Winnipeg Free Press, November 15, 2005

HO, by Toni Hafkenscheid

Platform Gallery, 121-100 Arthur St.

To December 3

HO, by Toni Hafkenscheid

Platform Gallery, 121-100 Arthur St.

To December 3

One of the more unique and challenging art works to come out of Europe in the early 20^th century was Rene Magritte's painting The Treachery of Images.

Under an image of what is quite clearly a pipe, Magritte wrote: Ceci n'est pas une pipe—literally, "this is not a pipe."

And he was right, of course, because it wasn't a pipe—it was only a painting of one, and it was that subtle but important difference that he was drawing the viewer's attention towards. Magritte's painting showed that an image is not the real thing, but only an artist's reproduction of something—and images, as he reminded us, can be treacherous.

Toronto artist Toni Hafkenscheid, a Dutch-born professor at the Ontario College of Art and Design, seems to use Magritte's ideas as a point to consider the North American landscape, and how we have viewed it both now and in the past.

HO, the show's title, are the letters used to describe a particular scale of model train set, and the work itself looks like some kind of model, where it's impossible to tell what, if anything, is real.

To describe it simply, Hafkenscheid's exhibit presents a series of photographs that, at first glance, look like pictures of model train set worlds. Everything about the trains, mountains, beach scenes, cityscapes and people in these works, including the colours, seem almost too real, if that's possible. And the slightly blurred perspective, with only the centre of the work in sharp focus, gives the viewer a sense of looking though a peephole at some tiny, miniature world.

By using a lens designed for architectural photography—ideal for taking full views of tall buildings, often from directly across the street—Hafkenscheid is able to fit a wide depth of field into his images. This means that everything from the immediate foreground to the furthest mountaintop have the same, blurry focus.

For those walking into this show knowing nothing about it, the mysterious quality of the photos is both puzzling and fascinating. The illusion that these are in fact models is so convincing, that it's easy to spend the entire viewing time trying to guess what's real in the photo and what's not.

Photographing iconic North American landscapes—rugged mountains, small roadside motels, even Niagara Falls—the artist presents them in a way that viewers would only have seen them in postcards. The fact that the works look this way isn't accidental—during the developing stage, the artist tints the images to give them that 1950's postcard-perfect hue, calling attention again to the artifice of images, and how they can be used to misrepresent.

It's no coincidence that the train, one of the ultimate symbols of "progress" on our continent, would show up so often. Hafkenscheid's work is often talked about in terms of the notions of progress, or the dream of the brilliant future that existed in 1950's North America. It's also no coincidence that, in the image of Niagara Falls, the tourists are too preoccupied with themselves or each other to bother looking at the falls, since the idyllic dreams for the future that existed in the 1950's largely ignored the natural landscape and our effects on it, something we're paying the price for today.

Since the idea behind postcards is that they be an advertising tool, designed to lure future tourists or to persuade old ones to return, it stands to reason that they would present an overly optimistic view. Hafkenscheid does the same here, seeming to deliberately ignore the political or social implications of the images, and thereby giving them an even more powerful and ironic political twist.

By taking the real and placing it in such an unsettling, miniaturized context, Hafkenscheid reminds that viewer, as Rene Magritte did 80 years ago, that images can't be trusted. Even in the realest of depictions, he shows us, there is always a distortion or bias.

As with the idyllic images of 1950's North America, the artist presents an impossibly perfect world, leaving that which is real and that which is not in doubt. It's a show that, both for the theory behind it, and for the incredible visual quality of the work itself, reveals an artist at the top of his game.

Winnipeg Free Press, January 10, 2006

(Image: Isiah 42:18, from the Aliyah Suite, by Salvador Dali)

Aliyah Suite, by Salvador Dali

The Winnipeg Art Gallery, 300 Memorial Blvd.

To March 19

In 1967, a year before the state of Israel prepared to celebrate its 20 ^th anniversary, noted Spanish artist Salvador Dali was commissioned to create a series of lithograph prints celebrating this historic event.

Dali may have seemed an odd choice at first, famous as he was for his bizarre, anti-art approach that saw him arrive at one of his shows in a limousine full of cauliflower, and paint such images as melting clocks and flaming giraffes.

Yet, in the decades that followed his rise to prominence with the Dada movement, Dali's work frequently explored religious, literary and historical themes.

The creation of the modern state of Israel, which he depicts in this show, was the result of a post-Holocaust movement of Jews from around the world, back to the Middle East. It also displaced large numbers of the existing Arab population, often against their will, as the Jewish population in the region grew from 8 per cent in 1900 to 75 per cent today.

Conflicts that flared up during the re-settlement have continued, and while there have been recent signs of hope, such as the pullout of Israeli troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip in September, 2005, the mood in modern Israel is one of uneasy co-existence at best, and ethnic and religious violence at worst.

Dali's exhibit openly celebrates the creation of the state of Israel, a theme that was put forward a decade and a half before him by the Jewish-Canadian writer A.M. Klein. In his remarkable novel The Second Scroll , Klein compares the modern re-settlement of Israel with the biblical Exodus story, in which the early Jewish people, under divine protection, escape the bondage of Pharaoh and return to the Promised Land.

As Klein did, then, Dali gained inspiration for Aliyah Suite from biblical and historical sources, depicting the return to Israel as divinely led. Many of the work's titles come directly from Hebrew scripture, and the word "Aliyah" translates as "ascention to Zion," which is the biblical name for the modern capital of Jerusalem.

It's the potential for controversy, then, at least in part, that makes this show so interesting—Dali's unapologetic celebration of the foundation of Israel. Whether he actually believed this himself, though, is not clear, since it's been suggested that he was in fact an anti-Semite.

Critics and historians have noted that in some works (such as the one depicting Rachael weeping for her murdered children, an allusion to both a biblical story and the modern Holocaust) Dali seems to almost overplay the emotion, as if he only half-sympathized. Others, however, argue that his work was truly sympathetic, and consistent with historical traditions.

Nevertheless, the work itself, from a limited edition series of lithograph prints, is fascinating—this is, after all, one of the 20^th century's most revered artists.

Using watercolours and inks, Dali created a semi-abstract depiction of various scenes from the recent history of Israel.

Psalm 23:4, ("Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death") , shows huddled crowds of refugees, pressing towards Zion beneath a sinister cloud. As A.M. Klein did before him, Dali views the smoke from the concentration camp furnaces as a new "pillar of fire", which in the biblical story, led the Jews through the desert.

It's a powerful metaphor, suggesting that the victims of the Holocaust served as spiritual "guides" on the modern return to Israel.

Another work depicts the massive construction projects that helped Israel to modernize. An irrigation pipe is shown being installed, while an angel hovers overhead protectively. The work's title is, The Land at the Start of Jewish Settlement: "I will make the wilderness a pool of water," (Isiah 41: 18) , suggesting that the modernization of Israel fulfilled ancient prophesies.

In The Second Scroll, A.M. Klein concludes repeatedly that the only way for the new Israel to achieve divine sanction was to create a nation in which the three "Great Faiths"—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—could live and worship together, free of hatred and warfare.

And judged by that standard, it's been a failure so far.

But with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on his deathbed, and the peace process in doubt, Klein's standard seems particularly worth considering, and perhaps now more than ever.

Winnipeg Free Press, January 11, 2007

(Image: Peter Rindisbacher, after Interior of a Sioux Lodge, 1824. Aquatint and etching, hand-coloured. Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa.

Peter Winkworth Collection of Canadiana: Vast New Lands--Canada's Northwest, by various artists
Winnipeg Art Gallery, 300 Memorial Blvd.
To Jan. 21

Amidst Greeks myths and old English trade laws, the grand narrative of history can seem a little dull--something for dusty old professors more than us everyday, working folk. So it's easy to forget that at its core, history is made up of countless individual stories, each of them involving a living, breathing person.
The fur traders who paddled up and down the rivers of the early Canadian west, for example, and the native people they encountered, were obviously from a different historical and cultural context than us. And yet they weren't really all that much different in the desires, struggles, and contradictions that made up their daily lives.
An exhibit currently on display at the WAG shows the familiar historical archetypes that we all know, as well as the real, living people behind those masks. The sixty or so paintings and prints are entirely from the collection of the late Peter Winkworth, a financier who collected more than 4,000 pieces of historical art during his lifetime and then left them all to the government of Canada.
The exhibit presents what seems to be a fairly straightforward visual history of the Canadian north and west between about 1800 and 1890, and yet it's packed with stories that go beyond the names we may think we know.
There's John Franklin, for example, the captain of an expedition that vanished in the Canadian arctic in 1849, and which thereby captured the popular imagination of Europe for years afterward.
Sir George Back was the official artist for some of Franklin's earlier (and more fortunate) expeditions, and there are several works here by him, all done while he traveled through the vast parcel of land that stretched from present-day Thunder Bay to the Pacific Ocean and the North Pole.
Before he teamed up with the legendary Franklin, though, Back had adventures of his own, including joining the British navy at age 12, and spending six years in a prison camp in France after being captured at sea.
And yet beyond the one-dimensional image we may hold of someone like Back, that of the romantic explorer and artist, was a man who historians describe as an unrepentant womanizer, drinker, and carouser. His co-workers seem to have considered him difficult and untrustworthy, while his journals were described by a contemporary as "all ornament and conceit, (with) no substance, and no small portion of sentimentality and self-admiration."
Despite those apparent inconsistencies, however, the half dozen woks here by Back offer a rare and elegant glimpse at a world that has changed forever.
As for Louis Riel, his leadership in two rebellions, and his subsequent execution, have made him as celebrated and controversial figure as any in the Canadian West.
But as works from his own era show, Riel's place in the popular mind may have changed greatly over time. One work, for example, a political cartoon from a Toronto newspaper in 1885, shows General Middleton, leader of the government troops who defeated Riel at Battoche. In the work, Middleton is seen telling prime minister John A. Macdonald: "Here is your prisoner. I have done my duty, now you do yours."
Behind the two men, and the shackled figure of Riel, a noose dangles suggestively.
One of the most intriguing characters in this exhibit, though, may be Peter Rindisbacher. A farmer and artist who immigrated here in 1821 with his Swiss parents, Rindisbacher is considered the first full-time resident artist among the settlers of the Canadian west.
For several years, Rindisbacher painted scenes from daily life, including the native populations of this part of the prairies, before moving with his family to St. Paul, Minnesota. Prints of his works were circulated widely in Europe and the U.S., providing some of the earliest images of the Canadian west to the larger world.
In 1834, only 28 years old, Rindisbacher died from a tuberculosis epidemic that swept the young American city of St. Paul. Beyond those few bare facts, little is known about this important and rather tragic figure.
These images, then, and the characters behind them, form a distinct, lively part of our history as Manitobans--and there's nothing really dull or dusty about that.

Winnipeg Free Press, February 10, 2007

(Image: The Swing, by Jean-Honore Fragonard)

This article appeared in the Wpg Free Press, as part of their Valentine's Day "Love and Sex" section.

For a revealing look at sex in art, a good place to start is in 1776, when Jean-Honore Fragonard's painting The Swing was titillating European audiences. The work shows a young man discreetly looking up a young woman's skirt, to her apparent enjoyment, as she's pushed on a swing by her older lover. By today's standards, it's pretty tame stuff, but for Fragonard's day, this frank depiction of desire was nothing short of scandalous.
In the age of internet porn, with upskirt this and girls gone that, it can seem as if we're living in a time that is particularly obsessed with sex. But even in the most repressed of cultures--Victorian England comes to mind--sexual tension still bubbled hotly under the surface, and popped up in some of the unlikeliest places.
Well into the 1800's, church control over the codes of public morality in Europe was strict. This showed up in the art, which was almost entirely religious-themed. But even there, in what would seem at first to be the most orthodox of artwork, it doesn't take much imagination to notice the sex peeking through.
Italian sculptor Giovani Bernini, for example, created famous 17th century works depicting Saint Theresa, including a scene in which the saint, after days of fasting and prayer, was said to be suddenly overcome by the power of Christ. Many scholars point out Bernini's own religious devotion, so that he likely intended the work to be nothing more than a straightforward religious icon.
It still seems that, consciously or not, Bernini has depicted the saint as experiencing something other than just religous fervour, since this and other similar works show her hands clutching feverishly at her breasts, or sliding down between her legs, while her eyes roll heavenward.
Religious icon, or sex symbol--or perhaps a bit of both.
The question of what is pornography and what is art, has for centuries been a horny, er, thorny issue. Two leading Italian artists were imprisoned in the early 1500's by Pope Clement II, after the publication their book I Modi (The Ways), which depicted various sexual escapades through images and text.
Even then, though, there was clearly a market for this type of work, since most art was bought or commissioned by wealthy patrons, and with a book like I Modi, numerous editions were usually produced at great expense. In I Modi's case, all copies were destroyed by the Pope, and only a less-than-faithful reproduction still remains to show us the work that enraged and titillated 16th century audiences.
At the same time that European artists were sneaking erotica into religious art, Japanese woodblock prints and illustrated Kama Sutra texts celebrated sexuality with explicit scenes of orgies.
The connections between art and sex go back much further, though. Some of the earliest known works of art depict female nudes, and are thought to have been representations of fertility goddesses. The so-called Venus of Willendorf for example, found in 1908 in Austria, is a 24,000 year old statue of a nude, pregnant female.
And both the ancient Greeks and Romans showed an obsession with sex that makes our modern internet porn culture seem dull in comparison. Phallic symbols and nudes show up in almost every work imaginable, from scenes of daily life to mythological images.
To these ancients, no sexual subject was taboo. Their dramas and comedies openly discussed and parodied topics that even most of today's Hollywood films (and some of the raunchiest internet porn) wouldn't touch with a ten-foot dildo. And Sappho's erotic lesbian poetry remains every bit as spicy today as when it was written in the 7th century BC.
In the last few centuries, standards in Europe and North America have changed enough that sex in art is fairly accepted, and no longer has to be subtle.
The fifth annual Seattle Erotic Art Festival takes place next month, for example, with thousands of artists and visitors from across North America expected to participate. And internationally recognized figures like Robert Mapplethorpe and Julian Murphy continue to make images that blur the boundaries between high art and erotica.
Looking at a history of art, it seems that from our earliest ancestors on, humans have been fascinated with sex--that would probably explain why there's always been so many new little humans running around.

Winnipeg Free Press, February 8, 2007

(Images: Healthy, and Oiseau (froid), by Denis Prieur. Photos by Lorne Roberts)

Oiseau (glum), by Denis Prieur
La Maison des artistes visuels francophones, 219 Provencher Blvd.
To March 13

When looking at or describing a piece of art, it's easy to throw out adjectives like "fresh", "exciting", "unique", and so on. They're generally quite safe, and can be rather meaningless if you want them to be.
Looking at work by local artist Denis Prieur (he calls them sculptural drawings), any number of those adjective can easily spring to mind. But as always, there's something about cliches that don't quite tell the whole story.
With Prieur, it's almost automatic to call the work "fun", or "child-like" because it certainly is that. It's partly the materials, as his art incorporates yarn and sparkles, and uses plywood, glue, and felt markers as some of its main components.
It feels a bit like looking at work by some weirdly mature little kid, who has managed, by gluing and colouring long enough, to actually come up with some genuinely interesting art.
Of course, Prieur is no-preschooler. He's actually a thirty-something U of M grad, and one of a large crew of mainly francophone artists of all stripe who have come out of St. Boniface in the last decade or so.
Prieur has said in the past that his artmaking was inspired by a time spent living in Asia, in which he found the local scripts to be very beautiful, even though he didn't understand their meaning.
With that idea in mind, his own work often incorporates text that is carefully (one might say obsessively) hidden inside the images. That means that his works are often like heiroglyphics, or puzzles, with something other than the obvious going on.
Influenced by such artists as the American sculptor Claes Oldenburg, who is perhaps best know for a giant three-dimensional hamburger, Prieur creates an unusual hybrid of crude carpentry and Pop Art that still manages to be serious work.
He uses sheets of plywood that are cut into smaller bits, coloured with felts and paint, and then glued on top of each other--sometimes up to six or seven layers deep.
Featuring light, airy themes and imagery such as birds, bits of old advertisements, and travel scenes, there's a collage-style feel to all of his works. It's as if he had cut and pasted bits from a National Geographic magazine, or scribbled pages full of drawings, and then turned them all to wood.
That fun, lively style is part of what makes Prieur's work so visually interesting. It also compensates for the fact that, beyond the recurring theme of birds, the show doesn't have much of an overall idea or theme to unify the work.
Canadiana shows up regularly, though, providing both animal and human scenes. In a work like Migration, a mountain range hitches a ride on the back of a flatbed semi, while Canadian geese fly by overhead. In Lucca (she), we see what looks to be a travel photo, as bits of wood become a Rocky Mountain postcard scene, a woman posed in front of it.
In some works, the breezy humour shows through in the titles alone, which mix English, French and Italian, and which often add to the mystery. In other works, such as his straightforward and lifelike depcitions of birds, the strength of the image alone is enough.
Prieur's only other solo show thus far has been a modest exhibit at a local college. This new exhibit places him among our city's top young artists, and makes him one of a select few who can claim to be doing work that is entirely their own.

Winnipeg Free Press, March 7, 2007

(Image: Hang Around the Fort One Day, by Linus Woods)

Head Smashed in Buffalo Jump, by Linus Woods
Urban Shaman, 290 McDermot Ave.
To Mar. 5

A unique and powerful myths of the aboriginal people of the central and western prairies is mentioned by American cultural historian Joseph Campbell in his book The Power of Myth, published just after his death in 1988.
Originating in the Blackfoot tribe of present-day Alberta and Montana, it tells the story of a chief's heroic daughter. One year, when the buffalo refused to be herded off the cliffs as they had every year, it seemed as though her people would starve. So the chief's daughter agreed to marry the leader of the buffalo herd, if only he would agree to get his friends and family to jump off the cliff again and provide meat for her people.
Linus Woods, a Dakota-Ojibway artist from the Long Plains First Nation, near Brandon, has chosen this powerful mythological symbol as the title of his show, on at Urban Shaman until this Saturday.
In the story, the bison agreed to the deal, and so the princess left her tribe to roam the plains with him. Her father the chief, though, chased after her, heartbroken, only to be trampled by the buffalo herd. The princess covered her father's body in a blanket, then performed a dance that slowly brought him back to life.
The leader of the buffalo herd is so impressed that he allows the princess to return to her people, and tells her something along the lines of: "From now on, dance this dance every year before the hunt, and us buffalo will always come to your people and jump off the cliff, because your dance will bring us back to life."
So from then on, the story goes, the Blackfoot people danced this ceremonial dance every year before the hunt, and the buffalo allowed themselves to be run off the cliff.
In the past, Woods has said that his work, a blending of ancient native traditions and avant-garde painting, seeks to reproduce the effect of these oral myths. Rather than having a single purpose or conclusion, he feels that his work can be open-ended, and subject to interpretation. (For example, in the myth of the princess and the buffalo, the point of the story wasn't just to remind the people to honour and respect the source of their food, but it also reflected social codes of marriage, family and tribal life, and so on).
Woods's latest show presents a dozen trippy blue-green landscapes and figures, and in style, if not in content, seems to borrow from artists like David Hockney and Picasso as much as any specific "aboriginal" style.
The trickster figure of the rabbit, though, a recurring character in the mythology of plains people, shows up in most of Woods's paintings here. Like the trees, humans, and and even the landscape around him, the rabbit almost always leans to the east, as if pushed by some invisible force.
It's a skillful blend of medium and message, in which the theme and colour work together to create the moody shamanistic effect the artist has in mind.
Those who've seen Woods's work before, in the handful of major shows he's been in, will recognize ongoing changes and development in his style.
The exhibit shows that, just shy of 40, Woods is hitting his stride as an artist, and perhaps even beginning to emerge as a truly distinctive voice. So while this exhibit shows his impressive development over the last few years, the best may be yet to come.

Winnipeg Free Press, May 24, 2007

Image by Don Gill, from www.erraticwinnipeg.blogspot.com

Erratic Space, by Don Gill
Winnipeg Art Gallery, 300 Memorial Blvd. (and www.erraticwinnipeg.blogspot.com/)
To July 1

Everyone's familiar with the private eye from 1950's film noir. You know the character: the tough-as-nails detective, gruff and lonely, but endearing. He smokes and drinks a bit too much, knows his way around the seedy back alleys and bars of the city, knows who to pay off to get whatever information he needs to solve the case.
Don Gill, a Lethbridge-based artist, may or may not work in this style, although he certainly challenges most people's notions of what makes an artist.
About to wrap up his month-long residency in the Winnipeg Art Gallery, Gill has turned the gallery into his own private eye's office, and turned the city itself into a case to be solved.
Starting on May 1, and for two more months, Gill will take his camera, a notebook, a GPS device, and just walk the streets of Winnipeg every day, rain or shine, trying to solve the mystery of what makes our city what it is.
Now, understand this about Gill's work--there's no real art show, per se.
I mean, there's a web log you can see, and the gallery itself contains a few images from similar projects he's done in other cities, some travel scrapbooks, and his studio, open for all to visit.
I would suggest starting with the blog. It contains one journal entry per day, with details about the length of his walk (sometimes more than 20 kilometres), the weather, notes about random adventures or people he met, and a single photo.
The blog provides that first inkling of how fascinating our city becomes when seen through the eyes of an outsider--simple, ordinary things take on a tinge of the exotic or, at the very least, of the new.
In the gallery itself, there's a wall that looks like a scrapbook in progress. It includes newspaper articles, dated from his stay here, as well as photos from his daily walks. It's certainly the most physical part of this somewhat elusive art project.
For example, there's an image from Louis Riel's grave, a spot that marked the symbolic beginning of Gill's project. There are pictures of dogs, ducks, art, and of the wild turkey who seems to have taken up residence downtown.
There are pictures of random scraps of food and garbage, of billboards and sidewalks, of discarded toys and the riverbank--scenes from everyday Winnipeg.
There's even a drawing of Gill, done on May 8 by some kid named Sebastian.
So Gill's work is all about archiving and cataloguing, about documenting what seems at first to be the ordinary and everyday. Of course, that's what a good detective has to do, right?--find the hidden clues that give away the whole mystery?
The whole show becomes a bit like detective work, then, both on the artist's part and on ours. He explores our city, and we're expected to explore his blog, his studio, to sift through the clues in newspaper articles and photos tacked to the wall.
(And a real detective, of course, would know to even sift through his garbage can, since it's just sitting out there in the open, and practically begging to be sifted through. But I'm sorry to report there wasn't much exciting--just a few granola bar wrappers, and the packaging from some parcels.)
It's fair to say that Gill likes our city. He loves it even, and from the evidence we have to go on, he seems to see the beauty in it more than many of us.
But as for where the "art" is in this show, Gill simply leaves it out there, an unsolved case in progress.
So it's really up to you here to be the detective--up to me, up to the viewers, and to anyone who lives in or visits Winnipeg.
There are still two days left to see the artist in the studio, and while his WAG residency ends this Sunday, the project continues until July 1.
In the meantime, check it out online at www.erraticwinnipeg.blogspot.com/