Exhibition Info
ON THE GRID
Grids surround us every day. They are the steel, timber, brick and mortar foundation of our buildings, the mapped roads that shape our cities, the network that brings power into our homes, and the binary system that allows our electronic devices to function. Architects use grids when drafting blueprints; accountants use them in the form of ledgers; graphic designers use them as a tool to create balanced designs.
In the visual arts, the grid is most often associated with mid-20th-century Minimalism, Op Art and Color Field painting. Artists associated with these movements were interested in the flatness of the picture plane, which led the American art critic Clement Greenberg to proclaim in 1954 that “pictorial space [in painting] has lost its ‘inside’ and become all ‘outside’” (1). He declared that painting was headed in a progressive trajectory toward greater abstraction, flatness and purity of form—a direction embraced by a number of leading artists throughout the United States, Europe and Canada. These artists were not concerned with painting for the purpose of representing the natural world. They wanted to create art for art’s sake. Art that alludes to itself. Art that was about pure form. Art devoid of an explicit narrative. The grid became the perfect emblem for this pursuit.
Like its presence in our day-to-day lives, the grid manifests literally and covertly in the artwork selected for this exhibition. In some instances, it is a visible, blatant motif, and in other instances, its presence is implied through the measured, and sometimes, modular construction of the compositions. This collection of work is intended to remind us of the grid’s tremendous influence on 20th-century art and architectural discourse, but also to lead us to contemplate its enduring presence. On the Grid is comprised of 17 works of art from the collection of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts (AFA) by 7 artists: Helen Archer, Charles Boyce, Ihor Dmytruk, Christian Grandjean, Harry Kiyooka, Bill McCarroll and Frank Stella.
1. Clement Greenberg. "Abstract, Representational, and So Forth," Ryerson Lecture at the School of Fine Arts. Yale University. May 12, 1954. Reprinted in "The Grid Book" (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2009), 222.
On the Grid was curated by Shannon Bingeman, Manager/Curator, Alberta Society of Artists, Region 3 of the AFA Travelling Exhibition Program (TREX).
