"The Blur in Between", Art Gallery of Alberta, January 23 to May 8, 2016

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Anyone who attends art exhibitions is familiar with headache-inducing curatorial panels. Explanations that ostensibly clarify often dissolve into a haze of verbiage. Sentences take on elevated but inexplicable meanings. The Blur in Between, which questions the boundaries between disciplines such as contemporary art, design, craft, typography, architecture and digital art, is no exception. Intentionally or not, it turns artspeak into a type of design-inspired performance.

At the gallery entrance, I, like fellow viewers, dutifully pick up an exhibition guide designed by Toronto-based artist and curator Micah Lexier and New York-based creative director Lisa Naftolin. The guide’s format and size – it’s almost as large as a weekly newspaper – make it clear from the outset that some serious reading is required. 

Thus armed, I venture on. But delight soon turns to dismay. Phrases such as these proliferate: “structures which contain the administrative labour of artistic practice”; “oral production of value”; “extra-informational qualities”; and the mind-twisting “eponymous words inscribed on FAA regulation light boxes conflate disparate locating system.” In fairness, meaning sometimes surfaces if you study the guide as if it were a philosophical text. But nobody around me lingers long enough to find out.

Unwilling to wade through the ponderous text, and unable to fully comprehend these concept-laden works without context, I turn to the gallery attendants. That’s when the clouds break. Three remarkably articulate people guide me, in turn, through this multi- layered show. For example, an installation by Toronto-based An Te Liu transforms the stress-inducing labyrinth of airport signage into a poetic metaphor for the human mind. Directions to gates and far-flung destinations are replaced by Freudian terms: Ego. Id. Super. The artist even includes helpful arrows pointing the way to, let’s say, Eros. Another smile-inducing work is the aptly titled Bottles Under the Influence by Vancouver-based artists Julia Feyrer and Tamara Henderson. Inspired by lucid dreams, they created sketches of quirky characters subsequently hand-blown into misshapen, eccentric and decidedly tipsy bottles filled with enticing mixtures like moonshine and valerian root. 

Such notes of humour may well be echoed in the perplexing exhibition design. For instance, the 18-page guide that promises to explain confounds, and viewers must fumble through it in search of specific works; even the labels and map are difficult to follow. Perhaps the very idea of design functionality is subverted here and viewers are the subjects of an elaborate performance: my initial bewilderment could be part of a meta-show. The text itself may be a superb parody of artspeak. But that is mere speculation.

In the end, what counts is the viewer. Art exhibitions can’t be more interested in the tangled world of self-referential theory than in feet-on-the-ground experience. Viewers are not incidental, slightly exasperating interruptions at a private party. This show amply illustrates that designers, artists and curators need to interact more with their public. They might see firsthand how – or if – their cryptic design concepts truly communicate.

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Art Gallery of Alberta

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780-422-6223

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