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THE OPENING is all about delving into the fascinating, quirky and wonderful visual arts in Vancouver. Each week we’ll feature an artist, cover an exhibition, discuss a lecture and everything else in-between to delve deep into who and what makes art happen! |
This Thursday, Burrard Arts Foundation (108 East Broadway) is opening a summer group show of recent works by six Vancouver-based artists. Jeff Hallbauer, Zoe Hodgson, Eddy Hofbauer, Simone Jarvis, Ben Marvin and Jacobo Zambrano.
The Last Bouquet. 60" x 60". Latex and oil on canvas. Eddy Hofbauer, 2015.
Burrard Arts Foundation will be presenting a group show of work by six Vancouver-based artists that address or innovate with colour by pouring, soaking, covering, washing, staining, inflating and negating. Recent works by Jeff Hallbauer, Eddy Hofbauer, Zoe Hodgson, Simone Jarvis, Ben Marvin and Jacobo Zambrano are paired with a semi-fictional rewriting of colour’s history as a way to reimagine it as a cultural symbol of economy, power, pleasure, memory and science. Using fiction’s idiosyncratic ability to offer alternative possibilities, the exhibition treats revisionist history as a rinse and colour as a flag with all the sanctioned trappings.
The exhibition Towards a Fictional History of Colour includes an installation about the role of fabric dye in cultural and family history, a large scale balloon installation by Ben Marvin borne out of research into Russian conceptual art, a layered, history-filled monochrome painting by Zoe Hodgson, paintings on ceramic and canvas by Jeff Hallbauer, a large scale recent painting by Eddy Hofbauer and a soaked painting by Simone Jarvis.
The exhibition text is a poetic re-telling of colour's history in list form. Here's an excerpt:
- Red was assumed to be the first colour seen by a living thing. It was hypothesized that one perceives red before reaching full consciousness, scarlet appearing in the liminal space between dreaming and waking. Maybe it was the blood-hue of light through the thin flesh of eyelids swaying scientists. Like the first notes of a familiar song, red was compared with sensation before intellectualization.
- People have always sought ways to make their garments more attractive. Flourishment eclipses practicality. Centuries ago, dyers invented aromatic concoctions derived from rare plants, animals, and sea creatures. They hung freshly coloured textiles to dry in the sun with fingers blistered from the boiling vats.
- As soon as they got to junior high school, colours were divided into two tables - cool and uncool.
The show will run from June 25 - July 25, 2015.
