McBride returns with more serious art whimsy

There are some places that you might recognize in Byron McBride’s new exhibit but you’ll be seeing them in an entirely different way.

Structures marks the Edmonton artist’s first return to this city since his joint exhibit with Ryan McCourt at the Art Gallery of St. Albert in 2011.

Now at the Visual Arts Studio Association Gallery, he has retained his signature sense of sculptural whimsy. This time, however, he has decided to take a more serious look at cityscapes and street scenes of Alberta.

“I’ve been trying to explore some different things with it. There’s a lot more atmospheric pieces,” he said, adding that he’s interested in the “hidden parts of cities and, to a lesser extent, the countryside.”

His images are familiar enough, distorted in the same playful way that we have come to know and expect from his work. Buildings rise in far from straight lines. They undulate even, reminding us of Dr. Seuss’ structures but in McBride’s own style but with more realism. “They’re more true to life,” he stated, which makes them more compelling.

A recent trip to Europe, among other things, held a heavy influence on him.

“We have worked hard to develop cities and we guard them very jealously from the perceived chaos without,” he writes in his artist’s statement.

That has given him much fodder for reflection and for new ways to consider his art.

“Everything is solid, but only from a certain point of view: buildings have strength, but are essentially hollow; our bodies are mainly liquid but they can be quite resilient. I am interested in altering the context of objects and playing with their form to question their role in the larger universe.”

That’s why this has a different feel than his other shows, and a world away from Beyond the Frame, his interactive 3-D travelling exhibit that looked like a giant pop-up book featuring original mural-sized paintings that people could walk into.

Structures is also a big show but with 30 recent works in it so attendees will have lots of structures to immerse themselves into in a different way entirely. It’s timely in a way as well, as one of the scenes depicted in his work looks like a flooded city, a subject that might catch some attention considering the one-year anniversary of southern Alberta’s devastating floods. They don’t actually show that city, however.

“A lot of the buildings there are more realistic. I was trying to take examples from around downtown [Edmonton] and Whyte Avenue. It looks a bit more like you came home and suddenly the whole city was flooded and you’ve got questions.”