Text and Image: It's Complicated

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A wag might quip that, as a medium for art exhibitions, text has an image problem. White walls, black words. Or, sometimes, black walls, white words. However it is done, text-based work in a gallery can feel very minimalist and very familiar, like the pages of a book writ large. Of course, there are other common tropes: altered books, words styled into 3-D objects, and text combined with images in various permutations and combinations. It can feel like déjà vu, all over again.

So you have to admire Contemporary Calgary’s courage in launching extratextual, a group survey show about art and text, on view until Jan. 21, along with myriad outreach activities, including a recent two-day symposium. A heady mix of international and domestic curators, academics, writers and artists, the symposium had a title that echoes the challenge – Never the Same: What (else) can arts writing do?

This ambitious, wide-ranging endeavour unfolded earlier this month as a plan to relocate Contemporary Calgary into the city’s old planetarium flamed out. Negotiations with the city broke down over the length of the lease and uncertainty over the ability of the gallery – an amalgamation of three non-profit groups – to raise the $32 million needed to soup up the planetarium. With its current location in an old sandstone building on Stephen Avenue apparently sold, and the spectre of homelessness looming, board chair Jay Mehr released a public letter about the need to “sit down with Calgarians to review our plans and solicit your feedback and ideas.”

But back to the exhibition. Cleverly curated by senior curator Lisa Baldissera and Joanne Bristol, a multidisciplinary artist, extratextual puts the gallery’s difficult, warren-like space to good use. There are several particularly interesting moments. One is the seeming irony of the words “cash only” that hang opposite the entryway. The piece, a silkscreen print by Swedish-based artist Jacqueline Hoàng Nguyen, refers to the cash-only economy common to marginalized immigrants. But without this context, offered in an adjacent text panel, visitors can be excused if their minds go elsewhere, especially given the recent metastasis of cultural fundraisers.

Nearby, a fast-paced digital work keeps up with today’s short attention spans. Some 33 computer-generated questions flash up each minute in English and Spanish courtesy of Mexican-born artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. Things like: “When will we cease to communicate with the master bedroom?” Or perhaps more appropriately to the show’s theme: “Didn’t many edit neutrally?” It’s an amusing sort of automatic poetry, courtesy of a program that uses grammatical rules and a dictionary to generate an estimated 55 billion different questions. It’s also a piece with staying power – apparently it would take some 3,000 years to flash through every question.

Another nice curatorial moment occurs on the way down from the gallery’s upper level. A single-channel black-and-white video by Alberta-born Nelson Henricks, Endless Paper, is projected on the small wall above the stairwell. It shows a hand turning seemingly endless blank sheets of letter paper, one after another. The sheer monotony brings up a familiar feeling of mind-numbing routine and bureaucratic paper-pushing.

The scope of the show is broad. A few older works, like an alphabet sampler from the 1800s, are buttressed by pieces dating from the 1970s onward. Pieces by local artists are intermingled with those by international artists, including a 43-minute audio piece by Maria Fusco, the former head of arts writing at the renowned British art school, Goldsmiths. There’s ample work by Indigenous artists, including Carl Beam, Cheryl L’Hirondelle and Judy Chartrand, whose 2007 ceramic remake of Campbell’s Soup cans offers flavours like rabbit and buffalo.

It was a lot to take in, particularly after a morning listening to brilliant, well-caffeinated minds put their artspeak through its paces at the symposium. Fatigue levels were exacerbated by explanatory labels with high-squint white text on a grey background, often posted in dim light. It took a repeat visit in a fresher state of mind to fully appreciate the show.

Now, back to the symposium. It’s hard to summarize effectively, for a lot was said, but a few points of emotional resonance bear noting:

  • Keynote speaker Chris Kraus, who recently published After Kathy Acker, a portrait of the American experimental writer, read a short story that both parodied the art world (lovely lines included “lubricated deadlines” and a curator who administers “a state of confusion”) and offered reflective musings about identity.
  • Walter Scott told the story of Wendy, his satirical comic-book series about a woman whose dreams of art stardom are continually derailed by romantic troubles, post-party hangovers and professional malfunctions. There’s something of Wendy in all of us, and if you haven’t met her, I’d encourage you to reach out.
  • Métis artist and curator David Garneau, discussing why there are so few critical reviews of Indigenous exhibitions, intriguingly proposed the development of “non-colonial modes of critical care,” an as-yet undefined concept.

One irony – and a larger backdrop to the symposium – is that arts coverage is disappearing from the mainstream Canadian media landscape as quickly as free cocktails at a gallery opening. The latest rumour is that the Globe and Mail will soon dismantle much of its weekday arts section. And, yes, there are print magazines like Canadian Art and Border Crossings, as well as the untapped potential of digital. But arts writers are increasingly struggling. As one confided privately, it’s impossible to earn a living writing about art in Alberta.

Still, there are hopeful signs. Toronto-based critic Sky Goodden challenged the status quo in 2014 ago by launching Momus, an online arts magazine with an international scope. She was at the symposium and issued a bracing call for critical writing that is cogent, clear and brave.

Now, full circle, back to the exhibition.

Text’s linear qualities often exist in opposition to modes of visual apprehension. It may occupy the same space as imagery, yes, but can also subvert it, behaving like a party guest who corners you, stands too close and then launches into a loud harangue. Art and text co-exist in delicate states of fractured equilibrium. To sum things up, perhaps we should revisit the opening quip. If text has an image problem, image also has a text problem. Their relationship? As the saying goes, it’s complicated.

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