James Carl: do you know what
a survey exhibition of James Carl’s work 1990-2008
January 17 – March 22, 2009
Opening Reception: Saturday, January 17 at 1 pm
+Free Art Bus to Cambridge Galleries at 3pm
The exhibition, do you know what, was the first major survey of works by Toronto based artist James Carl. Curated by Judith Nasby (MSAC director and curator), the MSAC’s exhibition ran concurrently with exhibitions at the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, Hart House, University of Toronto (curated by Barbara Fischer, exhibition) and the Cambridge Galleries (curated by Ivan Jurakic, on view January 17 to March 1). Each venue focused on particular aspects of Carl’s sculptural and graphic production from 1990 to the present,
highlighting the artist’s preoccupation with the normal, the moral, and the all-too-common.
The Guelph exhibition included towers of banker’s boxes on which “over-stuffed binders” were precariously stacked. What appeared as office detritus was in fact made from foam core sculpted by Carl to replicate binders and mounds of paper. Carl’s “office work” was made more complex by the inclusion of real objects: the banker’s boxes are store bought and built to consumer specifications. The adjoining gallery featured a selection of Carl’s graphic works including “super size rastafries” — two rows of vinyl panels depicting french fry containers designed to look like logos in the spectrum of the Rasta colours — and a series of information, traffic, and road “signs” reconfigured as nonsensical logos. For example, Carl’s work titled OKNOTOK is a blue and white vinyl diptych with one panel emblazoned with the word OK, the other intercepted with an interdit symbol.
James Carl was born in Montreal in 1960 and is an associate professor in the School of Fine Art & Music at the University of Guelph (SOFAM/UG). He moved to Toronto after studying at the University of Victoria, McGill University, Rutgers, and the Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing. He quickly came to attention with an ambitious series of one-to-one scale cardboard replicas of consumer and household appliances. Since then, Carl’s interest in replicating objects from the flow of consumer culture has come to involve carving white marble into disposable Styrofoam fast-food containers and cutting and folding Coroplast hand tools, car tires, and office furnishings. Materials made for one-time purposes, such as packaging, represent seemingly long-lasting material goods; materials associated with permanence and enduring value represent the fleeting impermanence of instantaneously disposable stuff. Carl’s works remark on material culture, but resist commentary in favour of confronting the viewer with starkly factual presentations of sculptural objects or their graphic equivalents. His work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Canada, Europe, and Asia. James Carl is represented by Diaz Contemporary, Toronto.
The exhibition, James Carl: do you know what, was supported by the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts. The Macdonald Stewart Art Centre also gratefully acknowledges the financial support of The Musagetes Fund at The Guelph Community Foundation, a public foundation serving the people of Guelph and Wellington. The Foundation
builds permanently endowed charitable funds for the changing need and opportunities of the community and provides grants to eligible charitable organizations in arts and culture, education, health, environment, recreation, and social service sectors.
Opening Reception & Free Art Bus
Saturday, January 17 at 1 pm featuring a talk by James Carl
The art bus departs the MSAC at 3 pm for a reception at the Cambridge Galleries (3:30 pm)
Artist Lecture with James Carl
Monday, February 23 at 7 pm
Co-presented by MSAC and SOFAM (UG)
Images:
Top: James Carl, thing’s end, 2008 (fimo, detail)
Bottom: James Carl, international briefs, 1999 (vinyl)
