>>PREVIEW
DIVE
Runs until July 1
Stride Gallery
Who knew watching Bugs Bunny cartoons could lead to a better appreciation for conceptual art?
Stride Gallery’s latest installation, entitled Dive, features the sculptures of Canadian artists David Diviney and Craig Le Blanc. Once a year, the gallery invites artists to create a collaborative exhibition, with this year’s pairing of the two artists bringing remarkable complementary patterns of approach in their displayed works. The combination of sculptures presented in Dive engage the spectator with a playful humour and appreciation for irony, satire and capturing moments of anticipation.
Gallery director Anthea Black describes the artist-run space as a hothouse for new ideas and new approaches to art. "We provide space for artists to re-check what is art. The audiences respond to this encouragement of ideas," she says.
Diviney’s works in Dive exemplify the experimentation that draws in the spectator to respond to art. His attraction to the mundane presence of things in the real world is employed as transformative statements within his art. Diviney’s Decoy, consisting of a simple galvanized steel tub, paint and a hollow hunting decoy, is a parody of the purpose of things and their usefulness. His sculptures approach the viewer with a wry smile.
Le Blanc creates his sculptures first as computer renderings before bringing them into spatial reality. As such, they bring with them a sense of precision. His works in Dive are visual puns of anticipation, irony and humour. The Medal Round, an oversized gold medal hanging precariously on the end of a diving board, is an example of the big ideas captured in the tiny space of Dive. There is a palpable weight of expectation and anticipation of the diver before the plunge. Le Blanc’s High Dive is another small object/big thing, presenting the complex in a simple fashion. It consists of an attenuated ladder with a platform high above an impossible glass of water – a statement of prolonging the inevitable. It is also the one piece that unerringly brings to mind a certain cartoon that has the main character repeatedly being tricked into diving off the exact same platform. This is probably not Le Blanc’s purpose, but it blends humour with the sense of play that pervades all of the sculptures presented in Dive. |
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