Yvonne and Yvonne
I received two emails two days apart from each other. Both are announcements for art shows by artists called Yvonne.
This post is about the tendency for viewers/receivers to make connections where no real connections exist. Our drive to find meaning within ourselves betrays our own sense of logic.
Accordingly, I’m driven to find parallels between these two emails – a sign – anything more than a random coincidence. A mere coincidence would mean the acceptance of non-meaning.
Yvonne Singer is a Canadian visual artist who makes videos and deserves far more credit than she has received. Yvonne Rainer is a renowned dancer turned filmmaker who has received a significant amount of international attention for her work in both fields. I could go on with more similarities and differences.
My strong inclination here is to draw a moral. To state the mantra of every critic of the Canadian Arts scene: Canadian Artists get a raw deal and deserve more international exposure and national recognition.
So in this case the art historical laws of comparison and contrast are turned upside down. The inclination to draw a parallel actually is accurate in reality.
The unfortunate truth is Yvonne and Yvonne are equals as artists and yet their equality is meaningless in our artworld.
I I I I wa wa wa WANT
Yvonne Singer
neon, mirror
December 5 to January 3
I I I I I wa wa wa WANT is a site-specific installation consisting of the words “I want” in neon, and mounted on 2 opposite-facing mirrors. The self-reflecting mirrors will create the illusion of repeating the words to infinity as well as implicating the viewers reflected in the mirrors. The convenience gallery storefront is an ideal location for this work. It is the intersection of the space of commerce and the private space of individual longing. The work speaks to our desires. Neon signs are familiar signifiers of commerce in an urban setting and the media advertising surrounding us promotes the economy of desire. Who doesn’t want something? Who hasn’t looked longingly at shop window?
Yvonne Singer is a practicing artist with an active national and international exhibition record. Her installation works employ multimedia techniques, often with cryptic texts to articulate cultural issues of disjuncture and perception. She is particularly interested in the intersection of public and private histories. Singer, a member of Loop Gallery, has served on several gallery, magazine, and art council boards and is on faculty in the Department of Visual Arts at York University where she is the former Graduate Program Director in visual arts.
convenience is a window gallery that provides an opening for art that engages, experiments, and takes risks with the architectural, urban, and civic realm.
convenience
24/7 window gallery
58 Lansdowne Avenue, Toronto ON M6K 2V9
(at Seaforth Avenue, one block North of Queen)
contact: Yvonne Singer
The Yvonne Rainer Project
26 November 2010 – 23 January 2011
Private view:
Thursday 25 November 6.30-9pm
The BFI Gallery show features Rainer's installation, After Many a Summer Dies the Swan: Hybrid (2002) to be shown for the first time in Europe and installation format projections of two of Rainer's most recent choreographies (as she has returned to dance in the past ten years), filmed by Babette Mangolte; RoS Indexical (2008) and AG Indexical with a Little Help from H.M. (2007).
ABOUT YVONNE RAINER
Yvonne Rainer was born in San Francisco in 1934. After training in modern dance in New York from 1957, she began to choreograph her own work in 1960. She was one of the founders of the Judson Dance Theatre in 1962, the genesis of a movement that proved to be a vital force in modern dance in the following decades. Rainer made a transition to filmmaking following a 15 year career as a choreographer/dancer (1960-1975). After making seven experimental feature films - Lives of Performers (1972), Privilege (1990), MURDER and murder (1996), among others - she returned to dance in 2000 via a commission from the Baryshnikov Dance Foundation for the White Oak Dance Project. Her most recent dances are AG Indexical, with a little help from H.M., a re-vision of Balanchine's Agon, RoS Indexical, a re-vision of Nijinsky's Rite of Spring and a Performa07 commission, and Spiraling Down, a meditation on soccer, aging, and war. Her dances have been performed in New York, Los Angeles, Vienna, Helsinki, Kassel, Berlin, and Sao Paolo. A memoir—Feelings Are Facts: a Life—was published by MIT Press in 2006. Rainer is currently the Claire Trevor Professor in Studio Art at the University of California, Irvine. She lives and works in California and New York.
BFI Gallery
BFI Southbank, London, SE1
posted by Otino Corsano at 8:38 PM
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