A towering photograph of performance artist-turned-photographer Max Dean adorns the entrance way to the National Gallery of Canada’s (NGC) biennial exhibition collectively entitled Builders. His photograph, “Here We Go,” draws an unsuspecting viewer in with its dynamic representation of an everyday object: a pulley.
He’s suspended, upside down, with his feet holding the pulley in place. His hands hold the other end of the rope attached to the pulley above him. If he let go, he’d come crashing down. But for now, he’s tensed up, red in the face, holding on.
It’s this moment of suspense —the fact that he is holding on for dear life in a seemingly ridiculous situation— that pulls the audience in and prepares them for the collective contemporary work of 45 of Canada’s best artists.
Yet, for an artist like Dean, a dynamic quality in his work is not unexpected — it’s a throwback to a performance stunt Dean tried live back in the late 1970s.
“Photography allowed him to go back and re-experience that early performance piece,” said Ann Thomas, curator of photographs for the NGC.
“He decided he wanted to test his own personal limits by trying it again and photography became the tool that allowed him to do that and record it permanently for himself.”
This is not the first time Dean’s work has been showcased at the NGC. One of his more recent installations that used image capture was “This is It,” also on display at the gallery. The installation is a clock, which takes a picture of the viewer’s face, displays it, then wipes the image away over a minute.
“I’ve used a lot of image capture, but this is my biggest foray into photography yet,” Dean said.
Dean also said that this photoset is very autobiographical, more so than other works he’s done. He said he focused on everyday objects and tried to get to their deeper meaning.
“I try and embody what I know about the object and what I’m reading from the object, he said. “Do objects wait for us? I think they wait for us as viewers to say to them ‘I like this,’ ‘I don’t like this,’ ‘this means this to me,’ or whatever.” The rest of the exhibit featured more than just photography, including installations, sculptures and multimedia light, sound, and moving picture pieces.
“In placing emergent practices alongside long-established Canadian artists who have been instrumental in ‘building’ a context for Canadian art today, Builders offers the opportunity to appreciate the range of aesthetic accomplishment in this country,” NGC director Marc Mayer wrote in the exhibit’s catalogue.
Thomas agreed saying that the range of photography alone explores a multitude of ideas and styles.
“These artists bring a particular sensibility where their experience has been from across medium boundaries and maybe that gives them a certain freedom,” she said.
Cross-medium exploration seemed to be a theme that each “builder” had employed in their work. For Dean, moving from performance art to photography had its own challenges.
“When you’re performing you’ve got the aspect of time but with a photograph, that time is probably a microsecond. Either I get you right now or I don’t get you at all,” he said.
As the exhibit preview wound down, the extent and calibre of Canadian art was obvious.
At times, the art was expansive and filled the room which it occupied. Or, the art was more subtle – a simple photograph of a man upside down, hanging from a pulley.
“While I make my work in the studio, at a certain point, it find its way through the door and that’s when the viewer takes over,” Dean said.
