On through February 25, 2007.

From the catalogue: “In an essay on Michaelangelo Antonioni’s film Zabriskie Point, Diedrich Diedrichsen considers incoherence as a utopian strategy against the rationalizing forces of bureaucracy and consumer society. He calls this “psychedelic critique.”

Curator NEIL CAMPBELL has divided the show into three parts. The first is a survey of Vancouver painting from the 1960’s, 70’s and 80s. We loved the salon-style hanging:

Says Campbell: “When students investigate painting in our art schools, they’re usually looking elsewhere for their references – to New York or Berlin or London. They could use more occasions to become familiar with what’s been made locally.”

Next were two featured artists, PETER SCHUYFF and JESSICA STOCKHOLDER, “two artists with local roots who went abroad in the 1980s to build acclaimed international careers”, says the exhibition catalogue.

STOCKHOLDER’S sculpture-slash-painting was the best thing in the show:

Image: miandn.com

Read more on Stockholder’s work HERE.

In the catalogue, Stockholder says of her work:

“I love the illusionistic space of painting…I’ve taken the picture plane, a place of flat illusion, and moved it into space, which is where sculpture occurs….It’s an exploration of experience and a creation of certain kinds of experience; it’s experimental and unfolds. It’s not an illustration of theory. (An overemphasis of theory) undermines the strength of visual art….The collision of the controlled and the random is at the heart of what I make.”

More Stockholder:

Image: kopenhagen.dk

Image: jessicastockholder.coe.uh.edu

A TIP FROM PETER SCHUYFF:

Image: thing.net

In conversation with Michael Morris on the importance of good studio practice:

“i suppose the point i was trying to make was there there’s no amount of theory that will let (a painter) get away with insufficient respect for the practice of painting. (The painter) told us that she doesn’t care about such petty issues and i told her that it shows. i suggested that studio habits, good ones, are the only vehicle that will convince me that (the painter) means to make the marks that she’s making. and, for that matter, that it’s worth my while to look at them.”

Next in the exhibition, the work of seven young Vancouver painters are featured, each with a room of their own.

We liked MATTHEW BROWN’s fictional (partly computer-generated) portraits:

Image: canadianart.ca

ARABELLA CAMPBELL makes work about the practice of painting, in a minimalist vein. Her works incorporates the canvas and stretcher into spare, pale work.

TIM GARDINER’s photorealist paintings capture the minute shifts in focus that often occur in casual photography.

HOLGER KALBERG:

Image: monteclarkgallery.com

ELIZABETH MCINTOSH:

Image: auction.rubyarts.org

CHARLIE ROBERTS:

We loved a rough-hewn wooden sculpture by Roberts:

but it was unfortunately hidden around the corner from his painting:

Image: richardhellergallery.com

and ETIENNE ZACK:

Image:akimbo.biz

Interesting and little-known Canadian art Fact #5:

In January 1963, the influential art critic Clement Greenberg

Image: artinfo.ru

wrote from New York to Ken Lochhead, head of Regina’s College of Art, to tell him that “David Smith has told me he’s willing to do an 18 foot-piece for the SPC building at cost - because it’s a socialist enterprise!”

David Smith, the subject of a 1957 retrospective at New York’s MoMA, was considered by many to be the most influential American sculptore of the 20th century. Smith was to American sculpture what Jackson Pollock was to American painting - a big deal - and he, along with a number of prominent American artists of the period, knew about the political and cultural developments taking place in Saskatchewan.

A selection committee visited Smith’s studio in Bolton Landing, New York, and chose Cubi XII.

Image: bluffton.edu

The final arrangements were put on hold by SaskPower general manager David Cass-Beggs, who was
concerned that buying a large piece of American abstract sculpture - even from a major artist at a bargain price - might become an election issue. After the 1964 election…the arrangement for Cubi XII fell apart.

The following year, Savid Smith died in a car crash. Cubi XII, which could have been purchased for $15,000, entered the collection of Washinton’s Hirshhorn Museum. In November 2005, a Smith sculpture from the same series, Cubi XXVIII, set a record for post WW2 art, selling at auction for $23.8 million U.S.

The above is taken from Smithless, by Mark Wihak in Reginas Secret Spaces, edited by Lorne Beug, Anne Campbell, Jeannie Mah.