Ken Singer

Jeremy Stanbridge

Angela Leach

Leach, Singer and Stanbridge are among a young generation of artists whose artwork directly or indirectly alludes to historical forms of abstraction — in this case modernist painting from the 1960s. Although the art from that period stressed the formal properties of colour and support, and avoided all references to representation or narrative, the artists in *Visual Stimulants* in large part question the autonomy of abstract painting and return it to the realm of the everyday.

Angela Leach's vibrant and visually demanding paintings appear aligned with the dizzying effects of Op Art, but the intricate interlocking patterns and colour range also reflect her day job as a weaver on a handloom producing fabric. Ken Singer produces work that initially reads as an aesthetic meditation on the modulation of colour, but the densely covered surface pattern is revealed as lines of repeated words that insert narrative content where it is not expected. Jeremy Stanbridge makes visually complex paintings that offer a play between positive and negative space, and which prompt associations as varied as landscape, microscopic cells, camouflage, animation, and wallpaper.

Defying the mass produced and manufactured quality of much contemporary art, and the quick assimilation of information in contemporary mass media, these works are all the product of a labour intensive hand-crafted process. This investment of time is an important component in both the making of the work and in its reception by the viewer, who is encouraged to slow down their apprehension of the work. By allowing the visual to be a pleasurable and complex encounter, and by making the work something it is not, Leach, Singer and Stanbridge create an experience of both contemplation and perplexity.

Essay: "Visual Stimulants," Keith Wallace

Detail of an artwork. The work is made with various textiles woven together, or placed next to each other, to create a repetition of small squares. The colours of textiles used in this work are gold, silver, blue and orange. 

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Seven abstract paintings of various sizes are installed on the gallery walls. The entire canvases are filled with colours, shapes, and patterns. There are two similar paintings in different colors.  

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Four abstract paintings of various sizes are installed on the gallery walls. Two of them are painted in a brown colour scheme. Two paintings in the middle share a similar pink  color.

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A large optical painting is installed on the gallery wall. Various coloured squares are painted in a specific way that gives viewers an illusion that the surface of the canvas is wavy and unleveled. 

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A large-sized abstract painting is installed on the gallery wall. The painting has a gold leopard-pattern on a white background. Contours of all gold figures are shadowed by purple thin lines. 

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Angela Leach, Ken Singer, Jeremy Stanbridge

Visual Stimulants

An Te Liu

The Contemporary Art Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition by An Te Liu, a young Vancouver artist and architect whose dual practices find a meeting ground in his art. The work in Pathology concerns itself with domestic technologies, both high and low, as well as urban planning, and how the two relate to a desire for health, pleasure and the prolongation of life within the safety of controlled environments. Liu is interested in contemporary society's obsession with the improvement and perfectibility of both our bodies and living spaces, and with technological and design formulas that propose solutions to a world full of unknown and unexpected threats.

The exhibition consists of various works that are connected by their minimal aesthetic, architectural references and everyday use-value. The centrepiece consists of a cluster of more than sixty clean-mist humidifiers and negative-air ionizers. Theoretically, these machines create a "charged" atmosphere that makes one feel better. They're clean, almost abstract, design is suggestively architectural, and Liu's arrangement of these machines mimics an architecture model of urban design, like those presented at expositions or town planning meetings. Although their appearance does not disclose their function, humidifiers and ionizers are promoted as preventing everything from parched sinuses to furniture drying and cracking. As most users lack an understanding of the technological principles employed to achieve this, these "machines for living" function as much psychologically as they do physically. Also in the exhibition are loosely-hung samples of decorative wallpaper imprinted with Rorschach-like patterns derived from an overhead view of Levittown, an early post-war example of ideal suburban planning.

*Pathology* is An Te Liu's first solo exhibition. He has previously exhibited at Hedgespace, PARC Gallery and the Pacific Design Centre all located in Los Angeles, and the Henry Urbach Gallery in New York City.


Detail of an art installation by An Te Liu. White mockups of electronic devices, many of which look like humidifiers, are placed on a white surface. 

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More than sixty white miniatures of electrics are placed on the white square panel on the gallery floor. They are the models of clean-mist humidifiers and negative-air ionizers. 

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Two scrolls are installed side by side on the white gallery wall. Both have similar intricate patterns printed on the surfaces. The one on the left is white and the one on the right is red.  

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Several artworks are installed in the gallery. White miniatures of electronics are installed in the back. Two small white machines are connected to the cable and placed on the floor. 

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Several artworks are installed in the gallery. White miniatures of electronics are installed on the floor. A pair of red and white scrolls are installed on the back wall. 

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AnTeLiu-Pathology-10.jpg

Pathology

Cornelia Parker

Steven Moore

André Martin

Matthew Jones

Douglas Gordon

*Documents & Lies* presents the work of four artists living in London, England. Although not photographic, the works point toward a number of photographic notions about truth and reality. The works on display use conceptual strategies to alter real documents and establish new relationships with them. Their particular use of traces — reproduced, modified or simply invented — allows for the transition from a collective history to another, more personal one. By generating doubt, these artists question what is commonly understood by the term “document."

Douglas Gordon's *30 seconds text* utilizes a scientific text that attempts to determine how long life continues after a body is decapitated. Mathew Jones presents a re-reading of Marcel Proust's *Remembrance of Things Past* through his highlighting of almost every sentence with a pink marker. Cornelia Parker's *Tarnish Drawings* present handkerchiefs carrying the residual markings from tarnished silver objects that belonged to famous people such as Charles Dickens, Henry VIII and James Bowie. Steven Moore manipulates the chemical reactions of paint to render images in a way that mimics the processes of photo emulsion used in photography.

André Martin’s signature is evident in the content of this exhibition — a reflection of his own sensibility as an artist — that includes an interest in literature as material for visual work, in the idea of reality and trace, and in the presence of ambiguity as a way of animating art.

Guest curated by André Martin




Detail of art installation by Cornelia Parker. Individually framed six white handkerchiefsare  mounted on a wall. Uniquely shaped black and brown stains are on these handkerchiefs.

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Twelve art pieces are installed on the gallery wall. They are white handkerchiefs framed in identical-sized squares. There are varying shaped stains on the handkerchiefs.  

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A text-based artwork is printed in white on a black gallery wall. This piece, titled 30 seconds text by Douglas Gordon, explains an experiment conducted in France in 1905.

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A large-sized red cube is built in a gallery space. A black rectangular on the right end of the cube looks like a door through which the visitors may walk inside the cube.

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A small wooden cabinet is installed on a pink gallery wall. One of the containers is filled with pink markers used by the artist to highlight the texts in Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past.

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Three figures are installed on the gallery wall. All of them have dusted white surfaces, on which some drawings are made. Two pieces at the top are circular and the bottom one is rectangular. 

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Douglas Gordon, Mathew Jones, Steven Moore, Cornelia Parker

Documents & Lies

Kelly Mark

Kelly Mark lives and works in Toronto, and is one of a new generation of artists gaining national and international attention. Her artwork encompasses an exploration of everyday actions and objects through the use of photography, video and sculpture. The fascination with the mundane is coupled with a desire to document and bring a sense of order to things in life that we disregard or have little control of. *Broken Meter*, for example, consists of a grid of photographs documenting idiosyncratic notes left at broken parking meters. Placed presents photographs of objects, ranging from styrofoam cups to pieces of crumpled paper that have been specifically "placed" or tucked into spots rather than simply being tossed away. *Sniff* is a video loop of the artist's cat sniffing an array of objects placed in front of him. *Origami Transfer* is comprised of dozens of bus transfers that have been obsessively folded and shaped into miniature sculptures. Displayed on shelves in the context of the gallery, these paper sculptures — some of which are made by the artist and others found on buses — are presented as art objects, but they are equally the product of habits shared by many of us.

This interest in the utterly mundane and in low-tech materials functions as an antidote to society's preoccupation with high-tech culture. It also proposes a relationship between the imprint of the individual and the commonplace rituals found throughout society. Kelly Mark's artwork is humorous, oddly profound and even poetic.

### Biography

Kelly Mark has been exhibiting since 1991 and has been included in exhibitions at the Sydney Biennial; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Wynick/Tuck Gallery, Toronto; Ace Art, Winnipeg; and Proposition Gallery, Belfast. This is her first exhibition in Vancouver.



This is a close-up view of black steel racks installed in the gallery. The racks store a number of time cards. The name of the artist, Kelly Mark is typed on each of those time cards. 

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Many artworks are installed in the gallery. Video works are played on two CRT TVs which are placed at the opposite end of the gallery. Two-dimensional works are mounted on the walls between the TVs.

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Multiple artworks are installed in the gallery. A mustard-coloured couch is placed with a CRT TV at the end of the gallery. Small-sized sculptures and pictures are mounted on the white walls.

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Small-sized sculptures are installed on the white gallery wall. They are all made out of crumpled paper. Some look more cylindrical than others. There are five rows of ten sculptures on the wall.

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Seven wedding photographs are installed on the gallery wall above the mustard-coloured couch. A black CRT TV is placed in front of the couch. All photographs are gold framed. 

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Six rows of thirty-five silver dinner knives are placed on the gallery floor. Those different sets of knives face their cutting edges to the right and point to the white wall.  

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Liz Magor

Liz Magor is a senior Canadian artist who lives in Vancouver. She began exhibiting her work in 1973 and has been included in numerous prestigious international exhibitions such as the Venice Biennial, Sydney Biennial, Documenta VIII in Kassel, and inSITE in San Diego/Tijuana. While she is widely known across Canada and beyond, this is Magor’s first solo exhibition in a public gallery in Vancouver in almost twenty years.

Magor is primarily recognized for her sculptural work – although she has developed significant projects in other mediums such as photography – which is expressed in various forms ranging from full-scale installations to individual pieces. *Stores* presented her most recent sculptural work and incorporated non-traditional materials such as silicone rubber and pigmented plaster and resin. With these materials, she made casts of objects with startlingly realistic results. However, while the large pile of rocks placed on the floor is convincingly real, the discovery of actual junk food stashed within its hollow cavity renders the mantle of reality questionable, bringing forward a focus on the work’s materiality. 

Magor’s sculptures at first resemble literal, easily accessible representations, but the play between what is real and what is an illusion, and the curious combination of food with other unrelated objects, complicate their apparent simplicity. The minimal yet evocative presentation suggests narratives and the activity of unknown personae obsessed with squirreling things away as insurance against anticipated disasters or shortages.  It also implies larger social/psychological issues about the relationship between the desire for security in the face of unidentifiable fears, and the fundamental question of what people store away and why.


A small brown backpack with two front pockets is installed on the white gallery wall. The bag is fully closed and looks heavy. Viewers are given no clue what would be stored inside this bag.  

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Two artworks are installed in the gallery space. One is a closed backpack with yellow paint scattered beneath where it is mounted. Thick paper and a piece of wood are leaning against the other wall.

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A pile of small rocks and stones is placed on the gallery floor. The pile is quite low. A layer of orange strings, which seems to be either ropes or fried snacks, are visible under the rocks. 

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Stores

Eleanor Bond

Eleanor Bond is a Winnipeg artist who is recognized internationally for her large-scale oil paintings of urban landscapes in which a labyrinth of forms include both the actual and the imaginary. Although Bond’s paintings do not represent a specific built environment, their starting point is a specific urban place, space and landscape. Research undertaken in Vancouver during February of 1999, when Bond spent ten days walking and driving throughout Vancouver and its environs making photographic and video documentation, influenced the two new works *Becoming the Glass City* and *Taking Shelter in the City of Tents*. Similar projects and exhibitions were undertaken in 1995, at the Witte de Witte Centre for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam; and in 1998, at the Salzburg Kunstverein in Salzburg, Austria. The point of departure for *Elevated Living in a Community-Built Neighbourhood* (1998) was an artist residency in Windsor and Detroit.

Bond’s physiognomy of the urban environment are ambiguous tableaux of both form and content. The urban landscape is characterized as a fluidity and plasticity of space, rather than a view of the city from a coherent and single position, or as a whole. This dynamic spatial representation is often achieved in the paintings through a bird’s-eye view combined with the absence of a horizon; instead sky and land, sky and architecture, sea and land unite in indistinct fields of colour. As interventions into the coherence of fixed structures, Bond’s paintings often seek out the edges of places and represent the urban landscape as syntactically unstable. Her paintings are therefore value-laden presentations of human experiences within modernity and conditions of urbanism, architecture and dwelling. This sense of metropolis is marked by a rootlessness in which technological development has created a new concept of space and social forms, or an experience of space that constitutes the foundation of new architecture, of interior and exterior, and private and public space. 

This disorientation of space struggles to deny a singular instrumentality, or what Bond clearly views as disciplinary effects of the urban landscape at the cusp of the millennium. If Bond’s visuality of place and space within the urban environment seems merely the capacity of the imagination to create models of constructed space, a form of architecture, it is useful to remember that the architecture of the Renaissance was painted before it was built.

Guest curated by Petra Watson

Essay: “Imaginary Displacement and the Facts of Metaphor,” Petra Watson

Detail of a painting by Eleanor Bond. Blue, purple, red, and white straight lines zigzag and overlap in a dark grey background. The image depicts an abstracted aerial view of a city filled with roads and skyscrapers. 

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Large-scale paintings are installed on the gallery walls. They depict urban city landscapes in grey, purple, and orange colours. Many vertical lines are used to depict towers, streets and buildings.

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A large-scale painting is installed on the gallery wall. It depicts an aerial view of an urban city where purple highways run between skyscrapers. The buildings are slightly tilted to the right angle. 

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Two paintings are installed on the gallery walls. The one in the back shows an aerial view of a wide road running straight between buildings. The one in the front shows the bottoms of skyscrapers.  