MashUp: The Birth of Modern Culture
New VAG exhibit explores how art mixes with art
MashUp, the new multidisciplinary and collaborative exhibit at the Vancouver Art Gallery, is dedicated to artistic techniques of remix, collage, sampling, quotation, and appropriation.
The exhibit is an architectural maze of artistic form created inside the building—the largest show in the gallery’s history occupying all four floors—and blends video, installation, painting, interactive remix stations, mixed media sculpture, collage, literature, and ready-mades with a balance of Vancouver artists and international contributions.
Around every corner is something radically different. There is too much to see in a single visit. So rather than a rambling overview, I give you some of my favourite moments from this historic and monumental exhibition.
Barbara Kruger – Untitled (SmashUp)
Impossible to avoid, Kruger’s site-specific installation draws the patron into the space from the moment they enter the exhibit. Kruger appropriates the architectural presence of the neoclassical VAG atrium by wrapping it in huge vinyl panels of found text, setting up a relationship between source and place that is echoed in many of the other works in the show.
Robert Rauschenberg – Revolver II
Rauschenberg looked to new technologies and photographic reproduction to
break down the divide between image and sculpture. In Revolver II, he uses silkscreen ink on five rotating Plexiglas discs that create a seemingly endless collage of image and text. A control box invites the viewer to trigger electric motors and spin the discs, to reorder the collage any way they choose, like an intuitive method of choose-your-own-artwork.
King Tubby’s Mixing Console
MashUp highlights the significant contribution of musicians and producers to remix culture with rooms dedicated to Brian Eno and David Byrne, DJ Spooky’s Voyager remix project, and the revolutionary Dub music production of Lee “Scratch” Perry and King Tubby. The dub room is dark and filled with large speakers playing bass-heavy instrumental reggae, and Tubby’s 1970s MCI mixing console is lit from above, as it would have been in the control room of his recording studio. The console shows the physical wear of thousands of hours of human use and stands in stark contrast to contemporary digital methods of music production.
Jean Luc Godard – Pierrot le Fou
One of the many purpose-built screening rooms was dedicated to French new wave filmmaker Jean Luc Godard, where the viewer can watch an endless loop of his films. This being my first experience with Godard, whom I had heard much about but not actually seen for myself, I was instantly captivated by the saturated colours and the intensity of the dialogue. I could sit all day and watch his films. I may or may not have plotted a way to return to the gallery next time with a stash of popcorn and snacks and make it a Godard marathon.
MashUp runs until June 12, 2016 at the Vancouver Art Gallery (750 Hornby Street).
