The language of contemporary art, how it is written and read, is multilingual and only apprehended and fully understood in translation.

The collapse of discipline boundaries, and the questioning of language and material specificity in contemporary art over the past few decades have been lauded by some and derided by others. Yet others still, either overlook, or opt to defer a reading of specific individual languages and materials, that may be germane to the complex of an art work.

Written Matter, curated by Gary Pearson, included works by artists Dora Economou; Jack Jeffrey; Natalia Calderón; Roberto Comini and Valérie Bourdel; and Pearson himself. The exhibition was centred on the relationship between language (text) and materials (matter), supported by each artist’s aesthetic, conceptual, research and production affiliations, with direct and indirect deployment of textual language and materials, further the argument that one reads art from an outward appearance, its external material and sensorial identity inward, and beyond, to expose other languages, other meanings, often more remote and complex.

Curatorial Statement by Gary Pearson

 ‘The narratives of the world are numberless. Narrative is first and foremost a prodigious variety of genres, themselves distributed amongst different substances – as though any material were fit to receive man’s stories.’ 

‘Language should be just as versatile a material once it enters into the palette of contemporary art as any other thing that has entered – plastics, different kinds of paints, different kinds of markers, different kinds of lasers. Once they enter in, they’re just something that can be used to make sculpture, to make drawings, to make anything else – and they can also be used to make a grocery list.’

This exhibition guest curated for the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art is a group show consisting of six artists. The artists are: Dora Economou (Athens); Jack Jeffrey (Vancouver); Natalia Calderón (Xalapa); Roberto Comini & Valérie Bourdel (Marseille); and Gary Pearson (Kelowna). Written Matter is centered on the relationship between language (text) and materials (matter). Each artist’s aesthetic, conceptual, and production affiliations with both research into and direct deployment of textual language and materials is evidenced in their practice, and the works in the exhibition.

The first quotation above written by Roland Barthes, is from his essay “Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives”. It was originally published in Image-Music-Text in 1977, and was a primary theoretical catalyst in transforming analysis and discourse of the visual arts from a largely “visual” reading to a “textual” reading, irrespective of the outward presence or absence of actual text. From Duchamp and Dada onwards avant-garde art of the 20th century integrated textual language into the visual arts. This historical backdrop is common knowledge to art audiences today, as artists continue to produce important and valued works of art activating intersections between image, sound, text, and materials.

Practice and theory, writing and materials, audience and artist discourse, are central to this exhibition. The language of contemporary art, how it is written and read, is multilingual and only apprehended and understood in translation. However, one can observe that the collapse of discipline boundaries and the questioning of language specificity in contemporary art over the past few decades have been lauded by some and derided by others, and yet others still, either overlook, or opt to defer a reading of individual languages that may be specific to the complex of an art work. A close reading of the “writing” of the artwork is essential to unravel its meaning and qualities. The exhibition Written Matter will advance and challenge the argument that one reads art from the outward appearance, its superficial or sensorial identity inward to expose other languages, other meanings, often more remote and complex.

Roberto Comini is closely associated with the Italian conceptual art (Art/Dialectics) movement who showed together at the legendary Toselli Gallery in Milan. He is known for artwork that questions the signification of language and visual forms, and is a founding member and director of CO.AR.CO. (Contemporary. Art. Concept.) which organizes events and exhibitions in Italy and France. Valérie Bourdel is a French painter. For this exhibition they have collaborated in the production of a large photo-print that depicts two side by side framed art works. The one on the left with the black frame presents lines of undecipherable but not unintelligible text, the one on the right with the white frame presents a line drawing of a framing rectangle within the white expanse of space, setting up an absorbing dialectic of the soft sheen of emptiness and the malleable texture of matter.

Natalia Calderón states that, ‘[…] through the practice of drawing and formulating actions and interventions, I am able to study different types of space and their significance as a social construction.’ In her work, language functions as an artistic-research tool in the realm of art and social process. ‘Artistic research, and actualizing that research into a working project is a crucial aspect of my practice. Thus, I am interested in investigating the process of knowledge production and the relation between practice and theory.’ 3 Her large wall drawing titled Emergency: Uncertain Places for this exhibition, is a dramaturgical diagram that maps out migration routes of the expressed potentiality in feeling, thinking, and doing. Drawn out like choreographic directions for the stage Calderón charts a philosophical journey of material and intellectual existence traversing indeterminate space and time, all the while reminding us that this often taxing process is always a work-in-progress.

In Jack Jeffrey’s sculpture everything is subject to a rigorous interrogation. His approach is often nuanced, subtle, but at times bold, even brash. The subtle approach often appears to suggest that the materials and their compositional organization will set about interrogating themselves in their new compound identity. But then again few raw materials once subjected to external applications can be said to retain their autonomy, and it’s this semiotic weight in natural and manufactured materials, that Jeffrey anticipates as making active contributions to the recombinant sculptural compositions. In the Untitled sculptures for this exhibition the artist juxtaposes constructivist inspired tripod plywood structures upon which, and to continue the semantics of art, are expressionistic bunched and billowing paper with transcriptions of Chinese writer Wèng Hào Rán’s (691-740) lucid imagistic poems floating above. At once imaginatively analogous to an erupting volcano or a nuclear plant cooling tower, these totemic abstractions proclaim their culturally constructed identity as being that which society has built, and in that realm, now of our collective responsibility, we must reckon with and interrogate their meaning. Intersubjective certainly. Abstract yes. Autonomous no. Therein lies the basis for interrogatory interpretation: These are, in a manner of speaking, our constructions, from part to part, from part to whole; from language to materials, and to the language of materials; we are tasked to search for the origins and meaning of our own abstraction, and by extension, the abstractions in Jack Jeffrey’s art work.

Face of the Earth, The Surface of Mars, 2015 – 2018, is the title of Gary Pearson’s forty mixed-media works on paper and lighting set up. In this piece the artist represents Mars as a twenty-part representation based on a single image captured by the Mars Rover, Earth on the other hand is represented by twenty different compositions each of which portray the human subject gesticulating or otherwise engaged in a self-described social activity. Body language and the expressions of hand gestures are a primary feature of each of the compositions. These images are intended to reflect the mediated, and particularly the news reportage mediated images that one encounters on television and the internet. They are caricatures of course, but caricatures like clichés, are understood to be grounded in the base realities of everyday life. To accompany the paper works all dated 2015, the artist has devised a lighting set-up for this exhibition, to carry over production dates to 2018.

What function can a poem have? Difficult question. Perhaps to slow the pace of one’s life…to encourage or inspire one to look at life differently? To bring voice to one’s thoughts and impressions that are not bound by or necessarily founded in pure reason or empiricism. This question, like all questions is completely justified and worth asking, but the function of some things and poetry might be among them, might be better off not being questioned. It might be better to simply write a poem, read a poem, listen to a poem, or look at a poem. Was it Socrates who said, “the unexamined life is not worth living…”? At any measure this is a blunt and didactic rhetorical phrase to be sure. It certainly sounds like it’s from another age, which it is, but it still remains as poetic as it is philosophical. The examination of life and its irregular relationship to art may be found to coexist in the space between cognition and expression. But there’s another space that is not necessarily found on the line that connects life and examination, and it’s in this space that art has its greatest independence. It’s there that art enters a discourse between things, between form and space, between colors, between scale relationships, between weights, volumes, tensile strengths, textures, between verbal and non-verbal languages. It is in this space that invention and intuition, chance and accident, speculation and calculation, articulate artistic process. 

Dora Economou’s art can be traced to the domains of the examined life and the space of independent artistic practice. The eleven origami sculptures she is exhibiting in Written Matter are a product of traditional origami design tutorials in which she investigated this distinctive art and sculptural craft. This knowledge acquisition served to expand her formidable command of sculptures histories and production methodologies, as she is a sculptor in the first place. Her work is imagined and produced in the context of literary, social, material, and spatial orientations and inspirations that inform expressive and formally adapted conceptual approaches to her interdisciplinary practice. The origami designs in the exhibition are folded onto kite paper, a type common in Greece; where they traditionally fold and fly kites on Clean Monday, which is the first Monday of the 40-day Lent before Easter. Following origami designs originated by others Economou has contributed nine of her favorite designs, two are doubled, to bring the number of pieces to eleven. In addition to her origami sculptures the exhibition includes a mixed-material piece titled Amy Foster Rug, dated 2008. This work, originally exhibited as a floor piece, is part of a larger body of work collectively titled Amy Foster, after a short story by Joseph Conrad, and exhibited in the exhibition Point of Origin, at Artspace, in Sydney, Australia, in 2008.

This curatorial statement concludes with an artist statement written by Roberto Comini, and it is as follows:

Do you want more?

Thanks, a glass.

I was watching that work on the wall. Would you be able to summarize the concept of painting through a single drawing?

...

Yes, it's this, in fact, it's this thing.

Could you describe the work of art by writing a text that is neither critical nor theoretical?

…

A text to look like a painting.

A drawing to read as a text..

Valérie Bourdel is a French contemporary painter. She has exhibited works several times at Galerie du Tableau in Marseille, France.

Natalia Calderón is a researcher, teacher and visual artist. In her academic training, she has a PhD in Arts and Education from the University of Barcelona, ​​a Master in Fine Arts from the Utrecht Graduate School of Visual Arts and Design, in the Netherlands, and a Bachelor of Visual Arts from the National Autonomous University. from Mexico.

Roberto Comini is an Italian artist that explores contemporary use of text. Comini has exhibited work at Galerie du Tableau in Marseille, France.

Dora Economou is a visual artist based in Athens Greece. She works on sculptures, photography and staged sketches of props and men. She is concerned with materials, their inherent capacities, their metamorphosis when paired in distinct contexts, their relationships with found text and image.

Jack Jeffrey has exhibited his work nationally and internationally since 1977. Recent exhibitions include solo shows at Galerie du Tableau, Marseille and Mercer Union, Toronto. Group exhibitions include Recontres #19 at La Vigie Art Contemporain, Nimes, Tracking at the Art Gallery of Windsor and All or Nothing, at La Galerie de la Friche la Belle de Mai, Marseille. Jeffrey teaches sculpture at Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design.

Written Matter

Interpretive Essay by Aiden de Vin

Each action and move we make becomes a language of its own, speaking deeply to our surroundings as an expression of our very own experience. In the show Written Matter, curated by Gary Pearson, the viewer is invited to engage in and be challenged with the notion of reading beyond visual stimulation that art creates. Each artist creates work that becomes a catalyst for the activation of an intersection of text and matter.

As you walk through the gallery, the initial experience of the space is visual. We read the art based on the visual appeal it characterizes. Have you ever thought about these visual forms becoming a language of their own? What if through this initial visual experience, an unspoken narrative is able to come to life?

Engagement is key. The first step is to enter into the conversation and say hello. Don’t be afraid, this art won’t bite. Each piece has its own story to tell and that story can be read in many different ways.

As you enter, see the way the folds of origami paper create drawings. Narratives are formed through each fold and crease, each one a mark showing time and place. Each work an interaction of soft and harsh material folds breathing life to moments that may have passed and new languages that are being spoken.

The chalk drawing along the far wall invites you to trace its lines and follow them as they dance their way along the surface. As you think, you are feeling and as you are feeling you are doing, you are experiencing a narrative right before your eyes.

The sculptural forms create curiosity. These abstractions claim fame to being recounted, spoken over and constructed by many. A combination of both language and material, it’s form embraces a constructed identity of it’s own, one you can mould and deconstruct yourself.

Now the photo-print catches your eye, each work so far has had you reading its material form and now you are faced with words. There’s something comforting in the way the words are comprehendible yet cryptic. It’s like looking into a mirror and seeing your life reflected in front of you, each action you’ve made a chaotic and beautiful piece of your own story, one sometimes you can’t even seem to understand.

You are now becoming a part of the work, your own narrative affecting the deeper meaning each work provides. You long for more and as you navigate through the rest of the space, you are left with a feeling of knowledge and understanding as each piece has brought you closer to your own story.

An array of drawings fill the wall. Each speaks of body language and movement and in this moment you are so aware of the way your body moves, it begins to speak its own language too as you turn to walk away. As you now have left the gallery, you see one last glimpse of work in the window space. Two lighting projections activate the space.

‘The narratives of the world are numberless. Narrative is first and foremost a prodigious variety of genres, themselves distributed amongst different substances – as though any material were fit to receive man’s stories.’

-Barthes, Roland, “Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives”, A Barthes Reader, (New York: Hill and Wang Publishers, 1982), p. 251.

Language should be just as versatile a material once it ‘enters into the palette of contemporary art as any other thing that has entered – plastics, different kinds of paints, different kinds of markers, different kinds of lasers. Once they enter in, they’re just something that can be used to make sculpture, to make drawings, to make anything else – and they can also be used to make a grocery list.

“Interview with Ann Temkin and John Ravenal, Having Been Said: Writings & Interviews of Lawrence Weiner 1968 – 2003, Hatje Cantz Publishers, 2004, p.320.

Negotiating Power was a call-to-action and vindication of disagreement and agonistic activities. The site-responsive, participatory exhibition consisted of posters, videos, small booklets, bunting and temporary tattoos that provided a variety of entry points for participants to consider the necessity for expressions of disagreement and solidarity to shape civic engagement. With a heightened political perspective, and by sidestepping direct discussion of race, culture, or other social indicators, Langlois re-contextualizes the conversation as a necessary mode of community engagement.

In addition to the exhibition in the Alternator’s Main Gallery Space, a satellite event, Unlikely Negotiations, was hosted at Kettle River Brewing on June 8th 2018.

Justin Langlois is an artist, writer, and educator. His practice explores public art, social engagement, and creative pedagogy through text-based works, long-term participatory projects, and public installations. His work has been presented at the Centre Pompidou (Paris), the Museum of Contemporary Art (Toronto), Conflux New York, Nuit Blanche (Toronto), Creative Time Summit (Venice Biennale), Open Engagement (Pittsburgh), CAFKA (Kitchener), Art Souterrain (Montreal), Art Moves (Poland), Manif D’art Biennial (Quebec City), along with galleries and artist-run centres across Canada. His writing has been published in C Magazine, Canadian Art, the Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy, Open Engagement, Esse, Curb Magazine, Scapegoat, and books including Artistic Approaches to Cultural Mapping (Routledge) and The Everyday Practice of Public Art (Routledge). He is an Associate Professor at Emily Carr University of Art and Design, and lives and works as an uninvited guest on unceded Coast Salish Territory in Vancouver, Canada.

For more information about Langlois’ work visit his website.

Negotiating Power

Interpretive Essay by Heidi Smith

We choose our stance on an issue based on our knowledge of relevant facts, our emotional response to how these facts are presented, our trust in those providing the facts, and a variety of other factors. However, one commonality is that all the information on which we base our opinions is initially presented to us through language. Contrary to popular belief, language is more than just a vehicle for expressing facts and ideas. Meaning is derived not only from a string of words that make up a message. It is interpreted based on multiple factors, including non-verbal communication, like body language or mutually understood silence, and the listener’s knowledge of a statement’s context, among others.

When it comes to politics, diplomacy, or the media, language is often used very purposefully in order to influence the public’s opinion. Effective use of word choice and rhetorical devices can sway an audience so subtly that they don’t even realize why the speaker is so persuasive. Think, for example, of two politicians discussing gentrification in their city. One politician may use the metaphor of “cleaning up” an area of town, while the opposing figure may describe proposed changes as “destroying” a neighbourhood, even if there is no actual demolition taking place. The speakers are referring to the same set of circumstances, but, according to their views of the situation, one has chosen a metaphor that suggests improvement and cleanliness, while the other leader’s metaphor implies loss and even violence.

“Speakers reveal much about their own beliefs through the terms they use, and where these speakers are politicians and policy makers, they do not merely reflect their own views, but often shape” the views of others through the use of such connotations.” – Dr. Biljana Scott (From Soft Power to Hard Talk: the languages of diplomacy)

Understanding how we interpret meaning and recognizing the plurality of views we are faced with allows us to become more aware of bias and think more critically about the information we take in. Justin Langlois’ exhibit, Negotiating Power, explores disagreement, multiplicity, and the role of language and meaning as part of civic engagement.

In his installation, the viewer is presented with a series of statements which are written by Langlois, but which have a familiar ring to them because of their vagueness and use of proverbial sayings. The statements all articulate strong positions, some of which contradict one another and all of which are intentionally unapologetic. Langlois creates an atmosphere of disagreement by filling these definitive statements with absolutes (“always”, “never”) and provocative language (“...are for suckers”, “violent assumptions”) and by placing opposing arguments nearby one another.

Negotiating Power is also an opportunity for the viewer to rethink how they attribute meaning and form opinions. Langlois’ statements are conspicuously lacking attribution, so the audience cannot judge the arguments’ validity based on the speaker’s values or credibility. Langlois has created statements that would normally make sense through reference to something said prior, by leaving the context of this action like “We should act now”. However, the viewer is invited to consider, “In what circumstances unspecified, would I agree?” In this way, Langlois has created an artificial environment, free from several contextual factors that would normally inform the viewer’s opinions, and then asked the viewer to make decisions based on what’s left.

Justin Langlois has created an experimental space where the audience is reminded that there are many versions of every story and that the words we hear or read may not be telling us the whole story.