Exhibition Review: An Invitation to An Infiltration at the CAG

The group exhibition An Invitation to An Infiltration is currently being held at the Contemporary Art Gallery, running from January 21st to February 28th, 2010. The show was put together by visiting curator Eric Fredericksen who is director of the art space Western Bridge in Seattle, Washington. It included artists at various stages of their career, from local and abroad, such as: Hadley+Maxwell, Jordan Wolfson, Dexter Sinister, Jonathan Middleton, Fia Backström, Holly Ward, and Lucy Clout.

In justifying the show and explaining his inspiration, Fredericksen references Andrea Fraser’s writing on the institutionalization of Institutional Critique. It has become no longer shocking or radical to challenge, deconstruct or bring attention to the white cube, the sterile gallery space and the bureaucracy around it, and in some ways it’s to be expected in contemporary art. An Invitation to An Infiltration hoped to re-hatch and disrupt the discourse once again.

To do this the show is meant to change over time through the process of various artistic interventions – as if an ongoing performance, or a malleable installation. This state of flux affects the titles, format and placement of artworks. Also, entirely new works can be added. Rather comically, the title of the entire exhibition is being debated between the curator and an artist. The show mandate challenges the assumption that art objects are meant to hold still, being captive by the audience and institution around it. The fact such a volatile entity is a group show means that An Invitation to An Infiltration is a set of ongoing negotiations. The show utilizes not only the interior of CAG but the outside and the text, paraphernalia, and discussions around the show.

Lucy Clout’s piece Untitled (eyebrows) (2008), a painted grey board of MDF is displayed suspended at eye level, therefore limiting the viewer’s view. At one point the work was installed in front of the reception desk, making it hard to normally interact with the gallery attendant. In ducking under to avoid the obstruction, the viewer would find themselves uncomfortably close. The artist Jonathan Middleton shows a proposal that the exhibition title be changed to: “Strange. The first time I’ve heard of a piano with four legs… (Hey, I keep falling down!)”. Dexter Sinister created various wood objects with use value like a shelf, twin lecterns and a sandwich board. Some other props were less clearly defined, but were meant to be eventually put to use. With this work, Sinister plays with the old Kantian definition that art has no function. In a related sculptural work, Hadley+Maxwell erected a marble pedestal with nothing on it.

A private performance by Hadley references the difficulty in critiquing the show. Dressed as a male 18th century art critic, she went through the show interacting with the artwork either with passive detachment or violence. In experiencing any of these works in their current but temporary state, makes the whole thing seem unsettled. This art is set up to be continually in the act of turning, making it impossible to be pinned down to any one interpretation. However, this could be a useful way to read art as it takes into account the ever changing context of time and space. It underscores that the comforting idea of fixed meaning or universal truth is a myth.

Exhibition Review - Backstory: Nuuchannulth Ceremonial Curtains

Backstory: Nuuchannulth Ceremonial Curtains and the Work of Ki-ke-in is a current Cultural Olympiad exhibition at the Belkin Art Gallery running from January 17^th to March 28^th, curated by Charlotte Townsend-Gault of UBC. The show focused on the thliitsapilthim, which are large ceremonial curtains painted to signify the family ancestry of the owner. These were displayed on the walls in the largest room which also held a glass case showing a carved mask and an intricately woven basket. The right side of the main room displayed some smaller fabric robes and partitioned off several video viewing stations for films, documentaries and interviews. Most work was accompanied with a textual “backstory” about the piece and the owners. This literature ranged from conversational personal narratives, notes from the artist and/or an objective formal history. In the smaller space to the right of the gallery entrance showed many framed and greatly detailed drawings by Ḳi-ḳe-in. Also along this wall were display cases that held mementos, personal photographs, and a collection of carved and painted whistles.

Several curtains by unknown artists were older, from the 19^th century, which were notably different from the more contemporary featured paintings of Ḳi-ḳe-in (Ron Hamilton) of the Nuuchaanulth in the same show. Historically, these older pieces were produced post-European contact, which occurred in 1778. Therefore the stylistic difference does not denote any assumed “purity” or “authenticity” of culture. In fact, the older curtains were less typical looking for what we now expect of First Nation’s design. One noteworthy example was a very long curtain (71x892 cm) that ran the entire northern wall entitled Kwaayats’iik (All Wolves) (c. 1900). This shows a line of 11 loosely rendered wolves formatted to appear life-size, each with a distinct body decorative pattern and colour.

Thluut’otl Aytsaksuu-ilthim (c. 1880) by an unknown artist was another painting of an early and uniquely executed curtain. The empty space around the objects and figuration is unusual because there still appears to be an implied pictorial depth. There are only two colours blue and iron oxide red used to describe, in a semiotic simplicity, the narrative and symbology of a coming of age potlatch ceremony for a girl named Effie Tate. The word Aytsaksuu-ilthim is defined in the exhibition catalog as a “…girl’s moveable puberty curtain”. The swing is symbolic for her transition from girlhood to womanhood. On the right there is two feast bowls fashioned as small war boats and the fins and meat of a whale is throughout the foreground.

The newer thliitsapilthim where predominately painted by the featured contemporary artist, Ḳi-ḳe-in aka Ron Hamilton. When compared to the 19^th century paintings, Ki-ke-in’s aesthetic seems very polished. One possible reason for this could be that the semiotics and general style of aboriginal design solidified and became more deliberate to provide a strong binary to Canada’s Eurocentric art. It would be important to note that the older curtains were made before the total impact of reservation schools, the Indian Act (1885) and other National governmental policies to destroy the language and culture of First Nations people was felt. More stylistic variation was possible before and it was more likely that amateur painter’s designed the thliitsapilthim. First Nation’s cultural contributors and artists like Ron Hamilton would be working under new pressures coupled with the influential European myth of the genius painter, and the general idea that an individual stuck to, and therefore became an expert at, only one discipline.

Ron Hamilton’s 20^th century thliitsapilthims have a strong graphic quality, which would make them translate to print or silkscreen very easily, as shown in his Naakshuu-isks Thliitsapilthim (1993) and several others. For comparison, Chachimin Aytsaksuu-ilthim (c. 1850) by unknown has black paint dry-brush dabbing for the bird feathers and interiors of the animals. Much of the older pieces had painterly edges and suggestions of spatial depth like the overlapping in Chachimin Aytsaksuu-ilthim (c. 1850) or the implied foreground/background depth in Thluut’otl Aytsaksuu-ilthim (c. 1880). Ron Hamilton’s hard edge designs were very flat with no illusion of space. However these were the biggest and most impressive curtains of the show, particularly the huge monochrome entitled Nuukmiis Thliitsapilthim (1989) that described in saturated black paint a thunderbird, whale and raven.

However, Ḳi-ḳe-in aka Ron Hamilton was capable of painting illusionary pictorial space as illustrated by Yaalthuu-a Thliitsapilthim (1984-85). The bottom third of the painting consists of realistically rendered mountains in the distance emerging from the water which holds 2 occupied boats. The above central figure called a thunderbird had wings that were more realistically molded, but for the most part the larger graphic style figures look superimposed over the more traditional European-looking landscape. The lack of unity isn’t disappointing because its rather daring to attempt the fusion and the effort is commendable. This hybrid form of contemporary art by First Nations is welcomed in Vancouver’s art community as it fits in with Brian Jungen and Lawrence Yuxweluptun.

Airstream solo show

Airstream - solo painting exhibition by Taralee Guild

OPENING Friday September 11^th at 7pm during Swarm @ JEM Gallery, 36-22 East Cordova St. Vancouver, BC.

This exhibition is comprised of 20 realistic paintings of early model Airstream trailers which have been polished to a mirror finish. Each composition emphasizes the distortion visible in the highly reflective metal. The paintings were inspired from amateur photographs taken by proud Airstream enthusiasts or sellers on the internet. The series examines the politics of the reflection and uses it to metaphor the ideology of the American Dream.

Taralee Guild lives and works in Vancouver, BC. Her painting praxis explores simulacrum of filmic/photographic media and where realism backslides into non-communication. She will be receiving a BFA of Visual Arts from Emily Carr University in April 2010.

JEM Gallery

36-22 East Cordova Street,

Vancouver, BC, V6A 4G8

http://www.facebook.com/thejemgallery

http://taraleeguild.com

g_taralee@hotmail.com

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!

Buy Art, Not Cocaine: The Cheaper Show 8

Saturday June 21^st was The Cheaper Show No. 8.

I found out about the show in the free paper my partner handed me. It sounded like a good premise, evening the playing field and I looked it up to submit. I put in Multiples, Heroic Strains, and Roller-skates. They loved the pin up girls but said that Heroic Strains was less refined. I was very surprised to find I got in, after not hearing from them for so long. I painted 2 paintings special for the show, and put them in the Roller-skates. They put in the skates, and it sold. I’m glad to get the other two paintings back – I didn’t photo doc them!

There was a line when I arrived at 9. It went around the block. I was meeting a friend there, and we got in right away because I was an artist. There was a DJ, we had beer and looked at all the art. It was great. As the night moved it got really crowded and hot in there. I couldn’t believe so many were there because of art. There’s a special feeling in going to art events. This was the best art sale show I’ve ever been in. I’ll be looking forward to the next one.

Attilla Richard Lukacs was supposed to be in that show, I couldn’t find his work. Adam Dodd was too, I own a drawing of his I bought at the Gaff Gallery that’s now closed. I found Robert Mearns crotch shot figure, that was his only piece in the show. These are artists I’m looking at, as they are part of the Vancouver art scene. I won’t consider them my peers until I have a few solo shows here.

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

Presentation: Wilhelm Sasnal

For my presentation on a contemporary painter I’ve chosen Wilhelm Sasnal. He was born in Tarnow, Poland in 1972 and graduated from Krakow Academy of Fine Art in 1999. Today he is about 30 years old and has already gained international notoriety in the contemporary art world.

He remains in Poland – living and working in Cracow. This locality seems important to him, since he has drawn inspiration and imagery out of Poland’s political past – such as communism, pre-war modernism, post-war life, and the Holocaust. Sasnal doesn’t completely dismiss this interpretation, as it’s hard to ignore Poland’s past while living there. But at the same time he contests that his work is often misunderstood. Sasnal generally lets people think what they want and states that art isn’t necessarily the best medium for making opinions known.

Sasnal says he’s very western oriented in taste, and uses the internet for source materials – which in turn makes him global. He maintains that his surroundings do not affect his work since he finds sources by “Googling”.

It is said his paintings are a responses to the abundance of imagery in Eastern Europe that emerged after the fall of communism in 1989 - which might be partially true if not combined with the fact the internet was popularized when Sasnal was in art school in the mid to late 90s.

Wilhelm Sasnal is often spoken about in comparisons with Luc Tuymans and to a lesser extent Gerhard Richter. However, he wholeheartedly disagrees about the “Luc Tuyman Effect” attributed to his work. But understandably, he shares with Tuymans a certain visual look, and also Richter’s command of paint materiality.

TECHNICAL ASPECTS

Sasnal finds painting sources from mass media circulated images turning paintings into an interpretative tool. He has a great range of subject matter and methods. But the most reoccurring visual qualities have much to do with lost visual information which is in turn replaced with the “idiosyncratic qualities” of painting. Lost information can be explained in a number a ways, depending on the artwork:

A lot of the time, the loss of information is colour – Sasnal’s achromatic paintings. He has painted butterflies, portraits, figures achromatically – which are all things known for lots of colour.

Sasnal loses information by exploiting the contrast. More subtle tonality between high and low key are cast off.

He also leaves out areas of the painting. A face is smeared or the ground under the figures dissipate into brushstrokes - unfinished as if the painter was interrupted. Other times the compositions are oddly cropped or even nonsensically rearranged.

All this shows Wilhelm Sasnal is treating painting as a reductive process, an economy of information. It’s obvious that he is interested in other analog image making forms, like print, silk screening and especially photography (in regards to black and white and overexposure.) He accepts the filtration of imperfect imaging tools and manipulates it as a new and interesting ways of seeing. Despite running with photographic qualities, brushstrokes are prevalent and at times his paintings dissolve into abstraction. Therefore, on top of it all, he uses the materiality of painting as a visual effect on his subjects. It results in a push-pull effect between representation and paint.

“Images are pared down to their barest essentials and estranged from their original context and meaning.” What’s left is an image far removed from any real scene, person or happening in the past. Considering Sasnal’s sources are pre-existing mass circulated pictures – making the image strange through his decontextualizing process – let’s us rethink the already known. That means he can be spoken about in terms of memory. Memory essentially defined as recreating the past.

Things I’ve related to/found useful about Sasnal’s work

Showing the materiality of paint isn’t a dated look, for example impressionistic, it can be contemporary. Falling short of an image isn’t a bad quality. Things considered flaws in the picture can be used as a visual tool.

More information and detail doesn’t necessarily mean its better. Establishing an economy of visual elements, how much is needed to make its point, it actually gives the audience more to do, it’s more interesting and memorable that way.

Using the internet, or other known imagery, for painting sources isn’t wrong.