AGA100 Act I: Earth to Eternity

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“AGA100 Act 1 Earth to Eternity,” 2024

(courtesy of the Gallery)

To celebrate the Art Gallery of Alberta’s 100th anniversary, we have created a series of three exhibitions that showcase Alberta art and artists in the AGA’s Collection. Many of the works are rooted in conceptions of time: revealing the passage of time or snapshots of time; capturing subtle or dramatic changes over time; or exploring the eternal or ideas of timelessness. Themes of time—including duration, seasons, history, memory, generations, and the future—connect across these anniversary exhibitions.

AGA100 Act I: Earth to Eternity shows a range of work that span the spectrum of representation of the natural world, from the earthbound and everyday to the sublime. The exhibition begins with studied observations of the organic and natural world. It moves through abstracted, simplified, altered, or obfuscated representations of landscape and nature and arrives at works of pure abstraction that aim to represent the universal truths that lay behind our realities or play with our perceptions and beliefs.

The Collection includes over 6,000 works of art with new works acquired annually. Works in the Collection are also researched, reevaluated and recontextualized on an ongoing basis. The Collection is an ever-changing, living document that is reflective of shifting values and interests over time. The AGA’s Collection does not represent the totality of artistic production in Alberta but, because of its mutability, there is opportunity within its gaps. The Collection charts a trajectory to this point but can also direct us to where we want to be and where we will go.