Half of my summer was spent weathering traffic congestion and heat waves while chasing down exhibitions. The other half was spent trying to escape the city in search of open spaces and cool breezes. No central air conditioning in our house provided plenty of motivation to leave, but we don’t have any cottages in our family holdings, so we had to rely on the generosity of others (as well as some cheap rentals) to have a place to land in the great outdoors. I was happy with the basic mental health benefits of being a step closer to nature, but the professional rewards of getting away were made clear to me after last week’s review of the Wanda Koop exhibition. To make sense of how luminous her canvases were, I appealed to the wide spectrum colour field of a Georgian Bay sunset. The wonders of the wild provided a handy reference point, but there was something more. Standing still in Division Gallery, waiting for the paintings to reveal themselves, I was doing the same thing I’d done off-and-on for the past handful of weekends when I found myself beneath a tree, on the end of a dock, or walking through the darkness that only comes when you leave the city behind: I was paying attention.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
(Photo: Kelly O’Brien)
Standing still in a forest (or your backyard or the city park you find refuge in) is to invite a personal performance of John Cage’s 4’33”. The big lesson of that so-called silent piece is that there is no silence at all, that a concert hall is infused with the shuffling of feet and humming of HVAC systems, and that the world around us is constantly abuzz with sounds and songs and noise. The most insistent instance of the sounds around us shifting to something we can’t ignore is the piercing industrial buzz of the cicada. They seemed particularly aggressive this year (and I hear them electrifying the air outside my window as I write this). Maybe it was because I spent two weeks in a park where every tree had a couple insect husks attached to its bark and on good days you could witness the winged bug emerging from its former body. The sound catches you unawares, but eventually you can hear nothing but. It reminds me of Max Neuhaus’ Times Square installation (which is still there, generating its tone beneath a subway grate, as far as I know). His intention, student of Cage that he was, was to elicit a moment of stillness within the hubbub of Manhattan. These days, each of us carries that restless noise of demands, distractions, and updates in our heads (and our hands), so a moment of contemplation can be an effort even in the middle of an empty forest.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
(Photo: Kelly O’Brien)
One day I met a kid on the edge of that forest who had just come back from Quaker camp. She told me that every morning the campers sat in silence on a hill for an hour. I found out later that this is known as meeting for worship and common practice for the faith. I was amazed that a pre-teen could handle such a task, but she was cool with it. In fact, the more people I ask, the more often I get the response that a time to unplug, to be quiet, to have a moment to oneself is not only appreciated, but something we crave. Those who have the means find it outside of town and I carved away some precious minutes of it this past month, but I also find it in galleries where the possibility of infinity comes in contact with my miniscule consciousness and in that instant I feel part of something greater.
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.
↧
The Great Outdoors
↧
