Grant Arnold

A stalwart of Vancouver's Conceptual scene, artist and musician Rodney Graham has used an array of media to explore appropriated historical sources from literature, philosophy and pop music, and to induce shifts in the viewer's preconceptions and perceptions of these sources: Sigmund Freud, Donald Judd, Edgar Allan Poe and even Graham's former bandmate Jeff Wall have provided subject matter for the artist's critical tweakings. Through the Forest collects over 100 works, dating from 1978 to the present, that emphasize Graham's interpolations in cultural history-in the forms of appendices, bookmarks and exhibition devices in the style of Donald Judd. This monograph also premiers Graham's first incursion into painting, his 2005 series Picasso, My Master, which inflects the reverence commonly attending Picasso's work with his signature humor. Through the Forest makes a thorough assessment of Graham's influential and seductive body of work.… (plus d'informations)

One of Canada's most humorous conceptual artists--as witty as he is smart--Rodney Graham gets his first North American museum retrospective and accompanying catalogue. Rodney Graham: A Little Thought tracks the career of a brilliant, idiosyncratic artist whose work spans a range of media including photography, film, book works, installation and pop music. In this volume, amply illustrated with many never-before-seen images from early in his career as well as new photography of his most recent works, scholarly essays provide a broad context for viewing: Cornelia Butler looks at Graham's relationship to landscape and Canadian identity, Lynne Cooke examines the construction of the artist's persona in works such as City Self/ Country Self (2001), and Shep Steiner discusses the joke as a conceptual strategy for Graham. Diedrich Diederichsen considers the artist's oeuvre within the context of musical structure, and Sara Krajewski describes how Graham's video works unfold. Finally, Grant Arnold offers an in-depth illustrated chronology, tracing the range of activities that have occupied Graham since his early days on the Vancouver scene.… (plus d'informations)

There's actually a lot of text, and it's interesting reading, if a bit heavy on the catalog part sometimes. But it still does what an art book should do, which is to give the reader "fresh eyes" for a while, so it'll get a thumbs up from me I think.

Another reviewer wrote that of a different catalogue: it applies here.

Exhibit and artist catalogues are a peculiar reading experience. Part of this comes from not reading many until recently, and part lies with their unfamiliar subject matter: art movements, artists and individual works, the various events (e.g. Venice Biennale) and fixtures, sundry forms and techniques. Another part from the distinctive blend of essay, biography, criticism, guidebook. The voice can be personal, academic, biographical; most often it switches among these, within a single publication. And of course, profuse illustrations as in a history book, sometimes an individual photo (they are most often photos) appearing pages before or after the relevant work is discussed in the text. Looking back and forth between essay and plates picturing the work. Resonances between various essays, common mentions of specific works. It makes for an oddly enjoyable disorientation, this blend of subjective and objective, all the more when the artist contributes alongside peers and critics.

I'm intrigued by Rodney's Graham's linkage between literature and his work, his extra-literary habit of quoting / alluding to literature in paintings, audio works, installations. Similarly, his use of art (music, film & still images, objects, paintings) seemingly as a means of defining himself for himself, and at the same time (yet something distinct) his conception of the amateur auteur. A conscious rendering of archetype. I get the impression Graham uses these cultural allusions as building blocks of Self, life as the Socratic art project. I don't recall Graham or any other contributor saying this in so many words, and it doesn't come across as pretension. More as though he does it for itself, and oh, incidentally: "if I can make a living doing it, it's all to the good."

I'm lookin' for the key
The key that will open the door
To the world.
(High and Lonesome)

It's all done with humour, but comedy isn't the aim: a means not an end. For example, the music is serious and slightly progressive, while the lyrics are odd, somewhat in the manner of Capt Beefheart. Art itself would appear to be a means. The end is: how to live, how to be a person in the world.

//

Rock Is Hard CD
The System of Landor's Cottage… (plus d'informations)