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Visual Arts by Anne Severson ALBERTA BIENNIAL OF CONTEMPORARY ART 2000 Runs until August 27 Edmonton Art Gallery The diversity of Alberta’s terrain is fortified by the multiplicity of its artists and their contrasting art forms in the Alberta Biennial of Contemporary Art 2000. A variety of approaches, often conflicting, explore a multitude of issues that flow through the wide open spaces of the Edmonton Art Gallery (EAG). Alex Janvier’s ongoing fight for First Nations’ land claims brightly ripples across the wall with six large paintings, path-finding for a language of his own. "Just do it," he urges. Pierre Öberg’s Our Most Precious and Vital Source, an earthy, altar-like plea for responsible organic farming alternatives and connectedness, looks out the window at the urban jungle eating this territory. The trite claim that "painting is not dead" is rehashed loudly by Graham Peacock’s over-large, bright, abstract, materialist works. His flippant titles, such as Where the Buffalo Roam, contrast with Janvier’s sacred white buffalo in P.L.A.W.R.-P.L.ELR., emphasizing that the personal really is the political. While the formalist painters seem to be beating a dead horse, they are in fact a perfect set up for Angela Yee’s humorous critique of painting. Yee has brushed thick gestural strokes of bright colour onto existing photographs, then re-produced these unique combined images in another photograph. The blow-up of this painting/photo is hung on the wall with a mirror at a right-angle to the image, thus reproducing the image again. (Will the "real" painting please stand up?) Life goes on – in more than one way. A relieving contrast to these theoretical issues is set by youthful voices of individuality such as Robin Arseneault and Candice Tarnowski. Their subtly coloured installations on the wall contemplatively question the measured cages of societal restraint on a personal level by dissecting sections of life and examining them. These whispered observations provide a fresh direction for Alberta art. The obsessive collecting, cataloguing and recording of bits of information is probably best immortalized in Maria Anna Parolin’s cold room. She has "wallowed in the research" by collecting – anything! In the scientific manner of today, she classified, cut, pressed and carefully labelled what appear to be random samples of a life. Placed neatly on tiered shelving, the viewer can walk around and read the brown tags describing such items as various dried leaves, tissues, poplar tree fluff, several brands of tea bags, and the artist’s prints, slides, photographs or negatives. One is labelled "unknown" – perhaps the most honest comment of all. Co-curated by Catherine Crowston and Allan Harding MacKay, this year’s survey of Alberta artists was culled from over 60 studio visits across the province with an openness to determine what dialogues would emerge, "to where the conversations might lead us," says Crowston. "The 2000 Biennial allows the artists and the viewers to step outside of linear thinking and see and do all sorts of new things." Robin Arseneault, Edward Bader, Allen Ball, Michael Camerson, David Cantine, Kenneth Doren, Karen Dugas, Amy Gogarty, Carl Granzow, Angela Inglis, Alex Janvier, Darci Mallon, Lisa Murray, Pierre Öberg, Katie Ohe, Maria Anna Parolin, Graham Peacock, Blake Senini, Candice Tarnowski, George Tosczak, Nick Wade, Brian Webb, John Will, Mary Shannon Will and Angela Yee are the 25 Alberta artists represented this year In Calgary, the Biennial will open on September 15 at both the Art Gallery of Calgary and the Illingworth Kerr Gallery, so the overall impression and interpretations of the exhibit will change dramatically between the two cities.

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