Any time a photographer hangs 11 large blue squares on white walls and calls it art, I must check it out. It’s always possible we have the next Black Square on our hands, and I want to have seen it first.
Now, I admit that I’m a contextualist. If it’s an image that needs an explanation, give me an explanatory note beside each piece, or, better yet, headphones and a taped explanation. Or let me speak to the artist. If I have to go in without any background and guess at the meaning behind what I am seeing, I get irritated.
I climbed the stairs to the second-floor location in a less-than-receptive mood and crossed the threshold into the long, bright, tiny white room showing Horizon 1 to 11. My eyes noticed the absence of title cards and, irritated anew, I thought about leaving.
But something about the squares drew me further into the room. Then I felt the old hit of knowing I was in the presence of art, and my eyes opened as the serene, sepulchral environment made an impression.
What the blue squares were mounted on was beginning to warp. Did the artist mean for them to appear to float above the walls like that? I noticed my shadow looked different reflected in each one; was that intentional? My favorite a deep, Prussian blue pool was steeped in nostalgia for me, reminding me of leaning over the edge of an air mattress as a child, looking deep into the bluest part of the lake. But why did she choose blue? Why a square?
In her artist’s statement, Wallace explains her blue squares as a “longing to be able to see what is beyond, so that the visually familiar becomes almost invisible,” of “wanting to create a contemplative space,” and of trying to avoid the natural restriction of photography because “an image always has to be something.”
While I wish I could say I honestly knew what she meant, I can’t. But, having seen the installation, I’m prepared to say that whatever it was, she pulled it off. (Hear that? It’s the sound of my aesthetic muscle being stretched.)
Some argue most contemporary art is not art or if it is, it’s not good art. But whether or not a square of solid colour be it a photograph or, say, a painting of a black square is art is not an interesting question. It is one for the philosophers to argue over, and a question artists have been wise to ignore, as evidenced by these 11 blue squares.
Horizon 1 to 11
Until December 15
Deluge Contemporary Art Gallery, 636 Yates Street
deluge.ca