Diane Landry at Barbara Edwards Contemporary

I am always interested when time-based artists have exhibitions at commercial galleries. Not that I find the idea of monetizing this type of art challenging (it has been done successfully for ages), I’m just genuinely curious as to what the work will look like in its new, saleable form.



Diane Landry, Solo Knight III, 2014, bicycle wheels, plastic water bottles, mineral oil, LED, aluminum, motor, gear, ball bearing

At Barbara Edwards Gallery, I found Diane Landry’s expansive kinetic sculpture and performative practice distilled into a tiny, yet multifaceted exhibition consisting of video works, photographs, and a stand-out kinetic sculpture. The last time Calgary saw Landry’s work was when it stole the show during Oh, Canada at the Esker Foundation with her dazzling room-sized installation of rotating wheels, flickering lights, and sifting sand sounds. I had a similarly dreamy ASMR-induced moment basking in her wall-mounted Solo Knight III, a bicycle wheel slowly turning, which caused small amounts of viscous liquid (mineral oil, it turns out) to drip and slosh around crystal clear rim-mounted water bottles. A 2015 Guggenheim Foundation fellow, Landry is the master of elevating common, even abject, found materials to the sublime, somehow with very little intervention. I caught myself marvelling at the contours of what I think could be a Gatorade bottle.

This is also evident in two videos documenting performances that use the very thin packing plastic that is often found in shipping, handling, and storing art. In last year’s Parachute Series, the artist conducts a range of actions with the plastic, other objects, and the human form: great crinkled balloons take breath like disembodied lungs, small sculptures are manipulated by hand, and so on. Icebreaker from 2013 is a well-known work that includes Landry rowing to nowhere through great swaths of astoundingly evocative plastic wrap. However, the still images on display in the gallery leave something to be desired, so, at least in this instance, it is impossible to compete with the fourth dimension.


Barbara Edwards Contemporary: http://www.becontemporary.com/calgary.php
Diane Landry continues until February 27.


Sarah Todd is a curator currently based in Calgary. She has previously worked at Western Front, InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Centre, XPACE Cultural Centre, and The Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery. She has also produced projects with a range of organizations including Vtape, Kunstverein München, The Goethe Institute, The Pacific Cinematheque, Glenbow Museum and The Illingworth Kerr Gallery. She is Akimblog’s Calgary correspondent and can be followed on Twitter @sarahannetodd.