Germaine Krull

Modernist photographer Germaine Krull led an extraordinary life that spanned nine decades and four continents. She witnessed many of the major events of the twentieth century and with her camera examined and recorded the industrial, technological and cultural transformations that took place following World War I. Born in Wilda, East Prussia (now Poland), Krull studied photography as a young woman in Munich.

untitled, open books and portrait, date unknown, gelatin silver print, 7.75 x 6.5 in

  

Politically minded for her entire career, Krull was briefly imprisoned in Russia as a counterrevolutionary and then deported before moving to Berlin in 1922. Working as a photographer, her subjects and were varied and diverse: fashion spreads, architecture, nudes, avant-garde montages, street photography and highly successful commercial advertising work all contributed to her body of work. Moving to Paris in 1928 and to Amsterdam later on, Krull was concerned with depicting all aspects of the modern city, with dramatically high angles, muscular patterns and near-abstracted close-ups. 

The Palm-Beach Pool in Cannes, c.1935, gelatin silver, 5.75 x 4.75 in

  

Alfa Romeo, c.1935, gelatin silver, 8 x 6 in

Quarry, c.1928, gelatin silver, 6 x 8 in

untitled, woman sitting on wall, c.1935, gelatin silver, 4.75 x 6.75 in

  

Genetics for Cowboys

Genetics for Cowboys

Multimedia Installation by Deborah Carruthers

September 15 – October 13, 2012

Opening Reception

Saturday, September 15th, 2 – 5 PM

   

         Genetics for Cowboys, a multimedia installation, was created in response to an artist residency exploring the intersection of science and art at University of Calgary. The exhibition investigates the socio-political impact of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, commonly known as mad cow disease, and is the result of a research project the artist engaged in at the invitation of renowned scientists such as Dr. Morley Hollenberg and Dr. Christen Sensen at the University of Calgary. 

The presentation includes paintings, photographs, a sound installation and a didactic slide show. The sound component of Genetics for Cowboys is comprised of an audio loop of the cattle auctions at Oldes Auction Mart, Alberta. Carruthers creates her intervention through this sound loop, now disrupted to include auctioneers “calling out” in auction patter, juxtaposed with Agriculture Canada regulations pertaining to the prevention and containment of mad cow disease, as well as excerpts of science and news articles.

The artist’s suite of bold acrylic paintings capture evocative abstract representations of cattle coats along with DNA-like renderings of the disease causing agent of mad cow disease. The accompanying photography deftly displays the complex realities of animal husbandry and the burgeoning field of related genetics to complete a compelling view of information gleaned from her research – research that raises provocative questions about what can happen when economic and political concerns trump science.

Genetics for Cowboys powerfully intersects art and science to investigate little known information about a very well known event that some in fact may find hard to swallow.

Text by Linda Abrahams

Artist bio: Deborah Carruthers is a Montreal based artist and curator. Her projects have been presented in art venues across Canada, as well as internationally.

Dancing with Che: Enter through the Gift Shop

Barbara Astman
Dancing with Che: Enter through the Gift Shop
Sept 28 – October 21
a museum gift shop intervention / installation

Barbara Astman explores the commodification of iconic revolutionary Che Guevara

containR
Olympic Plaza
228 8 Avenue Southeast Calgary, AB T2P 2M5
Presented by the Museum of Contemporary Art Calgary

containR: a street installation at the nexus of video, public art and urban design, sitting at the cross roads of mountain and urban culture, art and sports cinema, embracing public art and sustainable design

Paris after Atget

Colonne de Juillet, Place de la Bastille, 11e, 2007, gelatin silver, 13 x 18.5 in

Thaddeus Holownia went to Paris more than once before undertaking this series. These missions set up in him a different appetite – that is why we travel after all. He would not go after surfaces, but layers. An archaeologist would call this a ‘dig’: the careful exploration of a site to reveal and, sometimes, extract evidence of its former states and uses. All photographers, consciously or unconsciously, traffic in history and memory. Any photographic image can be excavated for signs of the past and most can help us to visualize changes to the earth or the living arrangements of its earthly creatures. History, as Jacques Le Goff tells us, “can only be a science of change and the explanation of change.” Any object or scene is infused with this dynamic potential; a photograph does not capture all of it, to be sure, but preserves and circulates an observant photographer’s insights about the history-in-the-making of a place.

Street calligraphy, 2007, gelatin silver, 13 x 18.5 in

Holownia has called this series “Paris after Atget.” In his statement of plans, he mentions not only Eugène Atget (1856 – 1927), who spent most of his working life intimately and exhaustively documenting the city, but Walker Evans (1903 – 1975) who spent about a year in the city (much of that reading books!) before returning home to America where his photographic subjects became places abandoned and people in transition and neglect. Scouting Paris with these ghosts, Holownia developed a comprehensive list of sites, scattered over twenty arrondissements, that responded to Atget’s rigour, sense of belonging, and visual poetry, as well as Evans’s eye-opening, fleeting experience.

Terrasse Lautreamont, 2007, gelatin silver, 13 x 18.5 in

A selection of photographs from Paris after Atget now on view at Corkin Gallery.

Photography by Thaddeus Holownia

Text by Martha Langford

The Eye as Dove

untitled, 2012, oil on canvas, 96 x 120 in

David Urban
The Eye as Dove
September 13 – October 28, 2012
Opening Reception: 5pm to 8pm, September 13

David Urban is widely regarded as the leading Canadian painter of his generation. His critically acclaimed paintings have become well known for their signature wandering lines, textured surfaces, and distinctive colour.

The Eyes as Dove is a visual chronicle of a walk in the woods. Natural elements found in the wild are condensed into form and figure. Deeply poetic and meditative, the paintings reconstruct moments in time as objects in space, each with a discrete personality. 

David Urban is exclusively represented by Corkin Gallery, located in the historic Distillery District, one of Toronto's hottest cultural attractions.

Made of Iron

Rigging Eye, Ironworks, 2001, 24 x 20 in, gelatin silver print

Taking as his subject a selection of hoary and venerable blacksmith-made objects (a rigging link, a rigging eye, and a measuring device called a “traveller”) each of them pitted with use and pocked with the decay, Thaddeus Holownia positions each of these objects against a velvety background. The intimacy of detail is made possible by the photographer’s use of the large negative format (8” x 10”) presenting each tool as an intriguing artifact.

Rigging Link, Ironworks, 2001, 24 x 20 in, gelatin silver print

Traveller, Ironworks, 2001, 24 x 20 in, gelatin silver print

Photography by Thaddeus Holownia

The Exacting Eye of Walker Evans

Woman and Man at Amusement Park, 1929. Gelatin silver print, 6 x 8.5 in

Walker Evans (1903-1975) created defining images of America. His work has influenced not only modern photography but also literature, film and visual arts in other mediums. Evans took up photography upon his return to New York in 1927, following a year in Paris when his aspiration to become a writer faded in the shadow of Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Joyce. Best known for social documentary photography, Evans worked for the Farm Security Administration recording the effects of the Great Depression. Much of his work from this period uses the large-format, 8x10-inch camera. Commenting on his work at the time, Evans noted that his goal as a photographer was to make pictures that were literate, authoritative and transcendent.

Church of Nazarene, Tennessee, 1936, Gelatin Silver Print, 7.5 x 9.5 in

In 1936 he traveled with the writer James Agee to illustrate an article on tenant farm families for Fortune magazine and the book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men came out of this collaboration. Evans continued to work for the FSA until 1938. That year, the Museum of Modern Art in New York held the exhibition, Walker Evans: American Photographs. This was the first exhibition that MoMA devoted to the work of a single photographer.

Throughout his career Evans contributed photographs to numerous publications, including three devoted solely to his work. In 1965 he left Fortune, where he had been a staff photographer for twenty years, to become a professor of photography and graphic design at Yale University. He remained in the position until 1974, a year before his death.