Poets, Locks, Cages

Parviz Tanavoli was born in Tehran, Iran in 1937. He received an excellent education at home and later in Italy, from which he returned to co-found an art movement, teach, stoke an international art career, then, in 1989, Iran's greatest living modern artist and now dual Canadian citizen began splitting his time between Iran and West Vancouver -- but the Lower Mainland's largest public art gallery never opened its doors to him, until now. 

So the questions remains ... or is it two questions: Why did the Vancouver Art Gallery wait so long? and Just how much does the VAG need Persian/Irani community support if it is going to move into that purpose-built mall known as the Chan Centre for the Arts?

And the work? Well, the work is not what I expected, but it's not unfamiliar, either. Drawing, painting and sculpture. Pictured up top is a more recent sculpture of one of the artist's more enduring motifs, the kind of work one makes when one feels they have secured a place for themselves as a 20th century modern and feel confident enough -- or arrogant enough -- to enter into self-parody. "Look at me," this bird chirps. "I am free to be as a please."

Here is that caged bird in an earlier, more traditional iteration:

And here is the cage or gridded grill in a painting that brings to mind Philip Gaston:

Now here is the artist channeling Jasper Johns:

Rather than share with you my pictures of the floor sculptures, I urge you to see the show. It's worth seeing. But read its first didactics. Tavanoli believes the cage is not an oppressive device (or symbol), but one of freedom -- the cage being a protector of the heart (of the poet?). I would have liked to have seen more on locks, but we see ample evidence of locks in the keys commonly used to pick them. Skeleton keys these keys are called. Are they still called that? Still? For Tavanoli, a key is a stylus, the tip of a brush. With every constraint, a liberty.

"Invest in OUR children NOW. They are the future."

On Thursday B.C.'s provincial government pledged another $50M to the Vancouver Art Gallery's capital campaign, making the combined provincial contribution $100M, matching the federal government's contribution.

The VAG is now $80M short of its $400M target to build a mall five blocks east, to be called the Chan Centre for the Visual Arts, which the Chan Family got for their $40M contribution (the Chan Family also has its name on UBC's Chan Centre for the Performing Arts). Not clear whether the VAG will be the property manager of this mall, or one of its tenants.

Philanthropist Michael Audain, for his part, followed the Chan pledge with $100M. Audain has at least three other galleries named after him (one at UBC, one at SFU and one at Whistler). Naming the mall the Audain Centre for the Visual Arts would only create a Groundhog Day effect for residents and tourists alike, so we have Michael to thank for keeping his name off of it.

The current VAG site was demarcated for cultural use after the B.C. Provincial Courthouse moved across Robson Street in the early 1980s. Once the VAG leaves, a new cultural institution will take its place. It was always assumed by the people who pay attention to these things that the Vancouver Museum would takes its place, given its current cramped quarters at Vanier Park, but that remains to be seen.

What can be seen is a growing installation (now protected by fencing) memorializing the recently discovered unmarked graves at Canada's former residential schools. I expect this inverse-Alamo memorial will continue to grow and a case will be made for it to reside indoors and throughout the building. Either way, the future of this site could well be a contested one, animated by shaking fists and tiptoeing politicians. 

Footsteps at an Exhibition

We visited the VAG's Imitation Game: Visual Culture in the Age of Artificial Intelligence exhibition earlier this week. Those who were there to learn something likely did, certainly on the topic of artificial intelligence and its myriad uses and abuses. As for those keen on seeing some art, the Kids Take Over exhibition had works from old school analogue types Michael Morris (b.1942), Gathie Falk (b. 1928) and Audrey Capel Doray (b.1931). Also included are three works with "Redacted" in their titles, by Chantal Gibson.

What distinguishes Gibson's redactions from the many artists, writers and public and private administrators working in this vein is that we don't see the redactions so much as the material used to make them (the titles tell us what we are looking at). The material in this instance is more ink than the book itself agreed to for publication (though Gibson cast liquid rubber in that role, to give the "ink" greater resonance). The book is expelling the excess ink, as if the book was made by its author and the author no like it. But books are generally made by publishers, busineses that assume the risk in making them and, if that risk pays off, profit at a greater rate than their authors.   

One of the great works of the 20th century is Robert Morris's Box With the Sound of Its Own Making (1961). Unlike Gibson's entitled redactions, where seeing is believing, Morris's self-mythologizing sculpture asks that we be there to hear, both literally and humorously, what it makes of itself.

Cheryl Siegel's Seasonal Tree

Former Vancouver Art Gallery librarian Cheryl Siegel was very helpful to me when I was researching Vancouver art and literature of the 60s, 70s and 80s, particularly written correspondence between VAG curators and artists. For those with historical imaginations who want to know why Jeff Wall did not participate in the VAG's 1983 re-opening Vancouver Art & Artists exhibition at the gallery's new location (the former Provincial Courthouse), book an appointment and ask to see his and Scott Watson's letters.

Cheryl is also the force behind what she calls a "seasonal tree" (above) made entirely of surplus books pulled for recycling. Before every Chanukah, Cheryl would set up the tree on a piece of red cloth on the reading table to the left of her desk (her left). I watched once as some potential donors were being toured through the gallery. When they saw the tree they fell silent and gathered to sit with it. I looked over at Cheryl, head down, working away. Just the faintest trace of a smile.

All the best to you and your family over the holidays, Cheryl!

New Directions in Contemporary Art

It had been six months since I last visited the Vancouver Art Galley, but I was there a couple weeks ago and saw the collection show and the Second Vancouver Special Triennial, now five years removed from its founding.

Like its first iteration, the VAG is once more the adult in the room when it comes to curation. Former VAG Chief Curator Daina Auguitus represented the gallery for the First Vancouver Special Triennial, when it teamed up with 221A's Head of Strategy Jessie McKee; this time it was the VAG's soon-to-retire Grant Arnold who was charged with saying yes, no or maybe to four relatively inexperienced curators pulled tight to cover all corners of our current moment.

A couple of nice inclusions (Charles Campbell's free-standing tree had great presence and energy, perhaps more so without the dimly-lit, yet gorgeously coloured, drawings surrounding it), but overall an exhibition that suffered from the VAG's usual tendency to deck the halls with too much artwork, a diffident gesture that some see as the gallery's only "argument" for a new and larger building.

And what of this new building? Is it even worth talking about anymore? Remember: this will not be the "purpose-built, stand alone, iconic building" former director Kathleen Bartels held out for but space in a mall known as the Chan Centre for the Visual Arts. Last I heard the CCVA would be built to budget, and that the gallery was awaiting $100 million from the federal government. In the meantime, curatorial salaries have been cut by 20-40%. No amount of subtraction will ever be enough to move the gallery to its new location, but the VAG must be seen to be trying.

Cheryl Siegel's Seasonal Tree

For years former Vancouver Art Gallery librarian Cheryl Siegel displayed a "seasonal tree" she made from certain books in the Gallery's collection. Not sure if this practice continues, but it would be nice to see it outside the confines of the VAG library, where more of us can enjoy it. Maybe when the VAG rebuilds itself.

Wishing you the best over the holidays, Cheryl!

Curator on the Move

"You are probably used to seeing mimes standing in various places making performances. This is an artist [Christian Jankowsi] who decided to make those mimes solid. So these are bronze. People were fooled by them and would go up to them and tap on them to see if they were actually real mimes or fake mimes or leave money for them, these performers, but these performers were actually bronze cast. Here we have Che Guevara, Caesar and the blue woman is from a Dalí painting."

Settlement

My respect for the Vancouver Art Gallery staff who stood for what they believe in -- many of whom caught colds in the process! Hopefully this latest settlement will mark a positive shift in labour relations at this notoriously stressful workplace.

Membership Has Its Differences

Vancouver Art Gallery Associate Director/Chief Curator Rochelle Steiner began her current position on June 1, 2018. As a member of the VAG I was looking forward to finally hearing something/anything from Ms. Steiner at the VAG's November 7th 5:30pm Annual General Meeting, but she is speaking at another 5:30pm members-only event that night, a membership I am not a part of -- the Globe and Mail newspaper.

Mattie Gunterman

The VAG's Dialogue with Emily Carr is an on-going program that has the paintings of Carr (1871-1945) displayed with another artist or artists, living or dead. The current "pairing" of Carr and Mattie Gunterman (1872-1945) is my introduction to the photographic adventures (adventures in photography?) of this Wisconsin-born, Kootenay-based artist.

Public Forum

At last Saturday's Ambivalent Pleasures forum co-curator Daina Augaitis introduced the exhibition's three curatorial rings -- Surrealism, Abstraction and Conceptualism -- while co-curator Jesse McKee provided the caulking -- introducing the panelists, offering commentary and concluding with a passage from Walter Frisch (?) on "ambivalent" modernism.

What was learned? Well, I learned that people can attempt to proceed surrealistically (obliquely) without supplying a definition of Surrealism, when asked for one, and that because art history is fraught (patriarchal, bourgeois, Eurocentric), definitions are therefore moot and unfriendable. (The difference between growing up with punk as a social expression in the 1970s and seeing it "break" as a retail category in the 1990s.)

I learned also that abstraction is not necessarily a sanctuary for diffidents (abstraction has it that I can make nouns out of adjectives), but, in the hands of those who care enough to get it down as exposition, can result in thoughtful and generative essay presentations.

Finally, I learned that conceptualism can be refused by those who have been thrown into its ring, and of that ring, have it reorganized and renamed to reflect not an artistic style but a critical pedagogy.

Vancouver Special: Ambivalent Pleasures

For years I knew of Alison Yip as a gallery artist who drew and painted scenes that appeared less like they were entered through her own experiences than received at a distance through her or someone else's camera. Then recently I found myself on the ground floor of the Vancouver Art Gallery where, through the application of lattice wallpaper, Yip has transformed an interior architectural space (the rotunda) into a pre-fab exterior one (a gazebo). In the framed alcoves protected from this at-times broken motif, a series of painting experiments that look like they were conducted by À rebours (1884) anti-hero Jean Des Esseintes, après Bouvard et Pécuchet.

A Symbolist intro if ever there was one. Not that any of the younger artists in Vancouver Special: Ambivalent Pleasures have the means to finance a Des Esseintian retreat towards refinement and, ultimately, spiritual transcendence. To think as much would be dreaming.

I don't have too much to say about Vancouver Special: Ambivalent Pleasures, apart from its unfortunate collapse as I turned the corner into the first big room (I travelled the exhibition clock-wise). All that dreamy interior stuff (Tamara Henderson, Maya Beaudry, Derya Akay) -- only to be met by the work of four artists whose objects were not so much arranged to any generative effect by the curators but left to approximate the discomfort of a high school detention, where the detainees did nothing other than submit to an uninspired -- or indeed ambivalent -- presentation of their work.

Seems the smaller the exhibition space, the more Vancouver Special: Ambivalent Pleasures resonates as something from or of here. A material-experiential room that includes the work of Anne Low and Michael Drebert. Garry Neill Kennedy's re-mount of a mid-1980s Or exhibition. And my favourite, Julian Hou's old man SRO EDM crib, with the north wall removed to reveal a construction site on grounds that belong to a province whose current government, under the influence of its biggest fundraiser, is doing what it can to un-support the VAG's attempt to finance a new building. Like the broken holes in Yip's lattice pattern, Hou's room (and its view) is a window to a city as it always has been and, if things continue, always will be.

Myfanwy MacLeod

Another exhibition worth visiting is Myfanwy MacLeod, or There and Back Again at the Vancouver Art Gallery. Most remarkable about this exhibition is its blend of the artist's work over the past 18 years with works MacLeod and curator Grant Arnold selected from the gallery's collection.

On Wallace

Tonight at 7:30 p.m. artist Dana Claxton and I will be at the VAG for a walk-and-talk on the work of Ian Wallace (Dana on Wallace's "Cinematic" works, me on "Text"). For those interested I reviewed Wallace's exhibition for Canadian Art's online platform.