CONCEPTIVITY/CONNECTIVITY: Dimensionality And Displacement In The Work of IAIN BAXTER&

Posted: July 27, 2012 | Author: David Bellman

CONCEPTIVITY/CONNECTIVITY:

Dimensionality And Displacement

In The Work of IAIN BAXTER&

David Bellman

CAUSA

July 23, 2012

__________

 

Part II

Precursory Provisions

 

“Infinity is the Fleeting, the Fleeting is the Vanishing,

the Vanishing is the Reverting.”

– Lao Tzu (c. 600 B.C.E.)

 

1.

THIS STATEMENT WILL BE, IS BEING, HAS BEEN SENT BY TELEX

[Statement Series, 1968-69.]

Telex transmission from N.E. THING CO. (North Vancouver) to Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (via Simon Fraser University Library, Burnaby), September 15, 1969.

[In September, 1969, IAIN BAXTER& assumed a position in the Centre for Communications and the Arts, SimonFraserUniversity. Being responsible for starting a Visual Arts Department, his aim was to cultivate “visual sensitivity” in students – without attempting to produce professional artists.]

 

2.

ORAL WORK.

Baxter (North Vancouver) to Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax, September 15, 1969.

Documentation:

Nova Scotia College of Art and Design memorandum.

 

3.

ORAL WORK.

North Vancouver City Library. (Forming part of a multi-site exhibition, IAIN BAXTER&: Information/Location, North Vancouver, presented at North Vancouver Museum/North Vancouver City Library/North Vancouver Archives/Loutet Urban Farm. June 17 – December 30, 2012.)

[Photograph: M. Cynog Evans, 2012.]

 

4.

A WORD IS WORTH 1/1000^TH OF A PICTURE

[Statement Series, 1968-69.]

Documentation:

Telex transmission from N.E. THING CO. (Projects Department), North Vancouver (via Simon Fraser University Library, Burnaby) to Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax (September 18, 1969).

 

5.

“A Word Is Worth 1/1000^th Of A Picture.” Wall text, 2011.

[Presented as part of the exhibition IAIN BAXTER&: New (Nomadic) Works: 1969 / 2011, Artspeak, Vancouver.]

[Photograph: M. Cynog Evans, 2012.]

 

6.

THIS STATEMENT IS A MURAL

[Statement Series, 1968-69.]

Telex transmission from N.E. THING CO. (Projects Department), North Vancouver (via Simon Fraser University Library, Burnaby), to Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax (September 19, 1969).

Original instructions to NSCAD students: “Get 3” gold sticky letters and stick on some polished stone surface….”

[Photograph: M. Cynog Evans, 2012.]

 

7.

“This Statement Is Actually A Mural.” Wall text, 2011.

[Presented as part of the exhibition IAIN BAXTER&: New (Nomadic) Works]: 1969 / 2011.]

 

8.

“Take a piece of chalk and draw on any chalkable surface until the chalk disappears. Photodocument.”

Documentation: Telex from N.E. THING CO., North Vancouver (via SimonFraserUniversity Library, Burnaby), to Nova ScotiaCollege of Art and Design, Halifax, October 3, 1969.

 

9.

Chalk drawing, following Iain Baxter instructions (from 1969). Executed (at the North VancouverMuseum) by Kevin Day, June, 2012.

 

10.

Chiba Garden Redux, digital colour photograph © IAIN BAXTER&, 2012

IAIN BAXTER& studied and travelled extensively in Japan (1961-62), exploring local traditions of visual culture and Buddhist philosophy.

ChibaGarden is located in North Vancouver (200-block, West Esplanade). Linking the City of North Vancouver and its sister city, Chiba, this authentic Japanese garden was opened to the public in 1986. BAXTER& made his first visit to the site in June, 2012.

__________

 

I know

The world is not

How it appears to be;

And yet how evanescent things are!

– Ryokan (1758-1831)

__________

CONCEPTIVITY / CONNECTIVITY

Posted: July 20, 2012 | Author: David Bellman

CONCEPTIVITY / CONNECTIVITY:

DIMENSIONALITY AND DISPLACEMENT

 

David Bellman

Part 1

In Plain View

 

“Art has poisoned our life.”

• Theo Van Doesburg (1925)

 

“The world is inseparable from the subject, but from a subject

which is nothing but a project of the world.”

• Maurice Merleau Ponty (1945)

 

“A million years is contained in a second, yet we tend to forget the

second as it happens.”

• Robert Smithson (1966)

 

“In a space with more than three dimensions, there can be no

traditional atoms and perhaps no stable structures. A space with

less than three dimensions allows no gravitational force and may

be too simple and barren to contain observers.”

• Max Tegmark (1997)

 

Preliminary points of reference:

1.

BLOCK

Aluminum letters on wall. (Installation variable.)

First presented in the exhibition N.E. Thing Co. Ltd., National Gallery of Canada, 1969.

Exhibited (in a new format) at Artspeak, Vancouver: New (Nomadic) Works, October 26 to November 12, 2011.

[Photographs: M. Cynog Evans.]

 

2.

“A word is worth 1/1000^th of a picture.”

Wall text. (Installation variable.)

First presented in the exhibition N.E. Thing Co. Ltd., National Gallery of Canada, 1969.

Exhibited (in a new format) at Artspeak, Vancouver: New (Nomadic) Works, October 26 to November 12, 2011.

[Photograph: M. Cynog Evans.]

 

3.

“This statement is actually a mural.”

Wall text. [Installation variable.]

First presented in the exhibition N.E. Thing Co. Ltd., National Gallery of Canada, 1969.

Exhibited (in a new format) at Artspeak, Vancouver: New (Nomadic) Works, October 26 to November 12, 2011.

 

4.

AND/DNA

Window signage, North Vancouver City Library, North Vancouver, British Columbia.

Presented as a component of the curatorial project IAIN BAXTER&: Information/Location, North Vancouver (a multi-site exhibition), presented from June 17 to December 30 2012.

[Photographs: M. Cynog Evans.]

 

__________

“Vancouver’s N.E. Thing Co. is another name for Iain Baxter … an artist for whom anything goes.”

• Time Magazine (Canadian Edition), September 1, 1967

 

“The ampersand summons the idea of something always happening in the future.”

• IAIN BAXTER& (2012)

 

IAIN BAXTER&: Field Conditions: Loutet Park (North Vancouver)

Posted: July 4, 2012 | Author: David Bellman

IAIN BAXTER&:
Field Conditions:
Loutet Park
(North Vancouver)

David Bellman, CAUSA

__________

 

“Every thing which is in harmony with me I call In harmony – But there may be things with Me which are not in harmony with Me & yet are in a More perfect Harmony.”

William Blake (notebook entry, written in mirror script), 1811

 

“Even as the Romantics began to deal with the old pastoral, agrarian world as an art form when machinery was new, so we will now begin to deal with the planet as a work of art.”

Marshall McLuhan, 1967

 

“Humans are 10,000 times more common than we should be.”

Steve Jones (Professor of Genetics, University College London), 2008

 

“Language moves in the middle kingdom between the “indefinite” and the “infinite”; it transforms the indeterminate into a determinate idea, and then holds it within the sphere of finite determinations.”

Ernst Cassirer, 1924

 

“As for galleries, to an exponent of “impossible art” like Baxter[&] they are obsolete.”

Joan Lowndes, 1971

 

Working away from (against) the inherently isolated conformism of so-called “post-studio” contemporary art, IAIN BAXTER& develops an alternatively engaged “laboratory” practice (situated outside/beyond a traditionally circumscribed role for “gallery-centred” practitioners).

Through his own self-defining space-time experiments BAXTER& connects a suggestively “creative praxis” to a boundlessly prospective “global public”.

 

David Bellman
July 2, 2012