May. 08, 2007 - Issue #603: Grow-a-Row

From Chengdu to Dirt City: a tale of two art scenes

It is the best of times; it is the worst of times. Depending on who you talk to, this is either the most awesome or most hideous time ever to be an artist in Edmonton. The polarity can be summed up thusly: some believe there is a positive correspondence between creative opportunities and the high general level of economic activity here, others feel that local art—and local artists—are getting ground under (or thrown under) those same wheels of boomtown industry.

The truth, of course and as always, is that both sides of the spectrum coexist, along with points in between, although this environment is pushing the range towards extremes at either end. It’s certainly not just the Western bronze-masters who are profiting from having more “ambient” money, but trickle-down economics also doesn’t work any better for a modern municipal community of artists than it did for the American middle class in the Reagan years.

It’s doubtful that every one of the 17 artists in Make It Not Suck, a strange and charming little urban show that will run all too briefly within the wood-swaddled tunnel that borders the construction site for the soon-to-be Sobey’s on Jasper Avenue between 104 and 105 Streets, feels completely and constantly embattled or embittered by the growth around them. Most of these people—technically anonymous but easily deducible collaborators in a guerrilla exhibition that sprang up on the morning of Sunday, May 6—are E-ville scene stalwarts in their 20s and 30s who flirt with commercialism yet still come home faithfully and lovingly to DIY.

Whether they signed on simply to be part of a bratty wink of a project or as active statement-making, it’s hard to escape the conclusion of provocation when a show with the pleading/commanding title of Make It Not Suck is installed semi-surreptitiously in the wasteland of crane-addled downtown renewal, only a block over from the city’s leading public arts institution. The AGA is in transition, too, with its current space serving as an interesting container for the gallery while awaiting its finality of purpose as an educational facility. The AGA proper will move on, into a new building. In a matter of months, the gallery’s old site on Winston Churchill Square will be a muddy, crane-addled construction pit just like the one Make It Not Suck circles precariously like a candy necklace, being picked off piece by piece. (One can only hope that those wooden tunnels will also be defiantly appropriated by a merry band of emerging artists.)

A stone’s throw away from Make It Not Suck, the walls of the AGA are covered with the work of young artists —paintings, photographs and sculptures rendered skillfully with imagination, wit and energy. However, these artists are not so much the peers of the Make It Not Suck gang as their counterparts. China Sensation: New Art From Chengdu features 22 artists from the capital city of Sichuan, in yes, the People’s Republic of China, many of them in the same age range as the Edmonton crew, and some even with a sympathetic aesthetic.

For the most part, the artists represented in Make It Not Suck are unlikely to be included in the AGA anytime soon. They are too young or too untrained or too undisciplined or too multidisciplinary or too intellectually unruly or simply too disinterested to compete with established names a generation or more ahead of them. Solo shows for locals at the AGA are rare; positional jockeying for the narrow niches that arise can seem both pitiless and pathetic to younger talents disinclined towards the “industry” approach to artmaking.

Both shows are worth seeing (the street art is documented at makeitnotsuck.blogspot.com), and have interesting commonalities and differences.

Ephemeral versus tangible. Make It Not Suck has maybe days before it disintegrates through urban decay. China Sensation hangs in a pristine protected environment, with a lush tabletop-book-type catalogue as its afterlife.

DIY versus formal channels. China Sensation owes its existence to diplomatic, cultural and economic bridge-building by the AGA and the Brave New World-ishly named Chengdu Profound Culture Promoting Co, Ltd. Extensive studio visits were done, judicious curatorial choices made, and the pieces expertly installed. Make It Not Suck was its own only rule, and consisted of a loose knot of art pals mounting work quickly on a sleepy Sunday morning.

“Art in public” versus “public art.” Nothing’s vulgar, but the artists of Make It Not Suck don’t seem to be seeking approval, either. AGA has the unenviable job of making Edmonton seem credible as a culturally relevant metropolis outside the region while simultaneously appealing to as many Edmontonians as possible. China Sensation walks that something-for-everyone line.

Common themes. Growth generates upheaval. Artworks from both cities reflect urban paranoia and social anxiety caused by economic transformation. Chengdu artists tend to manifest these as a preoccupation with resources (especially food) and compressed and distorted landscapes, while the Make crowd dives into sentimentality, indulges in Dada repetition, and leverages the environmental context of their work to evoke those notions. Works from both shows share a dream-like logic and an aesthetic that can be called “earnest whimsy”—playfully engaging a serious topic. Nostalgia and theatricality are endemic to both artist groups, along with using animals and botanical subjects in a pop wonderland/dystopia fantasy. Genre mash-ups are common to both, too: printerly sculptures, drawing-ish paintings, painterly photographs, etc.

For a largely unplanned show, Make It Not Suck has provided the perfect companion piece and response to the meticulous China Sensation, reasserting Edmonton’s singular place in the world of art with sly, slouchy mirth. V

 

To Jun 10
China Sensation: New Art From Chengdu
With Yang Cao, Shuo Chen, Conglin Cheng, Xiang Cheng, Yi Diao, Qing Han,
Mingjing Huang, Jing Jiang, Peng Jiang, Mao Li, Xueming Lian, Shi Liu, Xintao Liu,
Jie Luo, Yuqi Luo, Quangping Qui, Feng Tian, Chengdian Wu, Yongkang Xu,
Chunsheng Yang, Hanmei Yang,
Gudqiang Zhang
Art Gallery of Alberta
(100 - 10230 Jasper Avenue)


Until it gets torn down
Make It Not Suck
Various Semi-Anonymous Artists
North side of Jasper Avenue,
between 104 & 105 Streets

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