Screen and Decor at the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery | The Thick of It at Mercer Union

There are plenty of reasons, both historical and aesthetic, for the white cube of the modern art gallery, but given the otherwise always resisting ethos of much contemporary art, one would think that more tampering with the standard would occur. This is not to say it doesn't happen and there aren't any number of excursions into domestic spaces or the public sphere, but it's a pleasant surprise when an exhibition productively interferes with the interface between viewer and art like the current exhibition at the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery.



Screen and Décor, installation view

Screen and Décor is couched in a discourse on digital media and contemporary image making by curator Rosemary Heather, but I see it as a far more basic – yet rigorous and challenging – exploration of seeing and representation through a tough-minded selection of works by Canadian and European artists and a clever intervention by exhibition designers Louise Witthöft and Rodney LaTourelle (Akimblog's currently-on-sabbatical Berlin correspondent who also just opened a solo show at Diaz Contemporary). Their translucent coloured screens enliven the vacuum of the space between the walls, turning the experience of viewing the works into a game of overlapping options that demand an additional alertness to navigate the resulting maze. This would be a novelty if it weren't for how the value-added mediation complements works that also internally address questions of surface and illusion like Bernhard Kahrmann's trompe l'oeil laserprints glued right on the walls, Simone Gilges' framing and layering of images, and Kristine Roepstorff's large-scale fabric renderings of digital noise. This is one of the smartest and engaging exhibitions of the summer and well worth a visit.



Screen and Décor, installation view

A somewhat complementary examination of tradition is also on view at Mercer Union in a group show titled The Thick of It curated by York Lethbridge. This collection of artists is concerned with painting and the places you can go with it. It's straightforward compared to the Barnicke show and includes such classics as Eric Cameron's gesso-clad objects and a John Baldessari performance video. Sasha Pierce's mindboggling abstractions are as trippy as ever, but it's only Josh Thorpe's subtle placement of lightly coloured sticks in a couple corners that really get me thinking. Consider this the starting point and then head to the U of T campus to see how far things can go.


Justina M. Barnicke Gallery: http://www.jmbgallery.ca/index.html
Screen and Décor continues until August 17.

Mercer Union: http://www.mercerunion.org/
The Thick of It continues until August 3.


Terence Dick is a freelance writer living in Toronto. His art criticism has appeared in Canadian Art, BorderCrossings, Prefix Photo, Camera Austria, Fuse, Mix, C Magazine, Azure, and The Globe and Mail. He is the editor of Akimblog. You can follow his quickie reviews and art news announcements on Twitter @TerenceDick.