Akimblog
Calgary
Body Worlds at Telus World of Science | Kristopher Karklin at Skew | Celebration of the Bow River via TRUCK CAMPER | Alberta Biennial at the Art Gallery of Alberta
posted by Dick Averns - June 23rd, 2010.
Exploring relationships between life, science and art may not be new, but the process is still valid in helping illuminate both who we are and why we do what we do. Moreover, these territories provide fertile ground for cross-pollination: a vein I have adopted for this early-summer foray into Calgary’s creative offerings.
First up, there’s a chance to see Gunter von Hagens’ infamous exhibit Body Worlds at Calgary’s Telus World of Science featuring a startling array of human and animal cadavers. Here, the passed away are preserved through his groundbreaking technique Plastination, whereby resins and elastomers are deployed to take the place of body fluids and soluble fats, then cured to provide stability and remarkable form. Controversial at the outset (not just the process but rather the spectacle of display when he went public in the 1990s), Dr. von Hagens actually does a service in acknowledging his continuance of an artistic tradition dating back to anatomical artists of the Renaissance.
The Calgary Body Worlds show is subtitled the Brain, enabling an overt engagement with the Cartesian mind-body continuum, elements of which are proficiently promulgated via interpretive text panels and adjunct graphics. A journey from health and happiness, through love and spirituality, to disease, stress and addictions creates a compelling gesamtkunstwerk. An opera of science and art, life and death, evokes Hippocrates’ observation that life is short but art is long. From here I offer a new conceptual Hippocratic oath that if you make your art quicker you might live longer – providing that is, the results offer a slowing, not quickening, of the space-time continuum. Body Worlds meets this soulful rubric.
Before moving on, it’s worthy to note that Calgary’s Telus World of Science has an ongoing commitment to integrating art to their programming. For instance, their Creative Kids Museum already incorporates art installations and Body Worlds has an adjunct show of thirty-six paintings by Teresa Posyniak. Such commitments will be continued when the centre moves to a new site in the fall of 2011, expanding to 153,000sq ft adjacent to the Calgary Zoo and Botanical Gardens. Among four new exhibition spaces, “art will be incorporated with science and technology throughout,” with the “New Technology, Style and Art” space apparently dedicated to cross-disciplinarity.
Kristopher Karklin, Beltline Washroom, 2009, digital print
A different form of styling the body is also in town, this time at Skew Gallery. Here Kris Karklin has his first commercial show, Routine Reconstruction, presenting a suite of large digital prints that place a solitary figure in ritualized interior spaces such as bedrooms, bathrooms, and public washrooms. What’s enigmatic is a contestation of hyperrealism and irrealism, whereby the seductive lighting and stripped-back architectures accentuate humanity, but also ooze a sense of virtual reality, not via a cosmeticizing of the human form, but through a seamless integration of the body into small-scale hand-built dioramas.
Karklin acknowledges influences such as Eric Fischl, Thomas Demand, and Jeff Wall, but I would argue there is also a melding of content from Lynne Cohen with process and evocation reminiscent of Gregory Crewdson. Undoubtedly, dioramic practices are ascendant in the current climate of contemporary art, but for me the acid test is when is a diorama, more than just a diorama? Karklin ably provides gestalt to surpass this.
CAMPER: Contemporary Art Mobile Public Exhibition Rig
Taking a turn away now from the regimen of the gallery and museum, machinations of the natural come to the fore with a collaboration between the City of Calgary Public Art Program and TRUCK artist-run centre via their Celebration of the Bow River. With so many cities built upon arteries of H2O, it is not surprising to find this a fluid ground for art reflecting life: think of Olafur Eliasson’s Waterfall in New York’s East River or back to the monumental River Crossings staged by London’s Cameraworks in the early 1990s. So what is different here? Firstly, the project is built on the City’s Utilities and Environmental Protection Department Public Art Plan that is “founded on the principle that public art, in collaboration with other disciplines, can create remarkable places that encourage sustainability and stewardship of the environment.” And secondly, there is a high degree of mobility afforded via the deployment of TRUCK’s CAMPER – Contemporary Art Mobile Public Exhibition Rig, a modified 1970s motor-home.
CAMPER has been running seasonal projects for several years, but this one looks like the most adventurous and far reaching to date. Opening the programming for July will be the duo of (Chloe) Lewis and Taggart (Andrew), who will research tributary factoids, thence sculpting forms and fables to create The Museum of the Bow, a wunderkammer (cabinet of curiosities) installed and toured in the CAMPER. This idea of an archive toured in mobile architecture is apposite as it brings to the surface that which is often forced underground or remains unseen, just as many cities have much of their water-courses closeted in culverts and forced beneath urbanity, unable to nourish to the optimum extent.
José Luis Torres, Observatory
This is certainly true in Calgary, where recent boom cycles and regional sprawl have exhausted the available supply of water or, at least, licenses to draw water: authorities have suspended the issuing of new water licenses from the Bow for several years now. Viewing this spectre will form the basis for the second in the Bow celebration series via The Observatory, a viewing platform that will be tailored to the site, space and context by José Luis Torres. Keep a lookout!
Justin Waddell, Untitled, 2007, photograph mounted on aluminum
And if all this is just not your cup of tea, or you fancy a summer road-trip, another take on geography is available three hours north at Edmonton’s re-vamped Art Gallery of Alberta. Guest-curated by Richard Rhodes, editor for Canadian Art, Timeland is the title and theme for the 2010 Alberta Biennial of Contemporary Art. Loved by many for its open submission process, replete with studio visits for short-listed artists, this go-around features twenty-five artists, young and old, including The Cedar Tavern Singers, Wednesday Lupypciw, Walter May, Kristin Ivey, and Chris Willard. Timeland trades in notions of landscape and temporality, particularly in works by Rita McKeough and Justin Waddell where technology and progress manifest diverse precipices. In conclusion, Waddell’s Untitled photo presents a compelling take our place in the world. It’s refreshing to know that art still has a stake in life.
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 2008-9 Canadian Forces Artists Program. Dick also teaches sculpture, performance and installation, liberal studies, drawing and first year studies at the Alberta College of Art + Design.
Telus World of Science: http://www.calgaryscience.ca/exhibits/exhibits/bodyworlds/
Gunter von Hagens: Body Worlds continues until August 31.
Skew: http://www.skewgallery.com/current.htm
Kristopher Karklin: Routine Reconstruction continues until July 27.
Truck: http://www.truck.ca/?maj=12camper&min=0camper
Celebration of the Bow River continues at multiple sites from July 6 to 26, August 3 to 20, and September 8 to 27.
Art Gallery of Alberta: http://albertabiennial.youraga.ca/index.html
Timeland: 2010 Alberta Biennial of Contemporary Art continues until August 29.