C, G, T, A. Four letters comprise the genetic alphabet, denoting combinations of four nucleotides into three-letter codons myriad of which comprise the genetic script that produces myriad us and everything else biological. Simple, yes? Well, yes and no. Things can go wrong, possibly resulting in the chance of mutation of the genetic script, but the idea of mutation has gotten a bad rap courtesy of Hollywood horror films, for in fact it can be a good thing – even an evolutionary necessary thing. A generation ago, French biologist Jacques Monod drove home the point that chance mutation was at the very bedrock of the process of natural selection, that it alone was "the source of every innovation, of all creation in the biosphere."
Nell Tenhaaf, Apparatus for Self-organization, 1995
So how about this, then: the chance of inviting artist Nell Tenhaaf, she of genetically oriented and wrought aesthetic enquiries, to mount an exhibition at the Visual Arts Centre of Clarington in Bowmanville, by chance a gallery established in a former grain mill – genetic tampering anyone? – by chance situated right next to a creek in which salmon – genetic engineering, anyone? – run each year.
Sounds good. Context can be everything.
For Life Forms, Tenhaaf organized a mix of new work with not-often-seen-these-days older pieces. Wisely installed in a ground floor room set apart from the main space was the 1999 video work dDNA (d is for dancing) which follows a couples dance class at a bar as they learn different dance steps. It is conceptually framed by Tenhaaf's aesthetic interest in research that suggested learned skill sets could develop into genetically innate traits if acquired at population levels.
The VAC's main space was given over to drawings and photographically-based installation works like Apparatus for Self-organization, a wall-mounted, horizontally lozenge-shaped, back-lit work that winks on and off. The image within is that of a woman. She fits so snugly within the ovoid frame as to suggest a swaddled newborn infant, or perhaps even a kind of anthropomorphized seed pod. Here lays the genetic hopes of humanity, the creator mother of those who are to come.
Maybe I read too much into it. Maybe not.
Nell Tenhaaf, Oedipal ounce of prevention, 1993
On a nearby wall hangs a small cluster of back-lit images comprising Oedipal ounce of prevention. Two of them are the shape of laboratory beakers, the remainder standard rectangular shapes. We see a portion of a woman's face in one frame juxtaposed against a detail of a belly and a forearm right next to it. Each image is contextualized by intrusive surgical forceps. Below them is a row of smaller images, three of which are illustrative of genetic processes at work.
It's so very complex. Larger meanings elude me, but I'm still drawn onward and forward by the work, knowing that, like the genetic script that has determined (amongst other far more important things) that I have male pattern baldness, Tenhaaf's dizzyingly difficult work is ultimately generative. A process is at play in it, one that I struggle to follow but which I know doesn't begin or end with an aesthetic excerpt I might encounter – or even with my understanding of the piece. It does its work with or without me.
I wish I could have seen her new video-based work set in the gallery's third-floor loft, but, alas, technological difficulties pre-empted that possibility. Unfortunately, it's not the first time. As the VAC's curatorial schedule increasingly incorporates media-based art forms and more daring exhibitions, that's become a bit of a problem.
A potentially big problem.
Visual Arts Centre of Clarington: http://www.vac.ca/
Nell Tenhaaf: Life Forms continues until June 30.
Gil McElroy is a poet, artist, independent curator, and freelance art critic. He is the author of Gravity & Grace: Selected Writing on Contemporary Canadian Art, four books of poetry, and Cold Comfort: Growing Up Cold War. McElroy lives in Colborne, Ontario with his wife Heather. He is Akimblog's roving Ontario correspondent and can be followed @GilMcElroy on Twitter.
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Nell Tenhaaf at the Visual Arts Centre of Clarington
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