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Vie des Arts
Western Fronts
Volume 42, numéro 171, été 1998
URI : https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/53210ac
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Éditeur(s)La Société La Vie des Arts
ISSN0042-5435 (imprimé)1923-3183 (numérique)
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Citer ce document(1998). Western Fronts. Vie des Arts, 42(171), 60–65.
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WESTERN FRONTS
From Prairie artist-run centres, The Banff Centre in the Rockies, to the Bushlen Mowatt Gallery near Stanley Park, (where Ross Pen hall's June exhibition of bi-dimen-sional work sells out for the second season in a row), or to the Granville Gallery Row, (where Dale Chihuly brings Diane Farris to front page of The Vancouver Sun with a window painting, and across to Victoria on Vancouver Island, the 1998 summer visual arts season is in full bloom. Vie des Arts was in the West for an advance preview.
Michael J. Molter
CHEN YIN YAN DISCREPANCY BETWEEN ONE IDEA Contemporary Art Gallerv, Vancouver,
March 20-May 9, 1998.
Director of sculpture, at the Shanghai Oil Painting and Sculpture Institute, Chen Yin Yan explores the psychological dimensions of femininity, love, desire and beauty, in a physical environment, that reverberates between the subjective and the collective, internal and external, the seductive and the disurbing. Discrepancy Between One Idea, an installation including 600 roses laid on a table, fed intravenously by tubes connected to infusion bags, is a poetic statement embracing the fantasies of love, desire, eternity, and the impossibility of reviving something fated to die.
Flash Art
Flash Art (cover). Zhou Nahai, 1997. Jiangnan Exhibition, Presentation House, North Vancouver, B.C.
Chen Yin Yan has exhibited in Beijing, Hong Kong, Amsterdam, Kassel, Copenhagen and Brisbane. This first installation in North America was shown at the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Brisbane, in 1996.
The exhibition is part oi Jiang-nan, a festival organized by Xia Wei and Hank Bull, director of the Western Front Society, with work by Hu Jie Ming, and including artists from Shanghai, Suzhou, Hangzhou and Nanking in exhibitions at: ArtSpeak (Gu Xiong); Catrionna Jeffries (Ken Lum); Vancouver Art Gallery (Pan Tianshou); Art Beatus (Xu Bing, New York , Huang Yong Ping, Paris, Qui ti, Beijing, Pang Tao and Lin Yan, New York); Presentation House (Geng Jiani, Zhou Tiehai); Access Gallery (Yang Zhen Zhong); Grunt Gallery (Shi Yong, Shanghai); Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery (Gu Wenda, New York , and the Charles H. Scott Gallery (Chen Haiyan, Ding Yi, Shen Fan, Shi Hui, and Liang Shaoji) with an international symposium positioning modern and contemporary Chinese art.
Discrepancy Between One Idea, Chen Yin Yan. installation. 1998. photo credit Kim Clarke
DOIT ' 9 8
Surrey Art Gallery, March 21 -May 20-Dunlop Art Gallery, May 12-June 14
Do it yourself. Museum Projet Jimmie Durham, 1995
do it, (ICI) Independent Curators Incorporated, 799 Broadway suite 205, NY 10003, New York, 1997,104 pp., bv Edwards Brothers, edition of 5,000, ISBN: 0-91365-51-4. Catalogue with introduction by Hans-Ulrich Olbrist, essay by Bruce Altschuler, (director of Isamu Noguchi Museum and Garden and author of (The Avant-Garde in Exhibition: New Art in the Twentieth Century), in conjunction with the travelling exhibition do it, curated by Hans-Ulrich Olbrist, and based on do i t , project initiated in 1993 by AFFA, Association Française d'Action Artistique, Ministère des Affaires Étrangères, Paris.
do it began in a conversation in 1993 between curator Hans-LUrich Obrist, Bertrand Lavier and Christian Boltanski, while both the artists spoke about the written instructions contained within their own work, in order to observe effects of translation upon an artworks interpretation. From this arose the idea of an exhibition of procedural instructions, which exists outside the venue, in a static condition. Exhibitions which followed the first do it at Klagenfurt, Austria, (in countries with which France has diplomatic missions), include: Bangkok, Bagota, Brisbane, Geneva, Glagow, Helsinki, Ljubiana, Reykjavik, Siena, Thallin, and Uppsala.
Governed by certain do it game rules, that include the museum's selection of at least 15 of a potential 30 works (to be created by gallery staff or community), ensures a new constellation of work at each representation. The diverse cities in which do it takes place, constructs a context of individual distinctions, with multiplied meaning, as the various interpretations of texts accumulate in venue after venue. There are no signatures by the artists, but each
artist receives photo documention of the work realised. No work is collected, except in certain exceptions, such as Boltanski requesting photos of a school group be dismantled by giving the individual photos, with his stamp on back, to the parents etc., ensuring a non static, and non fetish character. The community, (local buisnesses, organizations, manufacturers, club owners, and students) were invited to pARTicipate al Surrey Art Gallery, March 21- May 20, Surrey, B.C., in interpretation of texts by some 30 artists which included Christian Boltanski, Paul Armand Cette, (Square meter boundary), Joseph Grigely, (Write and mail a postcard to a long lost friend), FelLx Gonzalez-Torres, (drop 180 pounds of candy in corner), Yoko Ono, (Make a Wish and Tie it to the Branch of a Tree).
A do it (TV) video produced by Hans-Ulrich Olbrist, (curator of the Museum of Modern Art, Paris, author of Delta X: The Curator as Catalyst and guest curator of the Vienna museum in progress for the Austrian TV institute, ORF), includes performances by Gilbert and George, Marie-Ange Guilleminot, Shere Hite, Jonas Mekas, Eileen Myles, Nancy Spero, Michael Smith, and Lawrence Weiner.
do it (home) projects are also proposed by such artists as: John Baldessari, Leon Golub, (don't do it), Jiri Kolar, Annette Messager, and Rosemarie Trockel.
ICI is circulating an expanded version of do it to travel throughout
Do it Now. Joseph Grigely , installation , Surrey Art Gallery, Surrey, B. C.
North America and South America through December in the year 2000. The title, in association with Jerry Rubin's battlecry from 1968 and a slogan for Nike shoes, prompts a post-modern pastiche nostalgia and accomodation with the institution, balancing subversion with curatorial and artistic renewal.
60 VIE DES ARTS N" 171
In Vancouver, on upper Granville row new galleries such as Third Avenue Gallery and Jennifer Wittman have opened, while Monte Clark has a new location. The Equinox, Catriona Jeffries, Bau-xi Galleries, Douglas Udell and Heffel Auction House are producing contemporary exhibitions of high quality. Diane Farris has increasingly caught the public's attention with a painting performance that covered the windows during a spring exhibition by Dale Chihuly. And on Granville Island this spring the Emily Carr Art School participate in the city wide Jiangnan project with an exhibition and conference that embraces contemporary Chinese art and Chinese artists doing it now.
•Ik* #
Chihuly Over Venice. 1996, Dale Chihuly, Hand Blown Glass installation, photo Russell Johnson. Diane Ferris Gallery.
Balcony Andre Peterson.
>997. transmounted
photograph on plexiglass and
steel, 27" x 35.5",
photo courtesy, Bau-xi Gallery,
Vancouver, B.C.
Night Drifter, Northern Lake series, John A. Macdonald, 1998, oil on canvas, 76 cm x 213 cm, Douglas Udell Gallery, Edmonton/Vancouver.
CAROL SAWYER, AMAZONIA
ArtSpeak Gallery, May 2-June 6, 1998, Vancouver, B.C.
Carol Sawyer's work at ArtSpeak Artist Centre combines photographic media, objects and aspects of performance art and music composition. A multi-media installation, Amazonia is inspired by movies, comic books and television femme fatalia, posing a threat to machoistic scenario narratives. Sawyer's Amazonia pushes beyond the limits of mortal and terrestrial boundaries as a site where contradictory ideas about gender, sexuality and power, collide. Sawyer's positive identification with these images opens up a space to imagine new narratives and outcomes.
Amazonia Alights at Queen Elizabeth Park, 1998, Kim Clarke
LEE GOREAS AND SHELLEY OUELLET
Two Constellations , Open Space, Victoria, B.C. April 1998
Lee Goreas, Beeing, acrylic on plaster board, 1998
Curator Jennifer McMackon proposes the idea of a constellation to understand the works represented by these two artists without relying on binary readings, as a wedge prying the works loose from their mutual orbit exhibition space. Open Space is a flexible forum generating and supporting experimental coexistence of two formations.
Newzones Gallery ol
Contemporary Art
http://www.newzones.com e-mail: [email protected]
F 403 266 1987 T 403 2661972
Wallace\f/Galleries Ltd. Contemporary Canadian works of art
Paintings, sculptures Fine art prints Art consulting
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i-̂ i VIVIAN THIE 'Some like it 1993, Water 8,5 x 8,5 inc
Tel: (1 E
Member: Pre
RFELDER. hot"
color on paper hes
WALLACE GALLERIES LTD.
50O5th Ave S.W. Calgary, Alberta T2P 3L5
03) 262-8050 Fax: (403) 264-7112 -mail: [email protected] ifessional Art Dealer Association of Canada
VIE DES ARTS N" 171 61
Shelley Ouellet situates her work within the scope of this analogy. Ouellet's Entymobgy moves an image of an insect composed of toy insects from virtual space into the physical site turning electronic impulse into social project, involving the labour of a volunteer army to organize and suspend the bugs in front of a high voltage emerald wall, triggering a retinal wave, from a mathematically determined grid on the ceiling by way of barely visible nylon filaments creating a bug of bugs. Ouellet's constellation mirrors the development of her work from pixel image to sculpture.
Lee Goreas' Beeing , depicts Billy Bee from the honeyjar in discussion with a human skull. To Be/Bee or not to be, considers alternatives on the part of the viewer. In another large scale wall drawing, Plato, Pluto and Bluto, suggests an infinity of variations from bully to beast to philosopher. The floorpiece Slowdown Showdown allows viewers to remote drive battery operated cars on a track in the shape of a moebus wheel, in which the works completion comes into play through the viewer.
A videotape, Post Structuralist Cash, with Johnny Cash singing Ring of Fire, situates the viewer in a spiral, cementing notions of love with cash and consumption, and refers to other stations in the exhibition where ideas systematically interchange.
ROGER ING'S UTOPIA AND ROGERISM
Saskatchewan Cultural Exchange Gallery, Mav 2 - 28, 1998.
Roger Ing, 1989 , enamel on photo, New Utopia Restaurant, Regina.
This exhibition in conjunction with the making of a documentary film on the work by artist Roger Ing, (featuring interviews with Art MacKay, Jack Severson and Edward Poitras), relates and reveals the depths of Ing's interventions and behind the scenes work in the development of prairie art culture. While proprietor of the local landmark New Utopia Restaurant in Regina, Roger Ing and the Utopia were the subject of a 1990 light box photo
work by Edward Poitras for lndigena at Canadian Museum of Civilizations.
Roger Ing's history of recycled paintings and mixed media objects, presented through the collections of artist and curator Jack Severson and Regina collectors, have been a subject of controversy over the years. Championed by some in the art establishment, such as Art MacKay, and visiting art historian's with an outside view of the landscape, Roger Ing's work has achieved renewed attention for its anarchistic energy and scope.
Ing studied Chinese caUigraphie brush work in Hong Kong before his introduction to western art in the 1960's. Largely autodidact, since studies with Ken Lochead at University of Regina, Ing is a phenomenon of popular prairie art about to be rediscovered. His recycled ink and
enamel on paper, canvas or mixed media surfaces, cover subjects from ballet to Beethoven, from Frankenstein to fabulistic cross overs between Pollock and Rogerism pistache.
ANDREW VALKO, R.C.A. -DUSK TO DAWN
Curator Tamar Zenith, May 7-30, 1998 New Zones Gallery of Contemporary Art, Calgary
Andrew Valko uses printmaking techniques in this solo exhibition of recent realist acryUc paintings on wood, at NewZones architectural gaUery space.
Tamar Zenith descibes Valko's reaUst paintings as so iUustrative that it is a near parody of camera technology. Critic Robert Enright suggests
In The Doorway, Andrew Valko, 1997 acrylic on wood, 48 x 33 " NewZones, Calgary.
that Valko's nomadic movements and his explorations with various medium have drawn him into producing a strong complex series of work. Valko's router technique on wood creates deep textured surfaces, reinforcing the paintings in his exhibition at New Zones. Valko's studies
Calgary has an increasingly active contemporary art market with
new galleries such as NewZones and more established venues like
Paul Kuhn, Trépanier Baer, Canadian Art Galleries, the Wallace Gal
leries and Master's Gallery achieving a very active market. The soon
to be opened Contemporary Art Institute and the Glenbow Museum
indicate the appetite for contemporary art is indicative of an engaged
and aware, increasingly art educated public.
This relat ionship extends to The Banff
Centre, where in ternat iona l focus has
brought the contemporary art wor ld to
Alberta's galleries.
Umbrella 1,1996, John Fox, 1996. oil on canvas. Paul Kuhn Gallery, Calgary.
Summer, 1998, Walter Bachinsky,
etching, 31 x 24 « , Wallace Galleries, Calgary.
open space 510 Fott Street, Victoria. BC. V8W 1E6
voice 250.383.8833 lax 250.380.1999
July/August 1998 ISLE group exhibibiton of Vancouver Island & Gulf Island artists monograph with text by Carol Williams
September 1998 symposium on Public Art with Mary Jane Jacobs, Robert Hewlott-Kantor and Greg Snider
October 1998 Mowry Baden - RECENT WORK 1991-1998 catalogue with text by Robert Hewlott-Kantor, Brenda Patays and Lauren Schaffer
62 VIE DES ARTS M°171
with master Japanese printmaker Toshi Yoshida are also apparent in this work, which led to his participation in the annual Yoshida International printmaking exhibition in Tokyo from 1987-1994. He has exhibited with Boston Print Makers at the Boston Art Museum, and in solo exhibited his contemporary block prints at Memorial University of Newfoundland Art GaUery.
After 20 years in Canada, foUow-ing apprenticeship training in Prague, Valko has produced a surreal body of paintings, reminiscent of Delvaux or Magritte, in intimately personal and private shared moments.
Awarded the Royal Order of Canada in 1994, Valko has exhibited at and is in the collections of: the Winnipeg Art GaUery; Tapei Fine Arts Museum; Brockton Art Gallery, Boston; and the Claridge CoUection, Montreal.
CHANGING SPACES
VANCOUVER ART GALLERY
May 2nd through September 27th, curated by Mary Jane Jacob, Fabric Workshop and Museum Philadelphia, features work produced by artists from Australia, Britain, Japan, South America and the United States.
The Apple of Adams Eye, 1993, Carrie Mae Weems, detail ol folding screen.
Fabric in everyday use is the thread of the fabric that the works exhibited draw upon in their associations with textiles, to reveal hidden histories, present new perspectives and confront poUticaUy charged images. Artists represented include Chris Burden, Maria Fernanda Car-dosa, Jim Hodges, Mona Hatoum, Narele JubeUn, Glenn Ligon, Anish Kapoor, Yukinori Yanagi, BUI Viola and Carrie Mae Weems.
Down from the Shimmering Sky, Masks of the Northwest Coast, offers a rare opportunity to explore two centuries of mask making by the region's finest artists, through a rich legacy of carved and painted objects, from June 4 - October 12.
Art and Process, Thorn, Ian M., 14 pp. ISBN 1-895442-22-9, an anthology of work by Emily Carr, explores the artist's three periods of art study, at San Francisco's School of Art and Design, in England at Bushey and in France at St. Ives, and the transfer of her ptein-air approach to the British Columbia wilderness with John Duncan Fergusson, Phelan Gibb and Frances Hodgkins. Organized by the V.A.G., at Greater Victoria Art GaUery (jime 24 to September 30) and Kamloops Art Gallery (Nov. 14-Jan. 24, 1999). Changing Spaces, is also at Power Plant, Toronto, June 24-September 7.
THRESHOLD,
THE POWER PLANT
Contemporary Art Gallery, April 3-June 14
vHr iW ë m S ' >if *r-warr.
My Way, Claude Levêque, 1996, faut plafond en grillage, chemises blanches.
10 th anniversary exhibition, with artists: Ian Carr Harris, (Canada), Terisita Fernandez (U.S.A.), Peter Kogler (Austria), Mischa Kuball (Germany), Claude Levêque (France), Ann Lislegaard (Norway / Denmark), Masato Nakamura (Japan), Lyla Rye (Canada), and Judith Schwarz (Canada).
A groundbreaking exhibition of new works, in a context that indicates a transition into an incorporeal space, consists of ten rooms as a site for the intersection of physical, mental and emotional contemplation, representing artists from several generations, who rely on allusive techniques to effect a transition into a speculative dimension, that engages the senses through use of colour, texture, sound and Ught in a range of media from drawing, installation and computer imaging. Catalogue by head curator Louise Dompierre, with essays by Antonio Guzman and Timothy Murray, 90 pp., 1998, ISBN 0-921047-33-9, considering developing area of activity in relation to secular postmodernism and introspective impetus in current practice.
WEST COAST AND LOWER MAINLAND EAST MEETS WEST
Vancouver art is taking on the Asian flavor that the rest of the city have adopted over the past ten years with a vengeance. Not only has the venerable cultural institutions, commercial gaUeries and non-commercial spaces increased their exhibitions of artists from China, Hong Kong, Singapore and India, but the British Columbia and Canadian artists and their work have taken on the trappings of the eastern voice; as weU, the newest commercial gaUeries are now owned and operated by the trained Asian curators and artists who have no where to ply their trade other than starting spaces for the benefit of themselves and feUow countrymen. The opportunities for artists of Pacific Rim descent far outstrip possible institutional openings for curators and administrators, and is reflected in the growing number of exhibitions which present the work emanating from the Far East.
Xu Bing Introduction to New English, 1994-1996 Calligraphy Art Beatus Gallery Vancouver, B.C.
With this cultural movement, or if you wUl, infiltration, the West Coast is once again experiencing national and international art, of a stature, which reflects the level of presentation and discourse which has been evident at many of the gaUeries and institutions for some time.
Take, for instance, the massive Jiangnan Project (Modern and Contemporary Chinese Art) named after the region of China south of the Yangtze river that includes Shanghai,
Hangzou and Nanjing brought to life by Hank BuU of the Western Front, Sheng Tian Zheng, Director of Art Beatus and Xia Wei a Masters student at the University of British Columbia and involved a dozen gaUeries and institutions, more than 20 Chinese artists and ailminated in an international symposium on Chinese art. This scholarly approach and massive coUaboration (artists, gaUeries, and cities) opened many minds, and eyes, to not only the art presented, but also instilled the thought that die west coast of Canada is capable of looking beyond itself. Art Beatus, with gaUeries in Vancouver and Hong Kong focuses on (international) contemporary Chinese art presenting the work of artists such as Xu Bing, whose instaUation New Chinese Calligraphy was in
essence a controlled experiment in language, foreign culture and adaptation as viewers were asked to duplicate recognizable latin letters with brush and ink to form seemingly unfamilar Chinese caUigraphy; and Huang Yong Ping, also an instaUation artist, whose work, Terminal presented a miniature replica of Amsterdam's Schiphol International Airport filled with in
sect and amphibian life form in the departure sector and dead specimens in the arrival sector, eUciting an overwhelming sense of basic survival and cultural identity. Presently, as a continuation of the Jiangnan Project, this gaUery is showing three generations of Chinese modernists, women from the same famUy, grandmother, Qui Ti, daughter, Pang To, and granddaughter, Lin Yan whose work plays with perfunctory modernist ideals whde still bringing new thoughts to the vernacular of strict modernism.
Catriona Jefferies Gallery presented the installation works of Canadian Ken Lum and Chen Zhen
alongside a collaborative project that pointed to cultural identities and similarities; presendy the gaUery is offering a survey exhibition of photographs by the late Canadian (nee Japanese) artist Roy Kiyooka, a modernist in his own right. At the Bau-Xi GaUery, David Sorensen represented the figure in scintillating coloured views entided Deities and Demons, his simple depictions of East Indian gods and goddesses floating on textured canvases evoked an academic style of India, no doubt effected by travels to the sub-continent. Toronto art ist Joanne Tod joined the view to the Far East with her stark and poignant p h o t o - r e a l i s t paintings at the Equinox Gallery of Ind ian-Asian-Canadian friends preparing for ceremonies outfitted in ethnic dress posed in the incon-gruent settings of Western hotels. Every item in the paintings carries equal billing which is not an easy task when beautiful women of colour dressed in satins and silks of a multitude of brilliant colours stand centre stage Uke paragons of ethnicity. Karen Yukovich was presenting her version of the Pacific Rim at the Diane Farris GaUery with an exhibition entitled B.C. Native and Immigrants. The idea of race seen metaphorically as indigenous, and immigrant, botanical paintings. The Vancouver Art Gallery seems to have become comfortable with its role in the community as the elder statesman by joining the Jiangnan Project with an exhibition of Chinese brush paintings by Pan Tianshou. These stylized ink and brush works were worthy of the
Huong Yong Ping Cage Insect, 1996 Terminal Shiphol (Amsterdam) Art Beatus Gallery Vancouver, B.C.
stature afforded both the artist and institution.
The Art GaUery of Greater Victoria with its grab-bag of mini-exhibitions has three worthy of the trip: Within the Walls: A Story of Healing, documentary photographs from inside the prison walls; Jack Bush: Hymn to the Sun (1929-1955) organized by the AGO; and from their worthy Asian CoUection, Art of the Hermit Kingdom (Korea). The other gaUeries that should be visited while in the Capital City include Hoi PoUoi which deals and presents exclusively 'arte pop Mexicano'; Fran Willis GaUery with traditional theme exhibitions by contemporary artists; and the Alcheringa GaUery with its exhibitions of indigenous art from around the globe, and at the present includes a view of masterful objet d'art from an
Haren Vakil A Proposal for a Dream for Fish tt 1,1998
Acrylic on paper, 56 cm x 76 cm Winchester Galleries
Victoria, B.C.
exhibition tided Many Traditions: Art of New Ireland, Aboriginal AustraUa, Vanuata, Papau New Guinea and British Columbia.
While some would say the west coast of Canada is lost behind that barrier of mountains and rock, I would say we have finally put our best foot forward in an attempt to recognize and analyze the many aspects of international contemporary culture, which exist here in Canada, such as: Asian culture, indigenous culture from around the world, First Nations art and culture and our own imported western histories.
Todd A. Davis
64 VIE DES ARTS NM71
FOOTHILLS AND VALLIES CALGARY AND KELOWNA WESTERLIES
Peter Van Tiesenhausen Boat, 1998 Installation Kelowna Art Gallery
The perception that Vancouver is the only site of curatorial innovation in B.C. is being challenged by Kelowna. Under the rejuvenating direction of curator-in-residence Diane Dickert, the decade old, artist-run, Alternator Gallety is raising its profile by showing inventive original exhibitions. The Kelowna Art Gallery's move to a spacious, purpose-built building two years ago, and its young curator, Clint Roenisch's, tracking down and coaxing Guido Molinari west, has also attracted national attention.
This Winter (Feb. 21-April 5) Roenisch curated Lebenslàufe; sculpture, drawings, and site-specific work by Peter von Tiesenhausen. Von Tiesenhausen is one of the few non-touristic artists linked to the eco-art movement. No urban artist communing with nature on hoUdays, he lives and works on the farm he grew up on near Demmitt, in Northern Alberta. His large, meditative objects embody a resonance between people and their environment rather than only iUustrating that relationship.
The show features two of von Tiesenhausen's trademark wattled wiUow boats. The ruddy coloured one suspended above the central haUway trails branches downward like roots or veins. The other, propped up by wooden staffs in the courtyard looks like a funeral bier for the large burnt figures in the main space. There is also a huge carved wooden bell covered in aromatic bee propolis and a carpenter art scarred dance hall floor. Few works are tided, leading viewers to a visceral rather than an intellectual response.
Von Tiesenhausen is a good painter, but beside his instaUations his pictures look like after-thoughts, representations of what the primary works actually embody. On their own, however, his five small paintings in a group show at Calgary's Canadian Art Galleries (April 25-May 16) have enough presence that you don't miss the installations, too much.
Also in the Canadian show were large, brushy garden paintings by LesUe Poole. The colours are bold but seem straight from the tube, and the brush work is more sloppy than expressive. Bill Pura's five large paintings of suburban streets at night have a novel subject but here too the paintings are rushed; there is more concern for making a picture than a
William Pura River View. 1994 Oil on canvas 163 cm x 163 cm Court. Canadian Art Gallery (Calgary)
painting. The greens of the foliage are almost uniform and the light roughly handled. Nevertheless, these photo-based pictures strike the right David Lynchian psychological chord of uneasy nostalgia, the tenuous veneer of normalcy, and casual voyeurism.
One of the best painting shows in Calgary this season also examined the urban landscape. David Janzen: New Paintings at Trépanier Baer GaUery (April 23-May 23) featured twenty one intimate, fragmented views of factories, electrical, radio and ceU phone towers, all set against prairie skies. A few of the pieces are
David Janzen Vibroseis Unit (Study)
Oil on steel, 14 cm x 41 cm Court. Trépanier Baer Gallery
in his Thiebaud/Hopperesque style, but most are nearly Impressionistic. While environmentalist issues are hinted at, Janzen is more painter than moraUst. He articulate a mid-ground between culture and nature and leaves the evaluations up to us. Janzens best pictures play between photorealism and abstraction and communicate the pleasure of both painting and finding unintended beauty.
David Garneau
C O N T E M P O R A R Y ArtGaUery
FRANCIS ALYS le temps du sommeil July 4 - a u g 8
CLAUDIA CUESTA sept 12-oct 24
KEVIN MADILL oct 31 - dec 5
555 Hamilton St. Vancouver BC Canada V6B 2R1 e-mail: [email protected]
Tel: 604 681-2700 Fax: 604 683-2710
The Contemporary An Gallery gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the City of Vancouver, the Government of British Columbia through the British Columbia Arts Council and our members. THI OUUOI COUKIL Li COMIH M I A*n
VIE DES ARTS NM7I 65
