Thursday, April 30, 2015
Wednesday, April 1, 2015
ESSAY: An Exhibition Essay on Kyle Beal's Exhibition
“Jokes are products of human ingenuity that at their driest and most refined, fall within the domain of art. Yet many people – even people blessed with a rich sense of humour – loathe them.” [1]
Kyle Beal’s exhibition Roulette is an installation that asks the viewer to explore a hallway lined with doors; to literally linger in a passageway. In the 1967 film Playtime Jacques Tati creates a humorous critique on modernity as the film follows two separate characters throughout a thoroughly modern Paris continuously absorbed by the sites, sounds, and gadgetry of the large metropolis. Throughout the film we can’t help but find humour in the discombobulating and angst Mosieur Hulot (played by Tati himself) experiences as he goes about his day. The female protagonist, an insouciant American tourist who haphazardly discovers Paris on her own terms, contrasts this. The two main characters’ days overlap throughout the film juxtaposing playfulness and disorientation. Beal’s hallway of doors reminds us of the ‘fun house’ and the disorientating yet playful interventions it flaunts. Like Tati – Beal draws on simple oddities of modernity and the unsuspecting disorientations we experience and discover as we move through space and time. Once inside the hallway we are surrounded with multiple closed doors - each having their own function giving us a curious but sublime feeling of alienation.
Beauty can be far too limiting as a term for an art object, so we instead look at the object’s aesthetic value. An object like Beal’s hallway is interactive and the observer transitions into an active aesthetic engagement. Our experience within the hallway is characterized by the condition that we do not ask anything of the hallway itself but take pleasure in the contemplation of the playfulness it boasts.
In the video Poke in the Eye/Nose/Ear (1994) by Bruce Nauman (USA) the artist presents us with a very detailed and closely cropped image of an eye, a nose, and an ear to be interpreted at face value (pun intended). Each considered image of the artist as a disembodied subject spotlights the individual act of a self-inflicted literal poke in the face. Nauman’s intent for the viewer accentuates the unusual situation as the art, instead of a more traditional product as the art, giving the experience as a whole more importance than the individual actions taking place on screen. In Beal’s exhibition Roulette we too are looking at art as an activity and less as a product. By creating the physical hallway this object’s function becomes less about its literal properties; instead being the experience the viewer has deciphering its purpose. The contrast between sense and nonsense becomes significant with the humorous artefact we are left with from this experience.
Freud theorized that a nonsensical joke references the time of our childhood – when our innocence didn’t need humour to feel happy. In contrast laughter can too relate to hopelessness, frustration, and more specifically alienation. When we run out of emotions to express our feelings laughter is often the bodies last form of expression. A frustrated laugh is a lot different than the innocent laughter of a child. The importance of humour as a coping mechanism for these themes is illustrated in the discoveries behind each of the doors. These physical objects are recognizable comedic tropes that take a slapstick approach into finding place in the zeitgeist of innovation. Which one should we open, and what awaits us on the other side?
As we hurtle through time, modern design and technologies attempt to bring us closer together making it easier for personal connections, repairing a social fabric while at the same time unraveling it. Feelings of alienation have never been so prominent and unsuspecting. There is nothing funny about this except that it can be made funny. “Jokes are a medium for fantasizing about what must be avoided in reality, a way of laughing off our cruel, irrational, and aggressive instincts.” [2] Looking back at the mishaps of our failures a sense of humour brings light to these dark places. ☺
“You Are the Clown who put the ugh in Laughter” – Richard Wilbur
Essay by Jeremy Pavka
----------------------------------
[1] Holt, Jim. Stop Me If You've Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes. New York: W.W Norton, 2008. 125. Print
[2] Holt, Jim. Stop Me If You've Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes. New York: W.W Norton, 2008. 41. Print
Kyle Beal’s exhibition Roulette is an installation that asks the viewer to explore a hallway lined with doors; to literally linger in a passageway. In the 1967 film Playtime Jacques Tati creates a humorous critique on modernity as the film follows two separate characters throughout a thoroughly modern Paris continuously absorbed by the sites, sounds, and gadgetry of the large metropolis. Throughout the film we can’t help but find humour in the discombobulating and angst Mosieur Hulot (played by Tati himself) experiences as he goes about his day. The female protagonist, an insouciant American tourist who haphazardly discovers Paris on her own terms, contrasts this. The two main characters’ days overlap throughout the film juxtaposing playfulness and disorientation. Beal’s hallway of doors reminds us of the ‘fun house’ and the disorientating yet playful interventions it flaunts. Like Tati – Beal draws on simple oddities of modernity and the unsuspecting disorientations we experience and discover as we move through space and time. Once inside the hallway we are surrounded with multiple closed doors - each having their own function giving us a curious but sublime feeling of alienation.
Beauty can be far too limiting as a term for an art object, so we instead look at the object’s aesthetic value. An object like Beal’s hallway is interactive and the observer transitions into an active aesthetic engagement. Our experience within the hallway is characterized by the condition that we do not ask anything of the hallway itself but take pleasure in the contemplation of the playfulness it boasts.
In the video Poke in the Eye/Nose/Ear (1994) by Bruce Nauman (USA) the artist presents us with a very detailed and closely cropped image of an eye, a nose, and an ear to be interpreted at face value (pun intended). Each considered image of the artist as a disembodied subject spotlights the individual act of a self-inflicted literal poke in the face. Nauman’s intent for the viewer accentuates the unusual situation as the art, instead of a more traditional product as the art, giving the experience as a whole more importance than the individual actions taking place on screen. In Beal’s exhibition Roulette we too are looking at art as an activity and less as a product. By creating the physical hallway this object’s function becomes less about its literal properties; instead being the experience the viewer has deciphering its purpose. The contrast between sense and nonsense becomes significant with the humorous artefact we are left with from this experience.
Freud theorized that a nonsensical joke references the time of our childhood – when our innocence didn’t need humour to feel happy. In contrast laughter can too relate to hopelessness, frustration, and more specifically alienation. When we run out of emotions to express our feelings laughter is often the bodies last form of expression. A frustrated laugh is a lot different than the innocent laughter of a child. The importance of humour as a coping mechanism for these themes is illustrated in the discoveries behind each of the doors. These physical objects are recognizable comedic tropes that take a slapstick approach into finding place in the zeitgeist of innovation. Which one should we open, and what awaits us on the other side?
As we hurtle through time, modern design and technologies attempt to bring us closer together making it easier for personal connections, repairing a social fabric while at the same time unraveling it. Feelings of alienation have never been so prominent and unsuspecting. There is nothing funny about this except that it can be made funny. “Jokes are a medium for fantasizing about what must be avoided in reality, a way of laughing off our cruel, irrational, and aggressive instincts.” [2] Looking back at the mishaps of our failures a sense of humour brings light to these dark places. ☺
“You Are the Clown who put the ugh in Laughter” – Richard Wilbur
Essay by Jeremy Pavka
----------------------------------
[1] Holt, Jim. Stop Me If You've Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes. New York: W.W Norton, 2008. 125. Print
[2] Holt, Jim. Stop Me If You've Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes. New York: W.W Norton, 2008. 41. Print
Tuesday, March 24, 2015
DOCUMENTATION: The Artist in Her Studio
Documentation from Carlin Brown's The Artist in Her Studio in TRUCK's +15 Project Window at Arts Commons
Friday, February 20, 2015
Saturday, February 7, 2015
U-Hall: The Urban Canada Foto Kollective
Urban Canada Foto Kollective's Wild Life:
The Urban Canada Foto Kollective (UCFK) are photographers who are interested in the cityscape, the ebb and flow of life on the street, and the ways people affect their environment. UCFK aims to make photography more present in Calgary, and continue a critical dialogue about image making and urban life.
In past exhibitions, UCFK has examined themes dealing with the connections and disconnections of urban living a simultaneous yearning for wild nature amidst vain attempts to civilize it. With Wild Life, UCFK have turned their attention to the animals in our urban environment.
In this exhibition Angela Inglis’ photographs are a continuation of her practice of documenting urban scenes captured with a point and shoot approach while travelling through London, San Diego and on home turf, Calgary. This time her images bear witness to the undulating movement of seagulls and pigeons as they rise and fall for bread crumbs and cheezies; winter geese nestled in an industrialized area of the Elbow River; and a sombre encounter with a woodland creature provides a comic yet endearing glimpse into a
moment in time.
Melody Jacobson’s photographs also come from travels to Spain, London and in her new hometown of Vancouver. The subjects in her photos are pensive and watchful, peering at the viewer like the crow on the wire, or the girl in the street scene in Barcelona. The puppy in this photo looks content with her sleeping master, however, the pity on the skateboarding boy’s face speaks volumes to the uneasiness society has with nonconforming behaviours, such as the men sleeping in the street. Her photos also highlight the animal nature of humans, with office workers sitting by the Thames River in London on their lunch hour, by juxtaposing a similar scene with ducks resting by a swimming pool closed for winter. The photos are printed on Canadian birchwood, further merging themes of nature with street photography.
Cat Schick’s contribution to this exhibition is different from what she’s done before in that it is more than straight photography. Her pieces are 11x14” color photographs with images of animals cut out of them, combining the street art vernacular of stencil with the medium of photography. The animals chosen are all those who live or have lived on the prairies and are literally cut out of or removed from the city landscape – those that were here before us and have adapted to the urban environment (rattlesnake, bat, hare, bird) and those who have been driven further and further away, only to be challenged and possibly killed when venturing back into the city (cougar, moose, deer). The buffalo has not been seen on the prairies for many decades and is slowly being reintroduced back into national parks in some provinces. The work aims to question our relationship to animals and our ability to share the environment with other beings. As a collective of female photographers observing our urban environment, UCFK consciously creates images to remind us of the subtle power of nature. The images examine the durability and fragility of these moments, when the city noise quiets and we’re struck by the beauty of an image of nature: where we came from and where we’re going all in the same moment.
Cat Schick’s contribution to this exhibition is different from what she’s done before in that it is more than straight photography. Her pieces are 11x14” color photographs with images of animals cut out of them, combining the street art vernacular of stencil with the medium of photography. The animals chosen are all those who live or have lived on the prairies and are literally cut out of or removed from the city landscape – those that were here before us and have adapted to the urban environment (rattlesnake, bat, hare, bird) and those who have been driven further and further away, only to be challenged and possibly killed when venturing back into the city (cougar, moose, deer). The buffalo has not been seen on the prairies for many decades and is slowly being reintroduced back into national parks in some provinces. The work aims to question our relationship to animals and our ability to share the environment with other beings. As a collective of female photographers observing our urban environment, UCFK consciously creates images to remind us of the subtle power of nature. The images examine the durability and fragility of these moments, when the city noise quiets and we’re struck by the beauty of an image of nature: where we came from and where we’re going all in the same moment.
UCFK is Angela Inglis, Melody Jacobson, and Cat Schick, who have been working together as a collective since 2009. Street photography is our focus, and we have exhibited in Hot Wax Records, Brulee Bakery, Sugar Shack, the Sugar Cube, and the EPCOR Centre and Untitled Art Society +15 window galleries. Explore more of our works at: ucfk.wordpress.com
Tuesday, January 27, 2015
DOCUMENTATION: Marvels of the Ages
Documentation of Robyn Moody & Denton Fredrickson's Marvels of the Ages Calling Forth Lost Spirits of Information
Tuesday, January 13, 2015
ESSAY: Marvels of the Ages
Gentle Reader,
I look forward to Marvels of the Ages Calling Forth Lost Spirits of Information at Truck. Last summer, I saw the bodies of the main characters, the player pianos, eviscerated on Robyn Moody’s back lawn. Since then, I’ve studied the on-line clip of the first performance on the pedestrian courtyard outside the Sunalta Transit Station in September 2013. That was shortly before the tercentenary of the birthday of French philosopher and writer, Denis Diderot, whose seminal encyclopedia informs the nerve centre of the project.
Intrigued, I sought out the collaborators, Robyn Moody and Denton Fredrickson, to talk about the ideas and the making of the work as they finish preparations for the next stage. The germ of the idea for this piece began as Robyn bought a musical scroll for a player piano in Oxford, and realized he had no way of knowing what it contains.
The installation promises to be smart, magical and wondrously wrought. I will enjoy decoding, but expect that even close observation won’t reveal all. Information will not equal knowledge. I imagine it will gnaw and ultimately haunt me.
Let’s pretend I am one of the first visitors. It is humid as I enter the greenhouse structure where the Oriental rug and two turn-of-the- century player pianos reinforce my sense of a Victorian parlour. Are the pianos on a form of life support, their original bellows replaced with tubing and mechanical vacuum-forming apparatus? Each is hooked up to an overhanging grid of lights.
As single squares light up, a letter or number appears below, a key of the piano moves, a note sounds. Both pianos play, tentatively at first. With effort, they speed up, seemingly anxious to communicate. I believe I can discern a chord or a phrase, a bit of coherent musical language and a sequence of letters that forms a word. Beneath their notes, I hear muffled wheezing sounds that carry the rhythm of human speech.
Perhaps these elders have already crossed to the other side, and I am in the midst of a séance, an attempt to communicate with and through a bygone information delivery system? Mist descends from the ceiling and wraithlike images from all branches of human study appear and disappear – illustrations, diagrams, works of art. Bolstered by the recognition of images, I try to make sense of the spectral sights and sounds, hoping for a clearer understanding, but they exhaust themselves and return to silence.
I look for connections. Is there a clue in the numbers: 88 keys on the piano, 101 keys on a keyboard? What generates the sequence of letters and numbers? I learn that one piano channels Diderot’s Encyclopedia, completed in 1772, and the other Wikipedia, launched in 2001, both built on the philosophy that access to information can help to build knowledge and benefit all.
From Denton Fredrickson, I learn that University of Lethbridge students selected the text. Acting as the medium behind the curtain, they followed their interests in the encyclopedia and hyperlinks in Wikipedia. They themselves operate at a turning point in the mechanics of reading, presumably still literate as “long form text” readers, and certainly fluent in hypertext. I recall a story from the head of Archives at the Glenbow Museum. When he showed letters from soldiers at the front in WWI to university students in Calgary one recognized the object as a letter, but was unable to read the cursive writing. It’s not taught in school anymore.
From Robyn Moody I learned that when phonographs, the new marvel of the day, replaced player pianos, many of the grand old instruments were burned for firewood. If Y2K made me aware of how dependent we are on computer technology, I believe the slow leak of information loss as technologies become obsolete is now a more insidious danger.
Sincerely yours,
Katherine Ylitalo Calgary, December 2014
About the Writer:
Katherine Ylitalois an independent curator, writer, garden historian, horticulturalist and educator based in Calgary with extensive experience as a museum professional in Canada. Her most recent project, “Made in Calgary, 2000’s,” was the final chapter in the Glenbow Museum 5-part series celebrating the artists of this city. “Made in Calgary, 2000’s” took the form of two sister exhibitions held at the Glenbow Museum and the Nickle Galleries at the University of Calgary in fall, 2014.
Ylitalo earned her Bachelor’s and Master of Arts Degrees from Stanford University in California in fine arts and education. She taught at Chemeketa College, St. Lawrence College, the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and the University of Regina and worked as a ceramic artist in Ontario, Nova Scotia, Oregon and Saskatchewan before making Alberta her home in 1986. In Calgary, she worked as a curator of contemporary art at the Glenbow Museum and the Nickle Arts Museum and taught at the Alberta College of Art and Design, Mt. Royal College and the University of Calgary. She has been involved in curatorial projects at several galleries across the country including the Art Gallery of Peterborough and the Walter Phillips Gallery.
I look forward to Marvels of the Ages Calling Forth Lost Spirits of Information at Truck. Last summer, I saw the bodies of the main characters, the player pianos, eviscerated on Robyn Moody’s back lawn. Since then, I’ve studied the on-line clip of the first performance on the pedestrian courtyard outside the Sunalta Transit Station in September 2013. That was shortly before the tercentenary of the birthday of French philosopher and writer, Denis Diderot, whose seminal encyclopedia informs the nerve centre of the project.
Intrigued, I sought out the collaborators, Robyn Moody and Denton Fredrickson, to talk about the ideas and the making of the work as they finish preparations for the next stage. The germ of the idea for this piece began as Robyn bought a musical scroll for a player piano in Oxford, and realized he had no way of knowing what it contains.
The installation promises to be smart, magical and wondrously wrought. I will enjoy decoding, but expect that even close observation won’t reveal all. Information will not equal knowledge. I imagine it will gnaw and ultimately haunt me.
Let’s pretend I am one of the first visitors. It is humid as I enter the greenhouse structure where the Oriental rug and two turn-of-the- century player pianos reinforce my sense of a Victorian parlour. Are the pianos on a form of life support, their original bellows replaced with tubing and mechanical vacuum-forming apparatus? Each is hooked up to an overhanging grid of lights.
As single squares light up, a letter or number appears below, a key of the piano moves, a note sounds. Both pianos play, tentatively at first. With effort, they speed up, seemingly anxious to communicate. I believe I can discern a chord or a phrase, a bit of coherent musical language and a sequence of letters that forms a word. Beneath their notes, I hear muffled wheezing sounds that carry the rhythm of human speech.
Perhaps these elders have already crossed to the other side, and I am in the midst of a séance, an attempt to communicate with and through a bygone information delivery system? Mist descends from the ceiling and wraithlike images from all branches of human study appear and disappear – illustrations, diagrams, works of art. Bolstered by the recognition of images, I try to make sense of the spectral sights and sounds, hoping for a clearer understanding, but they exhaust themselves and return to silence.
I look for connections. Is there a clue in the numbers: 88 keys on the piano, 101 keys on a keyboard? What generates the sequence of letters and numbers? I learn that one piano channels Diderot’s Encyclopedia, completed in 1772, and the other Wikipedia, launched in 2001, both built on the philosophy that access to information can help to build knowledge and benefit all.
From Denton Fredrickson, I learn that University of Lethbridge students selected the text. Acting as the medium behind the curtain, they followed their interests in the encyclopedia and hyperlinks in Wikipedia. They themselves operate at a turning point in the mechanics of reading, presumably still literate as “long form text” readers, and certainly fluent in hypertext. I recall a story from the head of Archives at the Glenbow Museum. When he showed letters from soldiers at the front in WWI to university students in Calgary one recognized the object as a letter, but was unable to read the cursive writing. It’s not taught in school anymore.
From Robyn Moody I learned that when phonographs, the new marvel of the day, replaced player pianos, many of the grand old instruments were burned for firewood. If Y2K made me aware of how dependent we are on computer technology, I believe the slow leak of information loss as technologies become obsolete is now a more insidious danger.
Sincerely yours,
Katherine Ylitalo Calgary, December 2014
About the Writer:
Katherine Ylitalois an independent curator, writer, garden historian, horticulturalist and educator based in Calgary with extensive experience as a museum professional in Canada. Her most recent project, “Made in Calgary, 2000’s,” was the final chapter in the Glenbow Museum 5-part series celebrating the artists of this city. “Made in Calgary, 2000’s” took the form of two sister exhibitions held at the Glenbow Museum and the Nickle Galleries at the University of Calgary in fall, 2014.
Ylitalo earned her Bachelor’s and Master of Arts Degrees from Stanford University in California in fine arts and education. She taught at Chemeketa College, St. Lawrence College, the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and the University of Regina and worked as a ceramic artist in Ontario, Nova Scotia, Oregon and Saskatchewan before making Alberta her home in 1986. In Calgary, she worked as a curator of contemporary art at the Glenbow Museum and the Nickle Arts Museum and taught at the Alberta College of Art and Design, Mt. Royal College and the University of Calgary. She has been involved in curatorial projects at several galleries across the country including the Art Gallery of Peterborough and the Walter Phillips Gallery.
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