Visitors planning to visit the new art exhibit at Profiles might want to consider some gloves, sturdy steel-toed boots and maybe some knee braces. Artist Edward van Vliet said that viewers should expect to do a fair bit of heavy lifting but only when it comes to the interpretation of what they are seeing.
Van Vliet is the former curator of the gallery but even though he moved away years ago, he’s still immersed in art and culture. The current director and curator at the Canmore Museum and Geoscience Centre has been exploring the connections people make between images and text and the changing interpretations that occur as one discovers and explores those connections. Everything is different to everybody and, after all, what would art be without someone to look at it and develop an opinion, thought or feeling about it?
“The connections between the objects soon begin to be about the connections between viewer and object and ultimately between the viewer and everything they bring to that conversation,” he writes in his artist statement. “As such, the work is insistent that the viewer or reader does some of the heavy lifting of interpretation.”
This is the origin of his show called your thoughts, like stars. It’s a way of reaching out to bridge the gap between art and interpretation, the image and the word and the divine and the earthly. It’s no small task, hence the protective gear. In fact, before you get through the whole show, you might be on your knees and that’s a small indication of how art can move the viewer.
One of van Vliet’s pieces is called recipes for kneeling, a series of books placed at a height that requires a specific posture for engaging with them. He says the posture directs the way viewers interpret the images and text as well as the object itself.
He writes, “In your thoughts, like stars, I wanted to explore the tensions between more mundane, earthly concerns and more ethereal, cosmological themes; and to use light and vision as primary ideas for that exploration. The way in which the viewer engages with the work is part of how it gains meaning, and that interactivity is an important part of the work. The theme of vision and [self] perception — what we see, and how we see it — is a primary idea for the exhibition, as is the symbolic use of light.”
It’s an interesting way of grabbing the viewer’s attention: making them change their own physical space in order to engage with the art. It will be up to patrons to decide if it enhances their own perception. Chances of this are pretty good, especially when they find they are bending to read a page with 100 eyes on it and the words, “you have lost the power of astonishment at your own actions.” Van Vliet gives plenty of food for thought and meditation here.
Other intriguing selections in the show feature pictures from the universe further combined with his own words as a way of getting the reader to consider their role in the big scheme of things. It’s a powerful show that requires attention to take home as many of the messages as possible.
