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Calgary
Lee Neilsen at the Weiss Gallery | Susy Oliveira at The New Gallery | Leadership change at Alberta College of Art & Design | The Object of Art and the Art as Object at The Banff Centre
posted by Dick Averns - February 8th, 2010.
Twelve months ago I couched my New Year Calgary report in an “out with the old, in with the new” vein, not least because Jeff Spalding was leaving the Glenbow. This year, I will instead segue to a cycle of hatchings, matchings and dispatchings.
Lee Neilsen, Untitled (Regime-04), 2010, oil on panel
First then, hatchings! Lee Neilsen, an artist whose practice I’ve followed for several years and a painter of considerable skill and sizeable output, is opening his inaugural solo show on March 11th at the Weiss Gallery. This show’s title, Signal to Noise, builds on the electro-acoustic term for measuring the strength of a signal in relation to corruption from background noise. Neilsen signals a fragmentation of human ideals in the face of corrupting influences from hierarchical power structures such as corporations and social regimens. Chiaroscuro renderings of parking lots, office cubicles and architecture are interrupted with human forms; presenting us with the conundrum of whether it’s the darkness of soulless institutions that corrupts people or people that corrupt institutions. Such themes of “inversion and subversion,” to use Neilsen’s words, highlight that the corporeal - a root for both our corpus and the corporation - is actually defined as a placeholder for the physical, not spiritual. Fortunately Neilsen reminds us of this, hatching emotive works that prick our senses with the penetration of power and place.
Susy Oliveira
Moving on to matchings, Calgary’s oldest artist-run centre, The New Gallery, has moved to a spiffy new space at Art Central, a location that houses venues spanning fine craft, design, traditional and contemporary art, as well as studios. To some it’s an emporium, but for others it’s a haven. Either way, as the only artist-run centre in the building, TNG will undoubtedly bring criticality. Their opening show hosts Susy Oliveira and her narrative-titled project Your face, like a lone nocturnal garden in Worlds where Suns spin round! The idea of finding one’s place in the world among a sea of darkness is not unrelated to the content of Neilsen’s work, but Oliveira’s approach is markedly different. Her photo-based sculpted landscapes are playful, aiming to create a sense that energy and life force can be attained from immersing oneself in nature. If you don’t catch this last week of the show, the next exhibit, Seasonal Affective, features three local emerging artists (Billie Rae Busby, Dana Bush, and Joshua Fraser) and explores relationships to mood and weather. The show opens on February 19th. And note that TNG is now open until 10pm on the first Thursday of each month; all part of the broader First Thursday event when many downtown galleries stay open late.
Now for a different kind of dispatch. The upcoming departure of Alberta College of Art & Design president Lance Carlson has people talking about the College’s mission of being not just an education or research institution, but one directed to cultural development. For instance, ACAD’s mandate also includes tenets such as serving the “economic, cultural and social life of the communities and society that it serves.” This raises the possibility that Richard Florida’s much quoted line, “the MFA is the new MBA,” has impacted the role of art (and design) education. In Lee Neilsen’s terms, art education would be the signal, while corporate design might be the noise. For those engaged with such issues there’s two new publications of note. From the Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design comes Rethinking the Contemporary Art School, while the MIT Press has published Art School: Propositions for the 21st Century, a text that includes essays by eminent cultural workers… ahem, art scholars, Boris Groys and Ken Lum.
Tobias Spichtig's Studio at The Banff Centre, Master Class: The Object of Art and the Art as Object with Ken Lum, Residency 2010 (photo: Laura Vanags)
And so to my last topic, one that conflates “hatchings, matchings and dispatchings” into a reworking of the Hegelian “thesis, antithesis, synthesis.” On February 17th,The Banff Centre Open Studios will showcase recent work, including production from their current thematic residencies: the First Nations, Métis, and Inuit focused Towards Language, led by Greg Staats, and The Object of Art and the Art as Object, led by Ken Lum. There’s a connection here with my earlier mention of Lum, positioning him within the realms of educational writing, critical theory, and cultural institutions… oh yes, and art and pedagogy. This master class residency has, by several accounts, been full of activity and output. Resident artists include Dana Samuel, Jennifer Schuler, Brenda Draney, Merve Unsal, Duane Linklater and Tobias Spichtig. Lum has been leading theoretical readings (including Michael Taussig’s "Mimesis and Alterity", Wu Hung’s "Tiananmen Square: A Political History of Monuments", Michael Fried’s "Art and Objecthood”), conducting regular studio visits, showing films, and challenging artists to games of table tennis.
Such play connects relationships between everyday life and art, pointing towards what the residency synopsis terms a “primary function of the avant-garde in art.” This assumes, of course, that an avant-garde can still exist, something I believe has evolved in scope but is challenged in outcomes. That said, the residency’s aim to “revisit the most fundamental questions about the status and function of art” is definitely valid, not just for those on the residency but for Neilsen, ACAD, and all the others mentioned in this report. And if this seems like the old saw, “what is art?”, it isn’t. As Serge Guilbaut has been know to ask: “What is at stake here?” Now there’s a question for everyone.
Dick Averns is an interdisciplinary artist and writer living in Calgary whose exhibitions and performances have been presented internationally. He has written for catalogues, journals, and magazines, including Canadian Art, Front, and Artichoke, and was part of the 2008/2009 Canadian Forces Artists Program. Dick also teaches sculpture, performance and installation, liberal studies, and first year studies at the Alberta College of Art + Design.
Weiss Gallery: http://www.theweissgallery.com/dynamic/exhibit.asp?Exhibit=Upcoming
Signal to Noise opens on March 11 and continues until April 10.
The New Gallery: http://www.thenewgallery.org/
Your face, like a lone nocturnal garden in Worlds where Suns spin round! continues until February 13.
The Banff Centre: http://www.banffcentre.ca/events/calendar/event_detail.aspx?sn=4642
Open Studios are open on February 17 from 3 to 6pm.
Comments (newest first)
Posted by Dick, 165 days ago on February 15th, 2010
Thanks Denise for this correction; obviously some slippage occurred compared to when I first cited this quote in Artichoke (at which time I correctly attributed it to Pink). "Canada's Art and Design Schools: A Critical Survey", Artichoke, Vol 16 # 3. In the meantime, it's good to see people are engaged with the content. Clearly the role of the Art School is a current debate.
Posted by Denise, 170 days ago on February 10th, 2010
A friendly correction to Dick Avern's mention of the line, the " Master of Fine Arts is the new MBA". The phrase comes from an article in the Harvard Business Review of February 2004 which referenced a New York Times article about Daniel Pink's writings, and not Richard Florida's. Though their ideas may be compatible, this often quoted phrase, and the proposition behind it, was put forth by Dan Pink.