Art that Avoids the Apocalypse
The Globe and Mail, December 30th 2011
by R.M. Vaughan
The world was supposed to end twice this year, and is scheduled to come to a crashing halt again in 2012, according to the Mayan calendar hysterics (and Euroskeptics).
Perilous times – and yet, I don’t see a lot of millennial or end-times anxiety in contemporary art (as I certainly did in the late 1990s). Artists are either too smart to buy into such perennial prophecies, or too self-absorbed. Likely both.
Thus, I predict 2012 will offer the visual-arts enthusiast experiences counter to the furies raging in the outside world – not pure escapism, but a different kind of questioning of norms and reality, one more considered, long-viewed and far more attractive.
Or, I could be wholly wrong, and artists will start smashing televisions, shredding plush toys and making blood paintings, again. Thank you, but no.
For the following upcoming exhibitions, I can at least promise that any or all of the above actions are highly unlikely. Not impossible, mind you….
[...]
Daniel Hutchinson at Angell Gallery
Feb. 23-March 24, 12 Ossington Ave., Toronto; angellgallery.com
Hutchinson’s penchant for dramatic multimedia works that explore the role of stages – humble shelf spaces to rotundas to platforms and theatres – and his crisp mixing of slate and fieldstone colours with occasional bouts of hot neon typically translates into a kind of oxymoronically serene spectacle. His new works promise to further these investigations, perhaps with a bit more colour (okay, that is me asking for a bit more colour). In 2011, Hutchinson was a semi-finalist for the RBC Canadian Painting Competition, and they don’t just hand those out to anybody.
The world was supposed to end twice this year, and is scheduled to come to a crashing halt again in 2012, according to the Mayan calendar hysterics (and Euroskeptics).
Perilous times – and yet, I don’t see a lot of millennial or end-times anxiety in contemporary art (as I certainly did in the late 1990s). Artists are either too smart to buy into such perennial prophecies, or too self-absorbed. Likely both.
Thus, I predict 2012 will offer the visual-arts enthusiast experiences counter to the furies raging in the outside world – not pure escapism, but a different kind of questioning of norms and reality, one more considered, long-viewed and far more attractive.
Or, I could be wholly wrong, and artists will start smashing televisions, shredding plush toys and making blood paintings, again. Thank you, but no.
For the following upcoming exhibitions, I can at least promise that any or all of the above actions are highly unlikely. Not impossible, mind you….
[...]
Daniel Hutchinson at Angell Gallery
Feb. 23-March 24, 12 Ossington Ave., Toronto; angellgallery.com
Hutchinson’s penchant for dramatic multimedia works that explore the role of stages – humble shelf spaces to rotundas to platforms and theatres – and his crisp mixing of slate and fieldstone colours with occasional bouts of hot neon typically translates into a kind of oxymoronically serene spectacle. His new works promise to further these investigations, perhaps with a bit more colour (okay, that is me asking for a bit more colour). In 2011, Hutchinson was a semi-finalist for the RBC Canadian Painting Competition, and they don’t just hand those out to anybody.
