William Laing

William Laing, RCA, Terrain of the Domestic #6, 2001; silkscreen on paper. Image courtesy of the artist

After a 10-city tour in Eastern Europe, in places as diverse as Ostrava, Pozna and Bratislava, the bold works of 14 contemporary artists are back at home in Cowtown.

Images & Reflections: The Artists Circle of Calgary has been showcased in galleries in Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. This powerful exhibition, which has also played its part in a significant cultural exchange between artistic communities in Calgary, the Czech Republic and Poland, had been organized by Calgary’s Triangle Gallery of Visual Arts, which is currently presenting the exhibition’s homecoming finale.

The success of Images & Reflections has sparked other international art exhibitions as well, including ones brought to Calgary from Eastern Europe (Visions-Media-Metaphor: Contemporary Artists from Pozna and Fragments: Contemporary Czech Artists from Ostrava), and a future experimental exhibition of Canadian print works to go on tour called Beyond Printmaking: Images in Objects.

The idea was set in motion and curated by print artist and professor Thomas Lax (who currently teaches at the Alberta College of Art and Design) and by art historian and the Triangle’s director and curator, Jacek Malec. Both Lax and Malec have roots in Eastern Europe: Lax organized the Czech leg of the tour, and Malec the Polish leg of the tour.

After their success in Poland (the media coverage for the exhibition included a Polish Television Pozna documentary called From the other side of the globe), Lax explored the possibility of extending the show’s tour in the nearby Republic of Slovakia. The Canadian Embassy in Bratislava and the Department of Foreign Affairs helped fund the exhibitions so that they would coincide with the Governor General’s visit in Eastern Europe. The result was a presentation with the GG at the Galeria V Podkrovi in Banska Bystrica, and shows in two other Slovakian cities.

The show itself includes a wide spectrum of styles from diverse contemporary artists including: Eric Cameron, Linda Craddock, Peter Deacon, Helena Hadala, Richard Halliday, Harry Kiyooka, Ron Kostyniuk, Thomas Lax, Brent Laycock, William Laing, Errol Lee Fullen, Arthur Nishimura, Noboru Sawai, Reinhard Skoracki and Simon Wong. All these artists share a Calgary connection.

And while the concept of the exhibition is noteworthy, many of these works are incredible in their own right. Peter Deacon’s Four Points of the Compass is an intriguing work in mixed media and paper that includes incredible textures in four combined images. Individually, Deacon’s images suggest that they are postcards, morphing into their traced history of written marks over images of landscapes. Harry Kiyooka’s Victims is a strikingly haunting image comprised of both charcoal and ink wash on paper. Equally striking in both its simplicity and in its suggestion of movement is Richard Halliday’s Constellation Series, which is also made of seemingly simple media — white gouache on black paper.

Talk to Malec about Brent Laycock’s watercolour works Allegretto and Allegro Spirituoso and the potent blending of bold colours takes on another reason for a second glance: Laycock had been developing the concept for these works just prior to the attack on New York in 2001 and was perhaps influenced by a violent energy he sensed, as well as by the abstract works of Vasily Kadinksy and the musical movements the pieces are named after.

Then there is Eric Cameron’s Exposed/Concealed Laura Baird series, which are works in progress that include the artist painstakingly adding layer after layer of acrylic gesso onto canisters of undeveloped film. The results are odd-looking objects — one may remind you of the wings of a butterfly, another of the rings of Saturn — but it is the idea of the layering that makes these film canisters morph into something so fascinating. They contrast with Ron Kostyniuk’s Neo Construction: Homage to Cezanne (Of Rods, Spheres and Cones), which looks as though it is made of colourful construction blocks set to a symmetrical stage.

The playful miniature sculptures of Reinhard Skoracki must be mentioned, especially the tongue-in-cheek Dialogue — a piece featuring a little green figure sitting on a chair, humourously facing a mirror on the gallery wall. Linda Craddock’s painting Red Rocket Slips Past the Tents is a colourful work reminiscent of the whimsical illustrations one may find in children’s books (and is bound to leave you feeling happy). “Images & Reflections” also has incredible photographs (the beautifully haunting black-and-white photographs by Arthur Nishimura), and incredible print works, including the colourful Terrain of the Domestic #6 (by William Laing), and the jaw dropping Northern Lights (by Noboru Sawai). The latter includes images in colour contrasted with black-and-white images, with artistic influences from Japanese block printing, and renderings influenced by both Japanese erotic fables and aboriginal culture. Beasts are portrayed in this stunning composition, as well as suggestions of other Northern symbols.

The critic and writer John Berger wrote, “If the new language of images were used differently, it would, through its use, confer a new kind of power.” I believe the images in this current exhibition at the Triangle hold the possibility to do just that.