Archives 1991 ()

3 - 12 December 1991

5 November -30 November 1991

Frieso Boning’s art doesn’t move in a smooth formalistic arc. From delicate pastel drawings of power tools, to complicated wall assemblages, to garish outdoor signboards — Boning’s constant is not his look, but his funny, steady intelligence. His work isn’t dry or academic. Rather, it has a playfulness, with materials and ideas, that undermines received notions of relevance, and in the process nudges the conscience of contemporary art.
“Save the Bloody World” is a book. Unlike wallwork, sculpture, video, or performance art, it occupies a narrow field of vision. But we have only to see the bookworks of Dieter Rot, Francesco Clemente, and Anselm Kiefer to note the wide ranging possibilities. This uncommon medium, because it is offered into our hands, is intimate and precious. Boning’s bookwork is made up of three series of found elements. Reproductions of photos, often magnified up to four times to a grainy indistinctness, are framed by excerpts from critical texts (in red type) and conversational, everyday phrases (handwritten in pale blue conte crayon). The pages are a flat, light-devouring black. Ten copies of this limited edition book go in one order, five in the reverse, and another five in a completely different order. Formally, it’s cool, symmetrical, regular. But this strict framework teems with idiosyncratic, intersecting meanings.
The red text in “Save the Bloody World” is taken from essays on Minimalism, especially the work of American Minimalist Robert Morris. This is a deliberate choice, of course; Minimalism was one of the first movements to yoke visual art into words, combining deceptively simple objects with the reams of theory and criticism needed to explain them. Other sixties trends, like Conceptualism, explored the possibilities and liabilities of art and language even more directly, bringing words into the works themselves.
In “Save the Bloody World”, Boning undermines and expands these late Modernist practices, most of which he sees as obscure and austere. Here, the connections among the photos and the two distinct types of written language are not linear or obvious. Aware of the treacherous relation among “real” objects, Boning resists pigeon-holing. Instead, he responds to the confusing overkill of post-Modern images and information. His bedtime “book”, as he calls it, seems to ask how we can make sense at the end of the day of the bombardment of data — visual, aural, written — that assaults us. Is there any way of ordering all this stuff — all these banal, threatening, comforting, manipulative, erotic, apocalyptic, alienating, conforming, overwhelming, enlightening, or just plain wrong-headed messages that ooze out from our TV.’s, magazines. billboards, from conversations overheard at the office coffee-maker, from the repetitive, circular arguments of the long-married? The artist seems to suggest that all this overexposure to images and language paradoxically can both reduce and expand our knowledge of communication.
Boning empties these found pictures and words of their official, endorsed meanings. Isolating phrases and images, he breaks down familiar rhythms, juxtaposes, inverts, and enlargers — anything to pull us up short and make us look again. “Save the Bloody World” allows us to construct  our own personal meanings in the face of the impersonal, obfuscating tangle of the post-Modern media world.
The red text in “Save the Bloody World” denotes the realm of public, official, academic discourse. In contrast to the messy subjectivity of the chalked words, the red phrases are hard-edged and glossy, suggesting clarity and logic. However, subtle editing sometimes hints that these didactic truths may be just as fuzzy as their chalked counterparts. Phrases such as “ALONG THE ENTROPIC AXIS,” or “THE DIFFUSION OF READABILITY,” seem a little naked and defensive on their own, without the usual struts and supports of argument and theory. This phrase, “THE LAST REMARK BEARS UNDERLINING,” sound mechanical and stodgy, but others, freed from their contexts, have a rich enigmatic poetry — “AS MUCH LAUGHTER AS YOU HAVE FAITH,” “TIME HONOURS ALIGNMENTS.”
The handwritten conte texts are a jumble of everyday spoken language. Commonplaces, aphorisms, and cliches, they range from the wise to the trite. Many of them seem to be culled from the tortured, round-about “anti-communication” of crumbling relationships — “I knew you would say that,” “let’s not talk about it,” “what’s that suppose to mean,” “I’ve heard it all before.” Others are cheerily optimistic — “aim for the stars,” “what have you got to lose,” “the world is yours.” Whether we see cheap jingoism or real hope can depend on the accompanying images and texts, on what comes before and after, even on our mood.
The pictures in “Save the Bloody World” range from advertisements to nature photos, reproductions of works by Hopper and Rodin, and photojournalism. Reproduced in gloss black ink onto flat black paper, strongly magnified, with obvious printings dots, they dismantle the usual immediacy and transparency of photography. We must concentrate to see these blurry, indistinct images as they waver on the thin line between positive and negative readings. Many of the pictures are strongly modifies by their texts. A picture of a masked man and woman, framed by the phrases, “WE COULD REMAIN ALOOF,” and “I feel eroded by doubt,” seems sinister, angst-ridden, hinting at violence. Actually, it’s an ad for balaclavas.
Boning is the first to admit that his use of photography runs counter to prevailing trends. He feels that the rising use of photography by visual artists in the last decade has too often been paired with clumsy, one-dimensional socio-political critique. Boning’s personal, self-concscious use of the medium is far removed from what he sees as the apathetic and bombastic game-playing of Barbara Kruger, Richard Price, Sherrie Levine, and Jeff Koons.
The format for “Save the Bloody World” seems simple. All those black pages — each one with a photographic image, red type, blue chalk. It would be easy to interpret this work as obvious and reductive. But Boning’s complicated selection process doesn’t allow this. Over a period of months, he collected pictures and phrases which appealed to him. Then he shuffled and reshuffled them, using loose, intuitive connections rather than determining some over-reaching ideological plan. The page order also came from trial-and-error. As the artist worked for some weeks on the first order, he discovered by accident that the reverse order was also full of significance and meaning, and then looked for a third completely different possibility.
Sometimes the pictures and words work in harmony to underscore a serious point. An image of a homeless man’s face is framed by the phrases, “we are all responsible,” and “EITHER BY FAITH OR DESPAIR.” At other times the messages undercut each other, offering complexity  and irony. The typed fragment, “CONCEALMENT IS REFLECTED,” is counter-pointed with the pleading (and distinctly smarmy-sounding) “you have to believe me.” Still others seem only vaguely connected, hinting at meanings, but refusing to give a settled answer.
That’s all right, though. There is meaning here, but the book is not a puzzle that we must solve to reach some fixed truth. With his careful concealments, his clever shifts and fragmentations, Boning evokes the stray phrases and images, anxieties and obsessions, that run through  our heads before we drift to sleep. These bedtime truths are more elusive but also deeper than our clear-headed, logical daytime thoughts. In “Save the Bloody World” meaning resides in the words and pictures in the words and pictures and pages, but also in the spaces among them. A conclusion can be reached by each of us, as we leaf from page to page and get ready to dream.

8 October - 2 November 1991

These images, self-portraits, represent a small visual lexicon for my sub-conscious, created through symbols. Steering clear of any attempt to produce a complete methodical inventory, the pictures are meant to give expression to some of the conditions of being human. Some of the symbols are relatively straight forward, for example the one in the image with the trumpet. Others are more obscure. One shows Christmas lights and phylacteries (the small leather box and straps, traditionally worn by Jewish men during daily morning prayers). This image originates from feelings arising from the disaccord I experience between my religious background and my current assimilation. None of the images escape some reference to sexuality or mortality. Some of the more abstruse images, for example the one in which the figure is bound to the background by four strips of cloth, represent mental images that I feel cannot adequately be described in words at all.

10 September - 5 October 1991

Artist Statement
Pictures can tell stories: I am concerned here not with literal narrative but with the way single moments suggest psychological dramas. I want to build a multi-layered intimacy into my pictures, an interplay of the closeness of the people I photograph, between themselves and between them and me, and the thematic substance of these images: love, hope, desire, regret, and vulnerability. I am motivated by a need to reconcile the conflict between my ideals of true love, personal fulfillment and universal happiness, and my experience as an adult which reveals to me fissures in these beliefs.
My current project, photographs of women, alone and in couples enables me to address theoretical questions concerning identity and representation, and also to express my fascination with the sensual, the way the photograph describes physical surfaces. Some of this series I’ve printed large so that the characters are approximately life-size. At this scale they confront and seduce the viewer into the seemingly intimate space. At the same time they reveal themselves as flat, “made-up” constructions: pictures. I have drawn upon feminist film theory to examine gender roles, power relationships, and the “gaze”  — who activates it and who receives it. At a more personal level, these images embody questions I have about alone-ness, togetherness and what can exist between. What does it mean and what does it look like; falling in, and out, of love, wanting to be alone when with someone and wanting to be with someone when alone?
My photographs never resolve our craving for the story to end, and this gives them a resonating tension. I’m not a story-teller in the sense that I’m trying to ask questions, not to answer them: how we look (appear and regard), our illusions and aspirations, and the work expend to maintain our faith.

13 August - 7 September 1991

“Faces of Feminism” is a portrait and text series documenting the Canadian women’s movement. For five years Pamela Harris (1990 winner of the Duke and Duchess of York Prize in Photography) researched, photographed and collected texts from the women’s community across Canada. The selected exhibition of “Faces of Feminism” includes women from all provinces and from many walks of life, rural and urban women, individuals and collectives, women of different races, ages and lifestyles. Most are not well known; each represents many others whom there was not space to include; all have something to tell us. Each woman ( or group) was asked to write about herself — her ideas and the life experiences or theory that have informed her actions — and her portrait is placed beside this text. As we meet these women and read their stories, we are reminded of the power we all have to act and to make a difference.
The strength of feminism comes from its origin in the daily lives of many different kinds of women; it remains an evolving dialogue between diverse groups and individuals. “Faces of Feminism” helps us to listen to the multiplicity of voices taking part in this social dialogue and appreciate the contribution of various experiences.

16 July - 10 August 1991

Lewis Koch | Recent Work

The enclosed ( ) slides and accompanying material represent the photographic assemblages I have been making for the past few years. Although their contents and purposes appear wide-ranging, each stems from a desire to organize the disparate realities of our daily existence into a unified whole: to give form to fragmented experience. This work-collectively titled “Further Confessions”- reflects both my social/political, and more personal/metaphysical concerns. Structurally, the assemblages are comprised of varying numbers of black-and-white (silver gelatin) prints which function as both autonomous ideas and as interactive elements, as raw materials for the larger work. What follows is a brief introduction to these assemblages:
“Totem Pole” [7 prints/ 105" x 19"] comments on our contemporary relationship with nature, or lack thereof. Its imagery refers to our being firmly rooted in the Earth, yet cut-off at the roots; then extends through five pole-like sections, intermingling natural and human-made objects. The top image is symbolic of our totem figure, suggesting how little known or thought of it is in today’s society.
“Nuclear Family” [3 prints/ 32" x 40"] draws attention to two significant concerns: the nuclear arsenal (which hangs like a mushroom cloud over all families), and the family structure (with its various ramifications on the social domain, population growth, etc.). This work is intended as a starting point, a questioning juncture which characterizes much of my work. I am not attempting to tell the viewer what to think, but rather I am proposing what to think about.
“Blind Justice: The Supreme Court” [17 prints/ 72" x 70"] also confronts contemporary social themes. This work suggests that television mediates our sense of morality, and that it both reflects and helps define our rigid patriarchal structure. The nine ‘justices’ (photographed portrait marbles of Roman statesmen) are all illuminated by the light of the TVs, implying a contemporary corollary to the hubris of Paz Romana. The television scenes, photographed in a shabby motel room, allude to the darker, sometimes covert side of our society.
“Trail of Tears (Farewell Tour)” [11 prints/ 92" x 79"] observes humanity’s constant cycle of conflict and wonders if we are not crucifying ourselves with this propensity for war.
“Winged Victory (of Some Old Race)” [4 prints/38" x 51"/ mounted on sheet steel, suspended by cable] draws its inspiration from the classical Greek sculpture “The Nike (or “Winged Victory”) of Samothrace.” My flat, winged ’sculpture’ suggests the chaos and frenzy to which the ideals of our cultural heritage have fallen prey.
“Transatlantic Dreamcycle (via Eurovision)” [16 prints/ 103" x 146"] is, like my earlier work “The Dream Sequence,” a quasi-narrative. Each work depends on the viewer to create the storyline, but unlike the Dream Sequence this work is non-linear in design and can be read in a variety of directions. The hub (a ‘house of dreams’) creates a central focus for the surrounding images which infer the dual themes of social concerns and interior mysteries.
“Broken Oval (for RL)” [10 prints/ 80" x 72"] began as a homage to British sculptor Richard Long. Rather than simply replicate his chosen forms (circles of lines), this piece in its form implies the multiplicity of structure which underlies our segmented, and incomplete perception of reality.
“Night Totem (Open)” [7 prints/ 105" x 19"] is a reciprocal sequel to the earlier totem. Here, the idea of monument-building is questioned with quiet satire.

18 June - 13 July 1991

Time presents itself as a continuum, always showing its ever changing human face. One cannot but reflect upon the reminders that have been left behind for us to behold. Do they really depict an accurate account of its history or have they just transgressed through the millenniums? Does the mind simply conjure up mysteries in an attempt to justify or romanticize their existence?
Why have these structures survived and other not? Perhaps more intriguing is the reverence with which we annoint these edifices and monuments. Does it presuppose the notion of fate, or have we as a humanity always held the answers to their destiny?
At the same time, it is difficult to observe these existing structure without becoming humbled by their grandeur. We gladly seem to relinquish our adornment for the smaller, more detailed parts. They appear to get lost as our eyes get completely seduced by the larger, more overwhelming form. Yet the smaller more intricate parts maintain their own individual characteristics, which when given the opportunity, also display a distinct quality of their own. Eventually, this enhances the structure to give it its inevitable whole, which provides us with some semblance of completeness that we so comfortably embrace.
Finally, what criteria will we apply to determine the survival of our human heritage? Perhaps it would be more meaningful to address the question, which part(s) will we attempt to preserve and bestow for the next generations?

21 May - 15 June 1991

Artist Statement:
This body of work represents my concerns with multiple images, scale, manipulation and reproduction. I want to communicate a sense of place, and a spiritual or psychological quality, which is associated with my interpretation of nature and the world around me.
By using multiple images, issue of comparison, repetition and the narrative are investigated. These similar or disparate images, evoke associations with time and memory. The subject matter is often based on traditional genres, including, still life, self-portraiture, landscape and architecture. The manipulation of the original source material, SX 70 polaroids,  creates a spontaneous personal mark making which, when reproduced to the mural ektacolour photographs, produces the illusion of surface texture and depth. WIth the large scale of the work, a presence, a painterly gesture, and a bigger than life quality is created. The ordered repetition of the grid format is a unifying element, allowing for a variety of placements, depending on the images.
The alteration of the initial photographic source, through a process of manipulation, enlargement, repetition and reproduction, creates a personal narrative.

23 April - 18 May 1991

Basements
Basements are mysterious places. They contain all those strange and dirty pipes, wires and machines that allow us to live in pristine comfort on the floors above. They are the part of our house that we don’t normally show to our guests. In older homes the unfinished basements have acquired character through the years in the form of spiders, cobwebs, dirt, decay, damage and reconstruction. These are the types of basements I have chosen for my project.
In most cases I stayed away from the objects I found stored in basements instead preferring to focus on the basements themselves. I wanted to document, in a straight forward way, the stone and concrete walls, the beams, pipes, wires, furnaces and the decay that I found there.
I started with my own basement, then the basements of friends with older homes and finally public buildings such as firehalls, churches and theaters.
Most are scenes we would normally walk by without a glance. The photographs force us to look a little more closely at the darkened corners that we might prefer to not look at all.

2-20 April 1991

Artists Statement:
Starting with the 18th century travel photography in mind, my photographic works are seen as a space where theatrical activity and fiction games take place.
I build models in studio, set lighting’s, use special effects and take the pictures. Through these set up, the photographer’s poetic  vision and artistic concerns sound and multiply the cultural and historical references, thus interrogating objects upon their specific powers of evocation.
Slowly traveling from greek to roman scenes, I am now moving into the desert where it seems to be a propitious place for illusion, mirages, magic and myth to appear and to find their natural ground.
I like the fact that stereo photography deals with illusion; the 3-D space is induced from two flat images.
The 3-D pictures never stand in front of the viewer (despite it appear through the screen), but rather inside him, from a relation between the observer and what happens outside him. There is nothing as objectivity, the world appear as an experience where the observer is an actor in the knowing process.