ROY ARDEN
MONTE CLARK GALLERY
MONTE CLARK GALLERY
This catalogue was published in conjunction with the exhibition: Roy Arden At Monte Clark Gallery, February 6 – March 5, 2016 Photography: Chris Rollett Design: Monte Clark Gallery Front cover image: Installation view, “Forward”
Copyright Notice Images may not be reproduced, copied, transmitted or manupulated without written permission. All rights reserved. © Copyright 2016 Monte Clark Gallery
MONTE CLARK GALLERY #105 - 525 Great Northern Way Vancouver, BC Canada V5T 1E1 604 730 5000 info@monteclarkgallery.com www.monteclarkgallery.com
Monte Clark Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of recent work by Vancouver artist Roy Arden. The exhibition focuses on several bodies of work that all follow an aesthetic strategy of collage or bricolage. Arden’s recent cyanotypes on paper are unique prints made by coating watercolour paper and other found papers with a light sensitive emulsion, laying objects on the paper and exposing it to either daylight or a metal halide light bulb. The resulting playful compositions of objects like toy trains, scraps of wire and detritus are rendered in a range of blues characteristic of the medium. Trains are a recurring motif in Arden’s oeuvre, and here the shadow of a 19th century American tin toy locomotive invokes the Westward expansion of European culture. Tip Top is a suite of unique relief prints made from vernacular, commercial printing plates the artist has collected over the past few years. These metal plates of classic cartoons like Li’l Abner and Tarzan, advertisements for burlesque shows, Jello Pudding, Coca Cola, technical diagrams, etc, represent a cross section of 20th century commercial print culture. Arden has created collages by combining and overprinting the plates in a range of vivid colours. This repurposing of found plates has its earliest precedent in Kurt Schwitter’s print collages created from plates made for various commercial concerns such as the Pelican Ink company. In some of Arden’s prints the original imagery and text are clearly legible, providing information on the sensibilities of the earlier days of modernity; in others, the artist has used the plates almost as brushstrokes to deliver deep colour and/or visual cacophony resulting in abstract compositions. Also included in the exhibition are several sculptural assemblages that continue Arden’s interest in the wheeled vehicle as an enduring motif throughout art history. These are made from a wide variety of objects including street finds, vintage toys, and automobile parts, and—as with much of Arden’s work—they at once continue and reflect on various art traditions, collage and assemblage in particular. Roy Arden’s work can be found in many public collections in North America and Europe, including The National Gallery of Canada, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Centre Pompidou, Paris, The Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, and the Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart. He has exhibited in dozens of international exhibitions from New York to Sharjah, and Berlin to Sydney. In 2007 the Vancouver Art Gallery mounted a survey show of his work covering the period 19812007. In 2013, Arden exhibited in Damage Control: Art and Destruction Since 1950 at the Hirschhorn Museum in Washington D.C.
Cowboy, 2015 Unique cyaontype on Arches paper 18 x 11 inches
High Noon, 2015 Unique cyaontype on Arches paper 30 x 22 inches
Trouble Train, 2015 Unique cyaontype on Lanaquarelle paper 23.5 x 22 inches
Ghost Train, 2015 Unique cyaontype on Arches paper 30 x 22 inches
Little Train, 2015 Unique cyaontype on found paper 8.5 x 23 inches
Tip Top 1, 2015 Unique relief print on Hahnem端le paper 30 x 22 inches
Tip Top 2, 2015 Unique relief print on Hahnem端le paper 30 x 22 inches
Tip Top 3, 2015 Unique relief print on Hahnem端le paper 30 x 22 inches
Tip Top 4, 2015 Unique relief print on Hahnem端le paper 30 x 22 inches
Tip Top 5, 2015 Unique relief print on Hahnem端le paper 30 x 22 inches
Tip Top 6, 2015 Unique relief print on Hahnem端le paper 30 x 22 inches
Tip Top 7, 2015 Unique relief print on Hahnem端le paper 30 x 22 inches
Tip Top 8, 2015 Unique relief print on Hahnem端le paper 30 x 22 inches
Tip Top 10, 2015 Unique relief print on Hahnem端le paper 30 x 22 inches
Tip Top 11, 2015 Unique relief print on Hahnem端le paper 30 x 22 inches
Tip Top 12, 2015 Unique relief print on Hahnem端le paper 30 x 22 inches
Tang, 2016 Mixed media 4.5 x 4 x 4 inches
Kickapoo, 2016 Mixed media 21 x 11 x 8 inches and 14.5 x 3.75 x 3.5 inches
Nostalgia, 2016 Mixed media 22.5 x 12 x 11 inches
Forward, 2015 Mixed media 43 x 33 x 24 inches