Andrew Wright

Ottawa
“Preternatural”
CANADIAN MUSEUM OF NATURE
240 McLeod Street
December 9–March 4

Marie-Jeanne Musiol, The Radiant Forest, 2011, electromagnetic photographic installation, back-lit positives, in two modules of 16 x 96" each. Installation view.

In “Preternatural,” curator Celina Jeffery addresses ways that contemporary art constructs epistemologies beyond the scientific; in so doing, she offers compelling counterexamples to the disconnect between spirituality and contemporary art that art historian James Elkins has observed. Fittingly for a show about unconventional perceptions, this exhibition is framed within three idiosyncratic spaces: a deconsecrated Catholic church, a gallery in a strip mall, and a natural history museum.

A performance installation at St. Brigid’s Centre for the Arts brings to mind spirit photography— Adrian Göllner conjured fleeting spectral emanations in Handel’s Cloud, 2011, an installation-performance (mounted in December) in which fog rushed from gothic vaulting. Equally elusive, the Patrick Mikhail Gallery’s white box space is interrupted only by the pressed lines of Shin il Kim’s Invisible Masterpiece, 2011. Embossed figure-outlines on colorless paper are animated in a three-channel video that shows these barely perceptible traces becoming even more ghostly as immaterial projections.

At the Canadian Museum of Nature, the artists focus on the sensuality and the sense of wonder in science. Sarah Walko’s installation It is very least what one ever sees, 2011, exists where scientific organization intersects with devotional practice, poetry, and romance. Wall-mounted test tubes become reliquaries for colorful collections of found objects, including bones, feathers, and text, all arranged according to Walko’s personal taxonomy. Live fish and plants in a central biosphere counter the dead, arranged objects. Through Nox Borealis, 2011, Andrew Wright rewrites the natural history diorama in “full-scale” photographic prints mounted on concave supports. His inverted arctic images purposefully disorient viewers; we aren’t exactly sure whether we are looking at minimal sculpture, snow, a heavenly cloudscape, or the lunar surface. In this confusion, he evokes the awe and terror of the arctic night—an environment without landmarks. Marie-Jeanne Musiol, a true believer in human spiritual potential, shows works that are far subtler but no less sublime. She displays electrophotographic light images of leaves—objective evidence of auratic energies discussed in Buddhism, Theosophy, and Scientology. In The Radiant Forest, 2011, she presents small transparencies backlit by a mysterious, dim bioluminescence that “develops” on viewers’ retinas—a metaphoric and demonstrative energy transference. Her works best manifest the exhibition’s theme of extraordinary natural experience.

This exhibition is also on view at St. Brigid’s Centre for the Arts, 302 St. Patrick Street, until February 17.

— William Ganis

What a great gig!

Christie Digital Systems Canada and CAFKA – Contemporary Art Forum Kitchener and Area have created an Artist in Residence programme. Christie Digital Systems Canada (www.christiedigital.com) is a global visual technologies company that produces products for business, entertainment, and industry. With expertise in film projection since 1929 and professional projection systems since 1979, Christie has established a reputation as the world's single source manufacturer of a variety of display technologies and solutions for cinema, large audience environments, control rooms, business presentations, training facilities, 3D and virtual reality, simulation, education, media and government. As a market leader, Christie has installed over 100,000 projection solutions worldwide. Christie's broad range of technologies include DLP Cinema™ projectors, LCD and DLP™ projectors, rear screen projection modules, video walls, and cutting edge projection technologies for 3D, virtual reality and simulation. In 2009, Christie launched the MicroTiles digital display system based on DLP technology with PhlatLight LED illumination. MicroTiles are modular 12h x 16w x 10d-inch rear projection units which can be stacked to form any shape or size.

The CHRISTIE/CAFKA Artist in Residence programme has the following goals:
a) the advancement of research and practice into the creative use of digital media technologies;
b) the use of visualisation and interactive technologies in the visual arts; and
c) the creation of digital media with intelligent projections that may include 3D animations.

Artists selected to participate in the programme will be exposed to a body of technical knowledge enabling them to explore forms, methods of display, and concepts not possible in their own studios as well as new ways of thinking and working in a unique collaborative environment. Christie will provide funding, facilities and technical mentoring to make its visualisation technologies accessible to resident artists.

1. DURATION OF PROGRAMME AND RESIDENCY

The Artist in Residence programme will have a term of two years. It will operate on an annual basis, hosting one artist position for a full year, or the equivalent in short term residencies. Each resident artist will have the opportunity to work from two to twelve months, depending on the size of the project, creating a work of art using Christie's projection systems.

2. FACILITIES AND ARTIST BENEFITS

Each artist will be provided with studio space at Christie's facilities at the Communitech HUB in downtown Kitchener, Ontario. The space is accessible to the resident artist 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. In addition, each resident artist will have access to the following:

a) technical assistance from Christie in developing artwork for use on Christie's projection systems;
b) reimbursement of housing expenses for rent of up to $1,000 per month (the artist may bring family members but the artist will be required to cover any additional costs);
c) a stipend of $1,200 per month to cover food and personal expenses of the artist;
d) reimbursement of travel costs of up to $1,000 for the artist to travel from the artist's residence to Kitchener, Ontario (the artist may bring family members but the artist will be required to cover any additional costs);
e) a workstation/studio at Christie's facility at 809 Wellington Street North, Kitchener, Ontario
f) access to software
g) use of a bicycle supplied by Cycle CAFKA;

An important consideration in the selection of artists will be the extent that an applicant will take advantage of the resources and technical support provided by Christie. Artists will be selected for a residency based on:
a) the quality of past work;
b) the potential impact of the residency on the artist and their work;
c) the ability of the artist to master new technologies; and
d) a demonstrated commitment to working at Christie's Kitchener facilities with their team and resources.

3. EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMMING / OUTREACH

The Christie/CAFKA residency is intended to benefit the cultural life of the City of Kitchener and the Region of Waterloo. As part of the Artist in Residence programme, resident artists will be expected to undertake a selection of the following, to be agreed upon between CAFKA and the artist:
a) public lecture;
b) public workshop;
c) video interviews to be broadcast on CAFKA TV and posted on the CAFKA web site;
d) blog or vlog, to be posted to the CAFKA website; and
e) public exhibition of completed artwork.

4. APPLICATION PROCESS

Applications to the Artist in Residence Programme must include:
a) a cover page including: name, address, city, postal/zip code, country, telephone, email, website, and a maximum one page project proposal;
b) a concise portfolio of previous work;
c) two letters of reference;
d) a curriculum vitae; and
e) an artist statement.

Applications will be administered and reviewed by CAFKA's programming committee with support from staff from Christie who will be called on to assess the project's technical feasibility.

ALL APPLICATIONS SHOULD BE DELIVERED TO:

CAFKA – Contemporary Art Forum Kitchener and Area
141 Whitney Place, Studio #7
Kitchener, Ontario, Canada N2G 2X8

Receipt of applications will be acknowledged by email.

Applications will be accepted on an on-going basis.

For more information please contact CAFKA at cafka@cafka.org or 519.744.5123

IMAGE: Jenn E. Norton, Tesseract, 2011. Presented at Christie's 3D imaging HIVE at the Communitech Hub, Kitchener, ON. Photo: K. Jennifer Bedford.

Weird stuff in Preternatural exhibit

December 9, 2011. 11:47 am • Section: Arts

Ottawa artist Andrew Wright with, in background, two panels from Nox Borealis, at the Canadian Museum of Nature. (Photo by Peter Simpson, Ottawa Citizen)

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What: Preternatural

When: Dec. 9 to Feb. 12

Where: Canadian Museum of Nature, St. Brigid’s Centre for the Arts, Patrick Mikhail Gallery

Once, at 1 a.m. on the longest day of the year, I sat with a cigar and single malt on a friend’s patio in Whitehorse and felt disoriented. It was after midnight and yet bright as day, and the legendary “midnight sun” was deeply weird. Our Yukon hosts were accustomed to endless day, but to a southerner like me it was The Twilight Zone. That’s why I understand Andrew Wright when he describes being up in the Canadian north.

One of Marie-Jeanne Musiol's electromagnetic leaves, at the Canadian Museum of Nature. (Photo by Peter Simpson, Ottawa Citizen)

“It’s kind of a site where almost everything related to geographic position and one’s sense of place is in flux, or at least inverted,” Wright says during a preview of a new exhibition, Preternatural, now at the Canadian Museum of Nature and other venues. “You don’t know when days switch from night, you don’t know which direction is up sometimes, depending on the weather conditions. You don’t know what time it is.”

We’re standing before Nox Borealis, a piece created by Wright, an artist and assistant professor at the University of Ottawa. It consists of four large photo panels, each subtly curved as if blowing in a wind. The two bottom panels are entirely filled with the pitch black Arctic night – a blackness “full of information but devoid of imagery,” he says – and the top photos show the empty land, covered in snow by nature and turned upside down by Wright. “The images here are inverted,” he says in the exhibition press kit, “a gesture that acknowledges the profound sense of disorientation one experiences when confronted with spaces so vast that they are difficult to behold, let alone understand.”

That “profound sense of disorientation” is what links the works of conceptual art in Preternatural, an exhibition that, over three months, will expand from the Museum of Nature to St. Brigid’s Centre for the Arts and Patrick Mikhail Gallery. Each of the eight artists involved attempts to play with your sense of what is natural, what is normal, and what we think when what we see is not what we expect to see.

German-British artist Mariele Neudecker with her glass spheres at the Canadian Museum of Nature. (Photo by Peter Simpson, Ottawa Citizen)

“I had this idea for an exhibition called Preternatural,” says curator Celina Jeffrey, the chair of visual arts at Ottawa U, “which deals with this conception of the world as being neither natural nor supernatural, but perhaps something in between.”

This preternaturalness is easy to see in most of the artworks that make up the main body of the exhibition, at the Museum of Nature. Gatineau artist Marie-Jeanne Musiol’s electromagnetic photographs of leaves are other-worldly, their edges aglow with brilliant light against the darkness. At quick glance they could be taken for bioluminescent creatures that swim in the ocean’s black depths. I only wish the small prints were larger, which could enhance their impact.

The German-British artist Mariele Neudecker creates an enigmatic effect with two pieces. A photograph, titled Much Was Decided Before You Were Born, shows a small pine tree inverted and immersed in murky water, creating a puzzling and spooky image. Another piece consists of two glass spheres with tiny, inverted lighthouses in water. A thick salt solution in the spheres will gradually mix with the water, so what you see in the spheres will change during the exhibition.

White smoke comes from vaults in the ceiling of St. Brigid's in Ottawa, part of Adrian Gollner's 'Handel's Clouds. (Photo courtesy Adrian Gollner)

New York City artist Sarah Walko has a wall installation built around dozens of test tubes filled with all sorts of items – pieces of texts, feathers, rusted bolts, bones. Its relevance to the “preternatural” theme escapes me, and it brings to mind the screed that renowned British collector Charles Saatchi wrote earlier this week in The Guardian, where, among other things, he slagged “those incomprehensible post-conceptual installations . . .”

Elsewhere in the exhibition, Ottawa artist Adrian Gollner will debut a site-specific piece titled Handel’s Cloud at the St. Brigid’s centre in the Byward Market on Saturday (Dec. 10). Plumes of white smoke will be released from the deconsecrated church’s vaulted ceilings, synchronized with a very, very slow version of music that is a perennial Christmas favourite.

“The smoke jets,” Gollner says, “are a transcription of a short passage from Handel’s Messiah: ‘Thy Rebuke hath broken his Heart.’ The two-minute, four-second passage is stretched to 12 minutes, 24 seconds, with one of each of the three jets portraying the violins, harpsichord and voice.What the audience witnesses is a music-less rendition of the passage rendered in smoke. My hopes are for it to be mysterious, intentional and beautiful.” You can see it on Dec. 10, 15 and 17 at 2 p.m. – a time, Jeffrey says, when the mid-December light will best illuminate the smoke.

Washington artist Avantika Bawa will launch another installation at St. Brigid’s on Jan. 7, and Korean artist Shin Il Kim will open a video installation at Patrick Mikhail Gallery on Jan. 6.

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Weird stuff...