IAIN BAXTER&: And [But, Yet]

Posted: June 27, 2012 | Author: David Bellman

IAIN BAXTER&: And [But, Yet]

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“New media are new environments. That is why the media are the message. One related consideration is that anti-environments, or counter-environments created by the artist, are indispensable means of becoming aware of the environment in which we live and the environment we create for ourselves technically”

–Marshal McLuhan (1967)

 

“At the end of our life there is just an &.”

–Iain Baxter& (2012)

 

A statement by Vancouver Art Gallery Librarian Cheryl Siegel (excerpted from her insightful introduction to a multi-site exhibition, “IAIN BAXTER&: Information/Location, North Vancouver”) now functions as an intervenient probe applicable to a second, far larger programme of “contemporary” art —Germany’s Documenta 13, Kassel. [See http://archives.library.yorku.ca/iain_baxterand_raisonne/archive/files/siegel-june182012-3_339929dc84.pdf] With precision, Siegel has observed: “IAIN BAXTER& has always been one step ahead.”

The individuated evidence of how BAXTER&’s work both locates and expands upon itself is particularized in the perpetual contradiction of a viewer’s self contained surroundings and the consistently conspicuous measure of distance which this artist maintains from the status quo constraints of any circumambient, technical environment. These dialectical relationships contrast sharply with the ambiguously designated Documenta 13 “retreat” (as planned for the month of August, 2012) at Banff, Alberta. In extension of an international showcase for currently fashionable art works, the organizing committee responsible for this “satellite” project have presented the critical, outside observer with a subtle aesthetic/curatorial distinction. Whereas a small, “think tank” nucleus of professional artists, academics and assorted student followers will gather, in brief isolation, at the mixed-use (commercial/educational) Banff Centre, the intellectually demanding and openly accessible BAXTER&/NorthVancouver project(s) will contemporaneously present a purposeful, expansive refutation of the diminuitive Kassel/Canada scheme.

In this regard, the curatorial endeavour “Information/Location” (June 17 –December 30, 2012), becomes a simultaneously local/global advance on the self-defining catastrophe of market-led, contemporary “art world” conceits. An embodiment of both social radicalism and institutional engagement, the CAUSA/BAXTER& (North Vancouver) initiative is connected to communities of interest outside/beyond the illusion of merely localized presence.

 

David Bellman

June 26, 2012