The Gallery Couldn’t Resist

True to its title, it’s a difficult show. On a whole, it bears striking resemblance to popular media portrayals of the dreaded “modern art.” It’s abstract, colourful, sometimes absolutely stunning, and it all seems to dislike you a little. The works hold their cards close, have few tells, and offer the viewer few concessions. The show features four artists, both Canadian and international, brought together in these rooms by a shared emphasis on the medium over the subject and a sympathetic aesthetic.

The gallery is perfectly aware of the viewer’s near certain challenges. The curatorial statement references the first ever exhibition in the space in 2007, during which the artist (Rirkrit Tiravanija) sealed up the entrance with cinder blocks, denying all interaction with the space, and goes on to acknowledge that “The Path of Most Resistance refuses easy engagement…”

The awkward part is that the gallery can’t seem to decide if they want to cast you adrift with these formidable works, and allow the difficulty of the experience to be an integral part of the experience, or if they want to do a thorough job of facilitating between the public and the show. Their solution, it seems, is to try a bit of both.

Daniel Raedeke’s woggy.

Arriving at the space, a text description of the show on the wall outside the door is the only interpretive device you’re offered, besides the usual names and titles next to the works. Daniel Raedeke’s sculptural pieces are slick and shiny and in absolute denial of their handmade fabrication. They reference both organic and wholly unnatural forms at once. His two painted pieces in the show look very much like paintings of sculptures painted by a sculptor. His work is formal and rather otherworldly.

Alexis Harding’s Flexible or Fixed?

Alexis Harding’s paintings are undeniably impressive. The paint itself is the plot of his work, and the story is frozen in the most precarious of moments in time. Splitting, folding, and sliding down the surface, it’s as if you might look back soon to see the whole thing piled on the floor. In one of his works, that’s exactly what’s happening. Harding is creating one piece, Wet Painting #10, during the course of the show, coming back at intervals to continue this work in progress. It leans near the entrance with thick wet paint that reeks of enamel and toxins, spilling out around its base.

Detail from Alexis Harding’s Wet Painting #10.

Elizabeth McIntosh’s Untitled (Blue and White - Paul Klee Cutout), and Untitled (Yellow).

Elizabeth McIntosh contributes what are perhaps the least forgiving pieces to the show. Her two, large scale angular abstracts are lovely, but feel official and rather daunting. One has been mysteriously installed on a wall covered in overlapping sheets of off-white paper, the reason for which the gallery attendant was unable to explain but assured that it was “the decision of the artist.”

Detail from Nestor Kruger's column.

It’s really one artist who uses the difficulty of the show as a tool in his arsenal, and implements resistance in the presentation of his work. Nestor Kruger’s installations deny you to the point that you might just miss them. He has created two additional pillars for the gallery’s structural support, one in each room of the gallery. They’re subtle but subversive. One stops short of reaching all the way down to the floor, hovering a few inches away from actually doing its job. The other curves gently, an act so seemingly wrong for a dutiful concrete post. Kruger requested that no visual mention be made of his work; no titles or signs, and they’re unbelievably well integrated in mimicry of the existing architecture. It would appear that the gallery and artist barely want you enjoy this work ... and this is the show at its best.

There’s nothing that says that art has to be easy, or that a gallery best serves the viewer by explaining everything. However, OCAD’s Professional Gallery couldn’t seem to go all the way and draw a hard line at difficulty. Perhaps out of habit, or in servitude to their mandate, a series of events were established throughout the course of the exhibition—a panel talk at the outset, and three evenings of “Insights” with local authorities in visual art—in an attempt to create this facilitation between the public and the show. It would seem you can’t really have both, and in not choosing between in-depth mediation and a bold, unfiltered presentation, neither is completely successful.

The next Insight into “The Path of Most Resistance” is on July 30 with Robert Linsley, and the exhibition runs until September 13.

Photos by Michael Chrisman/Torontoist.