Gallery showcases DANBY art:
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/article/548599
NEW GALLERY SHOWS
TheStar.com
Danby show delivers easygoing, iconic images
Dec 06, 2008 04:30 AM
Peter Goddard
These days it's reasonable to think that little media attention might be paid to a Ken Danby show at the conservative Odon Wagner gallery – especially from critics interested in what's new and cutting edge.
The goalie image in Danby's signature painting, At The Crease – it wasn't Ken Dryden, the artist always insisted – turns up on sports memorabilia websites more than art sites.
So, does being this out-of-fashion mean something new? With that question in mind I knew I had to attend a recent reception for "The Graphic Works of Ken Danby."
Two other factors took me to the Wagner Gallery at 172 Davenport Rd., where the show continues until Dec. 20 (and where there'll be a show of Danby paintings next fall).
"Graphic Works" is the first show for the painter/printmaker since his unexpected death, at age 67, in fall 2007 while on a canoeing trip in Algonquin Park with his wife, Gillian, and some friends.
Secondly, it brings together all the prints he made up until about 2004, according to gallery-owner Wagner, who represents the Danby estate. The list goes back to the early '70s and the earliest of the artist's multicolour silkscreen prints.
Walking past so many familiar images – The Dreamer (1972), a remarkably chaste nude (which may explain why it's so popular with Canadians); and The Goalie (1972) – felt unpressured in a homey sort of way.
It was like listening to Gordon Lightfoot's Complete Greatest Hits, remembering where and when you first heard each song, while not getting lost in nostalgia. Listening in on the other gallery-goers around me, I discovered I wasn't alone in this.
One retired music teacher remembered waiting in a lineup outside Walter Moos Gallery in the '70s, then representing Danby, to buy a print of The Dreamer for about $200. These prints now go for between $4,000 and $7,100.
Other people shared stories about meeting Danby. "You know, he was so much better looking than anyone he ever painted," said one woman.
Those who knew him personally remembered his fussiness with getting the right tonal results in his prints, and how he'd tug at his eyebrows while deciding whether or not the result was to his liking.
It's not difficult to understand the continuing appeal of Danby's work, something likely to increase in the near future. While never mawkish, his pieces don't bring with them all the heavy-going conceptual layering surrounding work by Christopher Pratt or Alex Colville.
Danby's appeal comes easily, but it's an ease that came about from intense artistic concentration sustained by extraordinary patience.
The Messiah, with a bullet
Viktor Mitic is as proud of his technique as Ken Danby was of his. Only in the case of the 35-year-old Toronto artist, the technique we're talking about involves firearms.
Hole Jesus, on display in a group show at Trias Gallery (80 Spadina Ave., suite 403) until Dec. 18, is a decidedly rudimentary painting of Christ that's suggestive of early medieval folk portraits. It includes a halo in gold leaf circling the Christ figure's head. Tradition ends there, though. The boldly delineated outline of both head and body was fashioned by a fusillade of exactly positioned 22-calibre bullet holes. The close-up detail work, Mitic explains, required the use of a handgun. For the broader strokes, "I used a semi-automatic M14 rifle," he adds.
Art-making is often the result of violence. It may mean the artist spilling his or her blood. It may mean the artist wilfully suffering physical deprivation. Provocative art with religious connotations, such as Hole Jesus, can be found to do violence to people's beliefs. Piss Christ by American photographer Andres Serrano, showing a plastic crucifix submerged allegedly in the artist's urine, was condemned worldwide when it appeared in 1989. The Holy Virgin Mary, in which British artist Chris Ofili used elephant dung as a compositional material for a work shown in 1999 at the Brooklyn Museum of Art during the "Sensations" exhibit, resulted in a lawsuit threat from then-New York mayor Rudy Giuliani.
Yet there wasn't a peep of dismay when Hole Jesus was part of an October art show at St. James Cathedral in Toronto. "They wanted to call it Untitled," says Mitic, who sees himself as more of an abstract painter using traditional materials. "I didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings."
He claims he's not seeking attention with all this art-making gunplay, which requires trips to Buffalo to use a gun range. Most of the attention he's received to date has been for his remarkably accurate aim. In Hole Jesus, for example, the figure's eyes are both indented at the centre by bullets, one for the right eye, two for the left. Gunpowder burns add an aged effect.
The artist's accurate shooting was honed during an obligatory yearlong stint at age 18 in the army of the former Yugoslavia, where he grew up. He says his decision to apply his hotshot talents to his art came after a well-known Torontonian told him his work "wasn't penetrating enough."
Peter Goddard is a freelance Toronto writer. He can be reached at
peter_g1@sympatico.ca
http://www.kendanbyart.com/