The wall is a relic. The container burst open. Information wants to be free and artists all over the world are opening up their frames and releasing the idea. Even here in Durham Region. Wander over to the Oshawa-born Berlin-based Shannon Finlay's exhibition, Interference at the Carrie Secrist Gallery in Chicago. FIndlay's paintings spread past the frame, going viral, spreading along the floors, the ceiling, the walls of the gallery like a virus, breeding expanding breathing, an organism growing out and into the great wide beyawnder beyond the box, the dish, the base, the seed.
Shannon Findlay, Interference, (via Facebook)
Jay Dart too has broken past the frame and his exhibit ‘Greeting From Yawnder’ at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery spreads and grows beyond the page invading the gallery, invading the architecture but spreading its seed by way of the catalogue, the book is the carrier for this idea, and the Yawnderer is released when the book is opened. The work also rests in tree stumps on the gallery floor, and in glass jars, the container of the apothecary and the alchemist.
The art is installation is environment. It begins on the page, with one Jiggs who becomes many, brightly coloured bearded gents wander over ‘Yawnder and Elseswheres’, building, creating, growing, making. Trees become pencils, a nod perhaps to Will Alsop’s Sharp Centre for Design OCADU building in Toronto, but the coloured pencils of Dart don’t support the tiled mosaic of Alsop but blurry clouds, canopies perhaps.
The men wander the world of Yawnder, across rivers and mountains, hills and forests and its curious that the Forest has its own inhabitant, but not the Windigo of Canadian Lumberjack lore but a giant, a woman. It seems that in this new environment that is leaking from the gallery, from the idea place out into the world has revealed its secret, the most powerful figure in this new world being created by our artists is not the Big Man of old but the Big Woman.
The world beyond our own will be watched over by a woman. Jay Dart’s exhibit will close but the seed has been planted and the journey continues.
Jay Dart Out There 44" x 30", 2016 graphite & watercolour (via website)