Access 100 Artists
Art 21 Screening Programme
37 Mulcaster Street, Barrie, ON L4M 3M2 (705) 721-9696
Art 21
Screening
Programme
Wednesdays:
5:30 to 6:15 pm
Rotary Education
Centre
Wednesday
March 26
Description:
Join us on Wednesdays for special screenings of Art 21: Artists in the 21st
Century. For over 5 years, PBS’ Art 21 has provided an innovative and
intimate look into the studio, inspiration and lives of contemporary artists. The
MacLaren is proud to be a part of Access 100 Artists, an international
screening programme initiated by Art 21. Bring a friend, stop by the Café for a
drink and enjoy highlights from this special series.
In conjunction with David Craven’s Jump Cut, learn how contemporary artists
Jessica Stockholder, Barry McGee and Margaret Kilgallen explore the ways
popular culture inspires their art.
Margaret Kilgallen:
"I like things that are handmade," says Margaret Kilgallen, referring to the hand-painted
signs of San Francisco's Mission District that influenced her work. "In that they did it
themselves—that's what I find beautiful." The segment follows Kilgallen as she bikes
around the Mission, paints in her studio, visits the San Francisco train yards with artist
and husband Barry McGee, and creates a new painting installation at the
UCLA/Armand Hammer Museum. While hand-painting wall sized letters on a ladder,
Kilgallen describes her process: "I do spend a lot of time trying to perfect my line
work...when you get close up, you can always see the line waver. And I think that's
where the beauty is." (Art 21)
Barry McGee:
Barry McGee, who has a passion for graffiti art, says, "I like that process of a thing
discarded, then picked up, and intercepted." In this segment, McGee discloses an
urban inspiration for his art. The segment follows McGee and Kilgallen to the local train
yards where the artists point out their favorite markings and leave some of their own,
contributing to a graphic conversation that spans train cars across the nation. McGee is
also filmed atop a water tower painting one of his signature figures. Traveling to the
UCLA/Armand Hammer Museum, the segment follows McGee as he installs a new
room-sized work, a two-story mural, as well as a storefront painting looking out on the
streets of Los Angeles. (Art 21)
Jessica Stockholder:
In the studio Jessica Stockholder makes sculptures on the scale of furniture,
assembling objects made of brightly colored plastic. “I love plastic. And I also just love
color,” Jessica Stockholder says. “Plastic is cheap and easy to buy, and my work
participates in that really quick and easy and inexpensive material that’s part of our
culture.” At the Rice Gallery in Houston where she is working on a large exuberant
installation, Stockholder’s fascination with systems is evident in the way she arranges
mundane objects in playful, surprising ways. “I’m interested in how a thinking process
can meander in unpredictable ways,” she says. Like child's play, “learning that doesn’t
have a predetermined end.” (Art 21)
Wednesday
April 23
In Jump Cut, David Craven uses a personal visual language to represent the
hustle of urban life and communication into sculptural paintings. Join us for a
look into the studio practice of Ritchie and Tuttle as they present their take on
technology, communication and art’s objecthood.
Matthew Ritchie:
All anyone is trying to do is try out some new ideas,” says Mathew Ritchie in describing
the project of modern art. Ambitious certainly describes Ritchie's work, which seeks to
picture the known universe. In “The Universal Cell,” Ritchie uses computers and metal
cutting equipment to transform drawings into sculpture. “If the universe is a prison, this
is your cell...and you drag it with you everywhere you go.” In another show, “Proposition
Player,” Ritchie creates a series of games to explore the continuum of risk, possibility,
and universal connection. Ritchie reflects on how humans filter out information in order
to go about their lives. “Can we turn the volume up just a little bit more?” he asks.
(Art 21)
Richard Tuttle:
“A painting or a sculpture really exists somewhere between what it is and what it is not,”
says Richard Tuttle. Tuttle uses humble materials such as paper, wire, and string to
create art “that accounts for the invisible.” Tuttle sees his current work as “a conjoining
of architecture and calligraphy.” In an exhibition at The Drawing Center in New York,
Tuttle creates “villages” in which sculptures invite viewers into a contemplative
relationship with the artist’s diminutive drawings. “The emotion of an art response does
to me feel like motion,” he observes. “We use that word moved. ‘I am moved.’ And yet
we know we’re standing right there and we have this experience of being stationary and
moved at the same time.” (Art 21)
Wednesday
May 21
In David Craven and the Cinematic, the artist uses colour, scale, impasto
technique and the figure to illicit emotional tension. In their own art practice,
Murray and Ford use contrasting images and ideas to often humourous and
ironic emotional effect.
Walton Ford:
A voracious reader of colonial letters and diaries, Walton Ford is fascinated by the fear
and wonder of nature that he finds in historical texts. “The big thing I’m always looking
for in my work is a sort of attraction-repulsion, where the stuff is beautiful to begin with
until you notice that some sort of horrible violence is about to happen or is in the middle
of happening.” Commenting on a large watercolor depicting a frenzy of birds falling with
a massive branch, he explains that the birds are “satisfying all their lusts...as they are
going down.” Contrasting the romanticized tradition of Audubon with the destructive
qualities of existence, Ford merges a dreamlike vision with a frenetic and comic reality.
(Art 21)
Elizabeth Murray
In her studio, Elizabeth Murray is painting a shaped, colorful canvas with inflated,
bulbous forms. “I want there to be conflict and I want there to be tension. And yet
somehow I want to make these very conflicting things live together and not just butt up
against each other.” Murray has spent a lifetime developing her particular vision of zany
and vibrant images, beginning with her time as a student at the Art Institute of Chicago
where she was surrounded by great works of art such as the Abstract Expressionist
paintings by DeKooning. “I just realized this was going to be my life,” says Murray. (Art
21)
Wednesday
June 11
Highlights from the MacLaren Permanent Collection:
Join Emily McKibbon, Assistant Curator, Photography/Collections Manager for
a special look into selected artwork from the MacLaren’s Permanent
Collection. This evening we will be looking at permanent collections as process
using the Sovfoto Archive as a case study, examining the ways in which
archives can be mined in the practice of art-making.
Barbara Kruger:
After attending Syracuse University, the School of Visual Arts, and studying art and
design with Diane Arbus at Parson’s School of Design in New York, Kruger obtained a
design job at Condé Nast Publications. Working for "Mademoiselle" magazine, she was
quickly promoted to head designer. Later, she worked as a graphic designer, art
director, and picture editor in the art departments at "House and Garden," "Aperture,"
and other publications. This background in design is evident in the work for which she is
now internationally renowned. Kruger layers found photographs from existing sources
with pithy and aggressive text that involves the viewer in the struggle for power and
control that her captions speak to. In their trademark black letters against a slash of red
background, some of her instantly recognizable slogans read “I shop, therefore I am,”
and “Your body is a battleground.” (Art 21)
John Baldessari:
Synthesizing photomontage, painting, and language, Baldessari’s deadpan visual
juxtapositions equate images with words and illuminate, confound, and challenge
meaning. He upends commonly held expectations of how images function, often by
drawing the viewer’s attention to minor details, absences, or the spaces between
things. By placing colorful dots over faces, obscuring portions of scenes, or juxtaposing
stock photographs with quixotic phrases, he injects humor and dissonance into
vernacular imagery. (Art 21)
Wednesday
September 10
It’s all about traditional and contemporary sculpture! Join us for an eyeopening and entertaining look into the studio practices of art icons Jeff Koons
and Louise Bourgeois.
Jeff Koons:
“Art should be something really powerful,” says Jeff Koons, “but at the same time,
there’s morality that comes along with that.” The segment begins in the artist’s busy
studio in Manhattan, where his computer-aided but hand-made paintings and
sculptures develop slowly, with a large team of dedicated assistants, in the manner of a
Renaissance workshop or atelier. The segment shifts to a major retrospective at the
MCA Chicago, where Koons provides a detailed analysis of two sculptures that
exemplify the ethical and spiritual dimensions of art. The segment concludes outside
Paris at the Chateau de Versailles, where Koons is the first contemporary American
artist to have a solo exhibition, showcasing the mathematical planting of a giant flower
topiary and a survey of works installed amidst the joyous decoration of the palace’s
period rooms and gardens. (Art 21)
Louise Bourgeois:
The final segment "Identity" focuses on Louise Bourgeois. Active since the early 1940s,
Bourgeois has consistently plumbed her own biography for subject matter and
inspiration. Working with delicate stone sculptures in public spaces and plaster casts of
hands, Bourgeois explores memory, emotion, and strength through works that reach
viewers on a visceral level. "A work of art doesn't have to be explained," she says. "If
you do not have any feeling about this, I cannot explain it to you. If this doesn't touch
you, I have failed." Bourgeois' work challenges viewers to make connections between
their own lives and the lives staged in the artist's installations, drawings, and public
sculptures. (Art 21)
Wednesday
October 8
Inspired the current exhibition of sculptural work by regional artists Lyn Carter
and James Carl, take a closer look into the art of David Altmejd and Lynda
Benglis, whose studio practice shares an exploration of unusual materials and
ideas.
David Altmejd:
In his studio in New York City, French Canadian artist David Altmejd constructs "The
Vessel" (2011) and "The Swarm" (2011), massive Plexiglas and plaster sculptures that
Altmejd describes as "laboratories" within which he can experiment with different
materials and ideas, contrasting images of menace with sensual tenderness. (Art 21)
Lynda Benglis:
A video pioneer and sculptor, Lynda Benglis transcends painting and sculpture by
creating solid forms with liquid materials that challenge viewers’ perceptions of
movement and gravity. (Art 21)
SCHEDULE UPDATE!
Highlights from the MacLaren Permanent Collection:
Wednesday
November 19
Join Emily McKibbon, Assistant Curator, Photography/Collections Manager for
a special look into selected artwork from the MacLaren Permanent Collection.
In preparation for our winter exhibitions, join us for a viewing about place—
from the intimacy of the kitchen table to the awe-inspiring Roden Crater—and
a short tour of works from our collection that address this topic.
Carrie Mae Weems:
Weems’s vibrant explorations of photography, video, and verse breathe new life into
traditional narrative forms: social documentary, tableaux, self-portrait, and oral history.
Eliciting epic contexts from individually framed moments, Weems debunks racist and
sexist labels, examines the relationship between power and aesthetics, and uses
personal biography to articulate broader truths. This segment pays particular attention
to her use of the kitchen table as the setting for dramatic enactments of gender and
power. (Art 21)
James Turrell:
Turrell’s work involves explorations in light and space that speak to viewers without
words, impacting the eye, body, and mind with the force of a spiritual awakening. “I
want to create an atmosphere that can be consciously plumbed with seeing,” says the
artist, “like the wordless thought that comes from looking in a fire.” Informed by his
studies in perceptual psychology and optical illusions, Turrell’s work allows us to see
ourselves “seeing.” Whether harnessing the light at sunset or transforming the glow of a
television set into a fluctuating portal, Turrell’s art places viewers in a realm of pure
experience. (Art 21)
SCHEDULE UPDATE!
Wednesday
December 10
The focus is on collaborative artists this month as we open exhibitions by
Brendan Fernandes and Nanna Debois Buhl, and Rhonda Weppler and Trevor
Mahovsky.
Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla
Collaborating since 1995, Allora and Calzadilla approach visual art as a set of
experiments that test whether ideas such as authorship, nationality, borders, and
democracy adequately describe today’s increasingly global and consumerist society.
Their hybrid works—often a unique mix of sculpture, photography, performance, sound,
and video—explore the physical and conceptual act of mark-making and its survival
through traces. By drawing historical, cultural, and political metaphors out of basic
materials, Allora and Calzadilla’s works explore the complex associations between an
object and its meaning. (Art 21)
assume vivid astro focus
The collective assume vivid astro focus (avaf) was formed in New York City in 2001. Its
principal members are Eli Sudbrack (born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1968) and
Christophe Hamaide-Pierson (born in Paris, France in 1973). Avaf fuses drawing,
sculpture, video, and performance into carnavalesque installations in which gender,
politics, and cultural codes float freely. A study in visual adaptation and modification,
avaf’s work recycles and transforms imagery from one project to the next—often in the
form of densely patterned wallpapers and graphic signage. Personal expression and a
lust for life feature prominently in projects simultaneously rooted in the politics of free
speech, civil rights, and the dissolution of rigid classifications of class, gender, and
national identity. (Art 21)
Note: This course outline is accurate at the time of publication but may be subject to change.