Opening reception: Thursday, April 3, 5 – 8 pm
From an artistic perspective, Brendan Tang and Alex McLeod have a lot in common and yet are not very similar. Both reinvent old traditions through juxtaposition with contemporary characteristics; both have a fascination with technology and it’s visual manifestations; both create believable, authentic worlds and creations that are fictions brought to life. However, one works with clay in his hands and the other in a completely digital environment before the final output to photographic paper.
The title Fan Fiction comes from both artists' propensity to play with tradition and rewrite art by using an existing style as a starting point. The Manga Ormolu series by Tang references the Blue and White of ancient Chinese ceramics, the post-Renaissance European (mostly) commercial enterprise of gilding these same vessels with different filigrees and the contemporary, pop-infused aesthetics of Japanese manga cartoons. A case could be made for Alex McLeod to be categorized as a landscape artist, even though his images make no claim to representation of a specific place. In fact, just the opposite: they present a place that obviously does not exist and yet he includes enough of what is comfortable to us (a horizon line, a semblance of
water, the basic geometry of a building) to make us able to understand and relate to the images.
The conscious coupling of Tang and McLeod’s explorations and output is the appropriately titled “Love Child”, a unique piece that is both a
purposefully incomplete vessel, an animation that completes the vessel and the live video of it happening. This multi-media installation will be part of the exhibition, in addition to several new works by both artists. Please join us for an opening reception, with both artists in attendance, on Thursday, April 3rd from 5 – 8pm.
On Saturday, April 12th at 2:30 pm, Richard Rhodes, Editor of Canadian Art magazine, will be speaking about the exhibition. I hope you will
be able to join us.
For additional information visit the Gallery Jones website.