We appreciate the opportunity to revisit the concept of an emerging artist show as a follow up on 6: New Vancouver Modern. While the first one had its problems (don't get us going), eXponential Future has us running from your "complex reality of urban life" for the hills. When you state "Vancouver artists continue to be better known in the U.S. and Europe than they are in their own city," better known by whom. The unexamined assumptions and biases underlying your proposal are egregious. Who exactly is your audience? It apparently is not the local arts community who are already acquainted with the selected artists in eXponential Future. If you were interested in introducing Vancouver artists to the city, the Belkin exhibition would include a public program that remedied our alleged lack of awareness. Further, the claim that this exhibition is an "overview of the new artistic thinking of our time and place" seems a bit grand, especially when your selection represents artist who do not directly engage with the Vancouver urban landscape. And don't get us going on Tim Lee whose work we have seen enough of to last three parallel eXponential Futures. But more than anything, we thought the days of archaic curatorial premises grounded on notions of exploration and identification of local trends was a thing of the past. It just makes us wonder who has an investment in identifying the next hot little things.
dazed and confused,
Vancouver 911
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4 comments:
Anonymity allows you to be unaccountable for what you say while trying to hold others accountable for their views. (anonymously posted)
Hello feedback,
As a writer for the catalogue, I too had a problem with some of the wording of the press release, but found many other things to consider in each of the works in progress (I haven't seen them on display) especially in terms of their sense of time. As for these 'types' of shows being "things of the past"...that is one thing that I definitely learned does not exist as simply as you see it (at least not according to these artists or curators of this show). Another form of historical reflection and another sense of the times is proposed in most of the works...that could have been in the press release. if there was some good criticism in vancouver, maybe that would be discussed more often. rigor in criticism would have you tarring with the work at hand, in part regardless of the name behind it, even if it is Tim Lee - if you've seen 'too much" of his work, you may need to get out more.
And if you're committed to honesty and rigor, and you have such clear disdain for this project, why are you afraid to show your face? I can't quite buy the moral upper hand - it seems that, just in case, one day, some of you are asked to show at the Belkin-perhaps as the next face of Vancouver's new art-you prefer to nibble quietly on your critical cake and also reserve the right to suck up to Scott Watson or Juan Gaitan or one of the artists at the next opening. (anon)
This is amusing. Who are you? (anon)
POST #2?
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