Patrick Traer

Patrick Traer has worked during the past eight years in various mediums that include painting, drawing and photography. Since 1990, he has been employing fabrics and machine embroidery to create what are in essence three dimensional drawings. He has also been exploring issues of the body and its representation. The works presented in this exhibition show references to the body that are ambiguous and fragmented yet potent. In the *Systemic Drawings*, the complex lines and shapes suggest internal parts of the body such as arterial or nervous systems. *PLUSH* consists of fourteen blood-red divans grouped together in the shape of a large sensuous bed that is not functional. The biomorphic forms of the divans suggest lips, limbs and body fluids. The red taffeta upholstery is elegant and seductive, it calls to be touched, but the sign that stands guard at one end of the grouping states "please do not touch," a reference to both the preciousness of the art object and the danger that is associated with blood in the era of AIDS.

### Biography
Patrick Traer lives and works in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. He graduated from York University in 1990 and currently teaches at the University of Saskatchewan. His work has been exhibited at Presentation House Gallery in Vancouver; YYZ in Toronto; the Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon; and the Art Gallery of Southern Alberta in Lethbridge.

The artist wishes to acknowledge embroiderer Anne Zbirun and Peter Sacher Upholstery, both of Saskatoon.



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PLUSH

Warren Murfitt

Steven Shearer

Derek Root

The Contemporary Art Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new work by three Vancouver artists: Warren Murfitt, Derek Root and Steven Shearer. Using a variety of media, these artists have in common a visual reference to forms of abstract art from the 1960s: Hard-Edge, Op and Minimalism. Their approach to this visual language, however, is derived from different sources and none of these artists was fully aware of the other's work before this exhibition.

There are tendencies internationally toward re-examining the language of abstract art from various points of view. The artists in this exhibition are not nostalgically yearning for the work or ideas of the 1960s. They have used the strong visual forms of abstraction to incite an immediate response by the viewer; there is the promise of a purely visual experience, but there is, at the same time, something unsettling. Murfitt's op-ish patterns look abstract but are deceptively familiar; Root's pristine appearing surfaces are layered with nuances and variations that arise from his process of hand-crafting; Shearer's systematic patterns are disrupted by texts that speak of insecurity.

This exhibition carries on concerns about abstract art that have been explored in two previous 1994 Contemporary Art Gallery exhibitions: Mina Totino, Paintings; Helmut Dorner, Under The Surface.

Essay: “Warren Murfitt, Derek Root, Steven Shearer,” Keith Wallace

A large sculpture in a gallery space. It is made of a wood and metal structure and shows an enlarged wood pattern in the interior. This inside part is lit in bright-blue.

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A large painting mounted on a white wall. The painting has a yellow background and a gridded dot pattern. Most of the dots are white, but some red and black dots are spread throughout.

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The corner of a gallery space with various artworks mounted on both walls. The works are paintings on square/rectangle canvasses. Many of them are one single colour but two have a dotted pattern. 

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A gallery space with artworks on the walls. The work in the centre is a large sculpture made of a wooden frame. The opening of the structure shows a large wood-pattern lit in bright blue.

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3 artworks on wood panels mounted on a white wall. They show black geometric patterns on natural wood with text. The work on the left has a grid pattern that reads "learn the truth I tried to hide." 

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The corner of a gallery space with 3 artworks visible. One is a wooden structure that shows a large wood pattern inside, in blue. The other 2 works are wood panels with black geometric patterns. 

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Warren Murfitt, Derek Root, Steven Shearer

Joey Morgan

*An Archive for the Lost Ones* was created while Joey Morgan was living in Brooklyn, New York. During the 1980s she lived, worked and exhibited extensively in Vancouver producing several site specific installations that incorporated numerous mediums such as sculpture, photography, collage, video, and audio.

Morgan's work has consistently explored an interest in the psychology, the instability and the ambiguity of actual and dreamed experience. In *An Archive for the Lost Ones* she has presented an environment reminiscent of an archive and a laboratory. The black and white image transparencies are like fleeting moments of a past time or a dream. The glass plates sandblasted with texts and associative medical specimens combine words which are drawn from *The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations*, a writer's manual originally published in 1921 by Georges Polti that describes all possible plot-lines. Morgan's installations are poetic in their beauty but disturbing in their effect.

The audio component of *An Archive for the Lost Ones* is a ten minute eight track sound work alternating with a ten minute recording of a clear running stream.

This is Joey Morgan's first solo exhibition in Vancouver since 1988. Recent solo exhibitions have been installed at Printed Matter in New York, The Power Plant in Toronto and at Le Fresnoy in Tourcoing, France. She also participated in the 1992 Sydney Biennale in Australia.


Essay: “Text for an Archive,” Barbara Burkhardt

A closeup of a grey surface in a gallery. On it, two wooden boxes with several photo-transparencies in metal frames with yellow stains lay. More of these lay in front of, and beside, the boxes. 

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Several photo-transparencies against a glowing white background. They include images of buildings, layered yellow stains and overlaid text. One of the slides with text reads "Abduction." 

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Several photo-transparencies against a glowing white background. The images in them are of cliffs and buildings, as well as yellow stains and layered text. One of the slides with text reads "Pursuit." 

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An Archive for the Lost Ones

Gisele Amantea

Peter White

Hank Bull

Sophie Dikeakos

Denise Oleksijczuk

Renée Van Halm

Kate Craig

Christos Dikeakos

Ken Lum

Exhibitions exploring the City of Vancouver Art Collection, managed by the Contemporary Art Gallery since 1971, have been the feature of our summer program during the past two years. This year the Gallery is taking a different approach to the idea of art collecting by focusing on art that has been collected by artists. Artists often acquire work through a variety of means such as trades, purchases from colleagues and through supporting the art auctions that are an essential means of raising funds for many non-profit galleries. The artists invited to share their collections in *Private Eyes* represent a diversity of sensibilities in their own work and in what they have collected. Selected works from five Vancouver artists' collections will be featured: Christos/ Sophie Dikeakos, Gisele Amantea/Peter White, Ken Lum/Denise Oleksijczuk, Hank Bull/Kate Craig, and Renee Van Halm.

In this exhibition the artists will also be assuming the role of curator. Each artist has been asked to select works from their own collection and to determine how they will be installed within their allotted space in the Gallery. Each collection will be arranged as a personalized grouping rather than the usual presentation of individual works standing on their own. Artists as collectors are often overlooked in considering how art collections are traditionally developed; *Private Eyes* brings a new perspective to this important aspect of the art-world.

Eleven artworks mounted on a white wall. The works include a small all-red painting, a double exposure photo portrait, and a text work that reads "au secouirs!". Some works are framed, some are not.

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Eight framed art works on a white wall. The works vary in size and are photographs, illustrations, or mixed media. The frames of the works are black, white or plain wood. 

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A corner of a gallery space with several artworks mounted across both walls. The works vary in size, framed and unframed. On the right, there is a large photo of a tree with a blue sky, upside down.

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31 landscape paintings of many sizes in various frames mounted on a white wall in a gallery space. Below, in front of the wall, there is a faded red velvet couch with a feather-shaped paisley pattern.

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Two walls and a darkened hallway in a gallery space. The walls contain several artworks of different sizes. Two works of different sizes are upside-down photos of trees in front of blue skies. 

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14 artworks on a gallery wall. The bottom edges of the works are mounted at the same level , but their height and width varies. The largest work, on the right, is a Salish landscape illustration.

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Three white walls and a shadowy hallway in a gallery. Dozens of artworks are mounted on the walls. The works on the back wall are landscapes, with a faded red velvet couch in front of them.

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11 works mounted on a white wall. The works are placed asymmetrically, many of them in wood frames. One work reads "Big Tree." Beside it, there is a large photo of an upside-down tree and a blue sky.

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13  artworks are mounted on a white wall in a gallery, all but one are framed. At the base of the wall on the floor, there is a tile mosaic that reads "Sex Hell" in red letters on a blue background. 

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Collections from Chris and Sophie Dikeakos, Gisele Amantea and Peter White, Ken Lum and Denise Oleksijczuk, Hank Bull and Kate Craig, and Renée Van Halm, artworks from approximately 40 artists

Private Eyes, What Artists Collect

Shani Mootoo

Shani Mootoo was born in Dublin, Ireland, raised in Trinidad and has been based in Vancouver for the past thirteen years. During the 1980s Mootoo was recognized primarily for her painting, but since the early 1990s she has directed her attention to photocopies, video and writing. To date, Mootoo's photocopies and videotapes have been presented only in group exhibitions. The Contemporary Art Gallery project is the first opportunity to see a coherent body of her work in these mediums.

Mootoo's work explores the complexities of identity as it is expressed through gender, sexuality and the individual's place within the larger social arena. The photocopy pieces she has produced for this exhibition range from snapshot-like photomontages reflecting the public realm of the street, to compositions that play upon psychological and imaginary states of mind, to imagery that is unabashedly sensual. Aspects of the videotapes explore the wilderness as a symbol of Canadian idealism. Together these works convey an identity that is fragmentary, filled with contradictions and that reverberates between the public and the private.

Shani Mootoo's work has been recently exhibited in *Memory and Desire: The Voices of 11 Women of Culture* at the Vancouver Art Gallery; *Racey, Sexy* at the Chinese Cultural Centre, Vancouver; *Telling Relations: Sexuality and the Family* at the Grunt Gallery, Vancouver; and at YYZ in Toronto. Her videos have been screened in Vancouver, Toronto, San Francisco, New York, Berlin, and Birmingham, England.

The majority of the work in this exhibition (South, North & West walls) was produced during the past month on a Xerox Majestic photocopier. The Contemporary Art Gallery extends a special thanks to Xerox Canada Limited for making this machine available to the artist, and for printing materials for the art and the accompanying publication.


Essay: Shani Mootoo: “Photocopies & Videotapes,” Monika Kin Gagnon

This is Shani Mootoo’s photocopy collage that was exhibited at CAG in 1994. A cutout photograph of the artist’s face is attached to the body of a man wearing underpants. 

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Photocopies and Videotapes

Helmut Dorner

Helmut Dorner's painting is rooted in the history of abstraction and the continued exploration of form. Toronto based independent curator Gregory Salzman has written of Dorner's work that it "engages us in a close and sustained process of looking that entails a certain stringency and clarity but also a degree of uncertainty and indeterminacy. His art is not bound by any aim or purpose, but true to the nature of perception itself, remains contingent and mutable." While the grids, language signs and decorative motifs suggest references to the real world, they never quite ground themselves and remain in a state of becoming.

Dorner employs various materials in his paintings including oil, lacquer and plexiglass. The surfaces range from thick impasto to finely polished finishes. The works are constructed of many successive layers. The lacquer paintings are worked by pouring the paint onto the surface and the images are formed by stencils. This brings a tactile and highly physical quality to the paintings that inverts one's first impression that these are cool and objective works.

Helmut Dorner works and teaches in Karlsruhe, Germany. His work has been seen in Germany, France, Spain and Belgium and was included in the 1993 Documenta in Kassel, Germany. This exhibition, guest curated by Gregory Salzman and circulated by Mercer Union in Toronto, is Dorner's first North American showing.

Curated by Gregory Salzman 
Exhibition organized by Mercer Union Gallery, Toronto


Three vertical paintings on a gallery wall. The painting on the left is all grey, the centre one has a two-column grid with black lines, and the one on the right has 3 clusters of black semi-circles. 

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Under the Surface

Sunil Gupta

The Contemporary Art Gallery is pleased to present the first solo exhibition in Canada by Sunil Gupta. As an artist, curator, writer and editor in London, England, Gupta has played an important role in the evolution of the Black Arts Movement that emerged in the United Kingdom during the early 1980s.

Having once worked as a photojournalist, Gupta has been influenced by documentary practices. *Trespass I* consists of large 3 ½ foot by 8 foot computer generated photomontages developed after a visit to Berlin. Gupta has juxtaposed images of himself and other non-Europeans with scenarios that represent icons of European culture. The photomontages speak of the immigrant presence in the new unified Europe, specifically "post-wall" Berlin, and are pertinent to discussions taking place around issues of immigration and the global cultural diaspora. Gupta presents the non-European as an active participant, rather than a passive observer, in the societal change that is affecting many western countries.

### Biography
Sunil Gupta was born in New Delhi, raised in Montreal, and has been living in London for the past decade. He has shown throughout the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, the United States and will be represented in the Havana Biennial in May of 1994. He is also curator for the Institute of New International Visual Art, an organization engaged in promoting a plurality of art-making practices from around the world that challenge the domination of Eurocentric traditions.


Essay: "Living in the City: Racial & Sexual Difference in the Work of Sunil Gupta," David A. Bailey

A long horizontal print containing three photographs in a row. One image is of a figure facing a baseball field, the next is of the outside of a sports stadium and the third is of two smiling people. 

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Three large horizontal works on a gallery space. The pieces have 2 or 3 photos included in each. The photos include a birds-eye view of a building, a naked person reading, and a person smoking. 

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Two horizontal artworks in a gallery space. The works each have 3 or 4  images in them. The images include European stone sculptures,  a person standing in front of a mantle, and images of text.

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Four horizontal works spread across two gallery walls. The works each have 2 or three photos in them. The photos include a rec-coloured image of Nazi Germany, a baseball field, and a metal gate.

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Three horizontal works across two gallery walls. The works have 3 photos each in them, which include images of an airport runway, people standing in line, a skyline, and Nazi Germany.

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Trespass I

Mina Totino

Mina Totino is a Vancouver-based painter who has been exhibiting for the past decade. Throughout this period, she has drawn upon seminal moments from the "official" history of painting such as the heroics of Abstract Expressionism, the genres of still life and the finality of the monochrome. But she has inserted elements commonly considered feminine — images of women, fashion accessories and decorative patterns. Through this strategy, she asserts a place for women within what has traditionally been a male dominated practice.

In this exhibition, Totino presents a diversity of imagery that is both representational and abstract. The paintings are sensual in their colour and surface but unsettling in their range of associations — from the rich colours of makeup to the inscription of a tattoo to renderings of body innards. Together, this construct of associations disrupts the pleasure of looking and the clarity of representation to create a sense of doubt about how we look at paintings. Each of these paintings stand as a unified structure, but in combination they function as an installation that can be rearranged according to the space of presentation. The installation tends to read like an extended phrase; the paintings are spaced to create an armature of assertions and pauses.

### Biography 
Mina Totino has exhibited widely in Vancouver. She was included in *Young Romantics* at the Vancouver Art Gallery and has shown at the Or Gallery, Artspeak Gallery and the Front Gallery. In 1991, she was part of an exhibition of four Canadian women artists, *Other Frontiers*, which was presented in Glasgow, London and Paris. Most recently she exhibited in *Corpus* which was organized by the Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon for a national tour.


Essay: “Mina Totino: Paintings,” Keith Wallace

A close view of a painting of overlapping flowers. The flowers are red, yellow, blue and pink. 

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Four vertical paintings in a gallery. One is all black, one has several large flowers layered together, one has a skull spewing blood from its mouth, and one is black with a textured beige circle. 

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Five vertical paintings in the corner of a gallery. The paintings depict various things, including a human digestive system, flowers, and a skull. One painting is all red, and one is all black.

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A photo of three vertical paintings in a gallery space. One painting is pale pink and hangs to the left. One painting is all red, and another depicts a human digestive system. 

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Three vertical paintings in a gallery. One painting has a dark background and the word "penetrate" written across in red, one painting is grey-blue and one shows various flowers, including daffodils.

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Three vertical paintings in a gallery. One has several large flowers layered together, one has a skull spewing blood from its mouth, and one is black with a beige circle that has a cracked texture.