After World War II, Jackson Pollock and the American Abstract Expressionists deployed abstraction as a way of registering authentic bodily and psychic impulses that were real and unmediated by style or aesthetic refinement of any kind. For the artists in REAL, abstraction also signifies the real – but with some differences.

Tim Rechner, for instance, draws from the unselfconsciousness of Lucy, an elephant from the Edmonton Valley Zoo.  In painting with Lucy, Tim drew off of Lucy’s differently constituted creative consciousness to produce artwork that harmoniously walks the line between man and animal.  Marianne Watchel, on the other hand, tries to counter the trivializations of contemporary culture. “It is easier to rely on sarcasm, symbolism and irony than to be emotionally honest,” she says, “and yet what art can offer is honest connection.”  Maria Madacky’s work recalls earlier abstract painters who strove to represent the un-representable: working serially and deploying chance as a way of arriving at indeterminate compositions, she uses her materials to conjure dimensions beyond the grasp of perspectival realism.  Paul Bernhardt is the skeptic of the group. For him, abstraction is the visible symptom of a breakdown in our perceived ability to resolve a true picture of the world.  Together, these artists add to the ongoing dialogue about what ‘real’ looks like today.

This exhibition is curated by Marcus Miller, Assistant Curator and Manager of Public Programs at the Art Gallery of Alberta.  The REAL artist talk will be held on September 18, 2008 at 7pm at the Art Gallery of Alberta.Media Release (PDF, 622 KB)

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