Evolving DNA: OCAD Grad Show
May 9-11, 2008 @ Main building and Sharp Centre for Design
By Matt McGeachy
Once you get past the fact that everyone is somehow obsessed by their dad’s old record collection (circa 1975) and the weird obsession with knitting (not to mention the big glasses and tight pants), the OCAD grad show was a ton of fun, and the new grads show lots of promise of success in the art market.
Six floors of art is a lot to take in at once. Luckily, each floor was divided into sections devoted to one medium or program: advertising, criticism and curatorial practice, drawing and painting, environmental design, graphic design, illustration, industrial design, integrated media, material art and design, photography, printmaking, and sculpture/installation. Medal winners of the internal competition from each department were showcased in the expansive Great Hall, filled with art, light, and a whole lot of people.
The photography, on the whole, was largely introspective, and much dealt with the personal lives of the artists themselves. The captured, isolated moment of a photograph easily translates to the portrayal of isolated subjects and their inner lives. Kristen White’s series “No Peek-a-boo Please” captures a surreal isolation most beautifully. Each of her subjects, caught perhaps in mid-jump, or standing on a chair, or alone in a bathtub, looks on the verge of committing suicide, alone except for the photographer capturing these most intimate last moments. Splendidly unsettling: supremely crisp colours and the use of bright light with such a dark and personal subject.
From White’s colourful, tragic shots, I turned to Heidi Hamilton’s untitled series that documented everyday moments with her lover, watching television and eating Chinese take-out; one of the most introspective of the show, perfectly capturing how mundane everyday life actually is. Dark colours and focused shots enhanced Hamilton’s presentation and challenged the viewer to see a close, photographic reflection of his or her own mundane life.
Material arts and design offered some wonderful jewellery pieces, pottery, and even mini-saris designed by Naheed Sumer. Material art always walks the suspicious line between Craft and Art. My personal test is to ask myself, “Would I use this fork if I bought it?” If the answer is yes, I tend to categorize it as Craft. If the answer is no, I call it Art. So, coming from me, it’s a high compliment to say that I wouldn’t serve casserole with most of what was in the exhibition, and might place it in my curio for display.
Installation art always pisses me off because it isolates itself from the market and therefore keeps me from voting with my pocket book. Installation artists tend to be the most self-indulgent among the visual arts, and feel all pissy because, more than anyone else, they have to defend themselves against charges that what they are doing is not art. (This has a lot to do with the fact that nobody can buy their work for the living room, so they tend to be dependent on the largesse of the government and museums.) I leave it to you to decide if you would let Maria Litwin sit in your foyer and knit in her glass box all day, or let Adrienne Coffey reconstruct, from memory, the living room of her cottage from cardboard in the living room of your cottage. I will also spare you a lengthy dissertation on exactly “what it means” because I have to tell you, I have no bloody clue. And I don’t really care.
Painting and drawing, and illustration, offered some of the highlights of the whole show. Stephanie Kervin’s stiking “Queen #1″ was an almost Warhol-esque portrait of the British monarch in bright colours and immediately drew my attention from all the pictures in the room. Cathy Kyung Ah Keum had beautiful paintings incorporating black ink, little dots of colour and Japanese paper, drawing on equal parts Gustav Klimt and Rorshach to create a striking piece dealing with the expanding global health pandemics, aestheticizing tragedy. Vanessa Riger’s “Neighbourhood Watch” series, including the “Block Parent” (a red painted toddler carrying an assault rifle), was a striking and crisp comment on the overprotection of suburban life, the cozying up of authority with the people, and artistic freedom (made more relevant by recent Bill C-10 controversy).
Perhaps an interesting comment on the modern state of the arts was that the cleverest and best-executed was from the advertising department. Ashkan Rashvand’s ads for Classical 96.3 FM were hilarious, and included the wonderful poster with a quotation from Mozart: “Where are you now, Salieri?” Joshua Best’s award-winning series for Rainbow Cinemas was clever and striking. Perhaps the future of art lies not in the galleries, but on the billboards. At least the invasion of our public space will be artfully done if these grads get the art director positions they covet!
The nature of a vast show like this makes it difficult to comment on a theme; indeed, there isn’t one. Like an art fair, it was a collection of some very good work and some mediocre stuff, but it was a wonderful way to spend a Saturday afternoon.
Oooh, you sure hit some of my art-school-graduate buttons in this review! If your measure of craft is whether or not the work has a mundane purpose, then isn’t all advertising craft? And why must it fit in your living room for it to succeed?
Matt’s remarks about installation artists are based on your ‘average’ person’s point of view. Sure its nice to bring home some ‘art’ and put it in your living room (part of me feels he said this to get a rise out of readers, congratulations Matt) but that frame of thought is as weak as people lacking the ability to understand conceptual artwork (which I understand some is bullshit but there’s a lot thats good too). Primarily a painter, I am slowly moving towards installation artwork because it takes art to the next level: when surrounded by art or included within it, it makes the experience that much richer. As James Turrell put it, painting is a record of something that happened or expressing an idea where as installation art can include the viewer in the ‘now’ and allow them to experience it themselves, rather then a depiction of an experience. And as society is slowly realizing we are consuming too much, perhaps things like installation art and street art (can be seen as installation) is what society needs to move toward to help contribute to saving our existance — as art can be seen as more ’stuff’.
(PS I’m fully aware a painting can be experienced, like a Rothko, which is amazing art.. and I’m definitely not saying painting should be abolished)
Hi Rachel and Amixa,
Well, you got some of the nail right on the head! Naturally a reviewer wants to get a rise out of readers, and this was part of my goal with this review.
However, I’d like to address two things that were raised by your comments: first, the ‘accusation’ that I write about art from an average person’s point of view. I use quotation marks around accusation because I’m not certain that it upsets me in any way; in fact, I kind of like it. I DO write about art from a so-called average point of view because it occurred to me a while ago, when I was struggling to write my very first art review, that most of the people I had seen in the gallery were like me: some art lovers drawn together around a specific show or artist, all of us admittedly average. Now, I probably knew a thing or two more than the greenest of them, and a thing or two less than the more experienced gallery-hoppers and critics, but I decided that in my reviewing I would try and reach a happy medium and bring critical analysis back to a pleasure principle. That is, I would try to communicate my own pleasures and analyse them in language that someone might enjoy reading, even if they don’t subscribe to Art Forum. Whether I succeed is up to you, but I guess that it does make me commoner than, say, Peter Schjendahl.
Second, I wanted to specifically address Rachel’s concern that my living room rule of thumb was not enough to measure the quality of art. I used living room merely as a device: it can surely be too large for a living room (God knows nothing would fit in my little box), but the point I was going for is that it should be something that someone wants to OWN. In my own view, a great work of art is something that you want to take possession of, enjoy time and time again, place it in your wunderkammer and open it just for the pleasure of seeing it emerge from behind closed doors!
I know that this is a view that is not so popular with a lot of people; I accept that. But my main ‘beef’ with the performance/installation stuff was that it isolated itself from the art market, and I think the art market is a crucial place to evaluate something. I don’t mean Sotheby’s, exactly, but I do mean that people should have a say in the art they consume (I’m ruffling feathers again, but it’s true, art is a produce of consumption, albeit a more positive kind than oil).
Now, as to your point, Rachel, about arts and crafts, it is well taken. Though I wouldn’t classify clever adverts in with spoons or forks, I do need to further think about my methods of distinction.
And just to prove that I am a man of many contradictions, I was in Buffalo last weekend and saw Jennifer Steinkamp at the Albright Knox Gallery, and loved it. Her computer graphics were something that it would be difficult to buy, and it was definitely and installation. So there. I’ve gone and confused myself about art all over again.
So, art isn’t art unless it can be purchased? And art isn’t art unless it can’t be used? Those statements seem incredibly old-fashioned and naive. IMHO.
Oh – I didn’t see that you already got some like-minded comments to deal with.
But really, art is defined by your need to own it and put it in a box? These statements need to be fully thought out; I’m also an “average” person and not an art student or historian, but I still don’t understand what you’re trying to say. You’re looking at art from the point of view of an economist.
ooo
seems like we have a great art debate going on! How fun!
Ok. Well I didn’t mean to be demeaning by saying ‘average’ person, although my frustration is what came through. Before I was forced to study abstract art or installation art, I didn’t really see the point.. I too was thinking oh well its not something I can appreciate time and again (more installation art then abstract) but once I studied the subject..I learned to appreciate it — the same way one has to listen to certain bands over and over to understand how to listen to them to appreciate it, who may not be so fun to listen to first time around.
I wouldn’t call myself an art critic and I appreciate the fact that you prefer not to use art jargon within your critical analysis as that can be a turn off for people who don’t understand it. And, I at least feel like an average person when I enter a gallery, I’m just an art nerd who spends a lot of my time looking at art to pass the time.
So when I usually talk to your ‘average’ person who didn’t study art as much as I have, they tend to have the same kind of outlook on art as I used to. And there is nothing wrong with that, however it can be frustrating to the artists at times who do deserve more credit.
As for installations I do believe they are available to purchase, however it is hard to find buyers who are willing to make room for them.
Also, for this genre defining art vs craft or if there should even be a vs in between, art first was separated as a ‘fine craft’ compared to your every day use. However I’d like to argue if this is a healthy mentality to begin with. I understand why people feel the need to separate the two however as we move more into art blurred with life (conceptual) it almost seems like we are going back to the beginning, in that art is life, is an expression of life and therefore should be a part of everyone’s experience — thus why people’s utensils and plates and tools were so dedicatedly decorated. Of course, that was an aesthetic approach to including art into life, where as the conceptual art can sometimes only be displayed by the artist who places themself within the situation and you see a recording of it or if the artist makes the experience available to the viewers.
You’re saying that if something is so popular, its popularity in the market is what defines itself as successful — which then takes you to argue what is good art.. main stream art? and that’s a whole other topic.
And of course people have a say in what they buy, it is their free will to purchase a piece of art.
Hi Matt. Kirsten White here. Thanks for the great review!