ALBERTA: Jocks & Jardins

Sam Taylor-Wood: 3-Minute Round (2008): Courtesy Jay Jopling/White Cube, London, and the Art Gallery of Calgary.

Visiting Western Canada soon? This trio of exhibitions in Alberta, which are running through the summer months, encompass everything from installation to painting.

“Mixed Signals” at the Art Gallery of Calgary
To September 4

The subtitle of this show, ‘Artists Consider Masculinity in Sport’, reflects the growing interest in sport, and the masculine culture that surrounds it, by a roster of international artists. The exhibition features works by several well-known names, including: Matthew Barney, whose physically demanding work transforms athleticism into art; Sam Taylor-Wood, who once filmed a ‘portrait’ of soccer star David Beckman sleeping for an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in Britain; and Catherine Opie, who has long examined stereotypes, and society’s notions of gender and gender roles, in her photography. Other artists, such as Canada’s Brian Jungen, make work that reference specific sports figures (in this case, Michael Jordan), while the photographs of Hank Willis Thomas deconstruct and examine how race and sexuality are used to market sports figures. “Mixed Signals” is a touring exhibition organized by the Independent Curators International in New York, and was curated by Christopher Bedford.

Spring Hurlbut: Le jardin du sommeil (1998): Courtesy the Museum of Contemporary Art, Montreal.

Spring Hurlbut at the Prairie Art Gallery, Grande Prairie
June 4 - August 22, 2010

Spring Hurlbut’s practice confronts viewers with their own mortality in an extremely sensitive and moving way. The artist has previously photographed people’s cremated remains, and arranged natural history-like displays of taxidermy animals. Le jardin du sommeil (1998) is one of Hurlbut’s most ambitious works. Acquired by Montreal’s Museum of Contemporary Art in 2009, and currently touring the country, the work consists of 140 ornate metal cribs dating from the late-19^th and early 20^th Centuries arranged in tight orderly rows. The installation calls to mind an abandoned hospital or orphanage.

The inclusion of a few ceramic funeral wreaths at the entrance of the installation reinforces the idea that, in English, this is a “garden of sleep”. The paths winding through and around the cribs suggest those in a graveyard, reminding viewers of the phrase that life is a journey ‘from cradle to grave.’

Jean-Paul Riopelle: Vallée (1949-50): Collection of the Winnipeg Art Gallery. Acquired with funds from the Volunteer Committee to the Winnipeg Art Gallery. Courtesy of Ernest Mayer, Winnipeg Art Gallery © Estate of Jean Paul Riopelle/SODRAC (2010)

Jean-Paul Riopelle at the Glenbow Museum, Calgary
To August 2

Born in Montreal in 1923, Riopelle went on to become one of the best-known members of the Automatistes movement, which reinvented painting in Quebec during the 1940s. In 1949, he moved to Paris, where he moved gradually from a Surrealist style of painting to a unique brand of Abstract Expressionism. Riopelle’s best paintings, with their riots of colour applied flatly with a palette knife, are like looking into gem-like kaleidoscopes. “Riopelle: The Glory of Abstraction” brings together, from public and private collections, several paintings produced during the artist’s peak years, some of which have not been seen in Calgary before.