SCAN CONTEMPORARY ART JOURNAL Editor’s Note for SCAN Issue 3

This issue of SCAN explores the possibility but also interact with art. Thus one of the of reconfiguring the past, present, and future. most common ways that contemporary artists We think it is integral to art practice. Two and viewers navigate the art work: art history. notions that significantly impact this question The discipline requires that we lean heaviest that implicates a certain exchange between on citation, thematic elements and medium- art and world are distance and experience. specific questions. All at the expense of Critical distance has often been regarded as the experience. The encounter with the artwork is important construct for critique. But the case a far more challenging endeavor. Far broader against critical distance as the standard bearer considerations are required to unpack its of critique a panacea has been mounting for content. We viewers find our way into the work some decades. The strongest contemporary by virtue of our practical experiences with accounts against maintaining critical distance the outside world. This expanded notion of hinge upon identity. Issues of gender, race the art encounter bridges space, and because and sexuality reimagine the past, present and darting between past and present, offers up an future precisely by substituting distance for alternative future. proximity, embodiment or identification. In this sense critical distance imposes Sarah Blanchard and Danielle Fenn constraints not only on how we produce art

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that sought to address their dire diagnosis: that national Gary Wilder’s new Indigenous Sovereignty decolonization was bound to give birth to neocolonialism. book Freedom Time: After all, the colonies-turned-nation-states have been Negritude, Decolonization, living in the neocolonial shadow of decolonization for and the Future of the and the over half a century in a world where state sovereignty World. continues to be celebrated as though it were a law of nature, serving as the foundation for entities such as the United Nations (premised on territorial sovereignty), such global Future of the World movements as human rights (premised on citizenship rights) and Indigenous rights (premised on settler state sovereignty), such fields as international law (premised on by Someone Here non-binding agreements between sovereign states), and such feigned federalisms as the European Union (premised on bankocracy and border militarization), to say nothing of the WTO, IMF, OECD, or the World Bank.1

Gary Wilder’s new book Freedom conversation and political project of antidote to this allergic reaction, In his concluding chapter, Wilder takes some time to Time: Negritude, Decolonization, francophone African intellectuals in Wilder urges us to take their poetic reflect on the freedom time of these thinkers as it relates to and the Future of the World is 1930’s Paris known as Négritude from and political visions of postnational our own time: “[Césaire] and Senghor’s visions of self- a wake-up call concerning the a longstanding critique that effectively democracy for what they really were: determination without state sovereignty, legacies that history of postnational democratic came to reduce the movement to an serious and significant attempts to they inherited and willed, should surely count as a fecund imagination. As he writes in the ultimately essentialist project carried imagine a form of decolonization that source for an effective history of our present throughout opening line of chapter one, “this out by a nativist and assimilated would transcend the assumed end- which to glimpse a possible future” (251). He then goes book is about ‘the problem of cultural elite opposed to national goal of state sovereignty at a particular on to write: “But we can only begin to recognize their freedom’ after the end of empire” decolonization. Or so the critique moment in history when the futures past, let alone hear their transgenerational call (1). As Wilder argues repeatedly goes. geopolitical landscape of imperialism to possible heirs, if we unthink entrenched assumptions throughout the book, the problem of had come to create an intercontinental about Négritude as a nativism, decolonization as national freedom during the post-war period Wilder is crystal clear on numerous climate of global interdependence. independence, and the post-war period as the Cold War of decolonization (1945–1960) is occasions that he is not making order that came to be rather than an opening in which how to of think self-determination an argument against the national The historical significance and a range of non-national political experiments were without state sovereignty; how to decolonization movements of the possible necessity of post-war national envisioned and enacted” (257). think of decolonization without post-war period. Nor is he making an decolonization notwithstanding, national independence; how to think argument that the political projects Césaire and Senghor’s claim that Just as Césaire and Senghor saw their own attempts to of popular sovereignty without put forth by Césaire and Senghor as colonial emancipation would never think colonial emancipation without state sovereignty as territorial sovereignty. As Wilder an alternative form of decolonization bring about genuine postcolonial inherited by past attempts to do the same in figures such makes clear, these are all different were necessarily the right ones. freedom so long as it remained as Toussaint Louverture and Victor Schoelcher, Wilder versions of the same question: how Instead, Wilder is concerned with premised on the principle of state concludes with the suggestion that we might listen to to think of a world order that is both those wholesale dismissals and sovereignty remains all too relevant the “pasts present” and “futures past” of these thinkers postcolonial and postnational? denunciations of Césaire and Senghor to our own historical moment. As in order to rethink our own post-Cold War present not as conservative apologists of empire Wilder emphasizes, admitting that as the neocolonial order that came to be but rather as He powerfully and persuasively engaging in compromises with the utopian political vision and a historical opening in its own right, in which a range argues that the importance of this the colonizer under the disguise of pragmatic political policies of these of non-national political experiments continue to be question, along with what were decolonization. As Wilder explains thinkers may not have been the right envisioned and enacted, and where the political stakes of significant attempts to answer it, can in a recent panel discussion, his (nor the only) solution to the concrete these experiments continue to be, as they were for Césaire be found in the lives and works of the argument is one set up against “the conditions and contradictions of and Senghor, nothing other than the “future of the world.” two poet politicians Aimé Césaire allergic reaction that anything that their time (or their place) does not Wilder then provides a brief survey of some of these and Léopold Sédar Senghor. To do isn’t revolutionary nationalism mean that they were necessarily current non-national political experiments, and how we so, Wilder retrieves the cultural is necessarily reactionary.” As an wrong in presenting a political form might understand their relationship to a longer history of

2 3 SCAN ISSUE 3 BY COLAB SCAN CONTEMPORARY ART JOURNAL imagining postnational decolonization political projects of non-national resurgence does not mean the since truly recognizing the latter would mean radically in place of empire, and how we might bring such a world inherited from such figures as Césaire decolonization required radically resurgence of Indigenous nationhood reconfiguring the former. For settlers, this would mean into being. I am here again reminded of Leanne Simpson’s and Senghor. reconstituting France itself, citing (it certainly does), but that Indigenous fundamentally rethinking our relationship to a “Canada” words: countless formulations in which resurgence certainly does not mean that continues to demand our unflinching and unthinking Wilder’s survey is certainly not Césaire and Senghor declare that the the resurgence of new Westphalian support to ensure that its state sovereignty is not revealed I am not so concerned with how we dismantle the master’s intended to be a comprehensive list object of decolonization cannot be nation-states all across Turtle in all its illegitimacy. I am reminded here of George house…but I am very concerned with how we (re)build our nor a detailed description of all the restricted or reduced to the colonies, Island. In the words of Anishinaabe Manuel’s words from The Fourth World, that “Real own house, or our own houses. I have spent enough time individual thinkers and collective but in fact requires the decolonization writer Leanne Simpson: “I am not recognition of our [Indigenous] presence and humanity taking down the master’s house and now I want most of movements currently aspiring to or the “explosion” of the very a nation-state, nor do I strive to be would require a genuine reconsideration of so many my energy to go into visioning and building our new home. some form of postnational democracy. category of “France.” As Wilder notes one.” Countless other Indigenous people’s role in North American society that it would (32) Nevertheless, there is a particular in a recent interview, this book is not feminist scholars and writers – Audra amount to a genuine leap of imagination” (216-217). absence from the list that I believe so much about rethinking France as Simpson, Sarah Hunt, Mishuana This is perhaps the difference between a project of needs to be highlighted, if only it is about unthinking France. In this Goeman, Patricia Monture-Angus, Another central claim in Wilder’s book is that Césaire decolonization that tells us what to knock down and a to further Wilder’s argument by sense, Césaire and Senghor’s (and Aileen Moreton-Robinson, Eve Tuck, and Senghor were at their core planetary thinkers. Again project of Indigenous resurgence that embodies alternative probing its particular relevance to by extension Wilder’s) argument is Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Jeannette and again, he argues that their political projects were not models and visions of the world we might inhabit instead. the particular location in which only that much more obvious in a Armstrong, Lee Maracle, among concerned with critiquing European universalism from In this sense, it is not merely a question of provincializing Wilder himself works, and where settler colonial context, where any many others – have and continue the standpoint of African particularism, so as to expose nation-state forms of sovereignty, but of universalizing much discussion of the book has genuine project of decolonization does to affirm Indigenous sovereignty as the former as a particularism of its own. Instead, they Indigenous forms of sovereignty. This is not a call for begun to take place. I am referring not mean contesting a nation-state decidedly different in political form were concerned with “challenging the assumption that settlers to adopt and appropriate Indigenous laws, to the decolonization movement whose headquarters are overseas in than that of the settler colonial nation- the universal is European property” (10). In other words, languages, and lifeways so as to use them as tools to our of Indigenous resurgence in settler the colonial metropole, but rather state.2 it’s not simply that Césaire and Senghor were talking back own ends. Instead, it means that settlers must work in colonial contexts, of which the requires challenging a nation-state to the colonizer to critique Europe’s claim to universality decolonizing ways with and on the terms of Indigenous United States is a prime example. whose very existence depends In Canada, this is precisely what from the standpoint of the colonized, but that Césaire and peoples in order to undo and remake our relationships Wilder refers to the movements upon the continued occupation of makes the current rhetoric of Senghor were claiming the universal for themselves by with one another and with the land in such a way that we across Latin America that “seek Indigenous lands in the here and renewing a “Nation to Nation” putting forth planetary political visions that had something do not reproduce the very relations of domination that we to constitutionalize autonomy for now. In other words, any project of relationship so contradictory. to teach humanity about what kind of world we might are seeking to transcend. It also means that the legitimacy indigenous peoples” (254), yet there Indigenous decolonization, regardless After all, we are talking about two want to live in after empire came crashing down. Wilder of the settler state and its colonial-capitalist character remains a salient silence on the topic of whether it is articulated as an fundamentally different forms of stresses that their projects were, in this regard, neither must be challenged every step of the way.4 To suggest that of Indigenous sovereignty on the assertion of state sovereignty, requires nationhood. The Canadian settler secessionist nor assimilationist, but humanist. In a recent non-national forms of sovereignty are a new idea or that very lands on which Wilder himself unthinking and exploding the political nation-state is, at is political- article that speaks to the core argument of the book, Wilder we need to go back to the drawing board is but another is a settler. I don’t point this out as a category of the “United States” or economic core, parasitic upon the writes: “Césaire and Senghor were not simply demanding exercise in erasing the existence of Indigenous peoples and critique of Wilder’s argument, which “Canada” (to name only two). dispossession of Indigenous lands and that overseas peoples be fully integrated within the existing their sovereign nations.5 is concerned with a rereading of two thus of Indigenous sovereignty.3 As national state: they were proposing a type of revolutionary thinkers at a particular historical This language of exploding and Glen Coulthard asserts with regard to integration that would reconstitute France itself, by quietly I am not suggesting that “Indigenous sovereignty” is some moment in a particular part of unthinking the settler colonial the Guswenta (Two Row Wampum exploding the nation-state from within.” It should be sort of panacea to be adopted uncritically as a catch-all the world, but because I believe nation-state is certainly not new in the Treaty), it is no longer sensible to clear from such a formulation that these thinkers were not solution to the problem of postnational democracy. That a more serious engagement with history of Indigenous decolonization speak of the Haudenosaunee canoe talking about liberal notions of multicultural inclusion there is a long history of the settler left romanticizing Indigenous forms of decolonization movements in the “new” world, and the European ship as morally within a nation-state that is by its very nature designed to Indigenous political forms and cultural practices as on Turtle Island actually stretches where the post-colonial period has equivalent vessels: respecting the exclude. Césaire and Senghor clearly had something else though they constitute a singular, static entity for which the significance and deepens the yet to arrive, and where the liberation sovereignty of the former requires in mind: a truly transformative process of decolonization Indigenous peoples are nostalgic and which settlers implications of what already follows of Indigenous nations depends upon sinking the sovereignty of the latter. in which state sovereignty would not survive unscathed. can help them recover must be understood for what it from Wilder’s argument, the contours the deconstruction of the settler This is what makes the Supreme Indeed, it would not survive at all. is: racist. Nor am I suggesting that engagement with of which he simply sketches out for us state. That so many expressions of Court of Canada’s continual call Indigenous forms of decolonization, whether theoretically in his final chapter. Indigenous sovereignty have and for the reconciliation of Crown Wilder’s reading of Césaire and Senghor therefore or practically, can be carried out in isolation or ignorance continue to be articulated in terms and Indigenous sovereignty a suggests that their political projects cannot be reduced to of class struggle.6 What I am suggesting is that Indigenous One of Wilder’s most compelling that have nothing to do with the contradiction in terms (akin to an instrumental rejection of European empire. Rather, resurgence and decolonization is a project that always and consistent claims throughout his nation-state is even more telling in calling for the reconciliation of the Césaire and Senghor must be taken seriously as global already precedes and exceeds settler state sovereignty. book is that Césaire and Senghor’s this regard. It’s not that Indigenous bourgeoisie and the proletariat), thinkers grappling with what kind of world will be built As an inescapably political project, it cannot be reduced

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indigenous peoples might learn to live together on the like Césaire and Senghor, who chose to heed the visions basis of mutual respect and peaceful co-existence on and and voices of postnational freedom that came before them, with the land.8 Instead of reducing Indigenous legal and it’s time the settler world listen to Indigenous visions and political traditions to an instrumental agent of radical voices of sovereignty that have long been in the business of change (a favoured move of settler socialists), we ought to answering the “problem of freedom” after empire. realize that these traditions have a great deal to teach the world about alternative political-economic and ecological orders from which everyone has something to gain. Much

Caption here: Caption here: Caption here: (Endnotes) indigenous claims to territory. A central It is interesting to note, for instance, how Equi torrovit asit, Equi torrovit asit, Equi torrovit asit, 1 With regard to Indigenous rights, I am characteristic of indigenous sovereignty, his stance on culture differed significantly corrum facepuda corrum facepuda corrum facepuda referring to the concluding article of The after all, is its relationship to the land. from that of Amílcar Cabral, and for what consectur? Facias as consectur? Facias as consectur? Facias as United Nations Declaration on the Rights of 4 Doing the work of delegitimizing without reasons. reium utem duntio reium utem duntio reium utem duntio minctatia num quis- minctatia num quis- minctatia num quis- Indigenous Peoples, which reads: “Nothing indigenizing manifests itself in movements 8  I am certainly not suggesting that such ciis nostem libus ciis nostem libus ciis nostem libus in this declaration may be interpreted as like Occupy that reproduce the very a home must be made accountable to the quia vidi dolupti quia vidi dolupti quia vidi dolupti implying for any State, people, group, or relations of settler colonial occupation in claims of settlers concerning their future person any right to engage in any activity or the name of ostensibly radical change (on on Indigenous lands. To the contrary, I am to perform any act contrary to the Charter this point, see Tuck and Yang, 2012). referring to a vision of decolonization that, to certain Indigenous cultural criticism that has (and continues to decolonial politics of resurgence in its of the United Nations or construed as 5 Not to mention the treaty relationships and as Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang describe practices and traditions that are so be) made of Négritude: that culture place, a politics that: seeks to practice authorizing or encouraging any action confederacies between Indigenous nations it, “is not accountable to settlers, or settler often fetishized by settlers without can only ever be an essentialist means decolonial, gender-emancipatory, which would dismember or impair, totally or treaties with the non-human world. It futurity. Decolonization is accountable to considering that the resurgence of to a decolonial end. For Fanon, this and economically nonexploitative or in part, the territorial integrity or political is worth noting that the notion of treaty Indigenous sovereignty and futurity” (35). these practices and traditions actually meant that Négritude could only alternative structures of law and unity of sovereign and independent States” (when not referring to treaties with a settler poses fundamental problems for the ever be instrumental to the national sovereign authority grounded on (Article 46, UNDRIP). nation-state) has an established critical political-economy of settler society. liberation struggles of Africa, with a critical refashioning of the best 2 It is worth noting, as Scott Lauria purchase within the theory and practice Doing so suggests that culture can be little to offer these nations (or the of Indigenous legal and political Morgensen has recently argued, that the of Indigenous resurgence. That the Truth treated independently of the political- world) once their independence traditions. It is only by privileging settler colonial nation-state form has had and Reconciliation Commission of Canada economic formation of which it is was won.7 On precisely this point, and grounding ourselves in these its fair share of historical influence upon has foregrounded the treaty relationship as born (and which it in turn influences), Jean-Paul Sartre famously declared: normative lifeways and resurgent the form of the (non-settler) nation-state of a framework for reconciliation is telling in which is why it is no surprise that “Thus, Négritude is for destroying practices that we have a hope of the “old” continent. this regard (while not being without its own such an approach is so appealing itself” (327). For many Indigenous surviving our strategic engagements 3 While it is surely not his intention, I contradictions). and ultimately unthreatening to sovereigntists around the world, with the colonial state with integrity am concerned that Wilder’s argument 6 On the need for an organizational praxis settler liberals and their multicultural such a declaration is nothing short of and as Indigenous peoples. (179) concerning Césaire and Senghor’s call for that is both decolonial and anti-capitalist, appetite for cultural difference. reactionary. In his recent work Red a non-territorial political form of popular see Natalie Knight’s ‘Building Rage’: Skin White Masks, Glen Coulthard In other words, the resurgence sovereignty might be read in such a way Decolonizing Class War. Also on this By the same token, it would be a takes up this question of culture in of Indigenous lifeways is not for as to undermine indigenous claims to topic, see Himani Bannerji’s Building from mistake to suggest that Indigenous the context of Fanon, Négritude, destroying these lifeways. To the traditional territories that settler-colonial Marx: Reflections on Race and Class. cultural resurgence is only of and Indigenous decolonization. He contrary, it is part and parcel of (re) nation states continue to claim as their 7 Fanon was of course writing and working instrumental value to anticolonial argues that Indigenous peoples must building a new/old home, a home that own. If sovereignty is to be deterritorialized, in a context where the pre-colonial culture and anticapitalist struggle. On this not only reject the colonial politics can stand without state sovereignty as I agree it must (border imperialism is (belonging to an agricultural or tithe mode note, we can recall the longstanding of recognition, but must affirm a and in which Indigenous and non- bad), this cannot mean delegitimizing of production) was far from egalitarian.

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drawings for the set at a quarter inch scale, which were then order to make room for Dzama’s creations to exist.[6] Marcel Dzama and blown up to sixty by forty feet by a team of set painters. This departure from the pure celebration of dance is The stage, in a theatre designed to resemble a jewelry box, something that Peck has received significant criticism for felt small and ordinary as I stood on it listening to Mehler in reviews. However, I didn’t attend the performance the Most Incredible Thing: discuss the logistics of the production. Justin Peck, the with expectations that dance should be showcased in its 28-year-old resident choreographer and rising star at the own right. Rather, I attended to see the transformation New York City Ballet, approached Dzama after seeing of Dzama’s drawings on the stage, which left me feeling, his 2014 solo show, Une Danse des Bouffons (A Jester’s temporarily enchanted by the opulence of the piece as a cautionary tale Dance), at David Zwirner Gallery. Both Peck and Bryce a whole. It was only after time and reflection that the Dessner, a musical collaborator who composed the original hollowness of the experience began to weigh on my score, “were interested in the fact that Marcel had this consciousness. regarding enchantment kind of semi-infatuation with dancers and dance.” [3] Atypically, the team was established before the project was I left Mahler after seeing the intricate costumes hung determined, the project being the production of a story lifeless and limp in the dressing rooms. The Most in contemporary art. ballet.[4] Incredible Thing was the last of five performances to be showcased. The production had gone way over budget The Most Incredible Thing is Peck’s first attempt at a and the order of the dances had to be shuffled around to by Danielle Fenn story ballet. A difficult move for someone working in the accommodate the elaborate hair and make-up changes to shadow of the City Ballet founder George Balanchine, who realize Dzama’s full vision. This is what I was thinking “did away with characters, plot, sets, and conventional about as the curtain started to rise. The stage I had stood costumes. As he proved repeatedly, music and steps on hours before seemed expansive under the glow of the could create their own compelling stories.”[5] Contrary lights and the costumes were now full of life transforming to Balanchine’s approach, Peck toned down his typically the dancers and making them nearly unidentifiable. movement-heavy choreography in this production in While, as Alastair Macaulay wrote in his New York Times

Canadian born, Brooklyn-based artist has worked with dancers before in his splendor of Dzama’s ingenuity and Marcel Dzama is best known for his own video creations such as A Game artistry. While the production is not works on paper. His watercolor and of Chess and Death Disco Dance, his strongest collaboration to date, ink drawings depicting whimsical yet as well as in a Department of Eagles Dzama’s concurrent installation in dystopian worlds filled with hybrid music video collaboration for No One the promenade of the David H. Koch animal and human characters led to Does It Like You. In examining these Theatre still demonstrates what the his representation by David Zwirner past video works it is easy to see clear artist is capable of when he holds the Gallery in 1998.[1] Dzama now links to his drawing practice. His visionary reigns. self defines as a mixed media artist reference lineage is strong, retaining working in ceramics, sculpture, and his artistic voice and integrity as I arrived early to the David H. Koch video, although drawing remains the he transforms his two-dimensional Theatre on the evening of February backbone of his practice.[2] I recently work into three dimensions. While I 19th , the last night of the special had the opportunity to see Dzama’s enjoyed the dazzling visual spectacle Artist Series performances. I was fantastical drawings spring to life that was The Most Incredible Thing, greeted by Marquerite Mehler the at one of the New York City Ballet key differences mark the production Director of Production for New York Art Series performances featuring a as a notable departure from Dzama’s City Ballet with whom I had arranged collaborative adaptation of the Hans normally self-imposed neutral and a back stage tour to see the set and Christian Andersen tale The Most ambiguous narrative style. Through the costumes. Dzama designed a Incredible Thing, for which Dzama looking at these differences and backdrop, a scrim, a screen that is designed the sets and costumes. deconstructing some of the heavy opaque when lit from the front and Dzama, who often composes the negative criticism published about the transparent when lit from the back, as characters he draws in theatrical ballet, it is clear that the hackneyed well as two entrance slides specifically settings like the stage or the court, binary fairy tale diminishes the for the ballet. The artist rendered

8 9 SCAN ISSUE 3 BY COLAB SCAN CONTEMPORARY ART JOURNAL review, some of the costumes don’t Destroyer: a tense, dark number seeing.[12] In his adult life, drawing out of recycled tin scavenged during a past residency (Endnotes) make sense in perplexing ways. For as if she’s falling reluctantly under often provides a way to reflect on and in Guadalajara, Mexico.[15] Dioramas of potential [1] “Marcel Dzama » David Zwirner.” David Zwirner Biography example, “why are the five senses all his spell.”[9] The depiction of a release the conflicts he consumes in set designs were complete with hand carved figurines Comments. David Zwirner Gallery. Web. 25 Mar. 2016. alike?”[7] Others, however, like the woman who lacks control of her the daily news.[13] In an interview smudged with graphite revealing frequent interaction http://www.davidzwirner.com/artists/marcel-dzama/biography/ two-headed king performed by two future and is shown in a conflicting featured in the take away book Dzama with the objects. Leaving the theatre felt like leaving a toy [2] Tate. “TateShots: Marcel Dzama – Studio Visit.” YouTube. dancers that concealed the princess abusive dynamic is problematic talks about how he was attracted to masters workshop, where the artist was as invested in play Tateshots, 2009. Web. 19 Mar. 2016. until they parted like a gate, and the and unfortunately quite common in the story of The Most Incredible as his imagined clientele. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFW_aTPOpME spring cuckoo who waved swathes of classical ballet. Furthermore, the Thing, because he read it around the [3] Marcel Dzama The Book of Ballet. New York: David Zwirner, 2016. fabric elongated with sticks in alluring shots of the spectators in A Game of time that ISIS was publicly destroying Bibliography Print. formations, were compelling even if Chess demonstrate an awareness of many artworks.[14] The fairy tale Dalamangas, Rachel. “INTERVIEW: MARCEL DZAMA WANTS TO [4] Marcel Dzama, 2016 they were nonsensical. The costumes and draw attention to the functions of that depicts the resurrection of art in GET INTIMATE BEFORE THE APOCALYPSE | Zingmagazine.” [5] Harss, Marina. “Justin Peck and the National’s Bryce Dessner are graphic and bright. Some of them, the stage and the role of the audience. order to defeat evil is highly seductive INTERVIEW: MARCEL DZAMA WANTS TO GET INTIMATE Create a Most Incredible Ballet.” The Guardian. Guardian News and like the Autumn Bird, are enjoyable There are no similar self-referential when framed as a parallel to this BEFORE THE APOCALYPSE | Zingmagazine. Zing Magazine, Oct. Media, 01 Feb. 2016. Web. 22 Mar. 2016. for the auditory experience of soft complexities present in The Most contemporary moment. However, 2013. Web. 22 Mar. 2016. http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/feb/01/justin-peck-national- rustling as well as the visual aspects. Incredible Thing. while the cuteness in No One Does http://www.zingmagazine.com/drupal/node/35886 bryce-dessner-most-incredible-thing-new-york-ballet The narrative was easy to follow in its it Like You allows for easy reception “Marcel Dzama » David Zwirner.” David Zwirner Biography [6] Marcel Dzama, 2016 simplicity and the lack of intellectual The ballet does manage to produce and makes light of potentially dark Comments. David Zwirner Gallery. Web. 25 Mar. 2016. [7] Macaulay, Alastair. “Review: ‘The Most Incredible Thing’ Brings energy required to piece together the an empathetic response towards and complex subject matter, there http://www.davidzwirner.com/artists/marcel-dzama/biography/ Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tale to Life.” The New York Times. events allowed me to take pleasure in imaginary characters similar to the is danger in the enchantment of The Dombal, Ryan. “News.” Director’s Cut: Department of Eagles’ “No The New York Times, 03 Feb. 2016. Web. 22 Mar. 2016. the viewing experience and the rise response produced in No One Does Most Incredible Thing to delude and One Does It Like You” Pitchfork, 12 May 2009. Web. 17 Mar. 2016. [8] MOCATV. “Marcel Dzama - Artists Talk with Alia Shawkat and and fall of the emotional arch. it Like You, in which the soldier lead to overly simplistic moralistic http://pitchfork.com/news/35158-directors-cut-department-of-eagles- Lance Bangs - The Artist’s Studio - MOCAtv.” YouTube. MOCATV, doll is depicted looking at a photo judgments. no-one-does-it-like-you/ 2013. Web. 22 Mar. 2016. In the moment, the production was of his family after a leg amputation. Harss, Marina. “Justin Peck and the National’s Bryce Dessner Create https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ERss29xVEQ highly enjoyable. But the story was [10] However, in No One Does it I met Dzama while I was wandering a Most Incredible Ballet.” The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, [9] Macaulay, Alastair, 2016 so tidy, the distinctions between Like You Dzama’s typical neutral through his installation, The tension 01 Feb. 2016. Web. 22 Mar. 2016. [10] Dombal, Ryan. “News.” Director’s Cut: Department of Eagles’ right and wrong and good and evil so stance remains. Two armies are around which history is built, in the http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/feb/01/justin-peck-national- “No One Does It Like You” Pitchfork, 12 May 2009. Web. 17 Mar. 2016. clear, that there was nothing left to pitted against each other but there Promenade after the performance. bryce-dessner-most-incredible-thing-new-york-ballet http://pitchfork.com/news/35158-directors-cut-department-of-eagles- mull over and discuss. This is where is no encouragement for the viewer It was his third time viewing the Macaulay, Alastair. “Review: ‘The Most Incredible Thing’ Brings Hans no-one-does-it-like-you/ I see the collaboration as a flat point to favor one over the other. Neither performance. He was extremely Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tale to Life.” The New York Times. The [11] Dombal, Ryan, 2009 for Dzama. His independent work is victorious, and one would feel modest but his enthusiasm for the New York Times, 03 Feb. 2016. Web. 22 Mar. 2016. [12]Dalamangas, Rachel. “INTERVIEW: MARCEL DZAMA WANTS is often anachronistic and tends to empathy for the amputee regardless production showed, and rightly so. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/04/arts/dance/review-the-most- TO GET INTIMATE BEFORE THE APOCALYPSE | Zingmagazine.” “conjure in the viewer nostalgia for of which army they belong to. In His contributions do really shine incredible-thing-brings-hans-christian-andersens-fairy-tale-to-life. INTERVIEW: MARCEL DZAMA WANTS TO GET INTIMATE an unfamiliar history.”[8] The Most an interview about the creation of despite my criticism of the adapted html BEFORE THE APOCALYPSE | Zingmagazine. Zing Magazine, Oct. Incredible Thing ends up presenting a the video director Patrick Daughter tale. While watching the video portion Marcel Dzama The Book of Ballet. New York: David Zwirner, 2016. 2013. Web. 22 Mar. 2016. tired narrative in a visually seductive explains the illusory power of the of the installation in which Amy Print. http://www.zingmagazine.com/drupal/node/35886 manner that enchants but does little doll costumes when he says, “we Sedaris impersonates Dzama as a Tate. “TateShots: Marcel Dzama – Studio Visit.” YouTube. [13] Dalamangas, Rachel, 2013 to empower or subvert standard knew we couldn’t get away with dictator on the set of a production, it Tateshots, 2009. Web. 19 Mar. 2016. [14] Marcel Dzama, 2016 moralistic ideologies. In comparison seeing real people with real faces is clear that Dzama is at his best when https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFW_aTPOpME [15] MOCATV 2013 to Dzama’s video work A Game decimating each other like that, but he constructs his own narratives. The MOCATV. “Marcel Dzama - Artists Talk with Alia Shawkat and Lance of Chess, which features a strong it was interesting to mix the cuteness self-reflexive humor had returned Bangs - The Artist’s Studio - MOCAtv.” YouTube. MOCATV, 2013. female lead implicated in a morally with the destruction.” [11] In an and, while there is no shortage of evil Web. 22 Mar. 2016. ambiguous power scenario, The Most interview with Rachel Dalamangas woman stereotypes, dictator power https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ERss29xVEQ Incredible Thing is patronizing and it is revealed that war stories are a figures are not typically females. misogynistic. Macaulay writes that source of inspiration for Dzama who Sculptures made in various media the Princess who dances a “formulaic grew up watching documentaries were shown in addition to the video this-thing-called-love duet” with with his father that left him feeling work. Dzama’s most fascinating the Creator “curiously, becomes… disturbed at an age when he wasn’t creation in the promenade was a freshly lifelike when she’s with the able to fully comprehend what he was kinetic piece with figures constructed

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who occupies a societal position with no negative material new reference points are created using what is available: The Problem of Distance: stake in the outcome of a situation. Roy argues that those personal emotional experience. Which description of the who have lived experience and material stake in struggle experience of slavery and its legacy would the institution understand truths which lie outside of and in opposition favor: unlimited numbers of historical accounts and Where do the blues come from? to the authority of experts, and that experts are directly journal papers; unlimited access to history, official invested in the suppressing these truths. For instance, when knowledge, and place; or a black man singing the blues in your home is flooded, you understand that hydroelectric prison during the 1930s? by dams are not good for you, a citizen of India, regardless of innumerable studies and reports that say otherwise. An Bibliography: emphasis on technical details can function as a tactic of Roy, Arundhati. “The Ladies Have Feelings So… Shall We Leave it avoidance when expertise enters territories of knowledge To the Experts?” Power Politics. Cambridge, MA: South End Press, Kelly Campbell with which it is hostile, unfamiliar, and unwilling to 2001. 1-33. engage. Similarly, in art criticism, aesthetic and theoretical https://soundcloud.com/backstory/islam-the-united-states (singing tone can be criticized while content is ignored. The skeleton at 8:20) is picked apart while the meat is left to rot. An institutional expert cannot access or understand a lived experience outside their own. To understand the work of an artist Have you seen, or have you heard vulnerable to capture as they travelled work for and are invested in the power The woman in Turbulent and the blues singer both have confronting a struggle he is not a part of, the expert must first admit of, Shirin Neshat’s video work often: to Mecca, to trade, and to study and authority of the establishment. institutionally forced distances from their own histories. that he cannot understand it. Turbulent? It’s a two- channel piece or teach at dispersed educational Roy, an impassioned political essayist Both singers have lost, have been ripped from, the stories installed on facing screens. On one, institutions. As slaves in America, and author, describes the official of their families and ancestors; both grasp to locate a man sings a traditional Persian love many West African Muslims lost response to her essays as the Expert’s themselves in a void. Barred access to the past and present, song to an auditorium full of men and their parents’ religion within a few Anthem: “You’re too emotional. much applause; on the other, a woman generations, due in no small part to You don’t understand, and it’s too sings a wordless, heartbreaking song the fact that they were not allowed complicated to explain.” (Roy, Power in the same auditorium, now empty. to read or write; the practice of Islam Politics, 25). The international The two channels are synchronized, relies heavily on the written word. dam industry experts discussed in with the singers stopping to watch Although the written tradition was Roy’s essay submerge entire towns each other’s performances. At the lost, singing was not outlawed. On the and valleys in India with the water time the piece was made (1998), podcast, a historian played a 1930s redirected by their faulty, unnecessary women were not permitted to perform recording of a man singing a blues dams. When confronted with the the or record music in Iran. The man song in a Mississippi prison. She then angry protests of those whose lives jealously watches the solitary woman played a West African call to prayer; have been destroyed, they invoke their as she, unable to access the tradition the melody is remarkably, disarmingly Anthem: if only the villagers could and community surrounding the man, similar. The notes are bridged using calm themselves, we experts would creates a new mode of expression the same microtonal characteristics of explain the long-term benefits of borne from necessity. In the absence traditional Islamic singing. Just as in hydroelectric power upon the nation, of language, the woman’s lonely song Neshat’s piece, those who are unable the economy, and ultimately the becomes more beautiful, powerful, to access their voice find a new way to now-homeless and landless citizens and identifiable than that of the man. speak. themselves. The Anthem is likewise used to undermine the truths in Roy’s Do you know where the blues come Academic art and art institutions prize writing, along with the legitimacy of from? I was recently listening to a artists who maintain an intellectual emotional political art and political podcast about the history of Islam distance from their work. So who is protest in general, positioning in the United States. Apparently, distant, and from what? Arundhati emotional involvement as a sign of many (about 15%) Africans captured Roy discusses distance in terms of intellectual weakness and emotional and sent to America in the 18th expertise. Experts are those who detachment as a sign of intelligence. century were Muslim. Muslim people have studied a discipline through But this dichotomy is false. from West Africa were particularly institutions or official channels. They Detachment is the sign of an observer

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REVIEW brings the distressing questions to and an object of feminist rebuke. sculpture functions as a sign for abstraction. The exacting texture man” is indicative of the artist’s By the fore and actualizes the mental Firstly, Moore’s famous for Moore, and a symbol for the male and mark so carefully laid out in psychological frame of mind. whitneyzyluk-danielleeds brooding the artist undergoes instrumental role in modernism domination of art history. each stroke it is indicative of the She continuously tries to solve in dealing with these problems. provides an epitome of the artistic Mendritzki’s presence artist sculpting with the paint. this issue by painting Moore’s I will first detail the historical male genius.[1] In addition his is facilitated through signs, The top left grouping informs the sculptures and offering a variety concerns that are central to this sculptures are constantly focused primarily the writing that is other groupings that it is the most of her own versions of it. The work. Secondly, the analysis on the female body as a standard obsessively written on the canvas. detailed and easily recognizable painting acts as a therapist, or a of supplements mediating the motif throughout his corpus. Writing in this respect crucially anthropomorphic figure arching page of a journal, painting out her artist’s presence in the work and Together these notions create an injects the painter into the piece; backwards. Thus, the others can frustrations and mapping her train the interpretation of the network excellent dartboard for Mendritzki her presence is critical to the be seen as a degeneration of the of thought. of signs giving context to where since not only is he iconic of the interpretation of the dialogue figure being further abstracted Mendritzki’s work is no these issues are being mentally male genius, but he gained that between Mendritzki and Moore. by Mendritzki - one even notices doubt steeped in feminist debate exercised. status using the nude female Mendritzki’s presence of mind is many reclining figures. This concerning the archetype of the On a formal level, the work figure. Therefore in referencing also constructed through the use further suggests the challenge male domination in art history. bears similarities to that of Raoul Moore Mendrizski’s work can be of sign. Even though Saussure’s from the artist: not only can She uses symbols to reference a de Keyser in the use of palette contextualized as both combating theory of the arbitrary form of the artist paint what the Moore specific artist that are emblematic and thoughtful application of the prejudice of the male artist the sign states that the form of sculpts, but can push it further of the male artistic genius and her paint. De Keyser uses a primarily and reclaiming the image of the the writing is not important, but into abstraction. own presence in the work to form muted palette and in a block- female body. its opposition to others is what One can narrate through the this critique of art. One narrates like application as a field on For this dialogue between gives it meaning.[3] This theory chains of signs that are provided their way through the many signs the canvas. Feely Touchy is Moore and Mendritzki to occur, can be applied to the style of by Mendritzki, but one must the artist gives to form meaning not as reductive in these fields the painting relies heavily on writing used by Mendritzki. The also account for the context in and the context to the painting: however there are instances of the connotative presence of the script style is important because which this debate occurs. The the debate and the frame of these divisions of planes that are artists to be read in the work. in comparison to the styles of motif of winter in Feely Touchy mind of the artist. An important purposeful in their subtleness. Signs and symbols mediate our script in Mendritzki’s other work is used to provide a backdrop for question is if the piece resolves Muted yellow blocks of colour interpretation of the work just different messages are relayed. the obsessive debate being had the question of the male artistic TouchyFeely halo different areas of the canvas as Jacques Derrida explains The script in this painting reads as by the artist. This motif comes genius in art history. From using activating for the viewer moments the chains of supplements as an obsessive cathartic act hashed through from the title of the the signs to read the work, one Erica Mendritzki’s exhibition of importance. A more direct mediating our experience.[2] The out by the artist. exhibit Sinon l’hiver or “if not can assume that the painting acts at the Maison des Artistes de Keyser-esque application of use of sign and symbol allows Now that the signs that infuse winter”, and through the palette. more as a platform to raise these Culturelles, Sinon l’hiver is an paint is seen in the other works the viewer to create meaning by the presence of the artist have The muted, grungy hues that issues and serve as the artist’s emotive response to the problem of the exhibit. But it is still conjuring Moore and Mendritzki been discussed, focus can be are followed through the entire personal forum to work these plaguing the contemporary present in Feely Touchy, where into the work. Moore is signified drawn to the message of the text: exhibit create the feeling that is all questions out since winter is the female artist: the history of De Keyser’s method of mental through Mendritzki’s careful “let me talk to you man to man”. too familiar in Manitoba: a long, time these tough questions haunt the male artistic genius. This mapping through process can be recreation of the Reclining This obsessive writing acts as dreary winter that does not seem us and demand to be reconciled. baggage that weighs on practicing read by the application of paint Nude which is central to the the challenge from Mendritzki. to end. The dirty hues suggest the women’s artists is worked out in a similar way. Mendritzki’s composition. This careful It is not simply a challenge to restlessness of winter when one 1 Kathleen Blackshear. “Henry Moore.” through Mendritzki’s exhibit and cognitive brooding is expressed rendering is is an anomalous Moore, but the challenge to the cannot go outside and is left to Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago is symptomatic of what mars the through obsessive, repetitive to the way image is rendered authority of the male domination dwell on the problems that plague (1907-1951) 41, no. 4 (1947): 45. career of the female artist. The scrawls of lettering, and a variety and paint handled in the other in the art historical context. the mind. This is the context the 2 Culler, Jonathan D. Literary Theory male domination of art history of impasto brushwork, in her paintings exhibited by Mendriszki Knowing that Mendritzki is a artist gives the viewer, one of : A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: is an ever present issue which sculptural rendering of Henry where one notices a certain female artist affects the meaning psychological agitation. Oxford University Press, 1997, 9. Mendritzki re-negotiates through Moore’s Reclining Nude, flatness, a messy rendering, or of this sentence dramatically. It The situation that is conjured her works – in particular Feely Moore is another key reference an abstracting of the form. It can speaks to the call for an equal from being caged in from a long 3 Culler, 57. Touchy. This piece is emblematic to examine. Mendritzki’s rendition be deduced that the recognition level of respect and recognition winter where the artist obsesses of the attack on the male genius of the Reclining Nude is central of this recreated sculpture is as opposed to an unbalanced over the problem that cannot and domination of the art to the canvas, and is at the crucial for the viewer to read competitive challenge. The escape her. There is nothing else historical landscape realized crux of this work. Following are since due to it’s delicate handling textured gestural impasto marks to do but to obsessively revisit through Mendrizki’s painting. speculations as to why Mendritzki one immediately recognizes the across the canvas again reference the issue of the male dominance While this this piece does not chose Moore as the symbol for reference and Moore is drawn into sculptural objects by Moore that in art history. The repetitive offer a solution to these issues, it male domination in art history the debate. Thus, the rendering of have been taken further into scrawl “let me talk to you man to

14 15 SCAN ISSUE 3 BY COLAB SCAN CONTEMPORARY ART JOURNAL Post Mortem: Karel Funk at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. by Shep Steiner

There were a number of surprises in to Hans Holbein’s The Dead Christ The second surprise this viewer Karel Funk’s mid-career retrospective in the Tomb, 1521 and Giovanni was not at all prepared for were the at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. The Bellini’s Portrait of a Venetian white grounds of Funk’s paintings. first surprise were the paintings Gentleman, 1500. Those strands of Ideally Funk’s paintings should not themselves. Seeing the paintings on hair! That Renaissance profile! be framed. What was the National the walls of the gallery and seeing Gallery thinking when it framed their effects ran a close second and By now it is common knowledge that Untitled #10, 2004? In a gallery third. Having only known Funk’s Funk’s visits to the Frick Collection the unframed works produce a very paintings from reproduction, I was while he was studying in New optical effect, which tethers the work initially amazed by how painterly the York were formative for his early to the wall. In short, these paintings works actually are. Funk’s paintings, portraiture. However, it should also are keyed to the question of display. especially early in his career, are not be clear that in his early paintings In fact, I noticed in the case of some nearly so photographic as they are death is almost always present. Thus, middle to late paintings that the white proto-photographic. In person, an with eyes closed Untitled, 2002 might background had been rollered on to entire range of details constantly well be the head of a cadaver lying simulate the texture of white paint remind us that photography is only a on an autopsy table. Indeed, though on the gallery wall. Moreover, the general horizon of expectation and not I hesitate to belabor the point, it is varieties of white Funk uses are very as necessarily consubstantial with the tempting to see Funk’s corpus as a unpainterly, seemingly intended more mimetic enterprise of the works as we sweeping analytics of death: Untitled, for the wall than the frame. This gives contemporary viewers would like to 2002 being “the living image of a dead Funk’s paintings a double purchase on believe. The color is sometimes off; we thing” and later works like Untitled institutional critique (via the gesture realize that it took the painter a while #62, 2014 or Untitled #78, 2016 to the wall) and modernist painting to master the painting of life-like skin. standing as death’s heads of one kind (via the optical equivalence or bleed Up close we can see that cloth is easier or another.1 Between these works— between painting and wall). to capture than flesh, and that stubble and here I am on firmer ground—one on a man’s chin will only ever be an sees etched ever deeper the lineaments Third, I was struck by how striking index of the movement of a single of what Walter Benjamin called “the and accentuated the silhouettes of bristled brush between the artist’s facies hyppocratica of history.”2 But the later works become. This is what fingers. Early paintings like Untitled, we are getting ahead of ourselves. I would describe as a cut and paste 2002 and Untitled #3, 2003 are good A more methodical approach is aesthetic, and it’s where the most examples. They belong right next necessitated by Funk’s corpus. recent painting comes cleanest about

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its technological mediation. We know that Funk traces red haired figure in Untitled #25, 2006 was similar. I the outlines of his figures using a projector, and that he found this economy of attraction and repulsion—always works from multiple digital images to arrive at the figures a question of aesthetic value—playing out in various he will finally paint. Karel Funk: Untitled, 2016, a film by ways in the works, perhaps most revealingly in Untitled Caelum Vatnsdal commissioned by the WAG, is especially #58, 2013, a painting of a plastic skull and cactus, and strong on this point. It shows this metaphysics of touch Untitled #61, 2014 a painting of plastic containers, as it emerges from Funk’s process: we see the painter’s both of which had me and many others pronouncing brush tracing the outlines of light projected from a digital the works as “bad.” It took a little while to shake free of apparatus onto the painterly surface. This is no great my aesthetic prejudices in face of these works, which are reveal in itself, given the omnipresence of the silhouette, obviously mediated by photography, or, more succinctly, but it certainly confirms the suspicions of the attentive by the primacy of life-likeness in the corpus as a whole. viewer. And, of course, the problem of photography is an This seems to be a point on which Funk appeals to the infinitely slippery one in this corpus. Funk himself admits Romantic (i.e., anti-modern) sensibilities in each of us— these are painterly images. At one point in the film, he says perhaps we are all like Heidi, preferring Grandfather’s something like: “They don’t look like photographs.” True hut in the mountains to the city’s decadence—but it is and false I would say. The photographic verisimilitude of also a moment when both the stories of Pygmalion and the paintings is a constant, if variable horizon. Zeuxis mediate our relationship with the work. The larger point here being not that I found myself constantly Four, pragmatically speaking, as a viewer I was continually checking in on details as a way to confirm that the checking the paintings to make sure they were not in fact controlling metaphor of Funk’s work is in fact mimesis— photographs. This tends to happen with some frequency whether equating the artificiality of plastic in painting and intensity. One is constantly moving in close to see with the artificiality of plastic in the world or equating where the fiction of painting (and as often the fiction of stitch in painting with stitch in world—but rather that photography) breaks down; admittedly more so with the the real controlling metaphor of Funk’s work is the later works, in which, from a distance, technique outpaces breakdown or failure of the mimetic apparatus, whether vision and the outline is so photographic. Nevertheless I that comes off as painting or photography. We might was constantly stooping and looking from below and from profitably call this interpretative undertaking digging the the side and with the aid of strafing gallery lights to see line between death and representation. Thus, I note that the trace of brushstrokes as they stood out against the very after painting his second momento mori Untitled #61, flat, smooth effects of the painted surface. To some extent Funk painted Untitled #62 a projective mirror whose the frontal view is the photographic perspective while the hidden countenance seems to whisper, “remember you look from the side is the painterly reveal. More complexly, too must die.” the frontal view from 10 feet out is photographic, while up close the perspective is painterly. I liked the fact that these When looking at Funk’s paintings one always eventually different techniques of viewing seemed to negotiate the crosses a threshold that marks a cessation of engagement different technologies involved, and of course the processes with the mimetic fiction; a point at which photography of looking are nowhere near as simple as I make out. For folds into painting, hyper realism is revealed as process, example, the silhouette edge is never totally sharp; in many depth as surface and so on. And presumably the focused cases it is blurred and only gains its sharpness by virtue of acts of attention through which we viewers perform this a differential system of details that are both in and out of labor somehow reproduces a similar moment of labor focus—a point on which photography comes up again as performed by the artist and keyed to the finishedness depth of field. of a particular detail in the painting or the painting as a whole. All of which raises something every viewer knows Five, and this is a question of value, the sharpness of about Funk’s painting but has no way of integrating into stitching was something that really seduced me, far more their encounter with it without anecdotal evidence or for instance, than the hair. In Untitled #3 I found the supplementary reading: that duration is built into the hair to be greasy and felt that the beard could easily have very bones of the practice. Long, hard, painstakingly been attached to that of a cadaver. The complexion of the laborious hours before the canvas are a given in this

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corpus. Whether we confront one of his plastic works or image of “godless materiality.” In this sense, art historical a magnificent painting like Untitled #78, 2015, it is an a reference, though important, is not as important as what priori given that the frozen moment depicted was worked the intentional look back to the masters brings into focus or up to the point of a sufficiently symbolic intensity over a visibility: a hyper-realist version of Robert Ryman’s how period of months. to paint. This poetics of painting is not easy to identify, but Funk is constantly becoming a better painter. It Of the essays in the Karel Funk catalogue which happens over the longue durée. Crucial moments include accompanied this fine exhibition curated by Andrew the overcoming of an early recourse to Chuck Close-type Kear, I found Jarret Gregory’s “Sensory Deprivation” visual distortions and the sexualized skin of Lucien Freud the most contemporary, albeit a contemporaneity that is for a cooler aesthetic, the move away from the face to the framed generationally, and which primarily plays out as an depiction of textile alone, and finally the shifts in scale that argument that Funk’s kind of painting belongs to a kind of ones sees over the past 16 years of the artist’s practice. zeitgeist that cuts across a number of mediums.3 If painting is to be interesting again it is clear that it has to assimilate More interesting is Borys’ provocative review of the the tactics of the neo avant-garde rather than flog the old literature on mood, atmosphere, quiet, and stillness. dead horse of medium specificity that many critics still Borys raises these qualities to back up his argument for defend. Nevertheless, the medium is still the medium. the sacred. However, I think these are not qualities of This said, I like the fact that Gregory’s account pushed the subject proper as trope or painterly motif, but more emptiness, the lack of frame and what I felt was a decidedly importantly of the space that surrounds the subject. The anti-humanist edge or a version of contemporary nihilism point is important because it marks a departure from the tethered to the internet. Given my preceding discussion I fullness of presence in the portrait subject to a fullness that think it should be clear that if Funk’s paintings participate surrounds the subject and hence is inclusive of the subject/ in the varied discourses of contemporary art, then they do object relationship and more. My point here is that the so on two levels: both through subject matter (Gregory’s literal and fictive space around Funk’s subjects is moody, emphasis) and more interestingly through the optic of a atmospheric, quiet and still and that this is grammatically very restricted and traditional version of what painting is. injected into the subjects. Conversely, these paintings are But then if we are talking about the contemporary, it seems spatially energizing in the Baroque sense; things spill out equally clear that Funk’s subject matter, like that of Tim of the frame, or discrete portrait, and into the space of the Gardner and Peter Doig, is shot through with Canadian white cube, or studio, and presumably also into the scene identity. A winter parka is a passport. of address between painting and painter. In this sense, portraiture is used for other than the usual ends. Rather Furthermore, I felt Jarret’s slightly nihilist edge than promising a moment of subjectification based on the (something I would push further) was a necessary antidote fiction of an interpersonal relationship, Funk’s mature to Stephen Borys’ art historical account, which is too version of portraiture really only makes the space around mired in the pious and sacred.4 Things are technically the subject hum with life. Metaphysical presence is not wrought in Funk’s painting and this is the very opposite exactly the point here, for it arrives second hand in the of the sacred, even for masters like Titian, Velazquez and form of a spatial supplement. This is something unique to Poussin, or for Francisco de Zurbarán, who is Borys’ focus. my mind. So I think things are far more contradictory than Borys suggests, even in terms of art history. Rather than the This point is tackled differently in Andrew Kear’s “Hidden pious scenes of Zurbarán—and in spite of the importance in Plain Sight,” a thoughtful piece of thematic criticism, of the Frick Collection to the artist—I would instead push though in my view too reliant on a theory of genres.5 I reference toward the bodiless figure in Nicholas Poussin’s think portraiture is important of course, but no more Marriage from his series The Seven Sacraments, 1634- important than putting the whole question of portraiture 40. This figure, whose face is half-obscured by a column, under pressure, even to the point of blowing the genre and which is all fabric, folds and drapery, is the proper wide open into sculpture or space, or into the reproduction progenitor of Funk’s faceless empty figures. For T. J. Clark of a situation—by which I mean recreating the quietness it is an example of pure technical virtuosity and hence an of the studio encounter in the gallery setting. This is

20 21 SCAN ISSUE 3 BY COLAB SCAN CONTEMPORARY ART JOURNAL precisely the point I was making discusses in his book on photography, version of paint by numbers, we can above, for the air of stillness inside are the absorptive equivalent of count on the fact that there will be the work bleeds into our reverential Funk’s figure studies.8 more Untitled paintings to come, attitude toward it and vice versa. that they will be better, etc., and For who is not captured and stilled Which brings me to my tenth and ultimately that all things will come to by these paintings? Even kids can final point, again a point that has an end. appreciate the fiction. Nevertheless, received little if any comment in in noting the absence of the subject, the literature on Funk. It is mind- (Endnotes) Kear does not go far enough in boggling just how shaped and 1 Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida, trans. registering the truly unsettling effects structured this artist’s corpus is. In Richard Howard (New York: Hill and of these paintings. For surely the most 2002, when he painted Untitled, Wang, 1980), 79. worrying thing about these hollowed 2002, he was a painter with a whole 2 Walter Benjamin, The Origin of the out and empty portraits is that in life ahead of him. With Untitled German Tragic Drama, trans. John spite of this lack, we believe them to #2, 2003, I presume his life’s work Osborne (London: Verso, 1977), 166. be portraits nevertheless. This is not was all sketched out. No need to 3 Jarrett Gregory, “Sensory Deprivation,” simply the anti-humanism pointed write an autobiography after the last Karel Funk (Winnipeg: Winnipeg Art to in Kear’s text, but something painting is completed—the work Gallery, 2016), 67-78. more like an “anti-anti humanism” has been writing the life from the 4 Stephen Borys, “Karel Funk and that has surfaced before in Canadian very beginning. Because Funk has Francisco de Zurbarán: Studies in portraiture—most importantly in the numbered his paintings consecutively Stillness and the Ritual Portrait,” Karel work of Ken Lum.6 from “1” we feel his development Funk (Winnipeg: Winnipeg Art Gallery, in very particular ways: the way he 2016), 37-63. One more point: the question of constantly gets better at painting, the 5 Andrew Kear, “Hidden in Plain Sight,” absorption is entirely missing from intractable restrictions he places on Karel Funk (Winnipeg: Winnipeg Art the literature on Funk. Funk’s himself, his boredom, his attempts Gallery, 2016), 17-33. figures—when human beings appear to break out of the portrait format, 6 Jeff Wall, “Four Essays on Ken Lum,” and even when they do not—are his worries over what is next, etc. (Winnipeg: Winnipeg Art Gallery, 1990), paradigmatically absorptive figures Funk’s notion of the corpus is a 61. and more than anyone else Michael very conceptual one. It turns his 7 Michael Fried, Absorption and Fried has consolidated this body of thoroughly visual practice into Theatricality: Painting and the Beholder painterly knowledge and tropes.7 And something non-retinal. Obviously, in the Age of Diderot (Berkeley and Los readers may or may not know but, this Marcel Duchamp is somewhere in the Angeles: University of California Press, body of practices bleed quite nicely shadows here, as are Andy Warhol 1980). into the experience of the hyper urban and On Kawara. I wonder too, given 8 Michael Fried, Why Photography Matters environment of New York, which his early fascination with morbidity, As Art As Never Before (New Haven: Yale is where Funk says he ultimately how closely his life studies verge on University Press, 2008). found his subject matter. Walker death, and how he has managed the Evans’ subway portraits, which Fried inherent risks of titling, if at one time he was considering actuarial science as a career? Given the logic of Funk’s

IMAGE Page 19. Page 20. Page 22. Page 25. INFORMATION KAREL FUNK KAREL FUNK KAREL FUNK KAREL FUNK Untitled #3 Untitled #25 Untitled #58 Untitled #10 2003 2006 2013 2004 Acrylic on panel Acrylic on panel Acrylic on Panel Acrylic on panel 13 1/2 x 13 1/2 37 x 33 inches 19 1/2 x 17 1/4 16 x 16 inches inches (94 x 83.8 cm) inches (49.5 x 43.8 (40.6 x 40.6 cm) (34.3 x 34.3 cm) cm)

22 23 SCAN ISSUE 3 BY COLAB SCAN CONTEMPORARY ART JOURNAL Laura Letinsky’s Photography: Remnants of Presence by Sarah Blanchard

For artist Laura Letinsky, photographs “show but as the top of the table, resulting in a bright white surface. also tell what the world is.” Letinsky’s work offers a The edge of the table and the tablecloth sharply converge secondary form of subsistence, and both the medium and with the linear corner in the background. The observation subject matter of her artistic practice can be considered that the stains and crumbs are on an area of cloth which intermediary and supplemental. As observed by the is draping over the side of the table suggest that there has French philosopher Jacques Derrida, “everything begins been a shift in the cloth’s placement. This could indicate with the intermediary.” This statement refers to the that the tablecloth is in fact falling off the table, which immediacy of presence, realized through a lack and its results in threatening the stability of the objects as well. deferral to a supplement. Untitled #62 (Fig. 1) will be The frame indicates where the photographic space ends analyzed through an exploration of the work’s visual and reality begins, and in this way the tablecloth can language, its reference and modification of historical extend and enter into the viewer’s space. The table and artistic practice, and applicability to Derrida’s theory. the objects placed on it seem accessible and tangible due to their placement in the forefront of the photograph. A The photograph Untitled #62 points to an initial state, a notion of precariousness can be sensed as this tangibility reference of what has been and no longer exists, an absence elicits a feeling of uncertainty and instability that transfers felt in a spare presence. When faced with this sparseness, to the viewer. the viewer is forced to ask ‘what is there?’ or rather, ‘what is left?’ This is where an analysis of Untitled #62 will History is constantly being brought forward by the begin. In the corner of a room, at the edge of the table, present, and the present has the ability to further certain there is a slice of cake on a white plate. The cake slice has aspects of history. As well, since the present moment is three layered sections, surrounded with icing. The slice is not granted the insight of its own retrospect, seeing the not entirely intact, evidenced by a concave dip that faces alteration in perspectives over time towards history can towards a fork. This fork also rests on the plate, with the amplify the subjective malleability of the present. In this tines adjacent to the cake slice, and the handle slightly way, there is a reciprocal relationship between the past extending off the table’s side. The overhanging tablecloth and present that informs one another. Another work from Figure 1, Laura Letinsky, Untitled #62 forms diagonals from the creased fabric, and scattered Letinsky’s series Hardly More Than Ever is Untitled #32 from the series Hardly More Than Ever, across the cloth are crumbs as well as distinct drink stains, (Fig. 2). Along with other pieces within this series, it has Inkjet Print, 2002. which are a faded crimson. With its subdued palette, the been likened to the still life paintings of Johannes Vermeer Courtesy the Yancey Richardson Gallery, most saturated aspects of Untitled #62 are the shadowed during the Dutch Golden Age. Vermeer’s interest in, N.Y. creases in the tablecloth, the sage green corner of the room, “naturalistic effects, his carefully balanced compositions, and the stains spilt from a supposed glass. The source of and his domestic subjects…the behavior of light and other light hits the wall that is furthest in the background, as well optical effects such as sudden recessions and changes

24 25 SCAN ISSUE 3 BY COLAB SCAN CONTEMPORARY ART JOURNAL of focus,” closely correlates with status historically. The fact that the To be filled by food has literal and similar emphasis placed within cake slice in Untitled #62 appears to figurative connotations, and the Letinsky’s works. For example, be a leftover, an excess, links to the significance and reasons for the cake Untitled #32 features a brightly superfluous treatment of food that being uneaten can be considered as lit room with rich blues of Chinese Letinsky observes of the mercantile well. Cake is a marker but also an porcelain, accompanied by orange culture in historical Europe. Letinsky expectation during celebrations, fruits and a white lily, perpetuating refers to how the privileged within and in light of this notion, cake the subject matter of objects that that society didn’t know what to do that is eaten without the context of were obtained and proudly presented with their wealth, and she views these external pleasure may indicate inner in the still life paintings during the still life paintings as a meticulous dissatisfaction. For Derrida, “the Dutch Golden Age. But rather than documentation of their abundance original is always deferred – never offering a fresh visual display of and “a way of digesting” what they to be grasped.” In her series Venus vegetation in this interior space, what obtained. Digesting is an astute term Inferred (Fig. 3), Letinsky refers to is shown in Untitled #32 are fruits in the context of Letinsky’s practice, the insatiable longing of romance, and and fallen petals strewn across the which combines a physical and mental her works address the question, “why table. The flowers have wilted and are fixation on food and what is leftover. do we structure along the want?” beginning to rot, as indicated by the This notion extends into Laura What surrounded couples in the brackish water in the vase. Although Letinsky’s larger body of works, living spaces she photographed were Letinsky’s photographs diverge and also speaks to her ability to both objects, as telling details indicative of from the paintings of Old Masters borrow and inform a new take on the who occupied those intimate spaces, due to their decaying subject matter, still life. and what that entailed. Letinsky she characterizes the remarkably recalls becoming more interested palpable sense within her works in Untitled #62 can be regarded as a in these objects: “I began to look at relation to the medium of oil paint by supplemental intermediary through the debris and think about the idea emphasizing “that the photographs traces found within the work. As of leftovers...You can’t have utopia Figure 2, Laura Letinsky, Untitled #32 hover between being painterly – in Derrida states, the supplement without its loss, and so you’re always from the series Hardly More Than Ever, Bibliography the sense of light, color, composition, “compensates for a lack.” What is stuck in this position.” This marks a Inkjet Print, 2001, 15x23.62 in., and plasticity – and being insistently lacking in this photograph is what the shift in her approach to photography, Courtesy the Edwynn Houk Gallery, Derrida, Jacques, and Alan Bass. Writing and Difference. photographic.” For creating art, cake was created and intended for, which would lead to creating still life New York. London: Routledge, 2001. Letinsky doesn’t see the ‘post- and it is through the presence of the works such as Untitled #62. Since her everything moment’ as burdensome, cake and stains on the tablecloth that earlier works, Letinsky expressed that Culler, Jonathan D. Literary Theory: A Very Short but rather utilizes it as a format in the absence of its consumer is more she wanted “there to be a palpable Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. which she can question “why certain strongly indicated. A supplement, in absence, this feeling of something movements will resurface, or play Derrida’s theory, is “something that missing.” Laura Letinsky’s piece Letinsky’s photographs, and pays homage to the history Letinsky, Laura. “Laura Letinsky.” Interview by Julie back, in contemporary culture.” completes or makes an addition.” Untitled #62 perpetuates this sense of art. Despite the distinction made between the mediums Farstad. MouthtoMouth. Accessed March 18, 2016. Letinsky notes that “17th century The slice of cake and the stains in of loss and longing, but also provides of painting and photography, the particular notion of http://www.mouthtomouthmag.com/letinsky.html. Northern European painting set up Untitled #62 provide something a temporal and intermediary space, documentation in photography provides a format in the conditions for photography…So that would not have been evident both invoking and deferring to a which what is unseen retains identifiable traces, and Letinsky, Laura. “Laura Letinsky: Still Life photography came along less as an if a person was present within the moment outside of the work. also coincides with aims of the still life historically. The Photographs.” Reception and Talk. School of Art Gallery, invention, and more as a realization of piece. An intermediate state that can focus throughout her career on what is leftover functions Winnipeg, 17 March. 2016. Artist Talk. a way one sees, and a reinforcement be drawn out resides in connecting Letinsky’s Untitled #62 offers a as indications of what is lacking in broader terms. In of this way of seeing.” The excessive the cake with the person eating it, secondary form of subsistence, Untitled #62 the slice of cake is a remnant of the past, Liedtke, Walter. “Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675).” focus on food in historical still life and the moment of bringing food and both the medium and subject and stains on the tablecloth are a sign of what has been. In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The paintings is perpetuated in Untitled up to one’s mouth is a hovering of matter of her artistic practice can When examining these meager remains, the viewer enters Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000. http://www. #62. Cake often signifies decadence, what is uneaten and what will be be considered intermediary and potential narratives, and uses the absence within the work metmuseum.org/toah/hd/verm/hd_verm.htm (October and the silver flatware in the consumed. It is unclear if the cake supplemental. The remnants of a as an expanded vacancy to be filled. 2003) photograph can be associated with in Untitled #62 will be returned to time that has past goes beyond the fine silverware that was a symbol of and consumed or left and discarded. contemporary instance of Laura Liedtke, Walter. “Still-Life Painting in Northern Europe,

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1600–1800.” In Heilbrunn Timeline (Endnotes) Join our event on Facebook of Art History. New York: The 1 Laura Letinsky, “Laura Letinsky: Still Life Photographs,” Reception tell us why you march Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000. and Talk, School of Art Gallery, Winnipeg, 17 March. 2016, Artist Women’s March on http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ Talk #whyimarch Washington - Winnipeg hd/nstl/hd_nstl.htm (October 2003) 2 Culler, Jonathan D. Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, 12. 3 Ibid. Follow us on Twittter 4 Laura Letinsky, “Laura Letinsky: Still Life Photographs,” Reception @womensmarchwpg and Talk, School of Art Gallery, Winnipeg, 17 March. 2016, Artist Talk. 5 Walter Liedtke, “Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675),” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000, http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/verm/hd_verm.htm Open to (October 2003) people of 6 Walter Liedtke, “Still-Life Painting in Northern Europe, 1600–1800,” all genders, In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000, http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/nstl/ races, abilities, hd_nstl.htm (October 2003) religious 7 Laura Letinsky, “Laura Letinsky,” Interview by Julie Farstad, communities, MouthtoMouth, Accessed March 18, 2016, http://www. political mouthtomouthmag.com/letinsky.html. affiliations 8 Ibid. and sexual 9 Ibid. 10 Walter, “Still-Life Painting in Northern Europe, 1600–1800” orientations. 11 Laura Letinsky, “Laura Letinsky: Still Life Photographs,” Artist Talk 12 Ibid. 13 Jacques Derrida and Alan Bass, Writing and Difference, London: Routledge, 2001, 266. Unite with us. 14 Culler, Jonathan D. Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction, 9. Stand in solidarity. 15 Ibid., 12. 16 Laura Letinsky, “Laura Letinsky,” Interview by Julie Farstad 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid. JANUARY 21ST•11am portage place centre court ELDER BLESSING • SPEAKERS MARCH TO US CONSULATE AT PORTAGE & MAIN

Take a stand and support the rights of ALL women. 28 29 SCAN ISSUE 3 BY COLAB SCAN CONTEMPORARY ART JOURNAL Michael Dumontier: New Body by Mark Neufeld

At Lisa Kohler Art + Projects 171 McDermott, Winnipeg Manitoba April 30 – May 28, 2016

Taking in Michael Dumontier’s latest Williamsburg, New York), elegantly now beating a retreat towards either show at Lisa Kehler Projects put trimmed beards gracing the faces of the dustbin of history or the nearest me in mind of some recent concerns men who rarely leave the city, most maker of bespoke goods. around the status we accord things in things bespoke, and every film made our culture. Mr. Dumontier seems by Wes Anderson. To be fair, as a Like many artists today, Dumontier to be a whittler of sorts – to my mind founding member of the Royal Art seems transfixed by these kinds of no bad thing – as the work he shows Lodge, Dumontier has as authentic objects. For those of us born into is, above much else, the product of a claim to this inauthentic stuff as their world, they are as much images careful consideration; a paring down anyone. The ironies appended to that as they are things. You hear “pocket bordering on anemic. His objects are claim would not be lost on this artist; knife” and you think Swiss Army; shorn of everything one might deem they may in fact be a large part of “dining room chair,” and you think excessive. In the absence of any high- what keeps Dumontier going back to Windsor, etc. Which goes to explain key visual drama, Dumontier delivers the studio. Dumontier’s penchant for inhabiting an unusual, if somewhat deadpan, the bas-relief mode, where image and level of attentiveness to subtle Dumontier’s object-images are from thing collide. To further underscore differences in surface and shade. Not a bygone world, when things still the distance from minimalism proper, to say he’s against the decorative, or had the good fortune (bestowed these are specific takes on generic a minimalist, exactly speaking – it’s upon them by their “designers” objects, rather than specific objects. more like if minimalism had been – although like many things that In Dumontier’s idiosyncratic world, invented in the 1920’s, Dumontier, word seems to have taken on new, the road to objecthood is a Sunday had he been alive, might have been outsize dimensions, aspirations, drive. His are works that are as shorn one of its practitioners. and pretensions) of being generic. of detail as much as they are devoid Windsor chairs, wooden coat racks, of the conventional signs of capital Which brings me to one thought tools such as hatchets and swiss ‘R’ rigor. In place of that rigor, extracted from this scene – that of army pocket-knives, loaves of bread Dumontier’s objects present some time, and how it is expressed in the characterized by “caps,” indicative sort of intersection between rigor and making of objects, which we can call of being baked in rectangular tins... leisure, which I think may be another style; our current fascination with What these things have in common is way of describing dandyism. anachronisms, such as the short- their commonness or, commonality, if lived monocle “craze” (the epicenter you prefer. They were once new, then There are parallels here with the of which was a few square blocks of elevated to the vernacular, and are work of the American artist Matthew

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Brannon, whose graphically inflected print-based works quirks and its deviations from generic “white cube” status. couple anodyne and generic mid-century popular design If that weren’t enough, for those accustomed to “reading” motifs with phrases and sentiments that manage to the citations in contemporary art, the work also manages convey apathy, cynicism, narcissism, and careerism all to contain one of the tropes of minimalist sculpture, again at once. While Dumontier’s works are less cynical, (or in vernacular form: the superimposition of supports and less reflective of a cynical world – he’s Canadian after all) architectural features (wall, floor, corner). both artists share similar visual appetites, drawn to the intersections of high modernism and banal décor; the The sly and dry jokes abound, as one would expect of this once-popular, re-formatted for today’s appetite for the Art Lodge alumnus. Happily, the tone and phrasing of knowing, the empty, and the elegant. These signifiers at these jokes, as they are deployed in his own practice, are times frame the content, and at other times are the content. thoroughly Dumontier’s own. The vacillation between these two modes keeps things interesting. It took me a few moments to work out how Untitled (Cracked Egg 1) and Untitled (Cracked Egg 2) were made, Take, for example, Untitled (hatchet). Comprised of a before I was led to a consideration of the forms themselves block of steel cut to the outline of a hatchet and faux- – slightly concave cracked eggs, with broken bits embedded into what could be described as a very narrow protruding as though pecked outward from within. I was and tall chopping block, or better yet, a plinth, it’s both tempted to read this pair of identically sized eggs (scaled violent and genteel – a high art version of industrial era 1:1 as was everything else in the show) as a joke on both tools as restaurant décor. But, before reading the decidedly phenomenology (the swelled form of the egg turned back blunt iconography, I was pulled in by the play of surfaces in on itself) and Gestalt Theory’s “pregnanz” or “good and attention to detail. The particularities of shade (cool, form.” Whether or not my reading is at all squared with his chalky, off-white stained wood playing to the gallery wall, intentions, the works are funny and compelling. interrupted by iron-oxide rimmed and rusted steel) are particularly satisfying here, and one has the sense with Perhaps the centerpieces of the show are his forays into all of the works that material choices are very important. painting – Clock (Wobble) and Clock (Meeting). Far from Narrative associations aside, the piece is also a regular slackening the aforementioned rigor/leisure dialectic, both polygon violently interrupted by an irregular one, making take this dialectic up as their content. What else to make Untitled (hatchet) a Canadian faux rustic’s riposte to El of “paintings” (no paint to be found here), which rather Lizzitsky’s Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge – all of than offering relief from time, seem bent on reinforcing our which highlights Dumontier’s canny ability to convey beholdeness to the clock. narrative tension, formalist reduction, and a finely honed sense of materiality. Both works feature unprimed cool grey linen stretched tautly over medium profile stretchers bearing mysterious Dumontier wants us to see both image and object forms on their surfaces. One of the two lightly toned dots simultaneously, hence the curious decision to have the on Clock (Meeting) is, miraculously, in motion, tracing base of Untitled (hatchet) – the bottom of the chopping a circle as it repeatedly arcs around to meet and pass its block – float above the ground, a few inches higher than stationary partner. With Clock (Wobble), the movement the gallery baseboard, where one might expect it to meet is implied or imperceptible, but I take the title at face value the floor. Elsewhere the gallery baseboard itself becomes a and assume the two circles (one nested into the other) to be kind of stage, used to prop up a narrow slat which in turn the result of some movement or wobble. In both cases the serves as shorthand for flat ground holding up the profile materials listed are “linen, wood, paper, clock movement” of a chair, tilted forward to lean into the corner of the (my italics). For me, the riddling aspect of Dumontier’s gallery. Here, with Untitled (Leaning Chair), seemingly practice is at its most fertile here – I can’t quite read the minimal means are employed to deliver maximum sign pieces, but feel there is something to be read. This feeling slippage. The effect, again, is that of a visual riddle. As can frustrate – especially when a work offers no other with a number of the works (if not all), Dumontier plays apparent reason for existing. But here, care with materials with the syntax of the gallery space itself, highlighting its (their good form), the dry protestant sensuality of clean

32 33 SCAN ISSUE 3 BY COLAB SCAN CONTEMPORARY ART JOURNAL linen, and the everyday miracle of that the whole was there for the eye minimalism, or one’s guarantee of perfect circular motion holds my simultaneously. The alternative for progressiveness depending on one’s attention. Fried was minimalism’s theatricality stance on these issues. These ideas, (used pejoratively by Fried); its having themselves already acquired Delving a little more deeply, one staging, and heightened awareness of, the quirks of 20th century relics, are also feels there is a whole modern the subject in relation to the object perhaps joining the ranks of bespoke literature of painting being tinkered – the staging of the institution itself, monocles and artisanal beards. For with here – albeit subtly and non- and the potential politics therein, was makers (and viewers) of the complex programmatically, from Matisse’s apparently insufficient or besides objects we call artworks, what these analogue of the function of painting the point for Fried. Dumontier’s ideas have been replaced by is of (to that of a comfortable armchair) talent, then, lies in holding these course much less certain. For the time to Michael Fried’s notion of a elements in play, adapting them to being, we will have to make do with work’s “presence as grace” in his his own particular artistic language their re-surfacing, their re-purposing once seminal Art and Objecthood and interests. Less relevant are the (both crafty and resourceful), and essay. The latter notion held that the stakes for painting, or sculpture, or their curious status as either baubles highest calling of a modern artwork shorn of ornament, or problems shorn worthy of the name was its ability of necessity. It is a curious position to contain a sense of “presentness.” to be sure, but one still capable of The work’s gift to the viewer was to generating objects like Dumontier’s, hold her in its sense of present time, which themselves generate pleasure. which was also instantaneous time, in

Plug In ICA

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Ace Art Urban Shaman

Decolonizing Lens LKP

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Application Deadline: January 15 MFA MASTER OF FINE ART CONTACT Graduate Program Manager 313 ARTlab, 180 Dafoe Road [email protected] University of Manitoba umanitoba.ca/schools/art Winnipeg, MB R3T 2N2 umanitoba.ca

Image title: Lidwien van de Ven, Cairo, 25/01/2013 (Tahrir Square)

Synthia’s Closet / Ione Thorkelsson January 12 – February 24, 2017 1. Lidwien van de Ven: Living On Reception February 02, 4:30 – 6:30pm curated by Shep Steiner Artist Talk 2. February 02, 6:30pm Opening 136 ARTlab March 10 Kiln Cast Glass demonstration 12:00 – 1:30 January 31, 9:00am – 12:00pm Ceramics Building 3. Gallery Talk March 10 1:30-2:45 with Lidwien van de Ven IMAGE CREDIT: SYNTHIA'S CLOSET, SPH-07. CAST GLASS, FEATHER SHAFTS, LED LIGHT FEATHER GLASS, CAST SPH-07. SYNTHIA'S CLOSET, CREDIT: IMAGE and Dr.Axelle Karera

In conjunction with the symposium “Living On” organized by the journal Mosaic. March 9–March 11, 2017. Featuring: Daniel Fischlin, David Farrell Krell, Elizabeth Rottenberg, Diane Enns, Antonio Calcagno, Al Lingis, Geoffrey Bennington, Peggy Kamuf,Nicholas Royle, Patricia Patkau, H.Peter Steeves and Danielle Meijer.

School of Art Gallery Gallery Hours: Monday–Friday, 10:00 am – 4:00 pm. Admission is Free. 255 ARTlab, 180 Dafoe Road, Winnipeg, Manitoba, R3T 2N2, Canada For more information: umanitoba.ca/schools/art/800.html

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