Shirley Kaneda, Fiona Rae, Clunie Reid, Ed Ruscha, Aaron Wexler, John Wilkins
Curated by Sherman Sam
1 March - 1 April 2007
My idea for this show is more intuitive; inspired by the notion of a dialogue between the objects, rather than a sense of “direct communication”, or strong over-arching curatorial concept. I chose a group of artists that I found interesting at different levels and approaches, whose work I felt would create a meaningful dialogue with each other.
Fiona Rae and Ed Ruscha perhaps exercise the show in different ways. Despite the intensity of her clashing of imagery and style or touch, there is also a different internal intimacy to her works on paper. Ruscha is cool; cool with detachment. It is his drawings that are the “hottest” though, in the sense that his touch is more apparent than in the paintings. On the other hand, Wilkins’ uses a hard-edged imagery that disguises an ease of gesture that he constantly tries to achieve in his paintings. The ‘funny’ Pop-like imagery also masks an ontological nature that was his point of departure. Likewise, Shirley Kaneda’s paintings are engaged with an interrogation of painting’s language. Yet, her sense of colour and design exceed this drive. Clunie Reid and Aaron Wexler use collage to put together ideas. Reid questions and responds to media, while Wexler’s imagery is fluid and dreamlike.
The two words in the title, “twilight” and “musings” I hope evoke this sense of the show. For me, twilight suggests a time for reflection that may be considered to be without anxiety, and a moment when a meditation on things occur. It might be said to undo the idea that we seem to be working in a moment when some of these notions have fallen away and much talk of art seems to be about communication with direct consequences; art with a message, that answers the question, “what is this about, then?”
Sherman Sam is an artist and holds the Inspire Curatorial Fellowship at The Hayward Gallery.
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