"Contemporary Drawings from the National Gallery of Canada": Mendel Art Gallery, Jan. 24, 2014 to March 30, 2014

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Credit: National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Photo © NGC

Tristram Lansdowne, "Axis Mundi", 2012

Tristram Lansdowne, "Axis Mundi", 2012, watercolour and graphite on wove paper, 32.9” x 43.5”

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Credit: National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Photo © NGC

Alison Norlen, "Edifice", 2006

Alison Norlen, "Edifice", 2006, coloured chalk and pastel over watercolour wash on wove paper, 12’ x 18’

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Contemporary Drawings from the National Gallery of Canada

Mendel Art Gallery

Jan. 24, 2014 to March 30, 2014

By Bart Gazzola

Drawing can and often does incorporate just about any medium. It can be so many things: shiny reflective material (Ed Pien’s Invisible); holographic foil (Sandy Plotnikoff); or ‘traditional’ watercolour and coloured pencil (Tristram Lansdowne). This flexibility is necessary for a practice both universal and immediate, that, as in this exhibition by 25 Canadian and international artists, includes work that attempts to translate interior landscapes into physical form. This is where the words of Paul Klee are insightful – “a drawing simply is no longer a drawing … it is a symbol, and the more profoundly the imaginary lines of projection meet higher dimensions, the better.”

An immediacy of experience with a considered thoughtfulness to one’s environment, whether literal or metaphorical, runs through nearly all these works. The show, curated by Rhiannon Vogl, includes nothing that predates 2000. Cape Dorset artists are strongly represented. The vibrant and sometimes very personal works of Annie Pootoogook, Janet Kigusiuq Uqayuittuq, Shuvinai Ashoona and Jutai Toonoo also indicate how ideas of ‘place’ and ‘history’ have changed, and which artists are included now that might not have been previously.

This isn’t just a Canadian question: the Cuban collective Los Carpinteros’ Broken Bridge illustrates (literally, with infrastructure) the failure of ideology in Havana. Lansdowne and Simon Hughes, in his massive Northern Landscape, incorporate Moshe Safdie’s iconic Habitat ’67: Vogl notes both a return to modernism (failed or reconfigured) by a younger generation of artists, and how some sites dominate memory and history. Lansdowne’s work is simultaneously logical and absurd, and a similar multiplicity of interpretations occurs with many of these works. Olia Mishchenko, in collaboration with Plotnikoff in 11:11 (No Can Pop Factory), explores ideas about social organization and architecture. The same can be said of Alison Norlen’s apocalyptic Edifice and Kelly Mark’s 33.333333, which resembles a church schematic gone absurdly awry.

Jason McLean’s Rubber Game for the Working Class is minimalist and personal, documenting both his own history and its larger context (the reference to Voice of Fire brings back memories for many). Pien’s aforementioned Invisible asks if you are seeing three “magical” floating figures, or anonymous victims. (Vogl cites Jacques Callot’s  etching La Pendaison (The Hanging). Many don’t see them at all.)

Drawings, which will tour to the Art Gallery of Alberta this summer, is a show that needs to be experienced several times. Vogl says there isn’t a specific prescriptive theme, but several ideas became clearer and stronger through the conversations the drawings had with each other. This is a strong, diverse, yet unified show that offers multiple interpretations and indicates that drawing is just as valid as ever.