MAIN SPACE EXHIBITION
MAY 13 – JUNE 4, 1994
RECEPTION: FRIDAY, MAY 13, 1994 AT 8 PM
LOCATION – STRIDE GALLERY
722, 11 AVE S.W, CALGARY, ALBERTA
EXHIBITION TEXT
Well, we hung everything yesterday and now I am supposed to write something. I don’t like doing this because I can’t possibly remember everything that is going on in all those things; I often blank on even the most fundamental aspects of what I do. Why is that? Perhaps when you only rely on the natural evolution of simply producing series of pictures you don’t need to remember much. I’ll draw anything when it comes down to it, because working this way please an enormous demand on one to come up with enough subjects to use. You forget about assigning and exhaustive rationale to each image or phrase, and trust that somewhere in your head you do know what and why etc because you have done so many other related things before the piece you are on now. This is the first time I have hung all of this stuff together and seen the sense of it all. I assume that each successive evolution of the work was somehow superior to the last. Stupid. How could anything here make its fullest sense without everything else? Things don’t necessarily appear from your work because they are bad, and the inverse is true. Sometimes you wear a good idea out and it bores you. Or maybe it really does stink. Sometimes something else is ready to take a dominant place in your head. Maybe you saw a film or something.
I would never say well it’s so whatever and it’s just junk that means whatever. I know I don’t feel that way about it; I would never log it all so carefully if I did. These things engross m in such a way that I draw and draw and draw. Franklin and Apollo 11 and boats and road hockey. The specifics of it (I drew this because…) shouldn’t be ripped out of the work and suck on this sheet; I’ll just say it’s a way of ordering the world and of recording – of giving things your own sense. And of course it’s a search. What do you like or hate? You could spend your life just drawing that.
One specific point I would like to make is on how the space changes in the work. The oldest things have a harsh, alien space with only grudging concessions to depth. This evolves gradually until the last paintings there is a cubist space in which the viewer is given almost omniscient access to all areas of the work. You can walk all the way around the space capsule or through the tunnels in the bullring and star as long as you like. I like how subconsciously changes are initiated in ones work that seem at first to be without reason, yet they end up reflecting changes in your attitude towards making art and your relationship with those who look at it.
-Trevor Mahovsky 1994