IAIN BAXTER&: "* The &MAN 50 Years & On," TrépanierBaer Gallery, Calgary, Oct. 18 to Nov. 16, 2013
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Courtesy TrépanierBaer Gallery.
"Landscape with Tree and Three Cirrus Clouds"
IAIN BAXTER&, "Landscape with Tree and Three Cirrus Clouds," 1965, acrylic paint on vacuum-formed plastic, 32” x 37.3” x 2”.
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Courtesy TrépanierBaer Gallery.
"Landscape with Mountains and Crescent Moon"
IAIN BAXTER&, "Landscape with Mountains and Crescent Moon," 1965, acrylic paint on vacuum-formed plastic, 40” x 65.3” x 2”.
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Courtesy TrépanierBaer Gallery.
"Landscape with Two Snow-capped Mountains and Three Cumulus Clouds"
IAIN BAXTER&, "Landscape with Two Snow-capped Mountains and Three Cumulus Clouds," 1965, acrylic paint on vacuum-formed plastic, 29.5” x 35.5” x 2”.
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Courtesy TrépanierBaer Gallery.
"Clear Landscape Mountain and Two Cumulus Clouds"
IAIN BAXTER&, "Clear Landscape Mountain and Two Cumulus Clouds," 1965, vacuum-formed plastic, 20” x 20” x 2.8”.
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Courtesy TrépanierBaer Gallery.
"* The &MAN 50 Years & On" installation view
IAIN BAXTER&, "* The &MAN 50 Years & On," installation view at TrépanierBaer Gallery, 2013.
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Courtesy TrépanierBaer Gallery.
"Clear Still Life works from IAIN BAXTER&, * The &MAN 50 Years & On,"
IAIN BAXTER& "Clear Still Life works from IAIN BAXTER&, * The &MAN 50 Years & On," installation view at TrépanierBaer Gallery, 2013.
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Courtesy TrépanierBaer Gallery.
"Clear Still Life - Three Crushed Bottles"
IAIN BAXTER&, "Clear Still Life - Three Crushed Bottles," 1965, vacuum-formed plastic, 16” x 13.8” x .5”.
IAIN BAXTER&, * The &MAN 50 Years & On
TrépanierBaer Gallery, Calgary
Oct. 18 to Nov. 16, 2013
By Mary-Beth Laviolette
My first encounter with an IAIN BAXTER& artwork was at the Art Gallery of Ontario in the late 1970s. This witty but insightful piece, I was to learn later, came from his Bagged Landscape series of the mid-1960s. Fabricated in inflatable vinyl, it was striking not only for its environmental content, but also for its context within Canadian art. Here was a plastic landscape for contemporary times – a succinct and imaginative reply to Tom Thomson and all those pine trees and once-pristine lakes north of Toronto.
Fast forward to an exhibition currently on in BAXTER&’s hometown of Calgary and once again I’m in the midst of work from that seminal period, viewing pieces made during his Vancouver days when he was one of the country’s early conceptualists. Earlier in his youth, BAXTER& (born Iain Baxter, he adopted his new moniker, pronounced Baxterand, in 2005 in part to reflect his collaborative view of art) had received encouragement and assistance from Calgary modernists like Maxwell Bates, Stanford Perrott and Ron Spickett. By the time he settled on the West Coast in 1964 with his young family, the restlessly productive BAXTER& had already earned a Bachelor’s degree in zoology, a Master’s in education and a Master’s in fine arts from a couple of American universities. As a nascent artist, he had also spent a year in Japan studying art, thanks to a scholarship for which Bates and Perrott had contributed letters of recommendation.
There are no bagged landscapes in this current show at TrépanierBaer, but from this same period there are other works in plastic – his vacuum-formed landscapes and still lifes. The former are brightly coloured with a hard shine and, as Pop-inspired landscapes of mountains, clouds and the like, these two-dimensional works are, despite their age, amazingly fresh, both materially and conceptually.
Not so fresh and imbued with a sepia patina, are BAXTER&’s still lifes of plastic milk jugs and other bottles. Recalling the influence of Italian painter Giorgio Morandi’s still lifes, these clear-plastic works − in contrast to their coloured brethren – evoke the hard passage of time, a strange condition for objects whose origins were purely commercial and, once emptied, destined for the landfill.
Accompanied by an essay from Toronto art historian David Silcox, who remarks on the artist’s ability to see “ordinary things in an intense and extraordinary way,” * The &MAN 50 Years & On does indeed carry on with more recent works. These include selections from BAXTER&’s 2008 Animal Preserve and his 2010 INFORMATION series. In both, the artist finds new means of expression to address lifelong concerns with ecology, consumerism and Marshall McLuhan’s edict about the medium being the message. In this respect, the most fundamental medium is the artist himself, who signals under his new moniker of IAIN BAXTER& his intent to continue energetically elaborating on what art can be.
TrépanierBaer
105-999 8 St SW, Calgary, Alberta 2R 1J5
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