Akimblog
Port Credit
The Projects: Port Credit at Blackwood Gallery | Seeing with Eyes Closed at the Art Gallery of Mississauga | Micah Lexier at Oakville Galleries
posted by Terence Dick - July 23rd, 2009.
My earliest (and, in fact, only) memory of Port Credit dates back to the late seventies when my father bought a sailboat parked in the marina there. I remember the family sedan turning off the QEW toward a grim warehouse and parking lot stacked with suspended yachts and cruisers. I also recall a distasteful smell from a nearby factory. Our boat was moved shortly thereafter to a club way out in Scarborough and my time at Mississauga’s waterfront ville came to an end.
Gareth Lichty, Hamper
Imagine my surprise when I headed out to the Blackwood Gallery’s off-site exhibition The Projects: Port Credit and found myself next door to that same old marina. Luckily, no buried traumas rose to the surface to distract me from the art on hand. Instead, as I entered the vacant architectural office that serves as a temporary gallery, I felt the full force of Gareth Lichty’s imposition into the multi-story, open-concept cubicles that must have once been a hive of design for the condos that now surround and out-date this building. Lichty is quickly establishing himself as an unforgettable craftsman of post-industrial hand-hewn minimalism. His rolls of bright orange storm fencing fit perfectly in the space’s maze of low walls, but completely reconfigure your perception of how the building works. Kim Adams and Lauren Nurse also respond to the previous inhabitants by either riffing on architectural models or sculpting the interior itself.
Sandra Rechico, The Alton Cottage Playhouse
The intrusive interventions, the bold strokes, are more effective than the work by artists who go the interactive or relational route, proposing projects like Kerri Reid’s cinder block repair service, entering the public sphere like Diane Borsato’s flyers, or recreating community work like Sandra Rechico’s little puppet show playhouse. The whimsy is appreciated but it feels like the actual art is somewhere else, somewhere in the surrounding neighbourhood. This is part of the Blackwood Director Christof Migone’s curatorial vision and suits the project-oriented process of architectural work, but in terms of gut-impact, the maquettes are always more memorable than the blueprints.
Ina Puchala, Summer & Smoke #2, 2008, oil on wood panel
If The Projects’ conceptualism is too heady for you, the Art Gallery of Mississauga offers an alternative with a group exhibition of uncomplicated abstract painting with regional artists Robin Hollingdrake, Jangmee Park, Ina Puchala, Doreen Renner, and Olga Shiels. In all things abstract, I lean to the extremes: either hardcore Zen freak out arch-minimalism or heavy duty, image overload maximalism. I need either mind numbing (not necessarily a bad thing) blankness or sheer eye-violence. Some of these canvases shred my retinas in a way I can appreciate. They adhere to Werner Herzog’s maxim that nature is chaotic and disharmonious and reflect it in their art.
Micah Lexier, Debbie Lexier’s Tulip Drawing (1), waterjet-cut aluminum, enamel paint, painted wall (courtesy TrépanierBaer)
Reluctant to head home just yet, I travel a little further west on the highway and end up at the Oakville Galleries. Photographer Vid Ingelevics has an exhibition at the Centennial Square site, but I helped out on the catalogue, so I’m going to leave it up to you readers to make your own judgment. Down at Gairloch Gardens, Micah Lexier, a “user-friendly Duchampian” according to curator Marnie Fleming, is exhibiting a selection of work that riffs on family portraiture. Lexier does this in his characteristically oblique way, turning seemingly insignificant quantities, marks, and gestures into both personal and universal symbols of those closest to you. My initial reaction to minimal conceptualism is often to scoff at it’s slightness, but Lexier is adept at the trick of turning a simple doodle into something that stays with you and leads you on a reflection through similar overlooked moments in your past.
Terence Dick is a freelance writer living in Toronto. His art criticism has appeared in Canadian Art, BorderCrossings, Prefix Photo, Camera Austria, Fuse, Mix, C Magazine, and The Globe and Mail. He is the editor of Akimblog.
Blackwood Gallery: http://www.blackwoodgallery.ca/Blackwood_intro.html
The Projects: Port Credit continues until July 30.
Art Gallery of Mississauga: http://www5.mississauga.ca/agm/Default/HomePg.htm
Seeing with Eyes Closed continues until September 13.
Oakville Galleries: http://www.oakvillegalleries.com/index.htm
Micah Lexier: Two Parents and Three Children continues until September 6.