Toni Hafkensheid, HO, Harcourt House, July 26 - August 28, 2007

Image credit: Toni Hafkensheid, C-print, 2007.

Literally, and of course figuratively blurring the line between the real and the imagined, Amsterdam-based Hafkensheid embarked on a series of photographs depicting his impression of British Columbia, mainly, his sense that the B.C. interior greatly resembles one giant train model set.
The sharp colour contrasts, of a deep green forest and a red train against a blue sky, do of course resemble early 20th century childhood representations of train sets and old postcards.
Only, to maybe go back, those train sets were modelled after the reality of the rail road. Cutting along mountains and forests, the figure of the railway only be the first intrusion into nature.
In the last 50 years have we so rapidly abandoned train travel for a far greater number roads that when we encounter a volume of nature, we can't help but find it exotic and nostalgic.
Postcards are the traveler's memory bank of a certain place and time; and this exhibit will most likely serve metamnenonically as a reminder of what nature in the early 21st century had looked like.

Tammy Salzl, Acts of Devotion, Harcourt House, July 26 - August 25, 2007

In person, the energy of Salzl's paintings are readily more apparent than the 2D world could ever represent. Large, much larger than expected, the stand out piece was not intune with the rest of her pieces, which mainly explore the role of modern women through traditional and religious iconographies; the image of boy and presumed father, the elder readily holding a weapon in one hand and the boy's hand in the other, walking away into the distance down a deserted path, with only the boy half-looking back, there is a great sense of lost conveyed not just through the Salzl's compositional hermeneutics, but in the fading light, and the expressive strokes in the boy's face that betrays reflection.

Image "The Sacrifice" courtesy of the artist

Kelly Johner, Against the Grain, FAB Gallery, July 24 - August 18, 2007

Image: "Chinganna I, II, and III" courtesy of the artist


When keeping the natural curves of the trunks, Kelly Johner disturbs the form of her sculptures. Disturb in the sense of line and aesthetic, but also in the sense that it problematizes the cold hardness of her sculpture's steel cousins. The wood grains and trunk shapes carry too much life, appearing trapped and stacked against each and so naturally melded into this new shape. As trees themselves are almost perfect structures, and where steel has none, to experience a wooden sculpture of abstract and awkward proportions was unsettling.
However, a piece like "Shoulder In", which keeps the lines straight and clean and doesn't reveal the material's formal qualities, certain carried a great presence inside the gallery. As an exercise in exploring form, as displayed with the entry way's "Chinganna I, II, III" sculptures (identifical miniature figures varying from beeswax, wood, and cement) Johner's pieces reconsiders the material matter as the central identity to a piece of art.