New exhibits open tonight at SAAG and Trianon

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There are a couple of new art exhibits opening tonight.
“Finding your Way Back Home and Zeno’s paradox” features new works by local artist Robert Bechtel.
It runs at Le petit Trianon gallery (104 5 St S). It runs from Feb. 17-April 6.
The opening reception is tonight at 9 p.m.


In the same building, but upstairs  at the Savill Group Architecture and Trianon Gallery, local artist Frater Tham presents Corpus Philosophorum, works on paper by Frater Tham. It also runs Feb. 17-April 6. The opening reception for that is 9 p.m. as well.
 He describes it as “ a compendium of div'rse charts & obfervations illustrating the workings of the philosophik bodie & strange marvels of ye fleshe f'r practicion'rs of ye metaphysik & alchymical artes.”


The Southern Alberta Art Gallery also opens new exhibits tonight.
 “Visualizing  Architecture” is a group exhibition exploring  the idea of data visualization with arts and science. It features works by  artists Jackson 2Bears, Tori Foster, Mary-Anne McTrowe, Robyn Moody, Adrien Segal, Michelle Sylvestre and Scientists Dr. André Laroche, Dr. Jamie Larsen.


The idea began in September 2016 when the Southern Alberta Art Gallery and the Data Physicalization Lab at the University of Lethbridge invited six artists to participate in a residency, documentary film, and exhibition asking them to respond to agricultural data developed by Dr. Jamie Larsen and Dr. André Laroche from the Lethbridge Research and Development Centre: Agriculture and Agri-food Canada. They were provided with two data sets: The first is the result of an experiment on breeding cereal wheats and wheat grasses with the intention of developing a perennial wheat cultivar. The second related to experimentation in genetic modification aimed at reducing wheat’s susceptibility to the devastating pathogen known as stripe rust. The artists were invited to engage with the instruments, test subjects, contexts, methods, and people associated with the development of this data, which they would later consider while creating new work for this exhibition.

The aim of this endeavour is to investigate the effect of intensive collaboration – how artists can use scientific process to guide their art, and how scientists can use artistic ways of knowing to approach their data in new ways.The artwork that emerges from this investigation explores the potential that lies within scientific inquiry when strict standards for fact and method are considered and probed through an expanded perspective. Through this inquiry, the work is allowed to effectively engage viewers by evoking feelings of wonder, curiosity, and consciousness about data and agricultural research, while creating a place for contemplation about the land and our inherent connection to it.

 


The second exhibit at the SAAG  is “Voices:Artists on Art,” a multimedia presentation from Yvonne Lammerich and Ian Carr-Harris. The exhibit , which is linked to a 1967 examination by the National Gallery into the meaning of contemporary art and historical narrative including interviews with 51  artists: Lois Andison, David Armstrong Six, Janet Bellotto, Alex Beriault, Therese Bolliger, Dan Borins, Jennifer Marman, Eva Brandl, Adam David Brown, Eric Cameron, Ian Carr-Harris, Amanda Christie, Panya Clark Espinal, David Clarkson, Michel Daigneault, Alexandre David, Bonnie Devine, Cliff Eyland, Gary Evans, Robert Fones, Stéphane Gilot, Raphaëlle De Groot, Paul de Guzman, Seema Goel, Mark Gomes, Lee Henderson, Kristan Horton, Robert Houle, Johanna Householder, Gunilla Josephson, Mary Kavanagh, Nestor Kruger, Kristiina Lahde, Yvonne Lammerich, Yam Lau, Lyse Lemieux, Ginette Legaré, Nina Leo, Sandra Meigs, Michael Merrill, Dax Morrison, Nick Ostoff, Luke Parnell, Paulette Phillips, Ana Rewakowicz, Milly Ristvedt, Susan Schelle, Stephen Schofield, Oli Sorenson, Nick Wade, Robert Wiens plus Michael Snow, Françoise Sullivan, Iain Baxter.


 This exhibit features those interviews and a multi-media presentation  about bridging the historical with the contemporary.
 The third exhibit at the SAAG is “2167,” a virtual reality presentation by magineNATIVE, in partnership with TIFF, Pinnguaq and the Initiative for Indigenous Futures (IIF). It features works from  four indigenous film makers and artists including Postcommodity, Scott Benesiinaabandan, Dansi Goulet and Kent Monkman.


 They combine their love for science fiction and alternate realities as  they imagine the place of Indigenous people  in 2167.
Southwestern U.S Collective Postcommodity examines New Mexico 150 years in the future in “Each branch Determined” where American indian and Xicano pueblos work together to exercise communal and regional self-determination.
Montreal based artist Scott Benesiinaabandan’s “Blueberry Pie Under the Martian Sky”  brings to life the Anishinabe legend about a boy who travels through a wormhole  back to his people’s place of origin.


Award winning film maker Danis Hunt’s movie the Hunt imagines a post war North America in ruin in 2167 where l automated airborne orbs enforce the law.
Kent Monkman’s “Honour Dance” is a virtual reality presentation based on a 2008 five channel video installation which reinterprets a traditional Indigenous ritual featuring the “Berdashe”, a gender-bending figure whose behaviour and very existence astonished and appalled European explorers of North America.
Both exhibits run Feb. 17-April 22.
 The opening reception for all three exhibitions is  at 8 p.m.

— by Richard Amery, L.A. beat Editor
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