RAMBLE ON by Stacey Koosel Ramble On is an exhibition of artworks from UBC Okanagan Gallery’s Public Art Collection, a rambling tour, which introduces some of our newest acquisitions including works by Judith Schwarz, Sheldon Louis, Tania Willard and Neil Cadger. The exhibition was inspired by UBC Okanagan alumnus Clinton McDougall’s wooden sculpture of a car tire entitled Reinvention (2005). The tread on the tire forms a pattern based on the utilitarian principle of adding grip or traction to move forward. The idea of using patterns, repetition or grids to gain traction or derive meaning is a universal principle. From the longitude and latitude of cartography, to charting information in graphs, to ideas of the matrix (with or without Keanu) – there is something about hypnotic repetition and persuasive grids that artists utilize to communicate complex ideas with clarity, impact and irreverence. Marshall McLuhan was a 1960s philosophy of media guru, perhaps the last time an academic deeply infiltrated pop culture, his ‘15 minutes of fame’ sound bite was borrowed and misattributed to Andy Warhol, he met with politicians and pop stars to help them navigate the new electronic media era, talking about the body electric. McLuhan prophesied many futuristic ideas: the global village, the information superhighway, the narcissism / numbness of the screen, and the concept of information overload. The idea of information overload is that when our senses become overwhelmed, we resort to pattern recognition. What unites the works selected for this exhibition is the incorporation of patterns in various forms whether they are in the depiction of baskets, videos of repeating human forms, series of screen prints or use of colour and form in repetitive patterns, to literal grids as is the case in Judith Shwarz’s artworks. Shwarz’s laser cut steel and birch plywood sculptures, Grid and Grid II (1996) are an X and O - primary shapes, the beginning of handwriting, symbolic of nature and culture.1 A spatial play, one is a cross and one is a circular movement, both are elongated to contribute to the sense of dimensionality. Shwarz explained that early on in her practice she was influenced by influential minimalist and conceptual artist Sol Lewit, to make works that were abstract, not narrative or representational. Grid and Grid II communicate the relationship between culture and nature, the tension between the industrial grid represented by the steel grid element of the work and the natural warm grain of the wood, the wood grain itself being a system. There is a conflict between what you see and what is there in reality, the pair present conflicting perception. The illusion is the multi-dimensionality of the piece, the laser cut steel is just from one sheet, as is the birch plywood, the flat pieces can appear multidimensional and cause a glitch between what you are seeing and what the body is experiencing - it invites the viewer to stand inside that conflict. Even though Grid and Grid II are conceptual and intellectual, the tactile, warmth of the wood versus the dark coolness of the steel gives the work a tactility. The works of Judith Shwarz have secured a prominent position in the history of Canadian Art.2
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