Preview
THE BASEMENT SHOW
Douglas Coupland, Graham Gillmore, Angela Grossmann, Attila Richard Lukacs and Derek Root
Runs until August 28
Art Gallery of Calgary
(117 Eighth Ave. S.W.)
From its beginnings in a Vancouver basement to the spacious Art Gallery of Calgary comes an exhibition from five artists who have had a major impact on contemporary art in Canada.
The Basement Show features the works of Douglas Coupland, Graham Gillmore, Angela Grossmann, Attila Richard Lukacs and Derek Root.
This quintet of trend-setters first met in the mid-1980s as students at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in Vancouver. From there, they travelled the country and the world in pursuit of opportunities to create.
"We went to school together, we were in shows together, we travelled together, we had studios together," says Grossmann, interviewed before the opening of the exhibition on May 28. "There’s a cord connecting us."
That connection brought the so-called "group of five" back to Vancouver from across the world last year to mount The Basement Show in the subterranean bowels of an old B.C. Hydro building. Although The Basement Show at AGC does not include exactly the same works that appeared in Vancouver, it’s equally inspired and indicative of the style of artwork that continues to bring this group international fame and attention.
The first pieces that confront viewers at AGC are from the "bad boy" of the Canadian art scene, Attila Richard Lukacs. Known for his imagery of German skinheads, Lukacs now enters the realm of the mystical with this series of paintings which he originally titled 13 Moons. Gone is the sadistic and masochistic imagery, replaced by a dramatic suite of paintings that incorporate eternal themes of good and evil using mythological characters such as Medusa as their central figures.
Graham Gillmore’s series of paintings, which rely on text as much as paint, are also here. Some are so recently created that the layers of paint are still drying.
Upstairs, the mood shifts to quiet contemplation with an installation entitled Remote Switch Poemscape (Heavy Winter) by Derek Root. A small room has been constructed in the gallery and on its outside wall are headphones which visitors are encouraged to put on. As you stare through a small window into the room, in which a faux snowstorm is whipped up, you hear a recital of "Aubade," Philip Larkin’s poem about a man confronting his own mortality.
In the lower level of the gallery is a series of large paintings by Angela Grossmann.
"In Vancouver, I was going to call them Psychological Atlas," she explains. "I was speaking to Attila (Lukacs) and he thought I said Psychological Alice and the name stuck."
Conjuring up themes of an Alice lost in Wonderland, the paintings feature disturbing images, mainly of children, that were inspired by the venue of the Vancouver show. Grossmann says that she saw a small handprint on a wall of the basement that was presumably left behind by a child. That chance image made her think more about how children are treated in our society. One particularly vivid work from the series depicts a boy seated at a desk with what appears to be a female poltergeist blowing through his body.
"They seem to be about fairy tales and reality and that collision," says Grossmann of her works.
The artist, who once again makes Vancouver her home after living in Paris, Amsterdam and Montreal, has made a career out of examining all types of relationships and their component parts. "It quite happens organically," she says of her work. "It’s a bit of a psychoanalytic journey."
In another room on the lower level of the gallery is Douglas Coupland’s installation. Coupland started out as a student of sculpture at Emily Carr and then went on to garner international literary fame with his book Generation X. Recently, he has returned more and more frequently to visual art to express his views on the world.
His installation consists of two separate pieces. The first work is a grouping of larger-than-life toy soldiers that appear to have been melted together. Coupland’s clump of soldiers have their automatic weapons trained on another of his sculptures, called Gorgon, which first appeared on the cover of his recent book Hey Nostradamus! Gorgon is made up of 10 generic, human-like figures similar to those found on airport signage pictograms.
"The Gorgon came about while I was researching the novel Hey Nostradamus! – a reflection on school shootings as a social phenomenon," says Coupland.
Kneeling down in front of the toy soldiers, the figures face their imminent execution. The effect is chilling and proves that Coupland’s visual art, like his writing, continues to poke and prod popular culture for its hidden meanings.
The Basement Show is a thinking person’s exhibition that aspires to the highest levels of contemporary art and succeeds. |
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