the artist's hand "drawn" or cut lines into each piece of paper form vertical depth into the layers. This activity as the only mark upon the map is also the only place where nature limits the otherwise flat, geometrical surface of the earth, ready for human development. The time Howe has spent finding unique paths on each subsequent layer of paper mimics the slow process of nature defining the form of the planet.
Bow River Topograph by Beth Howe. Office Paper. 2009.
Unlike the other two artists' works in the exhibition, Bow River Topograph is empty of descriptive symbols of place. Howe in her statement talks about emotional or psychological attachments to places, which necessarily develop over time. Her piece asks whether there are traces of these temporal relationships left behind in physical form or if the form of the land itself indicates in a derivative way what kind of psychology the people of the land come to adopt. In her piece, the only trace of human activity appearing on the landscape is a grid division of space into regular quadrants and the whitewashing of all variety. Howe seems to be stripping the land bare of everything except its base structure or topography to see how this might exist in its own right, and how everything we do rests atop a map of predetermined paths. The piece also offers the contemplation of what physical traces we as a city or civilization will leave behind or whether most of our daily activity is rendered invisible from a distant perspective in time.
___________
1 L. Lippard in "Out of Place" defines place as "a cultural landscape or cityscape, formed when culture and nature, politics and lives, meet in an almost surreal process to form a new entity." Retrieved June 3, 2009, from www.robbinsbecher.com/LippardArticle.pdf
2 Belanger, Erin. Interview with Marcy Adzich. May 2009.
3 Belanger, Erin. Interview with Christine Cheung. May 2009.
4 Beth Howe in her interview for At Variance: "Marc Auge has this idea of 'Non-Places' which bears on that: a non-place is a space that no one has emotional connection to, it's interchangeable with other spaces of its type: airports, chain restaurants off the freeway, the freeway itself. Non-places are familiar because they are all the same, they make us comfortable because we know how they work no matter where they are, but we don't tend to form attachments or histories or feel invested in these spaces." ]]>
Giddy Up! David R. Harper's The Last to Wintag:www.shotgun-review.ca,2009://4.3982009-05-07T01:53:22Z2009-05-07T02:34:17ZDavid R. Harper's horse currently on display at the Stride Gallery should consider himself lucky to join the ranks of other famous taxidermied horses such as Napoleon's horse "Vizir" or the great "Trigger" ridden by Roy Rogers. Like all great...Carly Slade
David R. Harper's horse currently on display at the Stride Gallery should consider himself lucky to join the ranks of other famous taxidermied horses such as Napoleon's horse "Vizir" or the great "Trigger" ridden by Roy Rogers. Like all great horses that have a story, Harper's horse is a fragment of the personal mythology he developed as a child living up north. Historically, horses were rarely preserved using taxidermy unless they were of the highest status. This rare practice of permanently commemorating a horse in a state of former glory is one of the ideas that Harper stated he enjoyed playing with during his artist talk at the U of C. Evidence of Harper's motley resume of jobs such as woodworker, upholster, boat builder, swamp digger, and a stint at his local tattoo shop can be seen in his work. His ability to pull from an array of skills has resulted in the DIY horse.
I was stopped in my tracks at the doorway of Stride by the majestic and melancholy horse that was bolted to the floor in front of me. Closer inspection revealed that the horse is not real, but instead is a patch-work of three and a half cow hides skilfully formed over a Styrofoam frame. This technique is a 19th century toy-making technique from Europe that Harper discovered during his extensive research. The horse's head stands slightly taller than mine. I looked up into his eyes unsure as to my stance on the practice of taxidermy, but as he gazed down on me I got the feeling that he had come to terms with his eternal position in the world. I was then struck by the fact that I was thinking about the horse as a "he" and giving him emotions. This must have something to do with the scale of the work within the space and some lingering childhood notions of stuffed animals.
Referencing the tradition of branding, Harper has embroidered a Victorian-inspired patch into the horse's flank. The embroidery is so finely crafted and has such small stitches, that at first, it looks to be carefully hand painted. The image is of a naked woman with flowing locks amidst a floral frame. The knees of the woman are simply whirls of thread that have the ability to suggest a knee without needing to be a different shade. The tactile nature of the thread gives the woman a sense of flowing movement. Harper had said during his artist talk that people usually think that his embroideries are painting, and I can see why they would think that. Using thread instead of paint gives the brand a soft sheen one could not achieve with paint. His use of a seemingly less invasive branding medium like thread is mischievous, and the skill at which is carried out is surprising.
Harper's lone sculpture holds the space. But Stride's small and otherwise empty gallery makes the horse feel innocent or almost fragile. Its innocence causes me to feel guilty for my gaze and prompts questions about why some people feel the need to do the seemingly ludicrous act of stuffing an animal to mount on their living room wall. Harper saw his first piece of taxidermy when he was seven, and he says although he didn't understand it, he knew that he was attracted to its "romantic sadness." Harper likes to think of his creatures as "beasts that I create but I didn't create them." He spoke in his artist talk about how he uses natural materials and creatures to create sculptures that address the duality and contradictions of manmade constructs of nature.
I laughed when Harper told the packed room at U of C that he spends between 13-17 hours a day embroidering while watching UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) on television. It is this crossing of sexual stereotypes that initially caught my eye and got me to make the trek to Stride, but it was his attention to detail and amazing craftsmanship that held my gaze.
The Last to Win runs at Stride Gallery until May 9, 2009.
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Visit the Hidden Places: New Work by Mia Rushtontag:www.shotgun-review.ca,2009://4.3972009-05-06T18:00:00Z2009-05-07T17:55:20ZStride Gallery's +15 Window has been transformed into a colourful mixed-media diorama by Calgary artist and crafter Mia Rushton. In this small universe behind glass, clouds are suggested with strands of braided yarn and screen-printed paper cutouts. A series of...Julie Bevan
Stride Gallery's +15 Window has been transformed into a colourful mixed-media diorama by Calgary artist and crafter Mia Rushton. In this small universe behind glass, clouds are suggested with strands of braided yarn and screen-printed paper cutouts. A series of two-dimensional paper houses, barns, and scrubby bushes are positioned next to oversized sculptural pine cones, tree branches, and abstract forms sewn from printed fabric.
In the Hidden Places is an imagined version of a real place, and was conceptualized by Rushton as an homage to her grandmother who grew up on a homestead in the rural community of Smokey Lake. Rushton tells me that her grandmother, who has always been supportive of her work, has a creative practice of her own, and the two share similar sensibilities. Both women are voracious collectors and pocket bits of the natural world: things like pinecones, acorns, leaves and broken pieces of branches are taken home and added to their stockpile. Rushton's work, with its colourful patterns and repeated forms, imitates something of the obsessive, repetitive practice of collecting.
With the idea of collecting in mind, Rushton's work can be read as a sort of treasure map. Evocative of a frequently-traveled pathway, a long rope-like form sewn together with pieces of colourful hand-printed fabric, weaves through, contains, and connects all of the elements of the piece. Does this map show the stomping grounds of the artist's grandmother? Does it imagine where the best finds are at different times of the year?
When I first encountered the installation, what came to mind is the recently released Japanese video game Noby Noby Boy. The central character of Noby Noby Boy is a worm-like creature whose striped body expands from tip and tail as it ingests creatures and objects. I don't know if Ruston was consciously referencing Noby Noby Boy when she made this work, but she knows the game--we've played at my house. It's interesting that Ruston's DIY craft approach shares similarities to the aesthetic of something designed for Playstation 3. There are formal affinities: Rushton's three dimensional "pathway" echoes the body of Boy, and her focus on collecting also links to the premise of the game.
As a review of Noby Noby Boy explains, "the game play happens on a flat plane spotted with houses, playground and sports equipment, animals, flowers...that look like [they] came out of an overturned toy box." Players, "let go of gaming conventions, enjoy Noby Noby Boy as a toy, rather than a challenge to beat...and simply play." Similarly, In the Hidden Places suggests a narrative that isn't intended to be classified or necessarily solved. Look at the work yourself and turn your imagination loose to play.
In the Hidden Places runs April-May 2009 in the Stride +15 Window Space, EPCOR Centre for the Performing Arts
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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.]]>
Photo Courtesy of TrepanierBaer Gallery, John Dean
Even though I was essentially a giant looking in on the house/factory, I couldn't observe the whole picture. The culture on the hovercraft was too complex for my ad hoc anthropological skills. I think this is what makes BDFPSFG so grand of an art experience. Even though the clues are all laid out in immaculate plastic detail, you could probably look at it forever.
That said, when I talked to Chris and he (or his finger) walked me through the rooms of the factory, I couldn't believe that I didn't get the story myself. The factory is an organic entity that processes sheets of plastic into flat templates that are folded into skulls, decorated, packaged and dropped down to earth. Each stage in the process has its own station or room, and there are also living spaces for the end of the workday or breaks. It's easy to see once he points it out, how this factory works. It's funny that this mini scheme looks functional, even the infinite staircase seems structurally believable.
