Exhibition Review Visceral Bodies

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Exhibition Review: Geoffrey Farmer The Surgeon and the Photographer

Exhibition Review: Geoffrey Farmer The Surgeon and the Photographer

Emily Carr 1992 graduate, Geoffrey Farmer exhibited The Surgeon and the Photographer at Catriona Jeffries Art Gallery from January 29^th to March 6^th, 2010. The show consisted of an army of cut-and-paste figures also known as The Last Two Million Years. There was also 2 filmic pieces that had to do with similar content, one being a computer controlled montage which used images from Life Magazine.

The title references Walter Benjamin’s essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1935). The two paragraphs from that text involve a comparison of a painter and a cameraman within a corresponding analogy of a magician and a surgeon. He tries to point out that a cameraman is closer in proximity to reality than a painter, despite the obvious problem that his reality is always filtered through a machine. With the critique of painting and the promotion of cinematic film aside, Benjamin’s states that “…the cameraman consists of multiple fragments which are assembled under a new law.” (Benjamin) This “new law” could refer to the specific methodology of creating each of the 365 pieces in the show and this assemblage will always be somewhat fragmentary in nature. The exhibition title calls up images of the collage process, where material is cut with precision, much like a surgery, and that material was offered up by a camera as it is mostly photographic.

But each piece also uses cloth and is put into a 3 dimensional arrangement. This is an unconventional outcome for a collage and creates a dialogue between it and another medium, sculpture. The problem of translation makes this relationship especially interesting since the photographic print bits remain 2D within this new 3D art form. Each flimsy seemingly temporary structure, often with its scotch-tape exposed, is put together on black bases with supporting posts which are uniform throughout the show.

With white pedestals at various heights and a non-linear organization of the figures, the show supposedly incorporates the non-hierarchical presentation technique by Aby Warburg's Mnemosyne Atlas. This becomes a way for Farmer to intellectually forfeit the authoritarian role over the installation. Of course, this is assuming we forget the problematic setting of the white cube and that Geoffrey needed to maintain a constant number of pieces to use the framework of a typical calendar year. In the original, Aby Warburg’s own subject position was expressed through his endless work as “…he searches for the proper arrangement of his fragmentary universe.” (Dillon) The comparison offered by the exhibition is not entirely useful as Warburg’s memory map would have been more malleable as he journeys through time and space. One table in the exhibition is in direct contradiction to this idea, where the central group carries long flag-like posts unlike the outer figures on the edges, making it appear aesthetically dictated.

Warburg was also an early researcher of the Native American Hopi, whose Kachina dolls bare a resemblance to these sculptures by Farmer. However, these new dolls do not carry dogmatic symbolic meaning or ceremonial purpose (unless we consider art gallery attendance a purposeful ceremony). Instead they seem to be a chaotic arrangement of a collective memory in limited availability as it’s expressed through printed photographic material.

Bibliography

Benjamin, Walter, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” Illuminations Ed. Hannah Arendt. New York: Schocken Books, 1968. 217-251

Dillon, Brian. “Collected Works: Aby Warburg's Mnemosyne Atlas”. Frieze. Issue 80, January-February 2004

So much has happened!

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Since The Cheaper Show I've done Bikosphere at Centre A, the "Buy More Art" student sale at ECU, a group show Nomadic Convergence at the Concourse Gallery, and a couple of group shows at student ran gallery The Brow.

I finally had my own solo show Mechanical Abstraction at The Brow. That went over extremely well and I'm ready to do more.

Starting in March I'm renting my very own studio space downtown. That means when schools out I can still work in a studio space all summer. Exciting!

Elizabeth McIntosh at Blanket Gallery:

pyramidal enigma

Elizabeth McIntosh’s latest paintings are large crystalline candy. Playfully coloured, these deliberately clumsy geometric compositions illuminate outward from the gallery wall. However the imposing scale of mostly 75” by 90”, takes on the smothering seriousness known to mid-20^th century abstraction. She wants the viewers to be transformed. Like a contemporary Rothko, her paintings are vessels of self-realization without the baggage of lofty semi-religious experience and universal primitive emotion. These new painting’s physical presence, vibrancy, and non-illusionary flatness would certainly hold up such transcendental potentiality.

McIntosh’s current exhibition at Blanket Gallery in Vancouver is only her second solo show and includes six oil paintings and one framed collage. The impressive paintings fill up the modest space. The installation made categorical sense with the three large 75” x 90” paintings on west wall, three smaller 30” x 40” paintings on east wall, and the single framed collage on the south wall.

Untitled (multi-coloured vertical stripes) (2007) brings to mind non-figurative Orphism of Sonia Delaunay. But instead of concentric circles, these large colorful structures are nearly entirely built up with triangles. There is a push-pull of positive and negative shape, as viewing breath in and out between triangles of rich colour and washed charcoal black. This is the kind of viewer experience that non-representational painting has to offer. Instead of being relaxed and satisfied by what the painting is of, the mind is at state of activity trying to make sense of these new and fascinating objects.

These works are designed like a do-it-yourself Hard-Edge Abstraction painting. It’s easy to feel how process oriented her practice is. Untitled (silver with geodesic shapes over colour) (2008) and Untitled (negative black triangles on silver ground) (2008) show repetition of triangles over on metallic silver paint. There is an obsessive one after the other placement but controlled with a knowledgeable restraint for the composition. The other two 30” by 40” works named Untitled are painted with saturated, bright and even neon colour applied much thicker than the rest of those exhibited. These works take on the appearance of unfolded origami. But even under the gaze of the most analytical eye, the structures always unravel back to its original position for new and infinite combinations.

The bright and sunny piece called Untitled (yellow) (2007) shows off the painterly brushstroke common throughout. Even though these are on canvas, the slightly transparent and directional paint application gives the impression of wood grain. This tactility becomes one of the ways McIntosh naturalizes a mode of painting that is usually static, solid, and industrial.

The scale, repetition, paint application, and edible coloration make for very welcoming artwork. Once ushered in, the viewer’s mind can grabble and work over Rubik’s cubes of triangles. This could be how McIntosh expects the audience to find transformative experience. This abstraction goes further than the empty promises of the stark flatness in Modernist abstraction. She starts here and moves on to build diamonds of unsolved puzzles begging for the viewer’s brain-play and participatory photism. It’s an open-ended art does not dictate meaning to us. McIntosh applies the kind of inventiveness and dedication that gives abstraction a valid place in the future of painting.

Taralee Guild