Modern Problems

From the historic administrations of Greenberg, Fried, Adorno: the integrity of materials, their objects and supports, our transcendence, their autonomy, not so much abstracting but in search of indetermination.

Palms on the clay, pressing down, rolling it finger thin, making patterns and motifs, dare I say it, suggestive of any number of practical objects. Some to be worn (sweaters), some to keep us in/out (chainlink fencing), some to be climbed (Juddian rungs), some simply to secure (knots) -- how making them from clay makes them none of them.

To add and not-add painting to that: flesh tones, a flood of colours, IKB(?), monochromatic, all towards that which it can't.

And the cube that is this space, lit large like I have never seen it before, painted a brightest white and threaded through it, its fabric breaking at right angles -- up, along, down, along, up, along, etc. And punctuation, inserted flush in some instances, proud in others (as support), made from more clay, like the fabric's (fabrics'?) broken-gridded stitching -- in and out of the walls.

Discrete works says the titled numbered floor plan, but it's always the exhibition, first, for me, the system so open its closing.

Which is not to lose sight of my feelings, which belong to this space and its quirk, where you enter a shop below to ask for its key, then turn around and walk out, along the street, up a flight of stairs, down a hall until you come to a door, a door with a window in it, the room dark, the door opened, the light switch to the right and flick -- boom! -- this feeling, which in this instance opened me up, filled me with joy, before the come-down reading of its codes.

Boss Bodies

Opening this week at CSA Space is Rowan Melling's Boss Bodies, an exhibition of 16 painted portraits of 16 disembodied heads. Applied to these decapitations are faces that many Vancouverites look to -- or away from -- for cues on how to appreciate a city that these bosses of construction, real estate,  secondary manufacturing and retail claim to be building, beautifying, writing, empowering ...

Of these faces, not all of them are men. Nor are all of them white. Nor are all of them heterosexual. All of them have some form of disability that allows them to do their work without losing a night's sleep. All of them believe that what they are doing is good and right, and that goodness and righteousness are measured not by humility but by financial profit. Those who disagree have been, in some instances, encouraged to move to the suburbs.

Most remarkable about these portraits (apart from the absence of their "entitled" bodies) are the bodies "playing" them. For example, when I look at the face of Bob Rennie (above), I see Bob, but I also see Jim Carrey (with a hint of former Social Credit MLA Pat McGeer thrown in). Same with Ian Gillespie, as played by Matthew McConaughey 

and Michael Audain, as played by a Paper Chase-era John Houseman.

Whether inhabitations like these are the intention of the artist, I don't know. What I do know is that the evocation of these actors and their styles stands in for the absence of the bodies these bosses have been removed from, enlivening them in ways that are not inconsistent with how they appear IRL (the ludic Bob, the laconic Ian, the patrician Michael), but also underlining the ongoing performances they are engaged in in their effort to exact the same of those living in "their" city, where the best advice to those trying to survive that city is to be anyone other than yourself.

Let me Introduce Myself

Perfectly strange and fucked up show at CSA says nothing about the work and everything about my attitude, which is unsupportable.

Before entering, a laminated letter-sized piece of paper with the title Let me Introduce Myself (note the lowercase"m" in "me"), the artist's name -- Michael Lachman -- and this criminally comic text by Lyndsay Pomerantz.

With the text read, a sense of this advertised "[-]self" as a comedian or a counterfeiter, and a deeper sense that the two are not unrelated. At the centre of the room, taste, as repped by purple latex tongues on tripods, St. Christopher's medals hanging from them? (St. Christopher: famous for carrying a child unknown to him across a river-- that child being Christ, who turns 2023 on Wednesday.)

On the south wall, a pair of dress pants, their pockets turned out and out-sized. Against the north and west walls, two wordy briefcases ("wordy" for their slightly outsized hard-cornered wooden handles). The case at the west end is open and I ask that you look at it:

A ceiling has been installed (lowered), and forever falling from it are a pair of hands, and inside a figure sitting. The carpet, too, is institutional and doesn't fit, so it is added to, and in doing so, the space is converted from a gallery to an impoverished or pop-up office.

Everything we need to know (or be affirmed in knowing) about life as a young artist (or critic) can be found in this show. Everything.

As you leave, a calendar to the left of the door. It is December, and the image above is a cartoon frog swimming out to sea with a scorpion on its back, the frog's frog friends looking on with concern.

Like I said, Everything!

GNK 3-2-1

3: the number of writers it took to write a three paragraph review of ...

2: the number of curators it took to curate ...

1: a single artist who, with little more than a pencil and a stool, wrote on the gallery wall "the names of everyone [he] ever met."

Threads

The image above is of Béance (gap) (2017) by Bernadette Phan. Wool, oil on canvas.

You can't see it in the image, but the work has a horizontal slit halfway up its non-fringed form and slightly to the right. Already I need to return to the gallery to see if the slit is "woven" into the form or if it is cut, with its edges sewn down. It makes a difference. Everything is of interest in a work of art.

Inside the wool form (though it functions as a pocket it looks like a halter top, a purse, a votive object) is a small abstract painting, of which only the top portion is available to the human eye.

Béance is one of eight works in an exhibitional conversation between Tom Burrows and Bernadette Phan at CSA Space. Entitled Threads, the exhibition runs through March 30.

Below is an exhibition statement, and below that another of my inconclusive photos -- an image of Tom's China Silk Lining (2008). Polyester thread in polyester resin.

Tom Burrows and Bernadette Phan
Threads
February 22nd - March 30th  2018 
Opening Reception: Thursday, February 22nd, 6-9pm

“a dense mat of threads which completely hides the animal” 

Painting, weaving and layering set the foundations for the dialogue between Tom Burrows and Bernadette Phan, whose bodies of work often involve processes of accumulation, be it the slow buildup of marks or layering of resin. This exhibition offers a peek at new directions for both artists.

For the past few years, Tom Burrows has been working in Jingdezhen, a city with a history of producing pottery for over 1700 years. In a discourse between ceramics and his ongoing exploration of cast resin, Tom creates colour fields that probe the surface and textures of both polymers and porcelain. “Bethune,” glazed porcelain, is a nod to Doctor Norman Bethune’s dedication to battle-field surgery in the struggle against fascism.

Bernadette Phan's work often negotiates the pictorial plane using patterns such as ovoids, grids and fields of colour. With "Béance", Bernadette revisits her painting practice through textile. The woven surface echoes the stippling of paint on her canvases  and the pace generated in the making. Alongside its colourful siblings, "Béance" envelops and contains, hanging loosely between painting and sculpture.