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DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20120905
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20121014
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SUMMARY:Reclamation: Etchings and Lithographs
DESCRIPTION:About the Exhibition\nCurtis Bartone: Reclamation – exhibition essay by Tracy Wormsbecker \nIn Reclamation\, accomplished American artist Curtis Bartone presents us with a collection of recent works consisting of 18 masterfully executed etchings and lithographs. The works comprise narratives that offer astute and often tense juxtapositions of nature’s flora and fauna with manufactured human artifice. While some works uncover a sense of beauty in this apparent disharmony\, a tense and foreboding sense of loss underscores his work\, highlighting that wilderness has changed from being a real pristine place to a kind of distorted fiction.Through the works presented in Reclamation\, Bartone encourages us to consider difficult questions about our apparent biased and arbitrary classifications of nature that drive our efforts to exert control over it in an attempt to fit the natural world into a human-centered paradigm. \n Formal influences from Italian Renaissance painting\, seventeenth century Dutch still life and nineteenth century scientific illustration are evident throughout Bartone’s decadent and detailed works that simultaneously comprise a contemporary aesthetic. Rich in this visual aesthetic\, Bartone plays with scale and value\, exquisitely rendering his main subjects\, which are often chosen for our aversion to them\, to paradoxically draw us to each work and to entice a deep engagement with their layered meaning. \n In contrast to Bartone’s natural protagonists\, a human presence is implied by destructive manufactured artifices that lurk in the background of the scenes. In a way\, Bartone is setting a stage for us to view these scenes from outside our human-centered perspective and there is no doubt that the subjects of each work\, their placement within each scene\, and their specific pairings are intended to be provocative. \n For example\, works such as Strike and Nocturne that juxtapose plants and animals\, which we instinctively fear\, against backgrounds depicting golf courses and factories\, which in reality pose far likelier threats\,openly hint at our anthropocentric and somewhat arbitrary prejudices. In the large diptych Ora Et Labora\, we may reflect that our actions to control plants and animals are likewise arbitrary and context-dependent.This particular work presents a seemingly clear distinction between “bad\,” pesky weeds and animals on the left that humans typically try to restrict\, and “good\,” beneficial plants and animals on the right that humans typically welcome and encourage. Considering that our perspectives are prone to bias however\, closer examination reveals that each assigned value of good and bad can shift depending on the context. For example\, while we exterminate pesky rats in homes\, they are incredibly valuable and therefore bred for research\, and while roses are considered desirable\, commercially producing such plants often includes harmful pesticides and herbicides. \n Given the tense and noxious subject matter presented\, it seems difficult to imagine regaining a natural harmony and restoring the truly natural places that these works seem to mourn. However\, as the title of this show implies\, Bartone is suggesting optimism rooted in his belief that “there is a drive to reclaim what we have lost places that are mysterious\, unknown\,and pristine.” \n Is there hope of reclaiming the harmonious and real wilderness that we have lost to our attempts to control the natural world? Curtis Bartone certainly invites us to take time engaging with such questions presented in this collection of exquisite prints. \nAbout the Artist\nCurtis Bartone is represented by Printworks Gallery in Chicago\, Illinois.The recipient of several grants\, residencies\, and awards\, his work has been widely exhibited across the United States and internationally\, and is included in multiple permanent collections including the Telfair Museum of Art\, Savannah\, Georgia; Columbia College\, Chicago\, Illinois; and Block Museum of Art\,Evanston\, Illinois.
URL:https://albertaprintmakers.com/event/reclamation-etchings-and-lithographs/
LOCATION:Alberta
CATEGORIES:Exhibition Past,Past
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DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20121017
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20121125
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SUMMARY:Accidental Poetry
DESCRIPTION:About the Exhibition \nAccidental Poetry – exhibition essay by Loren Spector \nAccidental Poetry presents a selection of ultraviolet screen prints by Briar Craig. Craig’s prints invite consideration of the varied and sundry fragmented visual experiences that signify moving through one’s day in a society teeming with visual debris\, and invite us to question if and how we consciously or unconsciously make connections that give meaning to the messages.  \nBriar Craig is a printmaker\, a screen printer in particular. He has said that\, “one of the reasons [he is] an ardent printmaking advocate is for its ability to amalgamate and synthesize diverse imagery\, materials\, and approaches to art-making.” The evolution of Craig’s work across the last twenty-some years conceals entirely where the techniques and materials of printmaking inform his work\, and where the content of his imagery necessitates choosing printmaking for its materialization. But the synthesis within Craig’s work is incomplete – in the best possible way. \nA duality bordering on contradiction lurks about the edges of a Briar Craig exhibition\, Accidental Poetry being no exception. His pieces raise questions\, and only half-heartedly suggest clues towards answers. They ask us to examine the relationship and the separation/space between form and content\, between media and message\, between art and gallery space\, between the personal and the public\, and between viewer and art. \nIt is typical\, when approaching “printmaking” in a gallery setting\, to move in close to the work\, nose-to-glass as it were\, in order to better read the fine marks\, layers and intricacies of the piece. While Craig’s prints are certainly intricate\, the extensive layers of translucent colour\, tactile surface qualities and myriad nuances and subtleties generated by the photographic process uncharacteristically lead the viewer to step back – to take in a broader view of the work and perhaps to seek a context that distance might provide. \nThese are narrative images that read very successfully as abstract work – an esthetic that will happily usurp the minor impetus of theory within\, should the viewer allow that to happen. \nAh\, but what of those unanswered questions? One can lose oneself in the attraction of the ink for only so long\, before returning to the beguiling nature of the narrative/poem presented. Yet a theorized reading of the images does not determine a foregone conclusion of meaning therein. Craig marries Dada and absurdist thought with a Pop Art sensibility. Can an object at once have meaning provided by the context of its reception\, and also be so commonplace as to lose all significance except as a symbol of how well we know it? (i.e. is an image of a National Geographic magazine cover a place­ holder for associations with the wild\, untamed corners of the Earth\, or an ironic reference to boxes stored in musty garages?) \nCraig writes\, “Whether we are walking down a street\, listening to a radio\, surfing television channels\, or reading a newspaper each of us will be individually drawn to specific things for specific and personal reasons... My frequent use of hand written texts and of weathered objects is an attempt to appeal to the viewer on the most basic and ‘human’ of levels. The texts and objects I use are often the ‘clues’ we leave behind that reveal who we are and the kinds of things that occupy our lives.” \nIn the works shown at the Artist Proof Gallery\, Craig employs a principle of chance to bring found words together in what he calls accidental poetry. Words that might not typically be connected are juxtaposed for their provocative and evocative potential\, to invite interpretation. But Craig’s evident choice of just exactly what words will be juxtaposed is an aware and artful mischief that challenges viewers to interpret the clues he leaves behind in his text/object-pairings to deduce an intended meaning\, all the while instinctively aware of our own individual meaning-making practices.
URL:https://albertaprintmakers.com/event/accidental-poetry/
LOCATION:Alberta
CATEGORIES:Exhibition Past,Past
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