Faking Death
Canadian Art Photography and the Canadian Imagination
Jack Shainman Gallery, NYC
January 6 - February 4, 2006
The Jack Shainman Gallery presents Faking Death: Canadian Art Photography and the Canadian Imagination, an exhibition which features contemporary and historical works by more than 50 established and emerging Canadian photographers. All are working in a variety of genres, exploring issues of representation, gender, cultural identity, and a deeply felt concern for the environment.
Among those included in the exhibit are such internationally-renowned art practitioners as Vancouver-based Rebecca Belmore, an Anishinabekwe artist who represented Canada at the 2005 Venice Biennale, and whose work addresses history, place, identity, and the elusive nature of memory; Jin-me Yoon, whose stills and video works grapple with the realities of Canadian immigrants, legal and illegal; Jeff Wall with his large scale lightbox creates a heroic tableaux making reference to the old masters paintings. The Holocaust Memorial in the Jewish Cemetery, 1987 is a seminal piece in Walls oeuvre; modern-day photographic explorer Edward Burtynsky, whose spectacular large-scale photographs, currently the focus of a solo exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, confront nature transformed through industry; Geneviève Cadieux, whose haunting, fragmented images of the body explore relationships between the sexes and the registering of psychic pain on human flesh; Toronto-born painter, photographer, sculptor, musician, and filmmaker Michael Snow, creator of such celebrated works as the Walking Women series of paintings and the seminal underground art film Wavelength; and the Vancouver artist Rodney Graham, whose photographs of up-side-down trees reflect his long-term obsession with the world as seen through the camera obsura; and Raymonde April, winner of the prestigious Paul-Emile Borduas Prize, whose moving, open-ended narratives have been instrumental in forging a uniquely Québecois photographic aesthetic.
“Each of the gifted artists featured in the exhibition brings a singular, distinctive, and dynamic perspective to his or her work, and it is a thrill for us to showcase this exciting and significant exhibition”, says Jack Shainman, director of the Jack Shainman Gallery.
The exhibition was co-curated by critic and author Penny Cousineau-Levine, Professor of the History and Theory of Art, and Chair of the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Ottawa in Canada’s capital city. The title of the exhibition is borrowed from Cousineau-Levine’s groundbreaking examination of Canadian photography entitled Faking Death: Canadian Art Photography and the Canadian Imagination, in which she examined the work of Canadian photographers, revealing the specificities of the Canadian identity and world-view. By bringing together this many Canadian works, the exhibition Faking Death, like the book, provides a stunning visual introduction to one of Canada's most vibrant and internationally recognized artistic media.
“An exhibition of this scope permits the viewer to experience the astonishing diversity, richness, and energy that is Canadian photo-art,“ explains co-curator Claude Simard of the Shainman Gallery. “And what a wonderful opportunity it is to present these important and influential Canadian artists, many of whom enjoy international success and acclaim, together in New York”.
Jack Shainman Gallery
513 W. 20th Street, New York, NY 10011
www.jackshainman.com
