#sunshine frere

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Sunshine Frere

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Of Myth and Mortar - The Fabricated City

Artist Kevin Lanthier opened an exhibition at Hot Art Wet City just over a week ago, it has received much attention. This is because the subject of the artist’s project is top of mind for many individuals living and working in this city. The Special covers the spectrum of issues that many Vancouverites are critical of and interested in – all of which are connected to the city’s growth. The speed of development, affordability of housing and the rapidly changing architecture of the city are a few of the key subjects that the work traverses.

Visually, Lanthier’s meticulous photo-montaged series delineates forced perspective streets where groupings of residential or commercial architecture are plotted out sequentially.The entrance of each structure faces the viewer. Each series is categorized, inspired by ideas founded in both fact and fiction. With a strong linearity to them, the imagery would work splendidly as a pop-up book, or as an exquisite set of accordion booklets.

East Van Relics, 40 x 100 inches, chromogenic print, edition of 5

Lanthier created interesting stories by connecting different houses types and styles of architecture together. The series, in many ways, acts as a lexicon for distinct ‘Vancouverisms’ in architecture. The artist also explores these subjects thematically and symbolically, adding in environmental and ambient tropes to further expand the narrative of each composition. For example, his Storybook West Side series features fairytale like homesteads strategically placed in front of a green forest, it also includes a colourful sunset behind the forest that extends into the realm of magical realism.

I caught up with Kevin Lanthier to ask him a few questions about this exhibition and his work.

The Old Entertainment District, 40 x 100 inches, chromogenic print, edition of 5

SF: This exhibition is formulated with the context of cataloging or indexing just as much as it is about myth-making and storytelling. Are you interested in systems of categorization? If yes, does this come up frequently within your work?

Although I hadn’t exactly intended to catalogue Vancouver housing styles, I do understand that there’s an inherent aspect of the delineating and organizing of Vancouver houses within the series. I think in this case it’s more a byproduct of my method of distilling the city into strongly thematic scenes to emphasize how we conceptualize it, rather than a hallmark of my work as a whole.

SF: The writing about each montage series that accompanies this exhibition seems to reflect an observational perspective that is somewhat rose tinted. It is clear that you have thought a great deal about the context of each of these spaces within the collective history of Vancouver. You have also carefully considered the odd juxtaposition of neighbourhoods, buildings, class structures and demographics of this city. I am sure that there has also been a significant amount of research involved. How long have you been working on this project? It feels, in some ways biographical and in others also quite personal. Do you see it as one or the other? or both? If yes, please explain?

I’ve been working on the series for about three years. I suppose I see it as a critical biography of the city, however upbeat in tone, but of course the questions I raise come from my own personal experiences and viewpoint. I think all biographies and documentaries carry the biases of their authors, just as history is written by the victors and even theoretical physics experiments are actually affected by the mere act of observation. Whether it was renting a basement suite or eventually purchasing a condo, my own relationship to real estate in the city was certainly an influence, to give one example.

Vancouver Specials, 40 x 100 inches, chromogenic print, edition of 5

The Cult of the Vancouver Special.

SF: There are several artists who have referenced or completed projects on Vancouver Specials. Keith Higgin’s “How To Look At A Vancouver Special” publication in 2010 and Ken Lum’s “Vancouver Especially”installation in 2015 that comments on the extremes of Vancouver’s economic stratospheres come to mind. The Special has become iconic, it has been used to name a local music compilation album and also title abook featuring stories about Vancouver. Are aspects of your exhibition that transcends the collective history of the special, and take it in a new direction?

The Vancouver Specials themselves were for me more of an entry point, as they already have so much cultural awareness surrounding them, as you point out. I’m not sure what I could say about them in and of themselves that hasn’t already been said by others, and likely better than I could, but I do find it interesting how our feelings and reactions to them compares to other housing styles in the city, starting with what I’ve been calling the “New Vancouver Specials”, which seem to elicit almost no reaction. Why was the original design so hated that bylaws prevented their further construction, but what ultimately replaced them was essentially the same but with a new surface aesthetic? They also don’t have basements, they also feature separate, ground level suites, they’re also clearly designed to fit the city lot footprint and building codes to maximize interior space, and finally, they’re no less pervasive. Driving on any East Van street, you’ll see them everywhere if you look for them. I don’t know the current number of houses in the city with that design, but at one point will there be enough of them and will they be unfashionable enough that they will spark similar awareness and scorn? Will they then, some years later, elicit the same nostalgia? Perhaps it’s all cyclical, and time will tell, but a process of tearing down and rebuilding houses for reasons of fashion seems like a poor expenditure of resources, not to mention a hugely unnecessary creation of waste.

The difference I do see in them, however, is in their purpose. Based on my own experiences looking for a place to live, it seems that with these newer houses the purpose of the layout with the separate suites is that they can be rented for needed monthly income to pay the mortgage for these now million dollar houses, as opposed to the original Vancouver Specials, where the suites were more often utilized for multigenerational families to stay together. Being a coping strategy for a ridiculous and unfortunate market situation just doesn’t elicit the same emotional response as being an affordable solution for incoming families. Beyond the comparison of old and new Specials, though, the design of any group of houses affects how we feel about our neighbourhoods, be it the Victorian houses of Strathcona or the Storybook houses on the west side, they’re all “specials” in their own, seemingly much less heralded, way. Hopefully the exhibition transcends the Special by being about a lot more than solely that type of house.

New Vancouver Specials, 40 x 100 inches, chromogenic print, edition of 5

SF: The notion of ‘special’ is connected to many ideas within this body of work. It is the namesake of the original architectural development and also, the term, when connected to construction, can simultaneously suggest superfluousness and practicality. Over the past 8-10 years, architects have either embraced opportunities to renovate these spaces, or torn them down, as they were deemed to horrendous to update. These homes evoke nostalgia, appreciation and also disgust. Vancouverites seem to enjoy polarizing The Special. Where would you say you fit on this ‘special spectrum’?

I think it’s kind of interesting how there’s a cycle of ironic nostalgia that grows into genuine nostalgia, just as the term was originally derisive in nature and now we have a store on Main Street called Vancouver Special and “taking it back”, so to speak. My view has evolved along those lines with my research of them. Like most people with most things, I was quick to judge them. When you first come to take notice of the house style, what first occurs is that their age and material finish (the stucco and stone veneers) seems outdated and unfashionable, and then of course their cookie-cutter nature makes them undesirable to a degree in and of itself as well. But they are unique to and iconic of our city, so at first I think I shifted to liking them on that somewhat tribal level of “okay, they may be ugly cookie cutter houses, but they’re OUR ugly cookie cutter houses!”

But as soon as you look beyond the superficial, and start to consider the value of their design, in terms of how efficiently they use space, and their history, in how they provided such practical and effective housing for so many people, especially new Canadians, you grow to honestly appreciate them and their legacy. How many people who are making significant contributions of our society today grew up in one of these? To what degree did they allow families, especially multigenerational ones, to afford functional, comfortable houses?

Installation View of The Special

SF: You mentioned that Vancouver is a city has many cliches and myths. Are there other old chestnuts that you hope to crack open and explore in future projects?

Yeah, there are a lot of stories in the history of migration around the city that can be seen in our architecture, I’ve really only scratched the surface. I’m also considering how including other visual elements, like perhaps people and wildlife can add to how the stories are told. To end on a poetic note, can you name three types of emotions you hope visitors will experience when visiting The Special?

If I had to pick and choose, I’d say joy, wonder, and thoughtfulness, in that order.  But, if it’s more like annoyance, incredulity, and disdain, I’m good with that too. I’m thankful for any and all emotions people feel in response to the series, it’s all you hope for when you set out to create anything, I think.

Pennylane Shen curated the exhibition at Hot Art Wet City, she shared her thoughts on the work with VIA earlier last week:

Kevin and I worked closely together on this body of work so I was able to see it fully develop over the past couple years. Fortuitously, the completion of The Special has coincided with some hugely topical issues regarding the price of housing, emigration and the cost of living in Vancouver. I felt the fabricated and fictional element of these crafted yet distinct neighbourhoods spoke to these anxieties and the nostalgia we associate with a city that is rapidly changing, perhaps at a rate it cannot keep up with. I chose the gallery Hot Art Wet City, because it is also very distinctly Vancouver, its audience of a generation that has grown up in a city where they cannot now afford housing. Gallery owner Chris Bentzen and I are both examples of this and working in the arts especially, this body of work resonates deeply with us.

Kevin Lanthier: kevinlanthier.com The Special: hotartwetcity.com An interview with Lanthier: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SXOh12J4_0

This article/interview originally appeared online for Vancouver Is Awesome. (January 2016)

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PHOTOGRAPHS AND FRAGMENTATION

I met with Randy Grskovic about 48 hours after he had arrived in Vancouver from Toronto. He described his first two days back, in what he calls his ‘home city’, as… awesome.

In that short period he had visited more exhibitions than many locals do in a month. Field Contemporary, Gallery Jones, Catriona Jeffries Gallery, Winsor Gallery, Equinox Gallery, the Mashup exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Rennie Collection, and there were probably others as well. This was only the start of Grskovic’s re-immersion into Vancouver’s art-sphere.

Grskovic was back in town to install work that is part of Capture Photography Festival. Capture has taken over nearly all of Vancouver’s exhibition spaces during the month of April. The city is dedicated to photography for the month in a very big way. In our meeting Grskovic discussed his practice and his exhibition at Burrard Arts Foundation. We also chatted about a multitude of other fascinating things. Judging by the energy that he exuded during his interview, there is no doubt that, post-interview and exhibition set-up, Grskovic went on to see another forty exhibitions before he left for Toronto.

Grskovic was an active artist, collaborator and exhibition curator in Vancouver for several years. In 2013, he opted for a change of scenery, job and city and moved to Toronto. So far, so good, he is busy acquiring a new perspective of the Canadian Art scene and immersing himself in darkrooms. His practice has grown and shifted. During our encounter, the many ideas and sensibilities that scatter across his art-making were fascinating to explore as he wove the story of his past into the present.

“I never worked in a darkroom until I moved to Toronto. My practice when I lived in Vancouver was collage. When I went to art school, I already knew how to draw and paint so I ended up taking video art because I wanted to learn a new skill. ‘Young Randy’ thought, if I am paying for school, I might as well be learning a new skill. So I worked a lot with video, then I realized that I really liked working with found imagery… I would build these video sculptures that would play these found images. As I finished school I couldn’t afford to create giant video sculptures, nor did I have the space. Plus student loan payments were coming in. Out of the reality of economy I started making these machines out of paper and also collage works. I was focused on collage work for a long time. But for me, it wasn’t just about the paper, it was also about the publications and their historical context.”

“I worked with magazines like National Geographic or Popular Mechanics, I would cut out machine parts and create these fantastic machines. Then I started thinking beyond that and what does it mean to have a published, printed image. Before an image appears in a publication there is already such a wealth of filters (editors) that it went through, and of course, I also thought about the distribution…I started creating what looked like digital collages based on the replication of the images I was using. It was really interesting, even the printed quality is different between magazine copies, some are more saturated, some have faded. You really notice this when you put them together. Even though they are meant to be identical copies, you see all this variation!”

“I’d also go on Ebay and collect additional editions of different magazines that I wanted more copies of. A lot of this doesn’t show through the work but the process for me is so fascinating. I always hope that people have different access points through the work and then through conversations like this, I can expand on my motivations for making work… As an artist, I don’t think that I make pieces, I hope that I make conversations”.

“Whilst I was looking on Ebay for magazines, I started finding negatives that interested me.” Grskovic enjoyed the contrast between the ubiquitous diffusion of publications versus the personal more intimate presence of these original negatives. Eventually Grskovic’s negative searches led him to glass negatives and into the dark room at Gallery 44 in Toronto. The glass negatives are part of his newest work currently on exhibit at the Burrard Arts Foundation. The exhibition is titled Earth to Earth, Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust.

“In my older paper collage work, I’d scan it and post it on my tumblr. The collage actually looked better on the internet because it became a light box. I think that is a really interesting thing about contemporary art now, people are consuming so much more art through screens as opposed to books. The collage works become personal light box pieces for everyone who finds it. These works were interesting in real life, but they definitely acquired a strong online viewership through their bright online output.”

For Grskovic, the prints he has been working on perfecting in the darkroom were intended to evoke a different effect. Competing with the sexy backlit glow of the digital, he challenged himself to create prints where the analog is more beautiful and seductive than a light box. He may have succeeded, the work at BAF is pretty spectacular.

His selenium toned, monochromatic prints create intense and lush black voids which beguile the viewer. Many works in the show evoke movement through high-low contrast shifts, layering, cuts and breaks. The paper seems reflective and shimmers, it interacts with light sources as the viewer moves from one side of a work to the next.

Grskovic’s art has always been process heavy, these new works are not any different. He is no stranger to spending hours trolling through negatives for sale and tirelessly triaging ‘items to watch’ lists on Ebay. Nor is he afraid to smash a century old original negative and then spend three days, and multiple chemical processes to create a print – only to discover that the process may need to be tweaked, then completely redone should the desired result not be attained.

Through this type of process driven work, meaning and context slowly accumulates. Presentation and editing are key factors, but it is also important to note that a great deal of thought and investigation is spent throughout all of that time in which the artist perfects technique. Grskovic has considered so many angles as part of the context for this body of work. It informs and interprets the canons of art history, internet culture, documentation and capitalism.

The work also explores: memory, greek sculpture, portraiture, interpretation, mimicry, idolization, the role of the artist, the anonymity of the photographer, analogue process and so much more. Conceptually, the work splinters off like a rhizome in all directions.

“In the dark room, I am using light, water, paper and glass. I am using all of these natural materials that have been refined and perfected, it’s scientific, it’s chemistry. How do I bring this process to light? I am making work that I feel is strong conceptually and aesthetically… But I’d like to lift the curtain a little bit on the process… That makes me think of The wizard of OZ! Ha ha!”

“My next goal, after this exhibition, will be to try to communicate more of the process behind the production of photography. I often use Instagram to document this process. I am hopeful that someone, one day, will mess up my photographic ones and zeros just as I’ve done to these negatives, or as I have done with collaged magazine imagery.” It would be an interesting to see what a mashup of a ‘Grskovic smashup’ would look like.

Grskovic’s series work in the second annex room at the Burrard Arts Foundation space, delineates a Memory series that starts with a negative that is smashed once, with each successive printed iteration of the image it has been further smashed until it is obliterated. This suite of images is critical, not only to his exhibition at BAF, it also offers great insight into the artist’s obsessive, process driven and image based practice. Perhaps to fully understand an image, it must be be taken apart, reconfigured and reassembled.

“Humans are always looking for patterns in things and trying to fill in the gaps, so a lot of my work is about approaching the viewer with holes so that hopefully they can fill in the gaps.”

Earth to Earth, Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust is on exhibit at Burrard Arts Foundation until May 14th. BAF is open Tuesday – Saturday noon-5pm.

More about Randy Grskovic: http://www.randygrskovic.com/ More about Burrard Arts Foundation: http://www.burrardarts.org/ More about Capture Photography Festival: https://capturephotofest.com/

This interview originally appeared online for Vancouver is Awesome. (April, 2016) All images are courtesy of Randy Grskovic. 

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Sonic Meanderings: MASHUP at Vancouver Art Gallery

The MASHUP exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery is, in one word, BIG.

It spans a century’s worth of art and history and all four floors of the gallery. Try not be too overwhelmed, there are only around 370 works of art to look at by over 150 artists. No big deal. You have two weeks of holiday time to kill… right?

Honestly, that is what you need. There is a lot of ground to cover. With less than a week left to explore this exhibition you need a plan of attack. How does one explore this explosive representation of 100+ years in art and culture in a single visit? Perhaps the answer would be to not over think it. Instead, why not take a sonic dérive through the exhibition.

Give your cones and rods a break, heaven knows they are overworked thanks totwitt-insta-chat-book. Let your ears be your guide and open up to the expansive and subtle power of the oracular. Allow your tympanic membrane, hammer, anvil, stirrup and cochlea to envelop your mind. Here is a proposal to bring forth different type of sensitivity and a new understanding. Feel the vibrations and convert your passive hearing into to active listening.

YOUR SONIC DERIVE STARTS HERE: POUNCE!…. s a u n t e r ….. ATTACK, plink, plonk, meow, thump! Cat video choreography and an innovative piano composition, these co-joined elements could easily go amiss as they are hidden in the corner of the entrance of MASHUP. They are somewhat eclipsed by a visually arresting and pulsating wall of digital screens right at the exhibition entrance. If you walk by these cats, you just might miss the secret to unlocking the key to Mashup.

If you are facing the multi-screen installation, look to the doorway nook on your right to find one of the best works in the show. Cory Arcangel’s remake of Arnold Schoenberg’s Opus 11 entitled Drei Klavierstücke (aka Three Piano Pieces) uses coding, youtube, and the cats of the internet, to recreate Schoenberg’s 1909 Opus; a work that was considered a new departure in composition at the turn of the 20th Century.

Arcangel’s piano-feline fuelled video trifecta is a brilliant gem. With so many intersecting conceptual layers it is impossible to know where to begin. By watching and listening, you may think that this is just a collection of random cat videos that are all tied together by the fact that they are all pouncing on piano keys. (There are over 170 featured videos total) However, what you are hearing is a piece of avant-garde composition that caused quite a commotion in its day. The work could be considered a form of aural abstraction, it is not easy to listen to, nor to follow, but try. It may open up something else in your mind entirely.

Stills from Arcangel’s Drie Klavierstücke, 2009

Drei Klavierstück is noted as the point where Schoenberg did away with the last traces of tonality and common-practice harmony in his music, a practice that was deeply embedded in western music for centuries. In 1909, this was quite the radical move.

Works like this create fissures for others to investigate, explore, and question. New ideas emerge, by connecting together multiple experimental concepts.

Flash forward to today, what does that mean when a seminal work is then re-appropriated by a hacker who wanted to see it remade with cats playing the piano from the internet? Given the complex algorithmic analysis involved in replicating the composition with hundreds of videos, some would argue it is a stroke of genius already, but perhaps it will take the context of 100 years from now for us to fully comprehend the significance of this particular remix. All will be revealed, no, wait, scratch that…reconfigured.

This is the heartbeat of Mashup – cut, copy, paste – histories & fictions told, retold, merged, replicated and constantly reinterpreted. Consider time as cyclical not linear, you’ll go further in this adventure if you do.

MOVING ALONG: Also on the first floor, your ears can escape the busy bustle of the visitors to the gallery. Cover them up by putting on a headphone set and explore the Grey Album by Danger Mouse. As you listen, you’ll hear vocal tracks by rapper Jay Z from his Black Album intermingling with songs from the Beatles’ White Album. Released in 2004, the Grey Album was incredibly controversial as it exploded the conversation on sampling and copyright in music in America. Danger Mouse considered this an art project and had intended to produce small limited edition of 3,000 album copies.

Mouse had permission from the two surviving Beatles and Jay Z to do so. But then, Beatles copyright holder EMI caught wind of the project which was fast gaining critical attention, they ordered production and distribution to stop. In a grand gesture of electronic civil disobedience, activist group Downhill Battle posted copies of the album for download for a 24-hour period where over 100,000 copies were downloaded.

Can sampling and riffing be considered as tools and techniques to illustrate a new idea, or is the original sample so powerful, that it cannot be hybridized and amalgamated into a new form? Ultimately, it comes down to perspective… What do you hear? The White Album, the Black Album, or something fluttering between these worlds? A new departure perhaps?

One final aural challenge on the first floor:

Explore the installation titled Plywood City by artist Ujino Muneteru with your eyes closed, no peaking!

Sculpturally the work is fascinating to look at, the artist has created an orchestra out of tools, crates, domestic appliances, a record player, a guitar, bits and bobs, and machinery. Close your eyes and have a listen. You’ll hear a myriad of beats and timbres that ebb and flow throughout the room. Welcome to the wonderfully chaotic world of Experimental Noise Music. Have a friend, or maybe a total stranger, walk you around the room so you can experience the surround sound of the installation. In addition to hearing the noises produced by this orchestra, you’ll likely also experience expressions of awe and wonder from other visitors taking in the piece.

Ujino installation view

Quietly, walk back to the heart of the exhibition, enter into Barbara Kruger’s monochromatic installation in the circular staircase. Remain quiet, taking in the sounds as you walk up the marble stairs. Turn right on the second floor and head up on the escalators to the third floor. You will be skipping the second.

Installation view of Barbara Kruger’s site specific work Untitled (Smashup)

On the third floor, find your way over to the John Cage work which features two small grey speakers flanked on either side of a framed graphic musical score. The work, entitled Concert for Piano and Orchestra (1957-1958) is a composition that redefined the constructs of what one could call music. The score is actually 63 pages long, and basically, you can think of it as a choose your own adventure piece. Each performative iteration of this work could feature as many or as little performers as deemed necessary, any of the 84 “types” of composition found within the work could be played in part or in their entirety.

John Cage’s Concert for Piano & Orchestra

Have a listen to the piece, consider it’s limitations within this exhibition. It is within a large room with many people wandering about, next to a moving sculpture that makes noise, and the speakers are small and not very powerful. Then consider that, this version of the piece that you hear, with the exception of recording technology, could never be reproduced in the same way. Ever. Even if one tried, the performers would be different people, the location where the piece was performed would have changed and so on. There is no defining ‘version’ of this work, which begs the question, can there ever be for any piece? The idea of this type of open-ended composition and performance has led to the offspring of hundreds, if not thousands, of projects exploring composition, music and time in so many exciting ways. Cage understood the concept of open-source long before it became popularized in computing, art and music in the early 2000’s.

With your mind blown, allow your thoughts settle in your mind as you meander over to the escalators and head up to the fourth floor.

Installation View, third floor, MASHUP.

Look for a room that features wooden frames and collage works on paper. Then locate a piece entitled Ursonate (1922-1932) by poet Kurt Schwitters. The poem is an absurdist work exploring sound through abstraction. Pure nonsense, and intensity. See if you can settle in to listen to the work in its glorious eighteen minute entirety. It is a difficult but fascinating thing to listen to. Schwitters performed the work first in 1925, he continued to develop it over the span of ten years. Schwitters was an interdisciplinary artist he worked in poetry, sound, painting, collage, sculpture, graphic design and installation art.

Once the staccato dust of the vowels and consonants settles…

Make your way along the fourth floor to the room featuring large black box sculptures that have cone like extensions. Welcome to the the Intonarumori room. A space dedicated to presenting working replicas of, futurist composer, Luigi Russolo’s instruments. If you were lucky, you would have had the chance to witness a performance of these instruments. Although these little beasts are silent, you can still hear what they sounded like in original recordings of the original instruments exist online. Russolo invented the Intonarumori in 1914, his first official concert with the instruments caused a riot. Russolo proposed that noise and the hums, bangs, hisses, booms, creaking and rustling of the city could be music. He performed a program comprised of what he called networks of noises. Pause here for a while and ruminate on what these may have sounded like.

Russolo’s Intonarumori, installation view.

Russolo’s provocative gesture of stating that all noise is music came true. In the many decades that have followed, musicians and composers have pretty much experimented with and intermingled any type of noise(s) you can think of; including cats jumping on pianos, abstract sound poetry and electrical appliances. You name it, they have played with it.

This concludes your sonic dérive, an aural mashup of MASHUP. May your ears guide you back through the exhibition and out into the sounds of the street.

All images taken by Sunshine Frere.

This sonic derive originally appeared online for Vancouver Is Awesome, May 2016.

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Paracosmic Sun at BGP

How much of what we see is actual? How much is fabricated? What possibilities for being, or communing with each other, might be affected if less normative sights were given more regard?

These questions come from the Paracosmic Sun exhibition write up, they introduce us to the essence of Annie Briard‘s ongoing investigations into enigmatic visual perception. Briard presents exhibition visitors with an opulent array of optical propositions.

Exhibiting at Back Gallery Project until March 7, Paracosmic Sun serves as a compendium of experiment results, most of which were produced last year by Briard whilst at an artist residency in Cadiz, Spain. During her tenure in Cadiz, Briard explored the many viewpoints that the city offered onto the water.

A southwestern port city, Cadiz is known for its large number of watchtowers, many of them still standing. Briard brought with her prisms that she had collected from binoculars, telescopes and other devices. She surveyed the many vantage points of the ancient city from the watchtowers through her sourced lenses.

In her research leading up to the residency Briard explored early scientific theories on how the human eye works. There have been many interesting and often outlandish ideas on how we see. In our discussion, Briard highlighted one such idea that made an impression on her – the notion that there was a crystal in the eye which allowed one to see. A few centuries later, knowledge and experimentation has revealed that the eye works differently.  Conceptually though, the idea wasn’t all that far off. After all, as Briard pointed out, the word crystal can still be found in reference to vision. Crystallin, for example, is the name of the transparent protein that is found in the lens and cornea of the eye. A mystical example of something that we don’t ‘see’, which actually enables sight.

The work in Paracosmic Sun projects and presents multiple temporal states simultaneously, states of seeing and not seeing, and also states where sight extends beyond the normal range or perception. One can see sunlight on the ocean, or the effect of light on the ocean reflected back through a prismatic lens, or one can see a paracosm. Three instances coalesced into a singular image.

Bringing awareness to multiple versions of a present state is something Briard frequently achieves in her work. For example, Horizon RGB at Back Gallery Project is a still object containing a fixed two-dimensional image of a horizon line. The work is activated so that it seems to be moving through Briard’s implementation of light phasing.

This work grew into its own state of being after Briard was unable to reproduce, to her standards, the perfect gradients that appear during sunsets in a single photograph. The prints weren’t cutting it, so she explored alternative ways of seeing gradients and the horizon. Mesmerizing to watch, this light-box installation conjures similar affective qualities to that of looking at a real-life sunset, the pulsating light allows your eyes and mind to explore the ethereal atmosphere of gradients shifting, whilst every once in a while the horizon line comes back into focus.

Briard’s film and video work highlights the tension between still and moving just as her photography works does, in fact they’re often interconnected in a recursive loop, one that is created to intentionally muddle memory and imagination. Should these formats come up short, Briard often finds alternative unique ways of representing time-space-sight-awareness.

A pragmatic interpretation of the exhibition would be that Briard’s imagery focuses on particular points at which the lens that she was experimenting with started breaking down the components of clear singular vision. Paracosmically speaking, Briard has uncovered shimmering colourful doppelgangers that were magically captured using mysterious holographic prisms.

Is what you are seeing actual or fabricated…allow your eyes to reveal and your mind to wander. Paracosmic Sun is on exhibit at Back Gallery Project until March 7th, 2017.

Back Gallery Project will also host an in-conversation event with Annie Briard and Manuel Piña onSaturday February 25th at 2pm.  Briard and Piña will discuss the work in the show, along with ideas surrounding perception, photography and technology. The talk is open to the public.

Work from this series entitled Paracosmic Land can also be seen on one of the public art columns at Aberdeen Canada Line Station. Artists Michael Love and Paolo Majano also have work on the columns at Lansdowne Station as part of the same call. The work of all three artists will be up from February until July, 2017. The project is part of the City of Richmond’s Public Art Programin collaboration with Capture Photography Festival 2017.

Annie Briard PARACOSMIC SUN February 8 – March 7, 2017 Back Gallery Project: 602 E Hastings Street, Vancouver, British Columbia V6A 1R1

**This article originally appeared online for Vancouver Is Awesome. (February 2017)

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STACK OVERFLOW - An essay on the work of Bradley Harms by Sunshine Frère

There is no single entry point into a Bradley Harms painting.One doesn't enter the the work, they are overtaken by it. Like a brilliant sun-flare or punch to the face.

Ocular intensity builds and intertwines with shaken reflexes in an attempt to understand what happened, and exactly what one is looking at. Attempts at a focused gaze are instantly dethroned by the twitch of perpetual movement. Eyes feel compelled to scan the entire oeuvre, flittering between foreground, background, colour, line, shapes, and grids. Subtle hints of imperfection lie underneath immaculate technique. Each compositional element relentlessly competes for attention, making it difficult for the viewer to compute the work.

Similar to html or computer programming these paintings generate an error signal causing stack overflow in the brain.i The neural-network receives an overabundance of information via the eyes. Attempts to comprehend the stimulus create more questions as opposed to answers. Harms' painting generates an analog overload of the minds eye. The firing synapses of the brain closely resemble a mercury spill; dense quicksilver flows, converges, separates and spreads - all at once. Indeterminacy supersedes resolution.

There is no single entry point into a Bradley Harms painting. The work is part of a larger ever-evolving painting program, a complex canon that spans centuries. Writing 'Harms' coding into this expansive program begins with an observation by Joseph Kosuth:

In art the how and why collapse into each other as the same sphere of production: the realm of meaning. - It is possible for the conceptual and the aesthetic to converse – it is actually impossible for them not to. They are part of the same system - One test simply awaits the next test, since a test cannot attempt to be a masterpiece that depicts the integrity of its agenda. It is such work, like any work, located within a community, that gives it meaning as it limits that meaning.ii

Painting conversations and concepts are not exclusive but interconnected through time.iii The closed dogmatic underpinnings of painting have been replaced with open strategy. One that focuses on the praxis as a series of tests, or recurring loops of code. Harms shares a similar perspective within his painting practice, comparing the completion of a work to finishing a leg in a a race. With the end of each painting, new paths emerge. Time and time again, the distance to the finish line is pushed further back. His determination stays strong, focusing on the task at hand, completing the current painting. Each work opens up a new set of variables, which, inevitably leads to more testing.

Within some of these new painted trajectories, the lineage of Harms' work can easily be traced beyond his lifetime and into older conversations and movements. In Imperfect Grid and 9 Exes, literal derivatives of earlier movements, such as de Stijl, Suprematism, and Conceptual Art, can be identified just as easily as references to contemporary and futuristic cross-cultural developments. Kim Cascone's writing on the Aesthetics of Failure, Chuck Close's pixel paintings and David Batchelor's ruminations on the use of the grid within minimalismare but a few of the themes that are integrated into these works.iv Thus a dialogue on the grid, and the many artists who test it, continues.v

9 Exes, 2014 acrylic on canvas, 36 x 36”

Imperfect Grid, 2014, acrylic on canvas, 54 x 77”

Harms' work also filters through to the inner mind. The composition and colour palette of AbSpout, The Reaper and The Seeker have elements to them that access a collective unconscious. In Abspout the geometric blocking of stripes outlined by red becomes somewhat figurative, limb-like. This work is particularly exploitative of its imperfect painting application. One can sense the hand of the artist in the build-up and lines that overlap. The recurring geometric shapes, lines and colours also reveal a dialogue with painters of previous generations; traces of Phillip Guston, Pablo Picasso, Francis Picabia and even Roy Lichtenstein undulate through the works. These new paintings interject their own lines of code into the generative contemporary painting program.

Les Femmes d'Alger (after Delacroix), 1955

Abspout, 2014, acrylic on canvas, 30 x 30” Picasso, oil on canvas, 45 x 57”

Moving from the larger painting program into its sub-program coding (Harms' practice), several recurring sequences can be identified. The rich build up of coloured lines found within Harms' Ragged Edge series informed an even more maximalist variation of the series - Hovering Mass Sets, as well as a group of more minimalist inspired paintings - Simple Line Sets. His larger Table Top and Scrambler series led to the production of smaller cynosural works such as Collapsing Chevrons, Grid Star and Tape Angle. The purposeful and noticeable differences in the pressure of the black lines in AbSprout, The Reaper and The Seeker were first explored in Harms' vivid Purros series. Within this sub-program, micro-sub-programming can be identified; each black line, each texture build-up, each coloured shape represents a line of code which Harms is constantly re-writing.

Hovering Mass Multi Series (RYB, RGY, BRG), 2014, acrylic on canvas, each painting: 30 x 20”

One should be warned however, not to enter into this work linearly, but recursively. Often in Harms' painting, it is impossible to gauge which work grew out of another. The Ragged Edge sets theoretically originate as Simple Line Sets, yet chronologically, the Simple Line Sets weren't brought into official existence until much later in the artists' process. Harms' painting projects outwards as much as it folds inwards. The coding is infinitely looped, test after test, painting after painting, it remains in flux.

Simple Line Sets (LBYDB, BR, GBR), 2014, acrylic on canvas, each painting: 30 x 20”

There is no single entry point into a Bradley Harms painting. The work is ceaselessly propositional. By frequently working in sets, each painting in each series presents its own inquisitive and isolated experimental gesture. Each gesture is then presented mutated and repeated as the build up of the series continues, each series further mutates into new series, where the isolated gesture is again studied, experimented with, applied and repeated. This application of repetition and difference in Harms' series work evokes perplexity in the viewer. Which painting draws them in the most or least, this one or that one, these colours or those, these lines or those patterns. Harms presents perplexity as a set of questions that always lead to more questions; a modus operandi employed by contemporary artists and curators alike.vi

Initial observations of Harms' work results in instant sentient appreciation of perfection. There is a digital purity to this work, a projection of flawlessness. The application of colour blocks and clean lines as witnessed in his Purros Set is so incredibly smooth and consistent that it feels as though it may have been silkscreened, printed or airbrushed. The thick black evenly applied gridlines below each colour block provides a grounded base and projects a sensation of compositional harmony. Perfection. The work has pulled the viewer in on this premise.

Purros Series (Red, Teal, Magenta), 2014, acrylic on canvas, each painting: 20 x 16”

Upon closer inspection the light catches the fine bristle brush traces within the colour blocks, micro-gestures of the artist are revealed. Up close, the thick black lines are much more discrete than uniform. Flecks of blue, yellow, turquoise and red permeate these dark lines with varied consistency. The weight of the blackness within each line fluctuates, as does the intensity of each line in conjunction with its neighbour. These elements highlight subtle differences in repetition further accentuating the mark maker. Stealthily camouflaged within this simulacra of seemingly mechanized perfection is the trace of the imperfect human. Paradoxes within the painting program are revealed as the work provokes ideas and questions in the viewer. Is perfection possible? Is beauty reproducible? Should perfection be sought after in painting?

The sublime is not simple gratification but the gratification of effort. It is impossible to represent the absolute, which is gratifying; but one knows that one has to, that the faculty of feeling or imagining is called upon to make the perceptible represent the ineffable – and even if this fails, and even if that causes suffering, a pure gratification will emerge from the tension. - Jean-Francois Lyotard vii

Like the parallel investment in auratic art, and despite Walter Benjamin's prognostications, the lost ideal of beauty would seem to shimmer more brightly in the astral glow of cyberspace, digital imaging and virtual reality. - Abigail Solmon-Godeauviii

There is no single entry point into a Bradley Harms painting. The work embraces the analog by exploring digital aesthetics: glitches, codes and errors.  Harms' painting practice originated in the digital domain. With a background in printmaking, vinyl plotting, printing and graphic design, he is no stranger to this style of aesthetics. For Harms, work produced using predominantly digital means, somehow lacked humanity, it was cold. He transitioned into exploring these digital tropes within the realm of painting; a worthwhile experiment that enabled a dynamic addition of depth and dimension to his work. Painting, the missing link and the warm-blooded medium that gives flow to these digital surface explorations; painting, an analog nexus of resistance.

Dual Event Multi Mono, 2014, acrylic on canvas, 24 x 30”

Concepts such as 'detritus', 'by-product', and 'background' (or 'horizon') are important to consider when examining how the current post-digital movement started. When visual arts first shifted their focus from foreground to background, it helped to expand their perceptual boundaries, enabling them to capture the background's enigmatic character. The basic composition of 'background' is comprised of data we filter out to focus on our immediate surroundings. The data hidden in our perceptual 'blind spot' contains worlds waiting to be explored, if we choose to shift our focus there. - Kim Casconeix

The more printing and digital techniques that have been acquired, the more Harms has been drawn to errors and glitches; exploring the anomaly hidden within perceived perfection. Textiles and printmaking effects that shift foreground and background space, such as interference and moiré patterns, are repeatedly experimented with in his painting, as Event Horizon Sets and Interference Wavelength works attest to. These paintings contain a high amount of intensity and tension between foreground and background.

Interference Wavelength, 2014, acrylic on canvas, 48 x 60”

In appropriating the techniques and glitches of the digital Harms has written a new looping sequence within the painting program. This work is about build-up, background layering and interference. But more importantly it is about recoding perfection and error.x Harms' painting exploits digital-ness, and perceived faultlessness in order to reveal human-ness and fallibility.

Dual Event Purple Teal, 2014, acrylic on canvas, 24 x 30”

There is no single entry point into a painting made by Bradley Harms. The work transitive and embodied.xi These two elements are at their most visceral within Harms' Scrambler and Tabletop series. Both of these sets are large scale paintings that embody both the physical gesture of the artist as well as an all encompassing view of the thought processes behind many types of coding that Harms experiments with in all of his painting.

Harms' Scrambler Sets act as encyclopedic doodle membranes, ready-made sections of code. Elements from these membranes are readily parsed recompiled and grafted into new paintings. These works acts as a means for exploration of ideas, they are test sites for uncoded paintings. The build up from these test sites often comes into its own. The work is then pushed further by Harms until it matures from sketchbook of ideas to a tableaux of expression. Within the folds of their constant referencing and experimentation, the works become active because they represent actions and reactions, they are transitive.

.... Transitive painting... invents forms and structures whose purpose is to demonstrate that once an object enters a network, it can never be fully stilled, but only subjected to different material states and speeds of circulation ranging from geologically slow (cold storage) to the infinitely fast. ...Transivity is a form of translation: when it enters into networks, the body of painting is submitted to infinite dislocations, fragmentations, and degradations.xii

Pinstripe Scrambler, 2014, acrylic on canvas, 24 x 30”

Pinstripe Scrambler conjures a playful yet controlled tone. Hidden amidst the solo geometric colour blocks are more rare speckled gems of moodiness, shadow, and reflection. Shapes that are not really shapes, these act more as windows of organic sensibility. Ambient light and waves are expressed in some areas whilst sunsets and algae are suggested in others. Proto Scrambler exemplifies some of Harms' most painterly gestures. Smears, splotches and partially mixed colour form a gooey background that resembles a build up of bubble gum on a wall. These forms soon become part of a digital matrix of line mark making. Squiggles, intersecting and parallel lines run amok, almost entirely netting in the gestural organic colour forms underneath. Brushstrokes that resemble fingerprints dance overtop of these sharp lines, carving out their own space along side the occasional hard-edge geometric form that has crystalised on top.

The push and pull of the Scambler Sets is highly affective, especially, as they are often executed on a human scale. These works epitomize the sub-program the artist is perpetually re-coding, breaking down binaries by integration and repetition. Coalescing the digital and analog, reconnecting the mechanized with the crafted, disguising the trace of the artist within the anonymity of sublime perfection.

The painting practice of Bradley Harms is a praxis of embodiment. A transitive research project dedicated to a mantra of maximalism. Viewers are constantly challenged to explore the multiple sub-programs presented within each painting and within each series ad infinitum.

Indeterminacy supersedes resolution, there is no single entry point into a painting made by Bradley Harms. His work is coded by embedding and revealing glitches in the aura of the digital and the hand of the human. His preferred method of interrupt: Stack Overflow - a request that leaves himself and the viewer continually searching; a request that is impossible to be satisfied.

Proto Scrambler, 2014, acrylic on canvas, 48 x 60”

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FOOTNOTES:

i A parallel between Harms' maximalist approach in painting can be drawn to an error in online html programming entitled:

ERROR 400 – The request had bad syntax or was impossible to be satisfied.  - This error results in a stack overflow.

In software, a stack overflow occurs when the stack pointer exceeds the stack bound. The call stack may consist of a limited amount of address space, often determined at the start of the program. The size of the call stack depends on many factors, including the programming language, machine architecture, multi-threading, and amount of available memory. When a program attempts to use more space than is available on the call stack (that is, when it attempts to access memory beyond the call stack's bounds, which is essentially a buffer overflow), the stack is said to overflow, typically resulting in a program crash.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stack_overflow

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ii Kosuth, Joseph. “Exemplar: Felix Gonzales-Torres.” 1994 FAILURE: Documents of Contemporary Art. Ed. Lisa Le Feuvre. London/Cambridge: Whitechapel Gallery/MIT Press, 2010, 91. Print

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iii In Painting Beside Itself, David Joselit reveals:

None of these problems [in painting] exists in isolation or ever disappears; instead, there are shifts in emphasis in which earlier questions are reformulated through newer ones.

Joselit, David. “Painting Beside Itself.” 2009 PAINTING: Documents of Contemporary Art. Ed. Terry R. Myers. London/Cambridge: Whitechapel Gallery/MIT Press, 2011, 218-219. Print

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iv The parts-to-whole relationship in this brick-and-grid system are more simple and more extendible than any other compositional form. The grid preserves the whole ness and morphological consistency of the basic unit. Work which has been 'formed by clear decision rather than groping craft' has 'the feel and look of openness, extendibility, accessibility, publicness, repeatability, equanimity, directness (and) immediacy.

Batchelor, David. MINIMALISM: Movements in Modernt Art. Tate Publishing, 1988, 39. Print

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v  A selection of artists tho work with the grid in their practice: Gerhard Richter, Chuck Close, John Cage, Damian Hirst, Ryoki Ikeda, Eadward Muybridge, Sol LeWitt, Carsten Holler and Carsten Nicolai.

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vi Hans-Ulrich Obrist: I'm still wondering how you can manage to find a form or forms, for doubt and at the same time escape any formalization of the idea. It is a paradox.

Carsten Holler: I present perplexity as a question so that it won't become formalized as a project: perplexity thus engenders further perplexity. I'd like to give expression to perplexity but it doesn't need to lead to anything.

Obrist, Hans-Ulrich & Carsten Holler. “The new Perplexity: in conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist” THE STUDIO: Documents of Contemporary Art. Ed. Jens Hoffmann. London/Cambridge: Whitechapel Gallery/MIT Press, 2012, 145. Print

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vii Lyotard, Jean-Francois. “Presenting the Unpresentable: The Sublime” 1982 THE SUBLIME: Documents of Contemporary Art. Ed. Simon Morley. London/Cambridge: Whitechapel Gallery/MIT Press, 2010, 135. Print

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viii Solomon-Godeau, Abigail. “The Rightness of Wrong” FAILURE: Documents of Contemporary Art. Ed. Lisa Le Feuvre. London/Cambridge: Whitechapel Gallery/MIT Press, 2010, 35. Print

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ix Cascone, Kim. “The Aesthetics of Failure” Computer Music Journal 24:4 Winter 2002 (MIT Press,)  http://subsol.c3.hu/subsol_2/contributors3/casconetext.html

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x Three perspectives on the significance of errors by Kim Cascone, Siegfried Zielinski & Paul Watziawick:

While technological failure is often controlled and suppressed – its effects buried beneath the threshold of perception... Indeed, 'failure' has become a prominent aesthetic in many of the arts in the late 20th century, reminding us that our control of technology is an illusion, and revealing digital tools to be only as perfect, precise, and efficient as the humans who build them. - Kim Cascone

...all communication has its roots in the experience of blockages, breaks, separations, and deficits”. Thus, our madly focused development with modern technology is to articulate and connect what has been wounded and it is here that technology accentuates our vulnerable self. - Siegfried Zielinski

... the 'real' world only manifests itself when our constructions fail. But as we can always only describe and explain the failure in those terms, which we have used to build the failed structures, a picture of the world, which we could make responsible for the failure, could never be conveyed to us. – Paul Watzlawick

Cascone, Kim. “The Aesthetics of Failure” Computer Music Journal 24:4 Winter 2002 (MIT Press,)  http://subsol.c3.hu/subsol_2/contributors3/casconetext.html

Zielinski, Siegfried. [. . . After the Media] News from the Slow-Fading Twentieth Century. Univocal Publishing, 2013, Print.

Watziawick, Paul. “On the Nonsense of Sense and The Sense of Nonsence” 1995, FAILURE: Documents of Contemporary Art. Ed. Lisa Le Feuvre. London/Cambridge: Whitechapel Gallery/MIT Press, 2010, 84. Print

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________ xi Harms' work is embodied by way of the artist physically applying paint to canvas, but also by way of the viewer's experience, as outlined in the two excerpts below:

If there is power intrinsic to painting, power it exerts in its own territory and in its own name, it resides in the capacity of its practice to exceed the fixities of representation. Since it is only by working, by transforming the signing material provided by the painting that the process of recognition unfolds, recognition is always in movement, is always an active rotation of the annulus of signs; viewing is mobility both of the eye and of discourse, in the disseminations of the glance. Since it is only through labour that the signs of painting appear on canvas, painting is itself a locus of mobility in the field of signification, a process which may be presented, by the conventions of the tradition, under the guise of static form, but which in the first place is a work on and through material signs, a practice at once entering interaction with the other domains of practice in the social formation. - Norman Bryson

...to quote Rosalind Krauss. Minimalist works alert the viewer – through their shape, surfaces and positioning – to the contingencies of site, and the variability of perspective, the begin to imply a different kind of viewer. At least, in relation to a theory which understands the perception of art as instantaneous and disembodied, this work implies a different kind of viewer: one who is embodied and whose experience exists through time and in real space.

Bryson, Norman. “The Invisible Body” 1983 PAINTING: Documents of Contemporary Art. Ed. Terry R. Myers. London/Cambridge: Whitechapel Gallery/MIT Press, 2011, 40-41. Print

Batchelor, David. MINIMALISM: Movements in Modernt Art. Tate Publishing, 1988, 25. Print.

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xii Joselit, David. “Painting Beside Itself.” 2009 PAINTING: Documents of Contemporary Art. Ed. Terry R. Myers. London/Cambridge: Whitechapel Gallery/MIT Press, 2011, 222. Print.

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