Save the Planet

 

Boarding House Gallery presents a selection of works by David Bierk from the Macdonald Stewart Art Centre’s permanent collection. Save the Planet features work made in the period from 1986 to 2002. 
 

Bierk’s romantic landscapes are dense with the kind of art historical reference Donald Kuspit described as “Old Masterism”. They are gloomy and passionate, they are permeated by a warm, nostalgic light, the touch of the brush seems to self-consciously pursue the virtuosic. And yet… there is strangeness to them; Bierk’s acknowledgement that we may know a landscape through what we see on the walls of a gallery rather than standing by a river; the irony in the use of cheap frames, frames that are an ersatz version of the historic “museum frame”. Are these paintings an homage or a subversive exercise in kitsch? The great strength of Save the Planet is that both seem possible.
 

Guest speaker, Gary Michael Dault, artist, writer, and educator is one of Canada’s most distinguished art critics. Please join Boarding House Gallery and Gary Michael Dault at 7pm on 21st November 2014 for a conversation about the life and work of David Bierk.