I began writing art reviews for the Exhibit-v blog in 2011. Here's the collection, starting with the last one first...
Friday, December 3, 2010
Shannon Scanlan’s The Blue Room by Debora Alanna
Shannon Scanlan’s The Blue Room, a sculptural installation at the 50/50 arts collective is not only about the implications of the colour blue. Nor is it only a vacancy, a basic dullish cerulean blue room that we enter. The gallery anteroom or main space becomes the preface to a story, until we chose to cross to the other side. Because Shannon challenges us, creates a narrative with a path to follow, a journey to undertake, a discovery to make.
We need to transverse and duck string strung across the width of the gallery, to follow the prescribed footpath she has demarked. Be in danger of distraction by blatant signage, an Albers-like 2-tone squared centre that encompasses an entire South wall, forcing our diversion from the final destination. If willing, we need to find a channel within the strung string, sectioned for relief or temporary repose. Become frustrated and free when we cross a river of string hung too low for consenting adults to cross without circumventing by stooping, lowering ourselves.
If you remember Antoin Pesvner and those mathematical cohorts of his, we can think of this pink string (pink for contrast in a blue room, the artist says) as a measurement of sorts. Pink is more than a contrast, however. The colour alludes to the pink Pop to come, measuring our tenacity and belief in our (Scanlan’s) narrative. Measuring our willingness to get to the other side. Measuring our compliance to follow a path or forge our own, without breaking the string barrier. Avoiding the trap of staying in the middle reprieve of a wider space between string strung and retreating.
So where are we after our odyssey? Stockholder curtaining brings us into an alcove. Bright with pink lighting and reflective paper cut into rectangular strips splash hot colour and contrast, We are brought to where there is a revelation, a self-discovery of a set of beliefs not quite formed, but felt, a threshold.
Our trek is not quite over. We need to navigate back (yes we must). No longer experiencing an arduous peregrination because we know where we have been, have accomplished tasks to arrive at the consequence of the yarn, we need to leave and reflect on the reflective. Shrewd, The Blue Room is a metaphor for lowered states that will adjunct to another, happier place, with persistence to reroute, even digress. You can see the happy place, but you cannot reach it without belief in your story.
Review by Debora Alanna - Photos by Rory Lambert
THE BLUE ROOM
50/50 Art Collective
2516 Douglas St
Victoria BC
19 November – 8 December 2010
We need to transverse and duck string strung across the width of the gallery, to follow the prescribed footpath she has demarked. Be in danger of distraction by blatant signage, an Albers-like 2-tone squared centre that encompasses an entire South wall, forcing our diversion from the final destination. If willing, we need to find a channel within the strung string, sectioned for relief or temporary repose. Become frustrated and free when we cross a river of string hung too low for consenting adults to cross without circumventing by stooping, lowering ourselves.
If you remember Antoin Pesvner and those mathematical cohorts of his, we can think of this pink string (pink for contrast in a blue room, the artist says) as a measurement of sorts. Pink is more than a contrast, however. The colour alludes to the pink Pop to come, measuring our tenacity and belief in our (Scanlan’s) narrative. Measuring our willingness to get to the other side. Measuring our compliance to follow a path or forge our own, without breaking the string barrier. Avoiding the trap of staying in the middle reprieve of a wider space between string strung and retreating.
So where are we after our odyssey? Stockholder curtaining brings us into an alcove. Bright with pink lighting and reflective paper cut into rectangular strips splash hot colour and contrast, We are brought to where there is a revelation, a self-discovery of a set of beliefs not quite formed, but felt, a threshold.
Our trek is not quite over. We need to navigate back (yes we must). No longer experiencing an arduous peregrination because we know where we have been, have accomplished tasks to arrive at the consequence of the yarn, we need to leave and reflect on the reflective. Shrewd, The Blue Room is a metaphor for lowered states that will adjunct to another, happier place, with persistence to reroute, even digress. You can see the happy place, but you cannot reach it without belief in your story.
Review by Debora Alanna - Photos by Rory Lambert
THE BLUE ROOM
50/50 Art Collective
2516 Douglas St
Victoria BC
19 November – 8 December 2010
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Aliza Souleyeva-Alexander by Debora Alanna
Kazakhstan born artist Aliza Souleyeva-Alexander imports alluring colour and direct iconography into lush jewels that delve into personally representative universal icons to feed our hunger for meaning. Her persuasive explorations saturate our senses while touching our deeper longing for connectivity. Introspective insights address our trust in her guides to ancient depths of significance. Souleyeva-Alexander’s captivating work enables us to welcome her pictorial stories as verity.
“Bird’s Tales” Paintings explores narratives of how the artist relates to bird myth and legend (Raven Steals the Light), aphorisms that originate from sincere expectation, like the Russian saying, “Magpie has brought news on its tail.” (Conversation with Flamingo) and develops inspired corollary from experiences with birds (Second Night in Kolkata). Homage to art-historical references is unapologetic. Souleyeva-Alexander embraces ominous Rousseau mysteries and widens colour with Matisse joy. “Bird’s Tales” are allegories of pathos and enchantment, captive natures caught in charming fields.
"Aliza 2010" New Works, a visual diary of a year in the artist’s life begins with the winter months on Vancouver Island. Strands of greyed pink and blue rain-beads (Conjunction between Dichotomy and Duality) and triangular, redemptive flags flying in a gratuitous space (Liberation from Formality) or contained arrangement of expectant promise (Hidden Possibilities) interrupt murky washes. In March 2010, Souleyeva-Alexander traveled to Kolkata, West Bengal, India for the "AVISKAR - East meets West" exhibition at the Birla Academy of Arts and Culture. Her work continues to be impacted by this cultural immersion, explodes in influence from the sensory deluge and complex Indian street life. The previous wary ruminations look like memorials, comparatively. A resurgence of her powerful, multi-layered colour palate surges capturing disturbing portrayals – child beggars, the drudgery of rural life. Souleyeva-Alexander mesmerizes us with the intoxication of sultry crimsons and lemony ochre, brilliant indigo, enticing us into the dolorous circumstances and contradictions that entirely signify this cultural paradox. (Morning in Calcutta) is a sophisticated layering of paint and pictograph, harkening to Souleyeva-Alexander’s roots in traditional grattography. Scratching paint, she produces edgy drawing. This grattographic convention provokes the surface. Her pictograms fortify the resonance of bazaar life, remarking on how animals, objects, symbols are remote, illusory yet integral to social convention. Integrated surface dances, conversant with ambiguity and mystique of that locale. (Meditation on Geranium) slathers intoxicating purple and alizarin crimson-like hues, while quietly contemplating her musical past, pasted behind the paint, a formidable memory. Through Souleyeva-Alexander’s paintings, we see a sincere understanding of life fabric, painted with an understated force.
"Bird's Tales" Paintings
Goward House - 2495 Arbutus Road, Victoria, BC (PH: 250.477.4401):
1 Oct - 3 Nov 2010
"Aliza 2010" New Works
Gallery at The Mac - 625 Fisgard Street Victoria, BC:
18 Oct - 22 Nov 2010
Gallery hours: during performances or by appointment (PH: 250.361.0800)
Review by Debora Alanna
“Bird’s Tales” Paintings explores narratives of how the artist relates to bird myth and legend (Raven Steals the Light), aphorisms that originate from sincere expectation, like the Russian saying, “Magpie has brought news on its tail.” (Conversation with Flamingo) and develops inspired corollary from experiences with birds (Second Night in Kolkata). Homage to art-historical references is unapologetic. Souleyeva-Alexander embraces ominous Rousseau mysteries and widens colour with Matisse joy. “Bird’s Tales” are allegories of pathos and enchantment, captive natures caught in charming fields.
"Aliza 2010" New Works, a visual diary of a year in the artist’s life begins with the winter months on Vancouver Island. Strands of greyed pink and blue rain-beads (Conjunction between Dichotomy and Duality) and triangular, redemptive flags flying in a gratuitous space (Liberation from Formality) or contained arrangement of expectant promise (Hidden Possibilities) interrupt murky washes. In March 2010, Souleyeva-Alexander traveled to Kolkata, West Bengal, India for the "AVISKAR - East meets West" exhibition at the Birla Academy of Arts and Culture. Her work continues to be impacted by this cultural immersion, explodes in influence from the sensory deluge and complex Indian street life. The previous wary ruminations look like memorials, comparatively. A resurgence of her powerful, multi-layered colour palate surges capturing disturbing portrayals – child beggars, the drudgery of rural life. Souleyeva-Alexander mesmerizes us with the intoxication of sultry crimsons and lemony ochre, brilliant indigo, enticing us into the dolorous circumstances and contradictions that entirely signify this cultural paradox. (Morning in Calcutta) is a sophisticated layering of paint and pictograph, harkening to Souleyeva-Alexander’s roots in traditional grattography. Scratching paint, she produces edgy drawing. This grattographic convention provokes the surface. Her pictograms fortify the resonance of bazaar life, remarking on how animals, objects, symbols are remote, illusory yet integral to social convention. Integrated surface dances, conversant with ambiguity and mystique of that locale. (Meditation on Geranium) slathers intoxicating purple and alizarin crimson-like hues, while quietly contemplating her musical past, pasted behind the paint, a formidable memory. Through Souleyeva-Alexander’s paintings, we see a sincere understanding of life fabric, painted with an understated force.
"Bird's Tales" Paintings
Goward House - 2495 Arbutus Road, Victoria, BC (PH: 250.477.4401):
1 Oct - 3 Nov 2010
"Aliza 2010" New Works
Gallery at The Mac - 625 Fisgard Street Victoria, BC:
18 Oct - 22 Nov 2010
Gallery hours: during performances or by appointment (PH: 250.361.0800)
Review by Debora Alanna
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
John Luna & Tyler Hodgins –The Storage Room and The Corridor by Debora Alanna
Tyler Hodgins and John Luna collaboratively manoeuvre us into The Storage Room & The Corridor.
In the front alcove of the gallery, Hodgins fills the space with fresh, factory new square boxes, compiled into various heights, substantially 8 x 8 feet, building towers of possibility. He structures a convenient, operative corridor surround that allows us to peek into the stacks of his deliberate, interconnected modules.
Presented mostly hanging on a wall we meet as we enter the gallery, some in verso and Corridor, suspended without a wall in the adjacent fore space, Luna’s fervent apertures rede delineation. His paintings consume the picture plane with demonstrative sculptural enquiry. Intensity stored, Luna develops a repository of vigilance and poetry, a passageway to disorienting eruptions of entrenched, rasping colour and paroxysmal form.
Hodgins’ work exudes purity and sanguine optimism. Fresh cardboard smells generate cheerful hope with pervasive buoyancy. The boxes are open and await the containment of apposite venture. Sturdily housing the unknown, Hodgins projects alternative echelons of endeavour, intuitively mounted. A companion drawing with the structure inverted is a reflection of his anticipated vision. Hodgins’ converse stance is a playful Gaudi – like preconstruction edifice that cantilevers above to readdress our perspective – transposes the cloistered storeroom to the spiritual attic where prodigious heights amplify qualified space.
Hodgins system of organization and structure can be envisioned using the Bachelard sensibility in the Poetics of Space: “Bachelard uses the physical characteristics of the house in his phenomenological "topoanalysis" to show the house as metaphor for the self...” ([1]) Reflecting on the storeroom in a house, Hodgins Storeroom as self is a system of harmonious, methodical interactions. References and comparisons to artists with cube discovery, like Sol Lewitt - “The system is the work of art; the visual work of art is the proof of the system. The visual aspect can't be understood without understanding the system. It isn't what it looks like but what it is that is of basic importance.” ([2]) or Rachel Whiteread’s appreciation through the "universal quality of the box" ([3]), we find that Hodgins is in good company. He projects his ‘self’ through a configuration of boxes that are patient, unperturbed, and rhythmic. His unhurried composition generates reassuring repose. The luxury of choice (varying heights of box towers) inspires and relieves. Hodgins’ site-specific work acquaints us with the present, imparting a sense of freedom, existing at least for the duration of this exhibition.
Luna provides means of access to what we struggle to know. Intrepid poetry, each work gnaws and squeezes, crushes and substantiates with colour, paper, canvas, wax, wire. He encloses and reframes, edging toward pugnacious rebellion. Sometimes we see the abstracted picture plane; and unpredictably, the ‘verso’. The face copes, allowing the verso to exist in raw aggression and aversion or painful beauty and mystic ardour (Lakeshore). With subverted grays drawing a reluctant closure or finality (Window) and marked scoring, with the eclipse of overpowering vision (Corridor), Luna penetrates fear. Incisions haemorrhage on the reverse (1000 Hrs Later [The Pulmonary Artery - Verso]),(Sign – Verso). “To hell with reality! I want to die in music, not in reason or in prose. People don't deserve the restraint we show by not going into delirium in front of them. To hell with them!” ([4]) Luna’s forthright, rousing accounts consistently assert intense orchestral passion.
Luna’s deference to Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns leads us to understand a history of material manipulation, a Combine. ([5]) However, there is more intuitive handling by Luna, more reverberation tempered by arch vigour. “...allow that the instances of so many things coming together in so rough a way generates its own patina, one that retroactively, inexplicably, forms its own history, legend of beginning, and underlying yield of truth.” ([6]) This quote from Luna’s essay, Pedestrian Colour strategizes one of his working premises. We are permitted long looks into his rationale; his candour supersedes legend of beginning, as his accession to truth is the result of years of investigation, creating an ominous pathos as patina.
Each composition converges and evolves. Suspended thoughts strain and progress, disconnect and refine, elegantly and unpredictably touch and alight significance. “It is true, sometimes the genius loves the strange shapes, but the thinker can read in its arcane figures, discern and know the emphasis of the verse that creates fantastic lightning from a sublime idea.” ([7]) Luna’s work embodies obdurate, audacious perseverance, tenacious investigative prowess, sometimes taking years to perfect the work. He undertakes the protracted risk we impatiently dread and shows us the results that coursing time allows. Luna supplants with cumulative abandon.
Hodgins amassed congress provides furtive circumnavigation where the surrounding corridor keeps activity around the work undisclosed. Privacy, cornering secrecy prevails. Hodgins storeroom monolith creates a welcome isolation. Trusting in the liberating cache, a consequence of his spatial construct, Hodgins affords participants a contracted, reliable retreat.
Luna’s mindscapes are extroverted sanctuaries where he harbours and dissuades, considers and demarcates consuming provocation and impulsion, proliferates in the privacy of introspection. "While working I have never thought of the theme of solitude. I have absolutely no intention of being an artist of solitude. Moreover, I must add that as a citizen and a thinking being I believe that all life is the opposite of solitude, for life consists of a fabric of relations with others...” ([8]) We can consider Luna in relation to Giacometti’s riposte regarding Existentialist readings of his work. Luna has the propensity to exude his acute discernment of life’s interactions and we benefit from his sincerity. ruminating and rebelling; he aligns with disruptive banality The Storage Room & The Corridor is a concerted endeavor. Concurrently, two distinct views of space and time cohesively thrive to showcase concord. The unrelenting, askew squares of painted planar distortions echo unruffled cubed boxes. We see the void of unknown prospects residing along vistas of confrontation. Both artists exhibit authenticity, which binds them. Veracity accumulates and disclosures of new conduits of understanding merge. Hodgins and Luna work in paradoxical alliance.
Tyler Hodgins & John Luna
The Storage Room & The Corridor
16 July - 14 August 2010
Deluge Art Gallery - Victoria BC
[1] Joan Ockman reviews The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard via http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/research/publications/hdm/back/6books_ockman.html [Feb 2005]
[2] http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/exhibitions/archived/2010/kaldor_projects/projects/1977_sol_lewitt
[3] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4326462.stm
[4] Louis Ferdinand Celine (French writer and physician, 1894-1961)
[5] http://www.lightmillennium.org/2006_17th/rrauschenberg_met.html
[6] John Luna. Pedestrian Colour: http://www.slideroomgallery.com/PEDESTRIAN%20COLOUR%20Essay.pdf
[7] Poesie e novelle in versi, by Ferdinando Fontana, 1877: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/9642
[8] P. Selz, New Images of Man, exh. cat., The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1959, p. 11
In the front alcove of the gallery, Hodgins fills the space with fresh, factory new square boxes, compiled into various heights, substantially 8 x 8 feet, building towers of possibility. He structures a convenient, operative corridor surround that allows us to peek into the stacks of his deliberate, interconnected modules.
Presented mostly hanging on a wall we meet as we enter the gallery, some in verso and Corridor, suspended without a wall in the adjacent fore space, Luna’s fervent apertures rede delineation. His paintings consume the picture plane with demonstrative sculptural enquiry. Intensity stored, Luna develops a repository of vigilance and poetry, a passageway to disorienting eruptions of entrenched, rasping colour and paroxysmal form.
Hodgins’ work exudes purity and sanguine optimism. Fresh cardboard smells generate cheerful hope with pervasive buoyancy. The boxes are open and await the containment of apposite venture. Sturdily housing the unknown, Hodgins projects alternative echelons of endeavour, intuitively mounted. A companion drawing with the structure inverted is a reflection of his anticipated vision. Hodgins’ converse stance is a playful Gaudi – like preconstruction edifice that cantilevers above to readdress our perspective – transposes the cloistered storeroom to the spiritual attic where prodigious heights amplify qualified space.
Hodgins system of organization and structure can be envisioned using the Bachelard sensibility in the Poetics of Space: “Bachelard uses the physical characteristics of the house in his phenomenological "topoanalysis" to show the house as metaphor for the self...” ([1]) Reflecting on the storeroom in a house, Hodgins Storeroom as self is a system of harmonious, methodical interactions. References and comparisons to artists with cube discovery, like Sol Lewitt - “The system is the work of art; the visual work of art is the proof of the system. The visual aspect can't be understood without understanding the system. It isn't what it looks like but what it is that is of basic importance.” ([2]) or Rachel Whiteread’s appreciation through the "universal quality of the box" ([3]), we find that Hodgins is in good company. He projects his ‘self’ through a configuration of boxes that are patient, unperturbed, and rhythmic. His unhurried composition generates reassuring repose. The luxury of choice (varying heights of box towers) inspires and relieves. Hodgins’ site-specific work acquaints us with the present, imparting a sense of freedom, existing at least for the duration of this exhibition.
Luna provides means of access to what we struggle to know. Intrepid poetry, each work gnaws and squeezes, crushes and substantiates with colour, paper, canvas, wax, wire. He encloses and reframes, edging toward pugnacious rebellion. Sometimes we see the abstracted picture plane; and unpredictably, the ‘verso’. The face copes, allowing the verso to exist in raw aggression and aversion or painful beauty and mystic ardour (Lakeshore). With subverted grays drawing a reluctant closure or finality (Window) and marked scoring, with the eclipse of overpowering vision (Corridor), Luna penetrates fear. Incisions haemorrhage on the reverse (1000 Hrs Later [The Pulmonary Artery - Verso]),(Sign – Verso). “To hell with reality! I want to die in music, not in reason or in prose. People don't deserve the restraint we show by not going into delirium in front of them. To hell with them!” ([4]) Luna’s forthright, rousing accounts consistently assert intense orchestral passion.
Luna’s deference to Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns leads us to understand a history of material manipulation, a Combine. ([5]) However, there is more intuitive handling by Luna, more reverberation tempered by arch vigour. “...allow that the instances of so many things coming together in so rough a way generates its own patina, one that retroactively, inexplicably, forms its own history, legend of beginning, and underlying yield of truth.” ([6]) This quote from Luna’s essay, Pedestrian Colour strategizes one of his working premises. We are permitted long looks into his rationale; his candour supersedes legend of beginning, as his accession to truth is the result of years of investigation, creating an ominous pathos as patina.
Each composition converges and evolves. Suspended thoughts strain and progress, disconnect and refine, elegantly and unpredictably touch and alight significance. “It is true, sometimes the genius loves the strange shapes, but the thinker can read in its arcane figures, discern and know the emphasis of the verse that creates fantastic lightning from a sublime idea.” ([7]) Luna’s work embodies obdurate, audacious perseverance, tenacious investigative prowess, sometimes taking years to perfect the work. He undertakes the protracted risk we impatiently dread and shows us the results that coursing time allows. Luna supplants with cumulative abandon.
Hodgins amassed congress provides furtive circumnavigation where the surrounding corridor keeps activity around the work undisclosed. Privacy, cornering secrecy prevails. Hodgins storeroom monolith creates a welcome isolation. Trusting in the liberating cache, a consequence of his spatial construct, Hodgins affords participants a contracted, reliable retreat.
Luna’s mindscapes are extroverted sanctuaries where he harbours and dissuades, considers and demarcates consuming provocation and impulsion, proliferates in the privacy of introspection. "While working I have never thought of the theme of solitude. I have absolutely no intention of being an artist of solitude. Moreover, I must add that as a citizen and a thinking being I believe that all life is the opposite of solitude, for life consists of a fabric of relations with others...” ([8]) We can consider Luna in relation to Giacometti’s riposte regarding Existentialist readings of his work. Luna has the propensity to exude his acute discernment of life’s interactions and we benefit from his sincerity. ruminating and rebelling; he aligns with disruptive banality The Storage Room & The Corridor is a concerted endeavor. Concurrently, two distinct views of space and time cohesively thrive to showcase concord. The unrelenting, askew squares of painted planar distortions echo unruffled cubed boxes. We see the void of unknown prospects residing along vistas of confrontation. Both artists exhibit authenticity, which binds them. Veracity accumulates and disclosures of new conduits of understanding merge. Hodgins and Luna work in paradoxical alliance.
Tyler Hodgins & John Luna
The Storage Room & The Corridor
16 July - 14 August 2010
Deluge Art Gallery - Victoria BC
[1] Joan Ockman reviews The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard via http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/research/publications/hdm/back/6books_ockman.html [Feb 2005]
[2] http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/exhibitions/archived/2010/kaldor_projects/projects/1977_sol_lewitt
[3] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4326462.stm
[4] Louis Ferdinand Celine (French writer and physician, 1894-1961)
[5] http://www.lightmillennium.org/2006_17th/rrauschenberg_met.html
[6] John Luna. Pedestrian Colour: http://www.slideroomgallery.com/PEDESTRIAN%20COLOUR%20Essay.pdf
[7] Poesie e novelle in versi, by Ferdinando Fontana, 1877: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/9642
[8] P. Selz, New Images of Man, exh. cat., The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1959, p. 11
Saturday, July 24, 2010
James Lindsay -Killer Paintings- by Debora Alanna
In ‘Landscape, Nature, and the Body Politic’ ([1]) Kenneth Olwig says, “our environment, conceived of as landscape scenery, is fundamentally linked to our political landscape.” Killer Paintings is a deliberate, terrifyingly calm discourse about James Lindsay’s absorption and response to our collective environmental and socio-political experiences. Lindsay’s recent expansive vistas with confounding demarcations delineate earthly boundaries with bright and enlivening shapes and symbols that detonate with each denotation. (Political Landscape) Ever changing political borders are marked to resonate bizarrely expedient environmentally horrific realities. Indignantly facetious, Lindsay’s palate articulates the baffling environmental destruction that political gain produces. As the current series progresses, sorrow and distain simplify to austerity, futuristic projections of a forsaken earth.
Adverse events propel Lindsay to remark on the unthinkable. In March 2006, journalist and Seaforth Highlander Lieut. Trevor Green, a former navy officer from Vancouver was assaulted with an axe to his head when attending a routine shuras, or meeting with Afghan village elders. ([2]) Lindsay depicted the ambush with a Munch-like visage, reminding the viewer of stunned meanderers in The Freeze of Life, only this impaled disembodied head (and subsequent version) drips blood: Hatchet. The quietude screams, brooding over the faith in communication, revealing a corporeal alarm.
New Arctic Landscape 1 and 11 are comprehensive investigations, addressing the ruin of our North. Sordid plunder shrouds the once pristine beauty, melting and evacuating wildness. Lindsay paints the understated rape with washes of paleness, memorializing past beauty. He shows us how our festering land scowls.
Trophy, versions 1, 11 and 111 utilize the deer symbol or abundance. Lindsay’s whimsy is at play here. A reclined head swallows the forefeet of the animal, a determination of our gluttony.
08-08-08 is elegant and striking. This is a one brush-stroke Zen painting, declaring how Lindsay’s contemplation and intuitive wisdom is at work in his art.
This exhibition displays Encryptomatons, seen at Open Space in ‘The Hidden is Hard to Come By’, a show with James Lindsay and David Gifford. This series of paintings references the 2003 atrocity when over 600 illegal combatants from the Afghanistan war were held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and the alleged genetic manipulations of prisoners in various wars. In his curatorial essay about Lindsay’s paintings, Roy Green wrote:
“These forms function as individual portraits of the genetically captured detainees, and appear as micro-cosmic slices of flesh exhumed from a Francis Bacon Painting, or perhaps digital cocoons, whirling bivalves of nano-technology gone horribly awry, floating in the dense blackness of metaphysical oil- meaning and identity encrypted within.”
“The dense blackness is analogous to the alchemist’s Nigredo state: the black that absorbs all colours, the vortex of silence releasing the dark night of the soul, the limitless void that holds these detainees in the deranged matrix of their digital cocoons.”
James Lindsay's work is monumental in its dauntless confrontation of his subjects, intrinsically painted. His show encompasses a life's work - 2 buildings and several floors. In this retrospective, Lindsay’s oeuvre is as intensely alluring as it is prophetic. Killer Paintings ensures we notice and gather insight. His compassionate portrayals are benevolently vengeful. Lindsay is our alerting guide through his deliberated, intuitive panoramas exposing the maliciousness that destroys where we live – environmentally profane and socio-politically saturated destruction. Killer Paintings is sagacious work; Lindsay refutes complacency. Lindsay augurs beyond transient, oneiric imagery. “An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world.” ([3]) Literal and linear views will not sustain Lindsay’s significant descriptions. Thankfully, Lindsay presents a gift of stratified vision that layers time, showing diverse contexts. He shows us all, at once, so we do not forget to remember.
[1] Olwig, Kenneth. Landscape, nature, and the body politic: from Britain's renaissance to America's new world. Univ of Wisconsin Press, 2002
[2] http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2006/03/04/canada-afghanistan060304.html#ixzz0uG92shYo
[3] George Santayana (Spanish born American Philosopher, Poet and 1863-1952)
James Lindsay “Killer Paintings“
17- 25 July 2010
Open Saturday & Sunday
Weekdays by appointment:
jameslindsayart@yahoo.ca
250.380.7687
549½ & 553½ Fisgard Street
Victoria BC
Adverse events propel Lindsay to remark on the unthinkable. In March 2006, journalist and Seaforth Highlander Lieut. Trevor Green, a former navy officer from Vancouver was assaulted with an axe to his head when attending a routine shuras, or meeting with Afghan village elders. ([2]) Lindsay depicted the ambush with a Munch-like visage, reminding the viewer of stunned meanderers in The Freeze of Life, only this impaled disembodied head (and subsequent version) drips blood: Hatchet. The quietude screams, brooding over the faith in communication, revealing a corporeal alarm.
New Arctic Landscape 1 and 11 are comprehensive investigations, addressing the ruin of our North. Sordid plunder shrouds the once pristine beauty, melting and evacuating wildness. Lindsay paints the understated rape with washes of paleness, memorializing past beauty. He shows us how our festering land scowls.
Trophy, versions 1, 11 and 111 utilize the deer symbol or abundance. Lindsay’s whimsy is at play here. A reclined head swallows the forefeet of the animal, a determination of our gluttony.
08-08-08 is elegant and striking. This is a one brush-stroke Zen painting, declaring how Lindsay’s contemplation and intuitive wisdom is at work in his art.
This exhibition displays Encryptomatons, seen at Open Space in ‘The Hidden is Hard to Come By’, a show with James Lindsay and David Gifford. This series of paintings references the 2003 atrocity when over 600 illegal combatants from the Afghanistan war were held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and the alleged genetic manipulations of prisoners in various wars. In his curatorial essay about Lindsay’s paintings, Roy Green wrote:
“These forms function as individual portraits of the genetically captured detainees, and appear as micro-cosmic slices of flesh exhumed from a Francis Bacon Painting, or perhaps digital cocoons, whirling bivalves of nano-technology gone horribly awry, floating in the dense blackness of metaphysical oil- meaning and identity encrypted within.”
“The dense blackness is analogous to the alchemist’s Nigredo state: the black that absorbs all colours, the vortex of silence releasing the dark night of the soul, the limitless void that holds these detainees in the deranged matrix of their digital cocoons.”
James Lindsay's work is monumental in its dauntless confrontation of his subjects, intrinsically painted. His show encompasses a life's work - 2 buildings and several floors. In this retrospective, Lindsay’s oeuvre is as intensely alluring as it is prophetic. Killer Paintings ensures we notice and gather insight. His compassionate portrayals are benevolently vengeful. Lindsay is our alerting guide through his deliberated, intuitive panoramas exposing the maliciousness that destroys where we live – environmentally profane and socio-politically saturated destruction. Killer Paintings is sagacious work; Lindsay refutes complacency. Lindsay augurs beyond transient, oneiric imagery. “An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world.” ([3]) Literal and linear views will not sustain Lindsay’s significant descriptions. Thankfully, Lindsay presents a gift of stratified vision that layers time, showing diverse contexts. He shows us all, at once, so we do not forget to remember.
[1] Olwig, Kenneth. Landscape, nature, and the body politic: from Britain's renaissance to America's new world. Univ of Wisconsin Press, 2002
[2] http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2006/03/04/canada-afghanistan060304.html#ixzz0uG92shYo
[3] George Santayana (Spanish born American Philosopher, Poet and 1863-1952)
James Lindsay “Killer Paintings“
17- 25 July 2010
Open Saturday & Sunday
Weekdays by appointment:
jameslindsayart@yahoo.ca
250.380.7687
549½ & 553½ Fisgard Street
Victoria BC
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Tracy Nelson: Walls of Intrigue and Cabinets of Curiosity & Alison Pebworth: Beautiful Possibility review by Debora Alanna
Beautiful Possibility
Alison Pebworth
Pebworth describes herself as a Neo- Pilgrim. She is a near-earth traveler on a specialized journey to seek, and to found, realize what is lost in America. Beautiful Possibility risks the integrity of picturesque models and theories. Painted on high-realism banners coalescing histories, Pebworth’s personal reconsideration of history’s time and place, interconnecting culture, recalibrates context with intricate whimsy. Complementing the banners, she maps her 2-year journey through points of her entry into narratives. These collected stories are cohesive passages routing and evaluating past and present communal, evolving markers.
The 19th century neurologist George M. Beard first defined what ails us, and called the condition Americanitis, resulting from “a fast way of life.” ([1]) Pebworth’s multiple, amalgamated concepts observe past and present Americanitis. Studying human culture and development, a comparative history of how time has advanced or evolved the pressures and distress that originally created the Americanitis condition, Pebworth devised a survey where participants can offer their contribution to this discussion. Collecting stories about lost or forgotten histories is also an integral dimension of this travelling show. Delighting in extraordinary opportunities for exploration, Pebworth’s itinerant exhibition gains content from interaction. Complete this survey on line, if you missed the Open Space form-filling opportunity.
Past travelling medicine shows peddled elixirs to ease pervasive anxiety, cure Americanitis. Pebworth created her own elixir to enable consideration of the cure. During a final performance, a drink of assorted leaves and blossom tea combined with vodka, poured into a communal oyster shell vessel provided a few with this elixir generating cautious examination of the possibility of transformation from this psychological panacea. Can there be a cure to what ails us? Do we really want a cure? Do we need a remedy? Pebworth’s excursion creates organized questioning.
This work is an evolving rendering, a portrait in the making, and the portrayal progresses with every thought and unearthing that incorporates the texture of past and present possibilities. Pebworth strives to beautify, to exemplify, circulating a surging need to restore our equilibrium, redirect our Americanitis towards the splendour of what is beautiful in our lives. This enquiring nomad promotes wellness and refreshing discovery of future possibilities. Her research into a Beautiful Possibility demonstrates this.
Beautiful Possibility tours the Northern United States after this only Southern Canada exposition. Video Pebworth’s next showcase is at the Missoula Public Library, 1 July – 10 July 2010. You can interact with the Beautiful Possibilityhttp://www.beautifulpossibilitytour.com/ through the website:
[1] http://www.beautifulpossibilitytour.com/
Walls of Intrigue and Cabinets of Curiosity
Tracy Nelson
Monkeys. Lots of sock-monkeys, monkeys made of recycled knitwear. Drawings of monkeys. Cabinets of mini-monkeys. Nelson has ardently made and mounted them all the way up the gallery walls, enlarged them to become freestanding primate-like sculptures and highlighted them in fabric wrapped consoles. Zealous projections, these monkeys silently taunt. Like Yasuma polka dots, Nelson’s crafted profusion saturates our vision, creating spectacle.
Disquieting creatures conspicuously seem to gaze at us, censorious, daunting. Gangly, elongated legs and arms, sometimes wrapping other little monkeys mainly dangle. Their frozen expressions frighten, toying with our willingness to think of this collection as entertaining. Nelson does portray some of her creatures humorously. There is playful contortion, diverting hats and funny features to examine. Yet the echoing stares redress the disturbance. Determined, modulated mania from the Walls of Intrigue directs us to the Cabinets of Curiosity. Fuzzy encased cabinetry pads the mechanism for framed vignettes of Nelson’s interacting creations. Monkey antics housed keeps the dynamics relegated, demonstrating nebulous inflections. Handmade, each monkey has integrity, and power to seize our wit.
A robot vacuum with spider-like legs holding pens, when active, obsessively draws on the floor. The critter monkeys. Here, there is a release of craze, a discharge of frantic inclinations.
In The Dancing Monkeys, Aesop describes the mimicking nature of nonhuman primates: “Being naturally great mimics of men's actions, they showed themselves most apt pupils, and when arrayed in their rich clothes and masks, they danced as well as any of the courtiers.”([1]) Nelson reverses the roles of monkey and audience, as does the clever story. We are observed; our actions are conspicuously a dance for attention. And as the monkeys in the fable scatter when the nuts are strewn for their consumption, we show our true natures when we are preoccupied with the nuttiness of obsessive acts. Nelson shows us that we are the intrigue, the curiosity. Video
[1] Aesop. Three Hundred and Fifty Aesop’s Fables. Trans. Rev. Geo. Flyer Townsend, M.A. Chicago: Belford, Clark & Co. 1882.
Alison Pebworth
Pebworth describes herself as a Neo- Pilgrim. She is a near-earth traveler on a specialized journey to seek, and to found, realize what is lost in America. Beautiful Possibility risks the integrity of picturesque models and theories. Painted on high-realism banners coalescing histories, Pebworth’s personal reconsideration of history’s time and place, interconnecting culture, recalibrates context with intricate whimsy. Complementing the banners, she maps her 2-year journey through points of her entry into narratives. These collected stories are cohesive passages routing and evaluating past and present communal, evolving markers.
The 19th century neurologist George M. Beard first defined what ails us, and called the condition Americanitis, resulting from “a fast way of life.” ([1]) Pebworth’s multiple, amalgamated concepts observe past and present Americanitis. Studying human culture and development, a comparative history of how time has advanced or evolved the pressures and distress that originally created the Americanitis condition, Pebworth devised a survey where participants can offer their contribution to this discussion. Collecting stories about lost or forgotten histories is also an integral dimension of this travelling show. Delighting in extraordinary opportunities for exploration, Pebworth’s itinerant exhibition gains content from interaction. Complete this survey on line, if you missed the Open Space form-filling opportunity.
Past travelling medicine shows peddled elixirs to ease pervasive anxiety, cure Americanitis. Pebworth created her own elixir to enable consideration of the cure. During a final performance, a drink of assorted leaves and blossom tea combined with vodka, poured into a communal oyster shell vessel provided a few with this elixir generating cautious examination of the possibility of transformation from this psychological panacea. Can there be a cure to what ails us? Do we really want a cure? Do we need a remedy? Pebworth’s excursion creates organized questioning.
This work is an evolving rendering, a portrait in the making, and the portrayal progresses with every thought and unearthing that incorporates the texture of past and present possibilities. Pebworth strives to beautify, to exemplify, circulating a surging need to restore our equilibrium, redirect our Americanitis towards the splendour of what is beautiful in our lives. This enquiring nomad promotes wellness and refreshing discovery of future possibilities. Her research into a Beautiful Possibility demonstrates this.
Beautiful Possibility tours the Northern United States after this only Southern Canada exposition. Video Pebworth’s next showcase is at the Missoula Public Library, 1 July – 10 July 2010. You can interact with the Beautiful Possibilityhttp://www.beautifulpossibilitytour.com/ through the website:
[1] http://www.beautifulpossibilitytour.com/
Walls of Intrigue and Cabinets of Curiosity
Tracy Nelson
Monkeys. Lots of sock-monkeys, monkeys made of recycled knitwear. Drawings of monkeys. Cabinets of mini-monkeys. Nelson has ardently made and mounted them all the way up the gallery walls, enlarged them to become freestanding primate-like sculptures and highlighted them in fabric wrapped consoles. Zealous projections, these monkeys silently taunt. Like Yasuma polka dots, Nelson’s crafted profusion saturates our vision, creating spectacle.
Disquieting creatures conspicuously seem to gaze at us, censorious, daunting. Gangly, elongated legs and arms, sometimes wrapping other little monkeys mainly dangle. Their frozen expressions frighten, toying with our willingness to think of this collection as entertaining. Nelson does portray some of her creatures humorously. There is playful contortion, diverting hats and funny features to examine. Yet the echoing stares redress the disturbance. Determined, modulated mania from the Walls of Intrigue directs us to the Cabinets of Curiosity. Fuzzy encased cabinetry pads the mechanism for framed vignettes of Nelson’s interacting creations. Monkey antics housed keeps the dynamics relegated, demonstrating nebulous inflections. Handmade, each monkey has integrity, and power to seize our wit.
A robot vacuum with spider-like legs holding pens, when active, obsessively draws on the floor. The critter monkeys. Here, there is a release of craze, a discharge of frantic inclinations.
In The Dancing Monkeys, Aesop describes the mimicking nature of nonhuman primates: “Being naturally great mimics of men's actions, they showed themselves most apt pupils, and when arrayed in their rich clothes and masks, they danced as well as any of the courtiers.”([1]) Nelson reverses the roles of monkey and audience, as does the clever story. We are observed; our actions are conspicuously a dance for attention. And as the monkeys in the fable scatter when the nuts are strewn for their consumption, we show our true natures when we are preoccupied with the nuttiness of obsessive acts. Nelson shows us that we are the intrigue, the curiosity. Video
[1] Aesop. Three Hundred and Fifty Aesop’s Fables. Trans. Rev. Geo. Flyer Townsend, M.A. Chicago: Belford, Clark & Co. 1882.
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Megan Dickie “Contact Games” review by Debora Alanna
Let’s play! The novelty of Contact Games jiggles and sways with the interaction between entity and participants that boing and shift, grapple and manoeuvre Megan Dickie’s palpable sculptures. A dynamic modification of our discernment about object and material changes with each play we engage.
The Tangler , an ostensibly ponderous leather net encapsulated inflation, liberates amazement when it refreshes its position after a press in the opposite direction, wrestling with balance and upright positioning. The work invites with cajoling coax to reposition, to realign and shuffle our viewpoint. This enlarged embodiment abstractly portrays a field of vision, which topples quietly and reconfigures, with ballast that keeps the leather-fringed apex on top, a system of controlled interaction. Challenging reason with diversion, the absurdity of interchange tangles our sensibilities.
Poised on a low pedestal, The Jiggler, a large sphere of conjoined leather strips, interiors sheathed with flexible aluminum, sits waiting for play. On the nearby wall, Dickie lists interaction suggestions: Gentle, Push, Rock, Jiggle. With an advisory outcome to this interplay, ‘it will grapple you’ posted below the play suggestions we confront a choice to seize, clasp and wrestle with the sculpture to produce an circumspect tussle of what wobbles our contrived notions of novelty. “It is that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment which constitutes poetic faith.” (1)
Printed wall works present silkscreened images of rebel Dickie clothed to party, wearing Mexican Luchador wrestling masks (mascaras) that signifying the identity of the wrestler, allowing the characterization of god, hero or archetype, and designating the fight as kayfabe or real. Convincing interplay reflects Roland Barthes interpreting signs described in his essay, World of Wrestling, prefaced by a quote from Baudelaire,” The grandiloquent truth of gestures on life's great occasions.” Dickie’s work develops excessive gesturing contingent on game playing, while moderating the certainty of these signals.
The Amazing Tangler presents two versions of the party-garbed dissenter in opposition to an unwieldy mass that references The Tangler. Prone, one incumbent lies arms outstretched endeavouring to envelope her opponent. This overlay impossibility is absurd, prohibitive because of the disparity between opponent’s largess and the diminutive size of the wrestler. Here, the defeat is Barthe’s “exaggeratedly visible explanation of a Necessity.”(2)Meanwhile, another subversive struggles to connect with this interweave, showing a different attack, strategy to contest the tangle. Dickie shows brave bravado despite inaccessibility, where the game’s fighter “...emphasizes and holds like a pause in music...” (3)
The Contact Games triptych exercises similar, opposing contestants wresting forcibly with an insurmountable opponent. Intangible abandon overloads the interplay. Grappling with the claim of a game, an amusement, this serious match of will and seizing marks contact without the possibility of submission or defeat. The rollicking sport dwells in Dickie’s sculpture.
[1] Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Biographia Literaria, 1817
[2] Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. Trans. Annette Lavers, Hill and Wang, New York, 1984.
[3] Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. Trans. Annette Lavers, Hill and Wang, New York, 1984.
Megan Dickie
Contact Games
11 June to 10 July 2010
Deluge Contemporary Art
636 Yates Street
Victoria BC Video
The Tangler , an ostensibly ponderous leather net encapsulated inflation, liberates amazement when it refreshes its position after a press in the opposite direction, wrestling with balance and upright positioning. The work invites with cajoling coax to reposition, to realign and shuffle our viewpoint. This enlarged embodiment abstractly portrays a field of vision, which topples quietly and reconfigures, with ballast that keeps the leather-fringed apex on top, a system of controlled interaction. Challenging reason with diversion, the absurdity of interchange tangles our sensibilities. 
Poised on a low pedestal, The Jiggler, a large sphere of conjoined leather strips, interiors sheathed with flexible aluminum, sits waiting for play. On the nearby wall, Dickie lists interaction suggestions: Gentle, Push, Rock, Jiggle. With an advisory outcome to this interplay, ‘it will grapple you’ posted below the play suggestions we confront a choice to seize, clasp and wrestle with the sculpture to produce an circumspect tussle of what wobbles our contrived notions of novelty. “It is that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment which constitutes poetic faith.” (1)
Printed wall works present silkscreened images of rebel Dickie clothed to party, wearing Mexican Luchador wrestling masks (mascaras) that signifying the identity of the wrestler, allowing the characterization of god, hero or archetype, and designating the fight as kayfabe or real. Convincing interplay reflects Roland Barthes interpreting signs described in his essay, World of Wrestling, prefaced by a quote from Baudelaire,” The grandiloquent truth of gestures on life's great occasions.” Dickie’s work develops excessive gesturing contingent on game playing, while moderating the certainty of these signals. 
The Amazing Tangler presents two versions of the party-garbed dissenter in opposition to an unwieldy mass that references The Tangler. Prone, one incumbent lies arms outstretched endeavouring to envelope her opponent. This overlay impossibility is absurd, prohibitive because of the disparity between opponent’s largess and the diminutive size of the wrestler. Here, the defeat is Barthe’s “exaggeratedly visible explanation of a Necessity.”(2)Meanwhile, another subversive struggles to connect with this interweave, showing a different attack, strategy to contest the tangle. Dickie shows brave bravado despite inaccessibility, where the game’s fighter “...emphasizes and holds like a pause in music...” (3)
The Contact Games triptych exercises similar, opposing contestants wresting forcibly with an insurmountable opponent. Intangible abandon overloads the interplay. Grappling with the claim of a game, an amusement, this serious match of will and seizing marks contact without the possibility of submission or defeat. The rollicking sport dwells in Dickie’s sculpture. [1] Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Biographia Literaria, 1817
[2] Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. Trans. Annette Lavers, Hill and Wang, New York, 1984.
[3] Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. Trans. Annette Lavers, Hill and Wang, New York, 1984.
Megan Dickie
Contact Games
11 June to 10 July 2010
Deluge Contemporary Art
636 Yates Street
Victoria BC Video
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Frank Torng “HerShe” Reviewed by Debora Alanna
Picture windows into a club life, Frank Torng’s HerShe is an aperture into the Drag Queen and Go-Go Boy emotional response of this rerouting world. Intimate portraits as overtures to compelling extravagance, candid or impromptu enactment offers us a study into this “third gender” and performance experience. Torng captures ritual dress and dressing, creating memories, memorials to his backstage family that shares dazzling goals and values.
Understanding this familial intimacy, Torng tightly composes his pictures. His photography resonate defining interplays of colour that expose this reality with deliberate articulation. Torng’s access to pre and post theatrical activity, association with characterizations created from behind the scenes creates work without fear of reprisal or need to conceal his observations. He produces refreshing candour. The reverie and admiration for his focus heightens our enthusiasm for his subjects. Torng’s exacting photographs are unadulterated portrayals within this segment of gay culture, bringing reliable documentation into view.
Torng, as an invited guest since boyhood, provides a fond record of spectacular events. Rather than peeking or peering through his lens, his convivial interchange protrudes throughout HerShe. The performers’ costumed facades become extroverted wonder through Torng faithful displays. Here, there is a Nan Goldin and Cindy Sherman influence. However, Torng does not detonate with the Goldin ribald impertinence or execute a Sherman staging. Torng salutes the ClubKids genre, related to the infamous Michael Alig, however, HerShe demonstrates intrinsic respect for these performers. Portraits exude sexuality, saturated with consideration.
As an emerging artist that eclipses perfunctory societal bias through his humanity, Frank Torng has obtained formal recognition by winning the University of Victoria BMO 1st Art Award, 2010 and has been shortlisted for the Future Generation Art Prize (results pending). Torng’s work quietly punctuates desires with acquisitive expertise.
Fifty Fifty Arts Collective 2516 Douglas St. Victoria, BC
3 June – 24 June 2010 Video
Understanding this familial intimacy, Torng tightly composes his pictures. His photography resonate defining interplays of colour that expose this reality with deliberate articulation. Torng’s access to pre and post theatrical activity, association with characterizations created from behind the scenes creates work without fear of reprisal or need to conceal his observations. He produces refreshing candour. The reverie and admiration for his focus heightens our enthusiasm for his subjects. Torng’s exacting photographs are unadulterated portrayals within this segment of gay culture, bringing reliable documentation into view.
Torng, as an invited guest since boyhood, provides a fond record of spectacular events. Rather than peeking or peering through his lens, his convivial interchange protrudes throughout HerShe. The performers’ costumed facades become extroverted wonder through Torng faithful displays. Here, there is a Nan Goldin and Cindy Sherman influence. However, Torng does not detonate with the Goldin ribald impertinence or execute a Sherman staging. Torng salutes the ClubKids genre, related to the infamous Michael Alig, however, HerShe demonstrates intrinsic respect for these performers. Portraits exude sexuality, saturated with consideration.
As an emerging artist that eclipses perfunctory societal bias through his humanity, Frank Torng has obtained formal recognition by winning the University of Victoria BMO 1st Art Award, 2010 and has been shortlisted for the Future Generation Art Prize (results pending). Torng’s work quietly punctuates desires with acquisitive expertise.
Fifty Fifty Arts Collective 2516 Douglas St. Victoria, BC
3 June – 24 June 2010 Video
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Rande Cook and Arlene Nesbitt by Debora Alanna
Innovative Visions of the Formline
Rande Cook
Works on paper and drum
13 May – 9 June 2010
Alcheringa Gallery
665 Fort St, Victoria BC
Rande Cook displays pride in his Kwakwaka’wakw heritage. A legacy of this First Nation’s tradition is the oral chronicles shared between its people. Visual depictions of stories, events and evocations embody art works. Impressions within oral histories befit specific, significant forms. Integral to this visual culture is the illustration of energy as Formline. Formline is not the outline of ovoids, circles and U form shapes that permeate the fundamental workings of this tradition; it is the coloured contour within the outline. Asserting the power and force found in living things, Formline tells stories, fortifies narratives with established shaping and colour.
Studying Formline as it transforms through time, and bringing his own interpretation of this evolution to his artwork, Cook presents more than a diachronic development. His innovative approach to Formline articulates and expands the historical application while respecting the Kwakwaka’wakw origins to this process. Sequentially, each work advances traditional design with crafted boldness.
Mapping sensation and reflection dominates Cook’s paintings. He develops intuitive terrain and elevates the sensibility of each idea he surveys. Taking Flight initiates the challenge to Formline with gentle colouration and graceful stretching. Supernatural amplifies that challenge, widening the central circle, releasing the restraint of visual modality from customary containment. Emerging heightens the feeling of possibility. A spacial incision releases the flow of energy, allowing burgeoning growth. Yellow ochre is the colour of healing, according to Cook. U forms, held by symbolic healing power enables the emergence of a new force. Bringing Light shows further release of Formline, with a lightening of palate and acknowledgement of presence, a disembodied spirit. In Play is mischievous teasing of Formline, testing and taunting the picture plane. Cook reveals introspection in Perception/Projection. Balancing elements are contrapuntal investigations. Painting a North West Coast traditional face, depicting the
recognizable nostrils and eye features, he continues to explore his challenges to Formline while confronting himself. Summer (drum), a circular painting on a drum is an explosive resonance, releasing Formline sensibility. A female figure, embedded in the reverberation of colour and abstracted Formline portrays in a contemporary stance. Elegance combines Formline and Cooks unique development. With a modish woman holding a wine glass, traditional structuring whirls and roots this work. Kwakwaka’wakw imagery tempers modern abandon.
More than half a century ago, First Nations artists were considering the importance of maintaining cultural integrity while developing new art practises. ” In 1948, (George) Clutesi claimed his art practice as a platform for ensuring that the old would not be totally sublimated to the new. He expressed his belief that “as long as paint exists on canvas, [my people’s] dances and legends will not be lost.[1]”[2] Through Rande Cook’s distinctive contribution to the enduring Kwakwaka’wakw culture, he advocates and advances his ethnic longevity, fearlessly contributing to its cultural vision.
[1] Crosby, Marcia. Making Indian Art Modern. Vancouver, BC: Ruins in Process. Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery. http://www.vancouverartinthesixties.com/
[2] Native Voice, September 1948, 3.
Image Informed
Arlene Nesbitt
Photomontage and digitally mixed media
21 May – 4 June 2010
Collective Works Gallery
1311 Gladstone Ave, Victoria BC
Arlene Nesbitt’s work is awakening. Her sumptuous prints line the Collective Works walls, toying and tugging at what is present in our senses. Drawings on various surfaces superimpose photographs, expertly layered. Each work evokes an intense revelation.
Paul Trejo’s 1993 analysis of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Mind (alias Phenomenology of Spirit) [1] explains that Hegel used phenomenon to consider appearance. “... we can only know Reality when we have completely mastered the appearances, since the appearances (phenomena) partially hide and partially reveal Reality... and there can be degrees of truth in propositions.” “Phenomena of mind also partially hide and partially reveal the truth.”
Nesbitt has employed this understanding of Phenomenology in her work. Crumpled aluminum becomes phenomenon (Invocation, Tracks). There is a transportation of our senses, a marvellous transmutation from the reality of metal, of industry and its connotations of impairment. These works transfigure material existence it plays with our understanding of the truth of the object. Crushed rose petals become a metallic ballet. (Dancer 1 and Dancer 11)
Recalling Marshall McLuhan, Derick de Kerchove said: “... he was constantly discovering, as if feeling the shapes of knowledge with his hands. ...thinking not with his head but with all his senses... did not deduce things... he perceived directly...” [2] Here, there is a correspondence to Nesbitt’s working process. Through works like Hybrid 1 and Hybrid 11, machinations layer the sensation of circulating discovery. Strokes of crayon or droplets on Mylar over industrial histories inculcate living memory through her sensual processing. Nesbitt’s direct perceptions communicate visual acuity.
In works such as Out of Kilter and Fence, Nesbitt employs nature, supplanting awe with consideration. We struggle to see foliage; she obfuscates the view with pattern and structure. Superimposed, coloured touches transfer complication to our preconceptions. We encounter a hermetic restlessness, a withdrawal to ruminate, to introspect. We recognize this need, and her work has brought us to the hermitage.
Nesbit considers the disposition of bones and teeth in Bones, a triptych. Her powerful presage to mortality directs our emotional enlightening, applying gentility to our fear. We become receptive to Nesbitt’s wilful surface light stirring our biases. Genuine, Nesbitt’s work touches us because this suggestion of our physical world allows us belief. Beauty hovers, suggesting physicality, which alludes to our vulnerability, a rumpled idea. Meeting is a playful portraiture. Nesbitt soaks colour, enlivens the surface, composing a current that radiates around the intimation of two figures. A portent, the radiance inundates, and reciprocity is phenomenon. video
[1] Trejo, Paul. Summary of Hegel’s Philosophy of Mind, 1993. http://philosophy.eserver.org/hegel-summary.html
[2] de Kerckhove, Derrick. Zulu Time (orig. L'heure zulu), 1999 NFC documentary, director Jonny Silver
Rande Cook
Works on paper and drum
13 May – 9 June 2010
Alcheringa Gallery
665 Fort St, Victoria BC
Rande Cook displays pride in his Kwakwaka’wakw heritage. A legacy of this First Nation’s tradition is the oral chronicles shared between its people. Visual depictions of stories, events and evocations embody art works. Impressions within oral histories befit specific, significant forms. Integral to this visual culture is the illustration of energy as Formline. Formline is not the outline of ovoids, circles and U form shapes that permeate the fundamental workings of this tradition; it is the coloured contour within the outline. Asserting the power and force found in living things, Formline tells stories, fortifies narratives with established shaping and colour.
Studying Formline as it transforms through time, and bringing his own interpretation of this evolution to his artwork, Cook presents more than a diachronic development. His innovative approach to Formline articulates and expands the historical application while respecting the Kwakwaka’wakw origins to this process. Sequentially, each work advances traditional design with crafted boldness.
Mapping sensation and reflection dominates Cook’s paintings. He develops intuitive terrain and elevates the sensibility of each idea he surveys. Taking Flight initiates the challenge to Formline with gentle colouration and graceful stretching. Supernatural amplifies that challenge, widening the central circle, releasing the restraint of visual modality from customary containment. Emerging heightens the feeling of possibility. A spacial incision releases the flow of energy, allowing burgeoning growth. Yellow ochre is the colour of healing, according to Cook. U forms, held by symbolic healing power enables the emergence of a new force. Bringing Light shows further release of Formline, with a lightening of palate and acknowledgement of presence, a disembodied spirit. In Play is mischievous teasing of Formline, testing and taunting the picture plane. Cook reveals introspection in Perception/Projection. Balancing elements are contrapuntal investigations. Painting a North West Coast traditional face, depicting the
recognizable nostrils and eye features, he continues to explore his challenges to Formline while confronting himself. Summer (drum), a circular painting on a drum is an explosive resonance, releasing Formline sensibility. A female figure, embedded in the reverberation of colour and abstracted Formline portrays in a contemporary stance. Elegance combines Formline and Cooks unique development. With a modish woman holding a wine glass, traditional structuring whirls and roots this work. Kwakwaka’wakw imagery tempers modern abandon.
More than half a century ago, First Nations artists were considering the importance of maintaining cultural integrity while developing new art practises. ” In 1948, (George) Clutesi claimed his art practice as a platform for ensuring that the old would not be totally sublimated to the new. He expressed his belief that “as long as paint exists on canvas, [my people’s] dances and legends will not be lost.[1]”[2] Through Rande Cook’s distinctive contribution to the enduring Kwakwaka’wakw culture, he advocates and advances his ethnic longevity, fearlessly contributing to its cultural vision.
[1] Crosby, Marcia. Making Indian Art Modern. Vancouver, BC: Ruins in Process. Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery. http://www.vancouverartinthesixties.com/
[2] Native Voice, September 1948, 3.
Image Informed
Arlene Nesbitt
Photomontage and digitally mixed media
21 May – 4 June 2010
Collective Works Gallery
1311 Gladstone Ave, Victoria BC
Arlene Nesbitt’s work is awakening. Her sumptuous prints line the Collective Works walls, toying and tugging at what is present in our senses. Drawings on various surfaces superimpose photographs, expertly layered. Each work evokes an intense revelation.
Paul Trejo’s 1993 analysis of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Mind (alias Phenomenology of Spirit) [1] explains that Hegel used phenomenon to consider appearance. “... we can only know Reality when we have completely mastered the appearances, since the appearances (phenomena) partially hide and partially reveal Reality... and there can be degrees of truth in propositions.” “Phenomena of mind also partially hide and partially reveal the truth.”
Nesbitt has employed this understanding of Phenomenology in her work. Crumpled aluminum becomes phenomenon (Invocation, Tracks). There is a transportation of our senses, a marvellous transmutation from the reality of metal, of industry and its connotations of impairment. These works transfigure material existence it plays with our understanding of the truth of the object. Crushed rose petals become a metallic ballet. (Dancer 1 and Dancer 11)
Recalling Marshall McLuhan, Derick de Kerchove said: “... he was constantly discovering, as if feeling the shapes of knowledge with his hands. ...thinking not with his head but with all his senses... did not deduce things... he perceived directly...” [2] Here, there is a correspondence to Nesbitt’s working process. Through works like Hybrid 1 and Hybrid 11, machinations layer the sensation of circulating discovery. Strokes of crayon or droplets on Mylar over industrial histories inculcate living memory through her sensual processing. Nesbitt’s direct perceptions communicate visual acuity.
In works such as Out of Kilter and Fence, Nesbitt employs nature, supplanting awe with consideration. We struggle to see foliage; she obfuscates the view with pattern and structure. Superimposed, coloured touches transfer complication to our preconceptions. We encounter a hermetic restlessness, a withdrawal to ruminate, to introspect. We recognize this need, and her work has brought us to the hermitage.
Nesbit considers the disposition of bones and teeth in Bones, a triptych. Her powerful presage to mortality directs our emotional enlightening, applying gentility to our fear. We become receptive to Nesbitt’s wilful surface light stirring our biases. Genuine, Nesbitt’s work touches us because this suggestion of our physical world allows us belief. Beauty hovers, suggesting physicality, which alludes to our vulnerability, a rumpled idea. Meeting is a playful portraiture. Nesbitt soaks colour, enlivens the surface, composing a current that radiates around the intimation of two figures. A portent, the radiance inundates, and reciprocity is phenomenon. video
[1] Trejo, Paul. Summary of Hegel’s Philosophy of Mind, 1993. http://philosophy.eserver.org/hegel-summary.html
[2] de Kerckhove, Derrick. Zulu Time (orig. L'heure zulu), 1999 NFC documentary, director Jonny Silver
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Pedestrian Colour by Debora Alanna
Slide Room Gallery
Victoria, BC
May 7 - 28, 2010
Curator: John Luna
Artists: Sean Alward, Marlene Bouchard, Jonathan Dowdall, Alexander Grewal, June Higgins, Michael Jess, Paul La Farge, Nathan Paine, and Wendy Welch.
Fleeting information, transient objects we manipulate, exchange or briefly acquire and discard, short-lived experiences that permeate our lives needs context to describe, to understand. An opportunity to reflect on the barrage of material layering and consequences of that saturate is presented in the works of 9 discerning artists at the Slide Room gallery, through the Pedestrian ColourPedestrian Colour framework, each artist has a personal response to their environment; each uses public resources as materials for their constructs or imagery, availing perspicacity to our present society. Yet as a group gathered to develop the premise for this show, we are privy to a larger, generous view of our impatient culture.
Luna named this show after the Robert Rauschenberg’s term Pedestrian Color, describing interaction, absorption, independence and neutrality, [1] referring to how, on the street, obvious colour and form can articulate and unify, develop patina. Patina, as Luna advances in his curatorial essay, can be the evocation of significance. Throughout a pedestrian life, our seemingly facile encounters become poetic continuity. exhibition. The derivation and relationships to nullity these artists employ to produce work have a multifaceted import because of John Luna’s curatorial vision. Independent of the
On rusted, rolling restaurant shelving, Alex Grewal displays a collection of abandoned signs earnestly requesting aid, beggars’ intractable markers. Confined to these shelves, the signs replace produce: needs not met. Objectified stubbornness resonates from the beggars’ signs, creating a “poetics of intransigency”, Luna clarifies. Grewal’s work assembles the conjecture of tarnished lives, a cultural patina.
Marlene Bouchard presented bottled water, drawn from public sources. Overrun by pedestrian notions of singular consumption, Bouchard comments on the complacence of consumerism. Luna adds, “...working up of character into a culture of personality.”, which colours the outcome of our choices. Bouchard has also shows two coloured collages, one, spewing or devouring commercialized bits, literally and metaphorically to or from an hole of dark and dangerous gluttony, and a landscape where paths are torn bits of telephone directories, cows and doorways are sequestered by barbed wire, clouds are date stamped. All of Bouchard’s work luridly warns.
The Roll Me series by Rob McTavish are tiny cubes that denote yielding, the chance to determine and protract interactivity. “[The cubes] can be for anyone. I want them to just kick them down the street you know?”, McTavish’s says. Luna reminds us of Leo Steinberg’s 
[1] We imagine street commotion resulting from the intermittent lightness of contact with cubes and pedestrians, creating a glaze of movement. Additionally, posted on the exit door are 6 black and white prints of McTavish poems, slightly concealed by the door brace. They are street posters, of slightly variable text, like architectural hording wallpaper shouting about agonizing violence: Close Eyes and you will see that colour. comment , “...the fruit of an artist’s work need not be an object. It could be an action...” 
Laird Hamilton lightens the risk inherent in 6/49 by exhibiting 2 lottery tickets with the same numbers, one drawn by chance, the other obtained with the same numbers by request. This work explicitly demonstrates corrosive societal longing. Fresh white gambling receipts, tickets representing the promise of value illustrate a patina of acerbic consequence. Luna tells us, “Swapping white for money is an old notion...”. He reminds us of Yves Klein selling bare white gallery space for gold leaf certificates that Klein later discarded in the River Seine. Gaming in any form is the promise of reward, the artless draw to experience the flush of a common dream. Hamilton succeeds to colour our feelings.
We are the pedestrian voyeurs, looking into hidden spaces with Sean Alward’s pair of photos. Alward gives up peep holes, round mats, to see a long undisturbed space discovered during a renovation - ‘pseudo archaeology’, Alward describes. In the first photo, there is a disturbing confinement, an inaccessible aperture to the daunting unknown, the brick surround of a darks squared opening, accompanied by a scrap of colour-stained cloth that brings propinquity to the imagery . Secondly, we see the open floorboards, a gaping conceptual structure that we may inspect after a studio fire’s consumption that Alward has personalized with an encircling of white gauche spray. Unlike the view we may have passing a construction site, the intimacy of theses peeks reflect, as Luna eloquently says, “hidden pockets of willful ignorance and delayed gratification like fossilized matter awaiting exposure and combustion.”
A sculptural work, Prom Night, is June Higgins’ contribution to Pedestrian Colour. A jaunty light fixture fills with remnants of getting ready for a prom, a balsa emulation of light sprays in open weave rays decorated with balloon lips. The light is perched on dominoes, presented on a flouncy platform. Higgins has provided a miniaturized explosion of festival, parading rosy memories of a customary rite of passage. Here, Pedestrian Colour interprets commonplace influences, a patina of vivid lives.
A mesh of videotaped exteriors played in an alcove present walking scenarios of visual oddments, takes us on a sojourn of dazed existence. Michael Jess’s videos are titles ornen, reypeha, irithjiens, lstyn, made-up words that accompany distortion, intoxication of Eric Satie and John Cage, asking: “alter, not the means 
of connection, but the things being connected.” Jess’s second work displays 3 found exterior photos are garnished with cages of hand drawn geometry, and tinted to manipulate our vision. Through Jess, we visualize a hovering of imagined, imposing structure, superimposed on the pedestrian landscape, allowing us to see future probability.
Wendy Welch’s Reading the Heart is a compressed wall work. Stitched newspapers construct a cross-section of red-saturated valves, or empty cells, holes cut and overlapped, multilayered inferences about of what is red, read and unread. Reducing communication or the heart of what matters expounds a everyday need, a regret, a hope for reconstructive treatment - the patina of a weathering soul.
Paul La Farge contributes an essay to this show. [2] Luna obtained permission from Cabinet to include this writing as a thought-provoking component of Pedestrian Colour. Luna discusses Rauschenberg‘s ‘black-paintings’; they are physical responses, not metaphors. In this work, black is a means of revelation about ourselves. La Farge says, “Because we are capable of inaction, we know that we have the ability to act, and also the choice of whether to act or not.” Blackness as a colour or non-colour is a physical and metaphysical presence, and absence. Just as pedestrians, we interact or ignore. La Farge considers liminal space, where the threshold for human functioning or psychological response exists. As he explains, the blackness, the space of imagination is freedom. This is a daily preoccupation within our private and public reality.
Easily missed, but decisively integral to the Pedestrian Colour premise is Jonathan Dowdall’s construction that leans against a disposal bin at the entrance to the Slide Room Gallery. There is lustre in this assemblage, a bright construct, a beacon that makes us look as we pass as pedestrians, giving colour to our day.
[1] Random Order: Robert Rauschenberg and the neo-avant-garde. “An October Book”. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 2003. Joseph, Branden Wayne,
[1] Leo Steinberg, Encounters with Rauschenberg, (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2000), p. 22
[2] http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/36/lafarge.php
Victoria, BC
May 7 - 28, 2010
Curator: John Luna
Artists: Sean Alward, Marlene Bouchard, Jonathan Dowdall, Alexander Grewal, June Higgins, Michael Jess, Paul La Farge, Nathan Paine, and Wendy Welch.
Fleeting information, transient objects we manipulate, exchange or briefly acquire and discard, short-lived experiences that permeate our lives needs context to describe, to understand. An opportunity to reflect on the barrage of material layering and consequences of that saturate is presented in the works of 9 discerning artists at the Slide Room gallery, through the Pedestrian ColourPedestrian Colour framework, each artist has a personal response to their environment; each uses public resources as materials for their constructs or imagery, availing perspicacity to our present society. Yet as a group gathered to develop the premise for this show, we are privy to a larger, generous view of our impatient culture.
Luna named this show after the Robert Rauschenberg’s term Pedestrian Color, describing interaction, absorption, independence and neutrality, [1] referring to how, on the street, obvious colour and form can articulate and unify, develop patina. Patina, as Luna advances in his curatorial essay, can be the evocation of significance. Throughout a pedestrian life, our seemingly facile encounters become poetic continuity. exhibition. The derivation and relationships to nullity these artists employ to produce work have a multifaceted import because of John Luna’s curatorial vision. Independent of the
On rusted, rolling restaurant shelving, Alex Grewal displays a collection of abandoned signs earnestly requesting aid, beggars’ intractable markers. Confined to these shelves, the signs replace produce: needs not met. Objectified stubbornness resonates from the beggars’ signs, creating a “poetics of intransigency”, Luna clarifies. Grewal’s work assembles the conjecture of tarnished lives, a cultural patina.
Marlene Bouchard presented bottled water, drawn from public sources. Overrun by pedestrian notions of singular consumption, Bouchard comments on the complacence of consumerism. Luna adds, “...working up of character into a culture of personality.”, which colours the outcome of our choices. Bouchard has also shows two coloured collages, one, spewing or devouring commercialized bits, literally and metaphorically to or from an hole of dark and dangerous gluttony, and a landscape where paths are torn bits of telephone directories, cows and doorways are sequestered by barbed wire, clouds are date stamped. All of Bouchard’s work luridly warns. 
The Roll Me series by Rob McTavish are tiny cubes that denote yielding, the chance to determine and protract interactivity. “[The cubes] can be for anyone. I want them to just kick them down the street you know?”, McTavish’s says. Luna reminds us of Leo Steinberg’s 
[1] We imagine street commotion resulting from the intermittent lightness of contact with cubes and pedestrians, creating a glaze of movement. Additionally, posted on the exit door are 6 black and white prints of McTavish poems, slightly concealed by the door brace. They are street posters, of slightly variable text, like architectural hording wallpaper shouting about agonizing violence: Close Eyes and you will see that colour. comment , “...the fruit of an artist’s work need not be an object. It could be an action...” 
Laird Hamilton lightens the risk inherent in 6/49 by exhibiting 2 lottery tickets with the same numbers, one drawn by chance, the other obtained with the same numbers by request. This work explicitly demonstrates corrosive societal longing. Fresh white gambling receipts, tickets representing the promise of value illustrate a patina of acerbic consequence. Luna tells us, “Swapping white for money is an old notion...”. He reminds us of Yves Klein selling bare white gallery space for gold leaf certificates that Klein later discarded in the River Seine. Gaming in any form is the promise of reward, the artless draw to experience the flush of a common dream. Hamilton succeeds to colour our feelings. 
We are the pedestrian voyeurs, looking into hidden spaces with Sean Alward’s pair of photos. Alward gives up peep holes, round mats, to see a long undisturbed space discovered during a renovation - ‘pseudo archaeology’, Alward describes. In the first photo, there is a disturbing confinement, an inaccessible aperture to the daunting unknown, the brick surround of a darks squared opening, accompanied by a scrap of colour-stained cloth that brings propinquity to the imagery . Secondly, we see the open floorboards, a gaping conceptual structure that we may inspect after a studio fire’s consumption that Alward has personalized with an encircling of white gauche spray. Unlike the view we may have passing a construction site, the intimacy of theses peeks reflect, as Luna eloquently says, “hidden pockets of willful ignorance and delayed gratification like fossilized matter awaiting exposure and combustion.”
A sculptural work, Prom Night, is June Higgins’ contribution to Pedestrian Colour. A jaunty light fixture fills with remnants of getting ready for a prom, a balsa emulation of light sprays in open weave rays decorated with balloon lips. The light is perched on dominoes, presented on a flouncy platform. Higgins has provided a miniaturized explosion of festival, parading rosy memories of a customary rite of passage. Here, Pedestrian Colour interprets commonplace influences, a patina of vivid lives.
A mesh of videotaped exteriors played in an alcove present walking scenarios of visual oddments, takes us on a sojourn of dazed existence. Michael Jess’s videos are titles ornen, reypeha, irithjiens, lstyn, made-up words that accompany distortion, intoxication of Eric Satie and John Cage, asking: “alter, not the means 
of connection, but the things being connected.” Jess’s second work displays 3 found exterior photos are garnished with cages of hand drawn geometry, and tinted to manipulate our vision. Through Jess, we visualize a hovering of imagined, imposing structure, superimposed on the pedestrian landscape, allowing us to see future probability. 
Wendy Welch’s Reading the Heart is a compressed wall work. Stitched newspapers construct a cross-section of red-saturated valves, or empty cells, holes cut and overlapped, multilayered inferences about of what is red, read and unread. Reducing communication or the heart of what matters expounds a everyday need, a regret, a hope for reconstructive treatment - the patina of a weathering soul. 
Paul La Farge contributes an essay to this show. [2] Luna obtained permission from Cabinet to include this writing as a thought-provoking component of Pedestrian Colour. Luna discusses Rauschenberg‘s ‘black-paintings’; they are physical responses, not metaphors. In this work, black is a means of revelation about ourselves. La Farge says, “Because we are capable of inaction, we know that we have the ability to act, and also the choice of whether to act or not.” Blackness as a colour or non-colour is a physical and metaphysical presence, and absence. Just as pedestrians, we interact or ignore. La Farge considers liminal space, where the threshold for human functioning or psychological response exists. As he explains, the blackness, the space of imagination is freedom. This is a daily preoccupation within our private and public reality.
Easily missed, but decisively integral to the Pedestrian Colour premise is Jonathan Dowdall’s construction that leans against a disposal bin at the entrance to the Slide Room Gallery. There is lustre in this assemblage, a bright construct, a beacon that makes us look as we pass as pedestrians, giving colour to our day. [1] Random Order: Robert Rauschenberg and the neo-avant-garde. “An October Book”. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 2003. Joseph, Branden Wayne,
[1] Leo Steinberg, Encounters with Rauschenberg, (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2000), p. 22
[2] http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/36/lafarge.php
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Jason Grondin – The Infinitely Dense Atom Experiment by Debora Alanna
7 May – 20 May 2010 -Collective Works Gallery -Victoria BC
In Leonardo, MITs art and technology publication, Ellen K. Levy reviewed last October’s 43rd International Association of Art Critics (AICA) Congress - The Relations between Art and Science: Complicity, Criticality, Knowledge. Levy references Susan Sulic’s discussion about how Lucio Fontana’s (1899 – 1968) early work initiated the artistic examination of (outer) space.[1] Space and time, science theory and investigations are permanently in artists’ domain. Jason Grondin contributes to this continuing dialogue.
Grondin’s experiential paintings are a visceral synthesis of hypothetical concepts. Visually expansive, the work exemplifies interconnectivity. After considering scientific theory, such as the “Big Bang”, (a hypothesis proposed by Georges Lemaître and phrase coined and idea refuted by Sir Fredrick Hoyle, both astronomers) he gesturally processes this inception of the universe with lively, curvaceous lines and abstracted connotations of particles. Grondin reaches beyond scientific assessments of formation from infinitely dense atoms. We see a belief in beauty, ordered chaos and an enchanting orchestration of wonder.
Initially inspired by Kandinsky, we can see Grondin’s homage to that explosive, spacial appreciation and discovery. However, there is a buoyant responsiveness in this work. Grondin’s palate is mostly soft and transient, and shapes articulate with few hard edges. We can see Klee-like bounce of calligraphic capture and Miro inspired exuberance that this artist translates to his own graphic dance. Using these techniques to forge the excitement of generation, Grondin deflects his thoughts to the outcomes of scientific abuse in Atomic Child. The raw wood panels of two works acknowledge our earth underneath the hovering reminder of atomic beginnings and future apocalyptic possibilities of our future. The dark washes of Reconstruction of Chaos and Through the Ashes deflect the viewer towards the inevitable murkiness between beginnings and definition. Grondin’s demonstrative enthusiasm for cosmic expansion resonates in Spontaneous Generation, and pairing the similar work, Rise and Fall instructs us that he is aware of the dichotomy of substance, how wave and particle matter, or any significance behaves differently under varied conditions. The painterly impasto backgrounds of four images signify jaunty heavens speedily layering under continued genesis. Grondin’s work postulates that the inception of the infinite universe is contingent on a feisty inaugural release within enigmatic space. We are witness to the integrity of this embracing assurance. Video
[1] http://www.leonardo.info/reviews/dec2009/xliiirdaica.levy.php
video
In Leonardo, MITs art and technology publication, Ellen K. Levy reviewed last October’s 43rd International Association of Art Critics (AICA) Congress - The Relations between Art and Science: Complicity, Criticality, Knowledge. Levy references Susan Sulic’s discussion about how Lucio Fontana’s (1899 – 1968) early work initiated the artistic examination of (outer) space.[1] Space and time, science theory and investigations are permanently in artists’ domain. Jason Grondin contributes to this continuing dialogue.
Grondin’s experiential paintings are a visceral synthesis of hypothetical concepts. Visually expansive, the work exemplifies interconnectivity. After considering scientific theory, such as the “Big Bang”, (a hypothesis proposed by Georges Lemaître and phrase coined and idea refuted by Sir Fredrick Hoyle, both astronomers) he gesturally processes this inception of the universe with lively, curvaceous lines and abstracted connotations of particles. Grondin reaches beyond scientific assessments of formation from infinitely dense atoms. We see a belief in beauty, ordered chaos and an enchanting orchestration of wonder.
Initially inspired by Kandinsky, we can see Grondin’s homage to that explosive, spacial appreciation and discovery. However, there is a buoyant responsiveness in this work. Grondin’s palate is mostly soft and transient, and shapes articulate with few hard edges. We can see Klee-like bounce of calligraphic capture and Miro inspired exuberance that this artist translates to his own graphic dance. Using these techniques to forge the excitement of generation, Grondin deflects his thoughts to the outcomes of scientific abuse in Atomic Child. The raw wood panels of two works acknowledge our earth underneath the hovering reminder of atomic beginnings and future apocalyptic possibilities of our future. The dark washes of Reconstruction of Chaos and Through the Ashes deflect the viewer towards the inevitable murkiness between beginnings and definition. Grondin’s demonstrative enthusiasm for cosmic expansion resonates in Spontaneous Generation, and pairing the similar work, Rise and Fall instructs us that he is aware of the dichotomy of substance, how wave and particle matter, or any significance behaves differently under varied conditions. The painterly impasto backgrounds of four images signify jaunty heavens speedily layering under continued genesis. Grondin’s work postulates that the inception of the infinite universe is contingent on a feisty inaugural release within enigmatic space. We are witness to the integrity of this embracing assurance. Video
[1] http://www.leonardo.info/reviews/dec2009/xliiirdaica.levy.php
video
Sunday, May 9, 2010
James Gordaneer: "A Life in Painting" -by Debora Alanna
Art Gallery of Greater Victoria
9 April - 6 June 2010
Jim Gordaneer teaches us bravery. His innate ability to dwell on his passion conspicuously drives and inspires his continued investigations. Mettlesome, Gordaneer distinctively scrutinizes plenty of genres over the decades of his production and produces unique paintings throughout the barrage of influences. Samples of his paintings on show at the AGGV are glimpses into a lifetime of accomplished dialogue embodied in canvas and board. Serious introspection presents through experimental abstraction jostling figurative reflection and using colour palates pertinent to various decades of approach. Prosaic subjects of comedic banality endear us to this work.
We are privy to Gordaneer’s droll commentary and understated constructs that unpretentiously probe flattening Modernism through his ’60 and ‘70s paintings. Puzzles of painterly parts stabilize delineated surfaces. He recalls the emotional conspiracy of Bacon’s smears and the Synthetic Cubist abandon of Gorky, indicating homage while gathering a personal, diverting vocabulary of style.
Gordaneer grumpily imposes a transfer of colour field doctrine with greyed palates and dismayed regard in the structured figures of Hortense (1985) and Rufus (1986). Waitress ll (1984) and Circus Series: Black Wire (1985) are shifts in his consternation, with cerulean optimism outweighing staidly chairs and playful deranging of pink and orange figures that revive Gordaneer’s recurring circus theme, enlivening his love of figuration. Gordaneer incarcerates this Post- Painterly Abstraction discipline through Beacon Hill Series: Band Stand (1987).
Paintings based on undulating philosophical conversations with Raymond Lorens, domineer Licence, The Harpist and Bass Player and Violinist (1993). Gordaneer’s topological figures twist and stretch, harmonizing coloured stripes or synchronize waves of geometry. Here, there is a revival of pure colour and brash figuration that earnestly discards the presumptive wake of art history’s duress. The drama of this work stages a mind-shift for Gordaneer.
Subsequent paintings rearrange his painted vocabulary, embracing neoexpressionist sensibilities, liberating the figures from outlines in favour of multi-layered constructs. Gordaneer’s results are confident and mischievous. He teases and invigorates the images of Sailor and The Umpire (2005), charging the delivery with belief.
The 2009 paintings have changed perspective. Looking down on an assemblage of body parts and excited elements of abstracted forms, Gordaneer punctuates the work with thriving, sophisticated idea proclamation. Gordaneer dares to confront a life of learning and transports his understanding to synergized observations, with sketches and ultimately master works. Rising above past ideology, he raises his investigative intensity and allows his imagination to ascend.
9 April - 6 June 2010
Jim Gordaneer teaches us bravery. His innate ability to dwell on his passion conspicuously drives and inspires his continued investigations. Mettlesome, Gordaneer distinctively scrutinizes plenty of genres over the decades of his production and produces unique paintings throughout the barrage of influences. Samples of his paintings on show at the AGGV are glimpses into a lifetime of accomplished dialogue embodied in canvas and board. Serious introspection presents through experimental abstraction jostling figurative reflection and using colour palates pertinent to various decades of approach. Prosaic subjects of comedic banality endear us to this work.
We are privy to Gordaneer’s droll commentary and understated constructs that unpretentiously probe flattening Modernism through his ’60 and ‘70s paintings. Puzzles of painterly parts stabilize delineated surfaces. He recalls the emotional conspiracy of Bacon’s smears and the Synthetic Cubist abandon of Gorky, indicating homage while gathering a personal, diverting vocabulary of style.
Gordaneer grumpily imposes a transfer of colour field doctrine with greyed palates and dismayed regard in the structured figures of Hortense (1985) and Rufus (1986). Waitress ll (1984) and Circus Series: Black Wire (1985) are shifts in his consternation, with cerulean optimism outweighing staidly chairs and playful deranging of pink and orange figures that revive Gordaneer’s recurring circus theme, enlivening his love of figuration. Gordaneer incarcerates this Post- Painterly Abstraction discipline through Beacon Hill Series: Band Stand (1987).
Paintings based on undulating philosophical conversations with Raymond Lorens, domineer Licence, The Harpist and Bass Player and Violinist (1993). Gordaneer’s topological figures twist and stretch, harmonizing coloured stripes or synchronize waves of geometry. Here, there is a revival of pure colour and brash figuration that earnestly discards the presumptive wake of art history’s duress. The drama of this work stages a mind-shift for Gordaneer.
Subsequent paintings rearrange his painted vocabulary, embracing neoexpressionist sensibilities, liberating the figures from outlines in favour of multi-layered constructs. Gordaneer’s results are confident and mischievous. He teases and invigorates the images of Sailor and The Umpire (2005), charging the delivery with belief.
The 2009 paintings have changed perspective. Looking down on an assemblage of body parts and excited elements of abstracted forms, Gordaneer punctuates the work with thriving, sophisticated idea proclamation. Gordaneer dares to confront a life of learning and transports his understanding to synergized observations, with sketches and ultimately master works. Rising above past ideology, he raises his investigative intensity and allows his imagination to ascend.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Ira Hoffecker by Debora Alanna
Urban Settings
Dales Gallery
8 April – 4 May 2010
Ira Hoffecker structures perception. She describes the correspondence between architectural reference and historical elements with expansive plotting, Commuting angular shapes to ideas, Hoffecker incorporates the filtration of deep reflection into her canvases. She bolsters her visions with complex stimulation, considering artists like Nicolas de Stael, Robert Motherwell, Hans Hofmann and Robert Rauschenberg. Her unique discernment references that abstractionist vocabulary, while instilling a fresh spaciousness into her work.
Imprints of metal forms encourage an industrial orientation within the canvas plane that builds the agenda for the work. Features, such as text swatches and print transfers delineate the topography of her paintings like fleeting, cherished memories. Drips punctuate with calculated incursion. The visual acuity of some work is cultivated by raising canvas levels, incorporating metal remnants on or under the surface and scraping or sanding paint away to reveal pigment levels, sharing a significant depth of past proceedings.
Hoffecker’s canvases are sometimes raw and stained with squared apertures, hues inviting introspection. They comfortably interrelate cooperatively, with gestural line drawings that dance amongst the calculated balance. Some surfaces are impressed with resin, high gloss lustre that holds the saturated colour strokes, reflecting back to the viewer. She mirrors recollections that exude tenacity. Here, the integrated compositions of abstracted form and materials of cosmopolitan life are a presence that shines fearlessly.
Through Urban Settings, we witness Hoffecker’s visualization of urban life that compels us to relinquish literal identification of city existence for a sincere, intangible understanding of the metropolitan experience. Incorporating snippets and traces of artifices of the world we inhabit, enigmatic layered allusions to history superimpose drenched colour to ascertain a provocative discourse about urbanity. Hoffecker acknowledges the experience can be stark as the unbleached linen she employs or as mesmerizing as the resin glow. She gives us a privileged insight into her lucid analysis. Ira Hoffecker takes us on an unfolding journey.
Dales Gallery
8 April – 4 May 2010
Ira Hoffecker structures perception. She describes the correspondence between architectural reference and historical elements with expansive plotting, Commuting angular shapes to ideas, Hoffecker incorporates the filtration of deep reflection into her canvases. She bolsters her visions with complex stimulation, considering artists like Nicolas de Stael, Robert Motherwell, Hans Hofmann and Robert Rauschenberg. Her unique discernment references that abstractionist vocabulary, while instilling a fresh spaciousness into her work.
Imprints of metal forms encourage an industrial orientation within the canvas plane that builds the agenda for the work. Features, such as text swatches and print transfers delineate the topography of her paintings like fleeting, cherished memories. Drips punctuate with calculated incursion. The visual acuity of some work is cultivated by raising canvas levels, incorporating metal remnants on or under the surface and scraping or sanding paint away to reveal pigment levels, sharing a significant depth of past proceedings.
Hoffecker’s canvases are sometimes raw and stained with squared apertures, hues inviting introspection. They comfortably interrelate cooperatively, with gestural line drawings that dance amongst the calculated balance. Some surfaces are impressed with resin, high gloss lustre that holds the saturated colour strokes, reflecting back to the viewer. She mirrors recollections that exude tenacity. Here, the integrated compositions of abstracted form and materials of cosmopolitan life are a presence that shines fearlessly.
Through Urban Settings, we witness Hoffecker’s visualization of urban life that compels us to relinquish literal identification of city existence for a sincere, intangible understanding of the metropolitan experience. Incorporating snippets and traces of artifices of the world we inhabit, enigmatic layered allusions to history superimpose drenched colour to ascertain a provocative discourse about urbanity. Hoffecker acknowledges the experience can be stark as the unbleached linen she employs or as mesmerizing as the resin glow. She gives us a privileged insight into her lucid analysis. Ira Hoffecker takes us on an unfolding journey.
Friday, April 23, 2010
Yuri Arajs and Christian Nicolay by Debora Alanna
Point of Reference
View Art Gallery
104-860 View Street
Victoria, BC V8W 3Z8
9 April – 8 May 2010
Whether we are transported to where “every known superstition in the world is gathered into the horseshoe of the Carpathians as if it were the centre of some sort of imaginative whirlpool...” [i] [Faith in Mythology- Nicolay ‘lay down’ and installation], or to the withstanding of whirlwind cycles, luckily miniaturized and accounted for within [Two Hundred and Seventy Tornados - Arajs], we are presented with a “Point of Reference”. At the View Gallery, Yuri Arajs and Christian Nicolay concurrently show individual viewpoints, implicitly referring to a personalized vocabulary of material, comportment and meaning. Deferential to found objects or materials, each artist yields to reclaimed matter, imbedding or challenging inference and allowing a departure of imagination to develop further. “Point of Reference” provides a summit to consider probing exploration and stimulate discovery.
Arajs deftly metamorphoses rusted metal and knotted wood into weathered vistas that direct us to reflect on artful landscaping. Surfaces smartly marked with scores, lithely applied paint, spots of pigment and layers of tempered stratum juxtapose with sheets of abrasion to recalibrate a presupposition that may occur with horizontal demarcation. Attrition through weathering becomes rue, an affecting territory. Encircling within atmospheres, cell-like features intensify horizons with insistent clarity. Cheerful dots speak, sometimes as monologue expositions [Untitled (Silver Moon) and Untitled (Island Landscape)], or vexing duet [Untitled (Point of Impact)], often gathering in chorusing clusters to adorn, enunciate the pictures’ voice as charming triggers [Untitled (red landscape)] and [Floral (#11), (#6), (#21) / Kirsu Koks1 & 2 (Cherry Tree 1 & 2)]. Alluring and mesmerizing, they conjure remote celestial bodies or plot floral accents that toy seriously. [Untitled (Kelowna)] references trenchant flurry, grounding and segregating the horizon of fire with gritty underpinning. Arajs consistently transforms unpretentious material through vociferous amalgamation, creating contemplative expanse.
Nicolay works with diachronic referencing, developing a visual linguistic through found, then engaged objects and imagery. Each work confidently reveals stories that encapsulate stages of idea deliberation and augmentation. He uses a medley of means to record his empirical processing, often building the descriptors over several years. Nicolay bluntly documents validation and justification within relationships, [I like cats, she’s the dog] and [Faith in Love], queries and thwarts trust and reliance [Faith in Money]. He questions the source of edification and acknowledges confused communication with ineffectual chalkboard erasers, their erasing function supplanted with chalk stalks and Chia growth / demise [Tower of Babel]. These works are conniving recounts of Nicolay’s quests, which wily commentate with commitment and spry enthusiasm.
[i] Stoker, Bram. “Dracula.” 1897. Free Public Domain E-Books from the Classic Literature Library
Video
View Art Gallery
104-860 View Street
Victoria, BC V8W 3Z8
9 April – 8 May 2010
Whether we are transported to where “every known superstition in the world is gathered into the horseshoe of the Carpathians as if it were the centre of some sort of imaginative whirlpool...” [i] [Faith in Mythology- Nicolay ‘lay down’ and installation], or to the withstanding of whirlwind cycles, luckily miniaturized and accounted for within [Two Hundred and Seventy Tornados - Arajs], we are presented with a “Point of Reference”. At the View Gallery, Yuri Arajs and Christian Nicolay concurrently show individual viewpoints, implicitly referring to a personalized vocabulary of material, comportment and meaning. Deferential to found objects or materials, each artist yields to reclaimed matter, imbedding or challenging inference and allowing a departure of imagination to develop further. “Point of Reference” provides a summit to consider probing exploration and stimulate discovery.
Arajs deftly metamorphoses rusted metal and knotted wood into weathered vistas that direct us to reflect on artful landscaping. Surfaces smartly marked with scores, lithely applied paint, spots of pigment and layers of tempered stratum juxtapose with sheets of abrasion to recalibrate a presupposition that may occur with horizontal demarcation. Attrition through weathering becomes rue, an affecting territory. Encircling within atmospheres, cell-like features intensify horizons with insistent clarity. Cheerful dots speak, sometimes as monologue expositions [Untitled (Silver Moon) and Untitled (Island Landscape)], or vexing duet [Untitled (Point of Impact)], often gathering in chorusing clusters to adorn, enunciate the pictures’ voice as charming triggers [Untitled (red landscape)] and [Floral (#11), (#6), (#21) / Kirsu Koks1 & 2 (Cherry Tree 1 & 2)]. Alluring and mesmerizing, they conjure remote celestial bodies or plot floral accents that toy seriously. [Untitled (Kelowna)] references trenchant flurry, grounding and segregating the horizon of fire with gritty underpinning. Arajs consistently transforms unpretentious material through vociferous amalgamation, creating contemplative expanse.
Nicolay works with diachronic referencing, developing a visual linguistic through found, then engaged objects and imagery. Each work confidently reveals stories that encapsulate stages of idea deliberation and augmentation. He uses a medley of means to record his empirical processing, often building the descriptors over several years. Nicolay bluntly documents validation and justification within relationships, [I like cats, she’s the dog] and [Faith in Love], queries and thwarts trust and reliance [Faith in Money]. He questions the source of edification and acknowledges confused communication with ineffectual chalkboard erasers, their erasing function supplanted with chalk stalks and Chia growth / demise [Tower of Babel]. These works are conniving recounts of Nicolay’s quests, which wily commentate with commitment and spry enthusiasm.
[i] Stoker, Bram. “Dracula.” 1897. Free Public Domain E-Books from the Classic Literature Library
Video
Friday, April 16, 2010
Jan Johnson by Debora Alanna
Jan Johnson’s sculpture is climatic. Eight of Johnson’s works contribute to the Urban Settings show at the Dales Gallery. His distinctive welded steel and ‘found objects’ , discarded metal remnants, merge and culminate in constructions that surpass the authenticity of the raw and cast-off matter found in urban locals. Although Johnson’s materials refer to the urban build, he dwells on the exacting experiences that are a consequence of urbanity. Shrewdly, Johnson’s pieces disclose perspicacity. Each an individual world, the works reveal meanings of extensive ideas that result from experiencing an urban life. These sculptures bristle, maximizing the methodical bonding of metal, realizing tantalizing allegory.
With God of Unforeseen Consequences, Johnson may allude to a god like Chacmool, Tenochtitlan – Aztec; however, his work shunts this resemblance with the tree extension from the god’s groin. This work celebrates the outbreak of capacity possible when we acknowledge the mysterious corollary of inspiration.
Garden of Delights involves Hieronymus Bosch’s influence. Johnson’s version minutely renders the delight of cavorting around two exposed, twisting pinnacles and the angst of the never-ending party. The dry vessel that holds this extravaganza remarks on the enchantment of revelry. Too much delight parches our sensibilities. What can purify and cultivate growth of positive spirit, in excess, can desiccate and diminish beauty.
Time Saving Truth From Falsehood is a sculptural parable. The story balances on a corroded disc indicative of a faceless clock, where Time shoulders Truth, impaling Falsehood. Time’s piercing spear forms a style on the plate, where integrity prevailing over perversion perpetually triumphs.
Framing the Birth of Adam in a deteriorated flat screen TV, we become privy to the entrapment of a legendary numinous event. Bedraggled hangings enmesh lounging Adam and the pointing finger that brought him to life. Johnson makes us voyeurs to this dilapidated launch. This version of Adam’s birth is a commentary on our need to see an event on TV to believe its veracity, and the decay of belief in a mystical spectacle.
Market Goddess rules over the minions scrambling up a mechanism of archaic commerce, the oxidized innards of a metal cash register. Sycophants cluster in the backside, as well. Johnson’s edifice shows how ruthless business belittles those that worship money.
Johnson is at ease constructing universal concepts, capturing the core of metaphor, symbol and more. Sinews of metallic components, elaborately wrought, produce sumptuous contributions to our understanding of disproportionate regulation (Policy Machine), susceptibility to opportunism (Arc) and the isolating disclosure of influence (Trinity). Johnson’s sculptures are encapsulated chronicles intricately told.
© Debora Alanna
Urban Settings : Jan Johnson sculpture with abstract paintings by Ira Hoffecker
Dales Gallery -537 Fisgard St, Victoria BC
8 April – 4 May 2010 Video
With God of Unforeseen Consequences, Johnson may allude to a god like Chacmool, Tenochtitlan – Aztec; however, his work shunts this resemblance with the tree extension from the god’s groin. This work celebrates the outbreak of capacity possible when we acknowledge the mysterious corollary of inspiration.
Garden of Delights involves Hieronymus Bosch’s influence. Johnson’s version minutely renders the delight of cavorting around two exposed, twisting pinnacles and the angst of the never-ending party. The dry vessel that holds this extravaganza remarks on the enchantment of revelry. Too much delight parches our sensibilities. What can purify and cultivate growth of positive spirit, in excess, can desiccate and diminish beauty.
Time Saving Truth From Falsehood is a sculptural parable. The story balances on a corroded disc indicative of a faceless clock, where Time shoulders Truth, impaling Falsehood. Time’s piercing spear forms a style on the plate, where integrity prevailing over perversion perpetually triumphs.
Framing the Birth of Adam in a deteriorated flat screen TV, we become privy to the entrapment of a legendary numinous event. Bedraggled hangings enmesh lounging Adam and the pointing finger that brought him to life. Johnson makes us voyeurs to this dilapidated launch. This version of Adam’s birth is a commentary on our need to see an event on TV to believe its veracity, and the decay of belief in a mystical spectacle.
Market Goddess rules over the minions scrambling up a mechanism of archaic commerce, the oxidized innards of a metal cash register. Sycophants cluster in the backside, as well. Johnson’s edifice shows how ruthless business belittles those that worship money.
Johnson is at ease constructing universal concepts, capturing the core of metaphor, symbol and more. Sinews of metallic components, elaborately wrought, produce sumptuous contributions to our understanding of disproportionate regulation (Policy Machine), susceptibility to opportunism (Arc) and the isolating disclosure of influence (Trinity). Johnson’s sculptures are encapsulated chronicles intricately told.
© Debora Alanna
Urban Settings : Jan Johnson sculpture with abstract paintings by Ira Hoffecker
Dales Gallery -537 Fisgard St, Victoria BC
8 April – 4 May 2010 Video
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Augustus Magus for exhibit-v!
We are pleased to announce that Augustus Magus will be other of our contributors to the new section WRITE-UPS !
Augustus Magus
* BFA (Visual Arts, Honours), University of Victoria, Victoria, BC.
* Film and Video, Emily Carr University of Art + Design, Vancouver, BC.
Augustus Magus
* BFA (Visual Arts, Honours), University of Victoria, Victoria, BC.
* Film and Video, Emily Carr University of Art + Design, Vancouver, BC.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Grant Watson –Sculptfiction- by Debora Alanna
Grant Watson’s show, Sculptfiction displays a broad oeuvre of 17 sculptures. The range of his deft vigour is evident in Calle Muro and his ability to demonstrate edifying, confident humour is unmistakable in Before I Lay Me Down To Sleep. His work narrates, describing insight through sculptural investigations. Watson’s inventive material use and most importantly, a considerate deliberation of various human experiences delivers jostling perspectives through witty visual banter, seductive colouration, calculated texture and wistful sculptural practice.
Lectern is a podium for raising our understanding of intense, primal activity. Like a yoni-lignum, Watson embodies the sexuality of human interaction through the structural integrity of emblematic forms. A multifaceted, undulating and corrugated shape clutches an extruded sphere on one side of a waveform. An unyielding phallic fringe, secured by a carved petal relief pokes out at the edges of the void hemispheric cavity on the other half of this interpretive duality. This taunt encourages visceral contact, enticingly and pawing simultaneously. The edging constructs a protective picket. Inside the opposite embracing waveform, similar picketing surrounds the extruded sphere within the encirclement. Watson expounds the opposing contrasts of yes and no, of open and closed, where our perpetual symbiotic dichotomy is in constant flux.
Watson’s Private Idaho measures forfeiture. He describes precarious development, which induces displacement of domesticity. Perched on top of a yellowed ovoid is a vacant white house icon. Watson dares to acknowledge the valued presence of sloppy oozing, ideas that collect brightly and separately, in spite of attentive maintenance to balance - the forfeit. This undefined green substance is the genesis of new opportunity cradled in the unique measuring mechanism that supports the tilting elliptical symbol of contrived optimism.
How Owed Are You cunningly refers to the tiny music box that turns the tune ‘Happy Birthday’ found in the centre of this brash wall work. Redness shouts robustly; however, tool marks, subtle below the red-stained surface gently caress the studded plane, placating the need to remember antecedents to this presentation of assertiveness.
Figurative works include the wall sculpture, I Dream in Red. A boy’s vulnerability is perched on a pyramid of steps. The red arched background shrouds his dream state, which truncates his mind from his body. Ballooning ideas hover above. Here, Watson’s whimsy balances the significance of this narrative. The dreamer cannot see the strength that supports him, the walled structure below, concealed by delineated steps. A wall of bricks under the dreamer is firm yet sometimes protrudes. This construction reveals potency and strength that supports innocence, which is impressionable. Watson’s construct of the future shows narrates how we are dependent on the consequence of the dream. All dreams. Grant Watson’s work is the result of disciplined dreaming.
Grant Watson Website
video
Lectern is a podium for raising our understanding of intense, primal activity. Like a yoni-lignum, Watson embodies the sexuality of human interaction through the structural integrity of emblematic forms. A multifaceted, undulating and corrugated shape clutches an extruded sphere on one side of a waveform. An unyielding phallic fringe, secured by a carved petal relief pokes out at the edges of the void hemispheric cavity on the other half of this interpretive duality. This taunt encourages visceral contact, enticingly and pawing simultaneously. The edging constructs a protective picket. Inside the opposite embracing waveform, similar picketing surrounds the extruded sphere within the encirclement. Watson expounds the opposing contrasts of yes and no, of open and closed, where our perpetual symbiotic dichotomy is in constant flux.
Watson’s Private Idaho measures forfeiture. He describes precarious development, which induces displacement of domesticity. Perched on top of a yellowed ovoid is a vacant white house icon. Watson dares to acknowledge the valued presence of sloppy oozing, ideas that collect brightly and separately, in spite of attentive maintenance to balance - the forfeit. This undefined green substance is the genesis of new opportunity cradled in the unique measuring mechanism that supports the tilting elliptical symbol of contrived optimism.
How Owed Are You cunningly refers to the tiny music box that turns the tune ‘Happy Birthday’ found in the centre of this brash wall work. Redness shouts robustly; however, tool marks, subtle below the red-stained surface gently caress the studded plane, placating the need to remember antecedents to this presentation of assertiveness.
Figurative works include the wall sculpture, I Dream in Red. A boy’s vulnerability is perched on a pyramid of steps. The red arched background shrouds his dream state, which truncates his mind from his body. Ballooning ideas hover above. Here, Watson’s whimsy balances the significance of this narrative. The dreamer cannot see the strength that supports him, the walled structure below, concealed by delineated steps. A wall of bricks under the dreamer is firm yet sometimes protrudes. This construction reveals potency and strength that supports innocence, which is impressionable. Watson’s construct of the future shows narrates how we are dependent on the consequence of the dream. All dreams. Grant Watson’s work is the result of disciplined dreaming.
Grant Watson Website
video
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Debora Alanna for exhibit-v!
We are pleased to announce that Debora Alanna will be other of our contributors to the new section WRITE-UPS !
I write about sensibilities projected by work considered. I discuss the essence, what is contingent to the art, what is projected. Art succeeds to transform our understanding. My writing features these observable facts.
In the 90’s the Hong Kong publisher, Ian Brown of Asian Sculpture News, now World Sculpture News included my articles on sculptural practice - individuals and group expositions in his publication. The Times of India, Ahmedabad published my features on culture, relationships connecting architecture and urbanity, and the culmination of curators’ visions in group exhibits. For the last decade, my professional writing, utilized by non-profit organizations, has facilitated consideration of pertinent public issues.
A graduate of Ontario College of Art, my art practice has enabled expositions in Brazil, Kazakhstan, Spain, France, Italy, India and Canada. My new home, Victoria, is creating vitalizing developments in my career. Writing for Exhibit-v is a welcome opportunity to share my observations about art in this on-line context. In my writing, I will discuss art to further the artist’s audience. I consider myself an advocate for artists. Your views about my explications are welcome.
Blog
I write about sensibilities projected by work considered. I discuss the essence, what is contingent to the art, what is projected. Art succeeds to transform our understanding. My writing features these observable facts.
In the 90’s the Hong Kong publisher, Ian Brown of Asian Sculpture News, now World Sculpture News included my articles on sculptural practice - individuals and group expositions in his publication. The Times of India, Ahmedabad published my features on culture, relationships connecting architecture and urbanity, and the culmination of curators’ visions in group exhibits. For the last decade, my professional writing, utilized by non-profit organizations, has facilitated consideration of pertinent public issues.
A graduate of Ontario College of Art, my art practice has enabled expositions in Brazil, Kazakhstan, Spain, France, Italy, India and Canada. My new home, Victoria, is creating vitalizing developments in my career. Writing for Exhibit-v is a welcome opportunity to share my observations about art in this on-line context. In my writing, I will discuss art to further the artist’s audience. I consider myself an advocate for artists. Your views about my explications are welcome.
Blog