Making It Like a Man! Mackenzie Art Gallery 2004 Making it Like a Man! is an exhibition of contemporary art made by men about masculinity. It is not just a show of men's art--there has been plenty of that, for centuries. Rather, it is a collection of self-conscious reflections on being a man. The show calls attention to masculine modes of art production. It invites viewers to consider these objects as both the work of individual artists and as expressions of more general patterns of masculinity. ......................................READ FULL TEXT
Transcendent Squares Rosemont Art Gallery
A horizontal band of blurry, dark and light blue hovers at eye level against the gallery wall. The room and viewer are reflected in its shiny surface like shifting aquatic forms. Because the pigment is suspended in thin veils of rhoplex, the solid rectangle ( 5.5 x 5.5 x 60 inches) looks more paint than panel, more painting than sculpture. The surface has depth. Slender strata of translucent, nebulous water: infinity in a millimeter. And, in the cobalt, teal and anthraquinone shallows, lurk dusky forms that interfere with reflection. The subtle colour and tonal shifts read not only as paint, but also as an abstraction from a blurred photograph. The possibility that the unfocussed shapes nearly rhyme with what it reflects creates a curious play between plane, depth and representation. This dark mirror seems to both record and shape the scene. The eye moves from cloudy mobile pictures to smooth skin and through to creamy to inky space and back again. Such a meditation destabilizes the painting and our selves. Marie Lannoo is a perceptualist. She plays with our visual expectations. ......................................READ FULL TEXT
Sophisticated Folk Rosemont Art Gallery Sophisticated Folk is an oxymoron. But the two gentlemen in this exhibition, Michel Boutin (Prince Albert, SK) and ManWoman (Cranbrook, BC) are just that, sophisticated folk who make sophisticated folk art! Like much folk art, their paintings employ a flat, 'graphic' style, bright colours, and present content in a didactic manner that stimulates your eye, mind and heart. And they take on the big existential themes favoured by the greatest folk artists: the Bible and religion, sex and death, love and hate, temptation and hope for redemption. They use direct and popular methods to relate these complex realities and experiences. ......................................READ FULL TEXT
David Garneau Associate Professor at The University of Regina
Faculty of Fine Arts, Visual Arts Department.
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RC 245 | (306) 585-5615 | david.garneau@uregina.ca
