Stefan Brüggemann Kelly Richardson Brendan Fernandes the Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes
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Contemporary Art Gallery Vancouver, BC The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes June 13 to June 29, 2014 B. C. Binning and Alvin Balkind Galleries Stefan Brüggemann June 13 to September 7, 2014 Gallery façade Kelly Richardson July 11 to August 31, 2014 B. C. Binning and Alvin Balkind Galleries Brendan Fernandes June to August, 2014 Burrard Marina Field House Studio Marian Penner Bancroft Until September 7, 2014 Off-site Opening receptions Thursday, June 12, 7–10pm Thursday, July 10, 7–10pm The Act of Seeing The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes is a group exhibition Avalon (2011) by Maryam Jafri initially appears as a of recent film and video that seeks to interrogate notions of straightforward documentary about individuals who unknowingly with One’s Own Eyes uncertainty within the documentary format. Work by ten artists find themselves making paraphernalia for the fetish industry. Yet engages with the conventions of source footage, narrative voice among a series of interviews, Jafri inserts a staged performance, Ed Atkins and re-enactment, questioning perceptions of such devices, a re-enactment of a story told by a dominatrix, thus juxtaposing Edgardo Aragón while also reclaiming them in order to redefine their intent and a fictional world with that of the factory, and performativity with Kim Beom potential. Not all works critique these characteristics, but each production. Toril Johannessen’s Non-Conservation of Energy Rossella Biscotti examines the consumption of knowledge and truth, using the (and of Spirits) (2012) is based on a transcript of a conversation Stan Brakhage body as form and performance as a site, to address where where she interviewed the late Danish physicist Niels Bohr Duncan Campbell meaning may reside. about energy and consciousness through a psychic medium. Fabiola Carranza The performative element in both these works raises questions Maryam Jafri The belief in the documentary as an authoritative tool has long about the investigative nature of documentary, the information Toril Johannessen been scrutinized, alluded to by the exhibition’s title, a direct accessed and the methods of inquiry. Subject and format Shahryar Nashat referencing of a 1971 Stan Brakhage film shot in a Pittsburgh are set against each other, their topics remaining elusive. In morgue, his title itself an attempt to literally translate the ‘autopsy’ contrast, Edgardo Aragón’s Efectos de Familia (Family Effects) June 13 to June 29, 2014 as shown. Brakhage’s film has a visceral intensity, a sense of the (2007–2009) uses re-enactment to make tangible his family’s B. C. Binning and Alvin Balkind Galleries tangible that rests in his presentation of an inanimate figure, the violent past. Drug-related incidents are restaged using young dead body, being acted upon. Even though categorized within the male relatives and their friends as actors, the incongruity genre of experimental film, it also functions as a candid record. between what is portrayed and the age of the actors revealing While in part the filmmaker’s intent was to disrupt readings the ongoing impact of the past on the present. of his films as mere documents, this work more pointedly plays with presence and absence, the body as both figure and Fabiola Carranza’s Corrida, 1929 (2013) also collapses different Opposite: subject. In blurring the ways factual information is conveyed time frames by asserting a physical presence on top of footage while simultaneously undermining the more usual documentary from a bullfight in Spain. A screening of Corrida, a home-made Edgardo Aragón conventions, Brakhage’s film provides the underpinning for film by Man Ray shot in 1929, is re-filmed with Carranza tracing Efectos de Familia (Family Effects) (2007–2009) other works in this exhibition. the bull and fighter with a flashlight across the surface of the Digital video, 27’ 58” projection. The artist’s gestures can be read as comment on Courtesy the artist and Proyectos Monclava, Mexico City Bernadette (2008) is a portrait of Irish activist Bernadette Devlin, Man Ray’s process, an illustration of his use of the body, light Duncan Campbell used archival footage from the late 1960s/ and shadow to make images, and of how we as audience, Rossella Biscotti early 1970s to create an indirect account of her political history. read film. This reference to the viewer is also seen in Shahryar The Prison of Santo Stefano (2011) Campbell uses out-takes, the moments between interviews Nashat’s Factor Green (2011) where a package containing a Super 8mm film transfered to video, 10’16’’ Color, no sound (part 1 seeming to capture a more off-guard Delvin, the ‘truth’ behind green object is delivered to a museum under restoration, it is Courtesy the artist and Wilfried Lentz, the public persona. However such a strategy only serves to found by an individual who then proceeds to use the form in Rotterdam heighten our awareness of the mediation of the camera. A Rock various ways. At one point it begins to move of its own volition, that Learned the Poetry of Jung Jiyong (2010) by Kim Beom becoming witness to the workings of the museum itself. A green Fabiola Carranza similarly creates a portrait of a historic figure, but through an screen is used in post-production for cinema or television when Corrida 1929 (2013) Digital video, no sound, 4’ 30” absurdist gesture, that of asking a professor to teach a rock layering two images together. Here it acts as a poetic surrogate, Courtesy the artist everything he knows about the Korean modernist poet, Jung embodying the potential to represent all that is not seen: the Jiyong. The original video lasts over twelve hours, the instructor missed histories, misrepresentations and absent visitors. Ed Atkins giving detailed lectures, a saturation of information that Beom A Primer for Cadavers (2011) Video, 19’ 58” enacts in the work’s sheer length, refusing to distill Jung’s life A Primer for Cadavers (2011) brings us full circle. Ed Atkins’ Courtesy the artist and Cabinet, London into a digestible format. Rossella Biscotti’s film The Prison of videos deal with the apparent immateriality of computer Santo Stefano (2013) also offers a portrait of sorts but here of a generated imagery in relation to its precise representations of place. Depicted in the Super 8 film is a trip to the prison, the first the physical world, yet links to Brakhage in poetically addressing Bernadette (2008) by Duncan Campbell is presented in collaboration with The Western to be designed specifically to receive people with life sentences. corporeal reality. Visually and conceptually the physicality of the Front and Dim Cinema and will screen in the It wanders through graveyards documenting visitors planting body provides a primary focus, whether real or conjured in spirit. Grand Luxe Hall at the Western Front, 303 8 flowers as well as showing another kind of recording — the artist The documentary as a form of veracity is called into question, Ave E, Vancouver from June 26 to June 29 seen making sculptures and taking rubbings from the prison’s for while the undeniable end for us all is pictured, it remains an during opening hours: noon to 5pm. Please stone courtyard. attempt to delve into the unknowable, a representation that is at join for a reception and screening Thursday, June 26 from 8–10pm. This exhibition is generously supported by once life-like yet completely dead. Inform Interiors. Stefan Brüggemann Headlines & Last Lines in the Movies transforms the façade of the Contemporary Art Gallery, wooden cladding covering Headlines and Last Lines in the Movies its frontage and south east corner. Resembling a construction June 13 to September 7, 2014 site, the structure becomes the ground for the work; the title a Gallery façade precise description of itself. In this new mural, Brüggemann writes headlines from current newspapers, from local to global, in combination with excerpts of last lines from popular films. ‘Forget it Jake, its Chinatown’ could be spray-painted next to ‘Enbridge Pipeline Rejected’, the juxtaposition of appropriated texts creating both a familiarity and an oddly appropriate pairing suggestive of narratives that may exist to connect current news items with scripted dialogue. With one text residing in the real, the other in the fictive, in combination they create a barrage of information that Brüggemann unifies into a totality of black text. The overlay forms a graphic field that is only partly legible, language creating an immersive installation that draws colloquial phrases into dense cacophonic arenas. The work seems declaratory, but what it is trying to Stefan Brüggemann works primarily with text; communicate is drowned out by volume, intensity and opacity. his often humorous work takes a variety of forms from large graphic fields to imitations It is important that Brüggemann makes these installations by of bookworks. Solo exhibitions include: Proyectos Monclova, Mexico City (2013); hand, the time taken to transcribe them becoming a form of Galeria de Arte Mexicano, Mexico City (2011); personalization, the act of writing as a means to externalize Villa du Parc, Centre d´Art Contemporain, thought. The frenetic appearance might suggest the scrambled France (2010); Kerlin Gallery, Dublin (2008); notes of someone trying to work through a complex problem Frac Bourgogne, France (2008); I-20 Gallery, or evoke the direct action of a graffiti political protest, the New York (2006) and Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Mexico City (1999). He has contributed to fragmented scribbling formally read as statements that urgently various group exhibitions, including Confusion need to be expressed. in the Vault, Museo Jumex, Mexico City (2013); An Exhibition (STEFAN BRÜGGEMANN, Despite the stylistic uniformity, phrases still register as individual LAWRENCE WEINER, CAREY YOUNG), The Holden Gallery, Manchester Metropolitan fragments with multiple subjects.