| After the relative quiet of last month, the visual arts scene heats up in February, beginning with offerings inspired by Africa.
Organized by well-known musician and man-about-town David Thiaw, the second annual Into Africa event is a celebration of Black History Month. The opening happens at the Auburn Saloon on February 6 from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m., with stone sculptures, textiles and paintings from local artists on display and music by Thiaw’s group Domba.
On February 10, Stride Gallery stages its 20th Anniversary Valentine’s Gala. This event will culminate with a fundraising auction where works of art will go to the highest bidders.
At Banff’s Whyte Museum, you’ll find the Exposure 2006 photography festival. One of the highlights of this year’s event – which runs until April – is Graver la Lumiere (Etched by Light), a series of photogravures that Jon Goodman has created using original negatives from some of the masters of photography. The exhibition includes images by Paul Strand, Walker Evans, Edward Steichen, Dorothea Lange and others.
Also in Banff throughout the month of February, at the Walter Phillips Gallery’s new Plan B curatorial space in The Banff Centre, are three large paintings by Kent Monkman. Cree in ancestry, Monkman’s canvases are inspired by the landscape paintings of Hudson River School founder Thomas Cole. "I pillage the history of painting," writes Monkman, "from the Baroque era to Romanticism, to investigate and challenge the subjectivity of the European eye on aboriginal peoples and the ‘New World.’"
An exhibition by Toronto-based photographer Edward Burtynsky, China’s Industrial Revolution, is showing at the Paul Kuhn Gallery until February 25. Known internationally for his large-scale photographs documenting man’s impact on the environment, Burtynsky this time trains his eyes (and lens) on the breathtaking changes now occurring in the People’s Republic of China.
"These past five years I focused my thoughts on and created work about China," writes Burtynsky in his artist’s statement. "I began thinking about this formidable country as a subject for my photography when the official go-ahead was announced to begin construction on the Three Gorges Dam Project. The voyages and resulting images I made during these years were as much about my personal need to understand the ecological events unfolding on our planet as they were about the powerful force China is now bringing to bear upon how the world does its business. In my view, China is the most recent participant to be seduced by western ideals – the hollow promise of fulfilment and happiness through material gain. The troubling downside of this is something that I am only too aware of from my experience of life in a developed nation. The mass consumerism these ideals ignite and the resulting degradation of our environment intrinsic to the process of making things should be of deep concern to all."
Paris Métro, an exhibition of photography by Alex Park, shows at the Alliance Française of Calgary in the Memorial Park Library from February 23 to March 30. A television producer and cable TV executive as well as a photographer, Park this time eschews moving images on the small screen in favour of still images of Paris’s subway stations. Taking a combination high-tech/low-tech approach to creating this work, Park starts by using a Polaroid camera to create an image that is eventually turned into a Giclée print. The result, he says, is large canvas works that "evoke a sense of romance, nostalgia and passion for an era long forgotten in modern-day Paris."
Of course, not all art is viewed inside a gallery and in Calgary there’s a trend toward what can be best described as "road art." In a city where it often seems the only issue on the public agenda is road construction, it should come as no surprise that overpasses are now being adorned with art.
The latest example is a piece by Gord Ferguson, commissioned by the City of Calgary’s Public Art Program, called Strung II, which will be installed on the Crowchild-Sarcee N.W. interchange overpass. According to the city, the work will consist of eight large panels of steel with cut-out images of a barbed wire fence that will fit into the pedestrian railing of the overpass.
"The selection panel felt the proposal satisfied the criteria for the project in an intellectual, esthetic and functional manner," said project co-ordinator Evelyn Grant when the commission was announced. "The clean and simple depiction of the barbed wire, in both positive and negative space, celebrates an iconic symbol of the West and reflects the historical use of the site." Strung II is expected to be installed in May. |
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