Morning Star by Alex Janvier. (Creative Commons Share-Alike).
EDMONTON - Aboriginal history is rife with references to the four directions; Alex Janvier’s compass is more complex, like any good hunter’s.
“It’s a lifelong quest,” Janvier says over the phone. “I’m alive, I’m above ground. As long as I’m capable of handling that brush, I’ll be doing something.”
In the coming months we’ll be able to experience the artist’s impact with unprecedented perspective. The Art Gallery of Alberta’s show title Alex Janvier is perfectly chosen. The new show, which opens to the general public on Friday, is a survey, though that’s like saying Elk Island Park is a checklist of wildlife.
Mapping a truly significant lifetime of experimentation, we’ll see Janvier’s childhood oils on Masonite recontextualizing Catholic iconography; the gorgeous early development of his signature style in black and white — his name signed with his treaty number, 287; colourful movement to his famous white backgrounds; work mirroring his masterpiece dome in the National Gallery; map-based protests to land abuse; impressionistic portraits of the Bill Reid and the so-called Indian Group of Seven. Like an ancient summit, the show gathers more than 90 pieces from private and gallery collections continentwide, and includes never-before-displayed early experiments bursting with aggressive colour, borrowed from the artist’s collection.
“The importance of Alex historically,” AGA curator Catherine Crowston explains as the paintings are being hung, “is that he is one of those artists who moved aboriginal art out of the margin — out of the idea of being a decorative, craft-based tradition — moving aboriginal art into the art mainstream culture.”
Read more at The Edmonton Journal. Click here.
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