Category: Curatorial Projects

Sympathetic Magic
June 27 to September 14, 2014
Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon, Canada

Canada has cultivated and maintained a strong symbolic connection with the northern landscape. The production of the Group of Seven and their progeny has both defined artistic practice at home and Canada abroad. As art historian John O’Brian observes in Wild Art History, “The land and its representations are knotted together, not unlike two other words with an affinity to landscape in contemporary thought – nation and nationalism.” The country as promoted by the authors of the Canadian landscape tradition is a pristine, untamed, and unpeopled place. Popular depictions of the landscape are telling: Canada is rich in natural beauty, abundant in resources, and ripe for development.

In recent years, changes to Canadian domestic and foreign policy have reconfigured the political landscape. Aggressive resource development has radically altered the physical environment. Yet Canadian landscape tropes of northern wilderness are incredibly difficult to displace. Why is it so?

Sympathetic Magic is an exhibition about the Canadian landscape that does not strictly operate in the recognizable idioms of the genre. Visitors to the gallery will not see the familiar snow-capped peaks of Lawren Harris’ iconic work*, but it’s most certainly present. There are no pristine vistas painted en plein air, nor will anyone see a twisted pine, a rocky outcropping, or a lake. Yet they never seem far away. The exhibition seeks to maneuver through the complex terrain of “the north” through the work of four contemporary Canadian artists – Raymond Boisjoly, Adad Hannah, Ken Lum, and Kevin Schmidt – to expand on concepts of territory, nationhood, and identity.

The exhibition title is derived from a term used by anthropologist James George Frazer in his seminal treatise on magic and religion. First published in 1890, The Golden Bough had a profound influence on then-emerging fields of anthropology and sociology, and enduring influences on psychology and literature. Under the umbrella of Sympathetic Magic, Frazer identified two foundational principles: the Law of Similarity and the Law of Contact or Contagion. The latter stipulates that “things which have once been in contact with each other continue to act on each other at a distance after the physical contact has been severed.” He makes another compelling statement: “things can physically affect each other through a space which appears to be empty.” There is poetry in this text that resonates throughout the exhibition.

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List of works:

Raymond Boisjoly
a relative position and direction, 2014
Acrylic vinyl
Courtesy of Catriona Jefferies

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Adad Hannah
The Russians, 2011
HD video
Courtesy of Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain, Montreal and Equinox Gallery, Vancouver.

Boy Sitting on a Tire | 4 min 17s
Russian Woman at Home | 8 min 57s
Cyclist Stopped on a Path | 5 min 09s

Soldiers Resting | 5 min 41s
Two Russian Couples | 5 min 57s
Six Russians Eating Ice Cream | 4 min 27s

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Ken Lum
Cheeseburger, 2011
Chromogenic print on archival paper
Collection of the Mendel Art Gallery. Purchased with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts Acquisition Assistance program 2012.

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Kevin Schmidt
Wild Signals, 2007
HD video
9 min 42 s
Courtesy of Catriona Jefferies

A Sign in the Northwest Passage, 2010
LightJet print, cedar frame
Courtesy of Catriona Jefferies

 

The names of things
Terry Billings, Zachari Logan, Stacia Verigin
September 28 to January 6, 2013
Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon, Canada

In their diverse mixed media works, drawings and sculpture, Terry Billings, Zachari Logan, and Stacia Verigin explore the complex relationships between human experience and the natural world. Their work engages with natural forms and imagery to challenge assumptions about nature and consider the beauty and mystery of the world around us.

Terry Billings’ mixed media works sit in the charged space between knowledge and intuition. Billings has created works of art using wasp nest paper and plumage to explore the contradictions between the established scientific understanding of biological life forms and her personal experience of the non-human world.

Zachari Logan’s provocative drawings investigate masculine representation in contemporary society. The large-scale chalk pastel drawing from his Eunuch Tapestry series is based upon a number of remarkable, 15^th-century textile works featuring unicorn subject matter. Logan extrapolates on the historical unicorn narrative to explore notions of sexuality, desire, domesticity, and love.

Stacia Verigin’s sculptures are inspired by her enchantment with the beauty and diversity of nature. Through a process of experimentation, discovery, and play, she eloquently transforms materials such as sawdust and glue into natural looking forms. Her work invites curious inspection; the viewer is challenged to resolve the tension between natural and unnatural, fiction and reality.

The human perspective on understandings of nature is a tangle of historical perspectives, personal experience, public and private interests. The names of things aims to tease out some of these issues through the poignant, humorous, and imaginative works of three Saskatoon artists.

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List of works:

Terry Billings
Revealed Wasp Drawings, 2011
wasp nest paper and acrylic medium on canvas

Reassembled Moult, 2007
gathered molted Sandhill Crane feathers and acrylic medium on burlap

 

Zachari Logan
Eunuch Tapestry One, 2012
pastel on black paper

 

Stacia Verigin
Polydactyl, 2012
plastic

Taxon 01, 2003 – present
glue, sawdust, plastic

Taxon 02, 2003 – present
glue, sawdust, plastic

Taxon 03, 2003 – present
glue, sawdust, plastic