The Wagon Burner and Other Stories

July 4 - September 8, 2024

What are the ways in which wagon trains were instrumental to European settlers' westward expansion across Turtle Island; and how did Indigenous peoples mobilize to protect their lands from encroachment by settlers? What are the afterlives of wagons today, and what place do they occupy in Western Canada, including within the Calgary Stampede?

Departing from – and centered around – Blackfoot artist Terrance Houle's The Wagon Burner (2003), The Wagon Burner and Other Stories reflects on the social and political history of the wagon, and the ways in which it has shaped our collective imaginaries of both the North American landscape and the Indigenous communities that have lived on this land for thousands of years.

Bringing together newspaper clippings from the Library of Congress, montages of Western films, and posters from the Calgary Stampede, The Wagon Burner and Other Stories offers a snapshot of the history of this land, seen through the lens of a seemingly benign – yet often overlooked – mode of transport: the wagon.

About the Artist

Terrance Houle
(he/him)

Terrance Houle (b. 1975) is an internationally recognized interdisciplinary artist and member of the Kainai Nation, with ancestry from the Sandy Bay Reservation, Manitoba. His late mother, Maxine WeaselFat, was a member of the Kainai Nation; and his father, Donald Vernon Houle, is from the Sandy Bay Reservation, Manitoba. Both were third-generation residential school survivors, with the latter currently residing in the Blood Reservation in Southern Alberta. Houle’s work ranges from the subversive, the humorous, and the absurd to the solemn and the poetic. His practice often relates to the physical body, addressing questions around history, colonization, Indigeneity, and representation in popular culture, as well as memory, home, and reserve communities. He recently co-directed a short animation film, Otanimm/Onnimm, with his daughter Neko. The film has been widely screened at festivals in Los Angeles, New York, Toronto, New Zealand, Vancouver, and Oxford, among others.

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Marie Lannoo
In Extremis

July 4 - October 13, 2024

As an abstract painter, Saskatoon-based Marie Lannoo has been applying layers of transparent acrylic colour on various support surfaces for more than three decades. Well-known as a conceptually groundbreaking non-objective painter, Lannoo is one of the few artists informed by a substantial knowledge base in both art and science to investigate light as the basis for her colour field paintings. 

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Lannoo returned to canvas as a support surface for the first time in 25 years with a tremendous level of freedom. She never predicted that a global pandemic and lockdown would open the creative floodgates to produce 36 of the most resonant works of her career. The resulting series of paintings in this touring solo exhibition facilitate a remarkably intimate level of experiential contact with the viewer.

Lannoo's decision-making in the studio became entirely intuitive with an unfiltered, direct connection to the painting process. It is difficult to describe this unique period of creative engagement other than in Lannoo’s own words: “In Extremis is an apt title for a body of work and a dedicated book that extends the illusive studio experience of the paintings. The studio was where I made the most profound connection with my materials and with my artistic self to embody the feelings of that connection in the work. When I was in this place of deep connection and feeling, time dissolved and slipped away. I also wanted to extend the connection to realize an innovative publication, to reproduce the true essence of my paintings in print media.” 

Lannoo has achieved what many painters strive for throughout their careers, that is, the controlled application of layers of colour that vibrate, pulsate, resonate, and radiate the energy of colour to create sensations of experience in the viewer. Light interacts with Lannoo’s skillfully rendered layers of transparent acrylic to change its luminosity. As the layers interact, the overall illumination of the colours is revealed. Lannoo’s skill in achieving an unparalleled luminosity and complexity in painting is the focus of In Extremis.

--- Wayne Baerwaldt, Guest Curator

“Marie Lannoo’s recent paintings have a surprising and refreshingly singular quality of light. A consistent illumination that occurs deep within the picture plane and creates a wonderful resonance of circumstance. On careful reflection it gives the viewer an opportunity to experience many things, even broader understandings of communal presence. It puts on view how collective memory ascends from ideas that can then be animated using the gift and exchange of painted light.” --- Jerry Allen

“As I gaze at one of Marie Lannoo’s recent works on canvas, I first become aware of the blank, sometimes coloured centre that is surrounded by vague, blurry coloured borders and then immediately surrounded by sharp edged borders and then a black physical frame. What I really appreciate about this is that I have been informed in this process of observing, that this use of the various framing devices forming a portal, is a deliberate strategy, and yet I am free to return to the centre which had no agenda. This phenomenon is possibly my most valued but rarely happened upon art experience, Agnes Martin, Mark Rothko and now, Marie Lannoo.”  --- Chris Cran RCA       

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About the Artist

Marie Lannoo

Marie Lannoo was born in Delhi, Ontario. She attended the University of Saskatchewan and studied painting at the Banff School of Arts and at Emma Lake Artists’ Workshops as well as in Virton, Belgium. Her work has been shown in exhibitions throughout Canada and internationally.   

Moving between abstraction and representation, Lannoo’s paintings exert a potent physiological effect on viewers. Imminent art historian Roald Nasgaard comments: “Lannoo’s work draws the viewer deep into internal illusions replete with reflected invasions from the external world. At the same time, it reaches out to embrace and enfold itself around the body of the viewer, who sees the world as if with eyes in the back of his/her/their head.”

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Ghosts of Canoe Lake: New Work by Marcel Dzama

June 27 - October 27, 2024

Marcel Dzama is one of Canada’s most intriguing contemporary artists, an artist who works in myriad media that draws from folk vernacular as well as from art historical and contemporary influences. Originally from Winnipeg, where he entered the art world as a founder of the famous Royal Art Lodge (once dubbed the new Group of Seven by a zealous journalist), Dzama moved to New York in 2004, where he’s continued to evolve a visual language that investigates the blurred relationship between the real and the subconscious.

This exhibition marks Dzama’s return to the Canadian institutional scene after more than a decade with a new body of work inspired by the occasion. The artist revisits themes of landscape drawn from Canadian art history and his own memories of a childhood spent in the wilds of Manitoba and northern Saskatchewan—all while confronting a natural world threatened by climate change. Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven come in for special attention, as Dzama plays with the legacies of the landscape painters who came before him. Also central to the exhibition is the film To Live on the Moon (For Lorca), commissioned for the Performa Biennale, New York, 2023.

This exhibition was co-organized by Contemporary Calgary and the McMichael Canadian Art Collection.

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About the Artist

Marcel Dzama (he/him)

Since rising to prominence in the late 1990s, Marcel Dzama (b. 1974) has developed an immediately recognizable visual language that draws from folk vernacular, art-historical, and contemporary influences. 

Born in Winnipeg, Canada, Dzama received his BFA in 1997 from the University of Manitoba. Since 1998, his work has been represented by David Zwirner. He has exhibited widely throughout the United States and abroad. In November 2023, Dzama presented To Live on the Moon (For Lorca) a film and performance commissioned by Performa as part of Performa Biennial 2023. Recent solo exhibitions by the artist include Marcel Dzama: Viviendo en el limbo y soñando con el paraíso at the Museo de Arte de Zapopan (MAZ), Mexico, in 2022; Marcel Dzama: An End to the End Times at the Savannah College of Art and Design Museum of Art, Georgia, in 2021; and Marcel Dzama: Tonight We Dance at the Sara Hildén Art Museum in Tampere, Finland, in 2021. 

Co-organized by

The Dialogue

June 11-30, 2024

Calgary Arts Academy presents The Dialogue, an inspiring exhibit that highlights the connection between mentors and mentees and the power of shared community in fostering artistic discovery. This special showcase features the work of 24 talented artists from Calgary Arts Academy. 12 graduating visual arts students from the Visual Arts program have each been paired with a staff artist from our community. The artworks on display are the result of rich, collaborative dialogues between these emerging artists and their mentors.

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LOOK2024 Art Auction

May 2–25, 2024

Visit givergy.ca/look2024 to explore the live auction items or start bidding on an incredible selection of silent auction items.

Contemporary Calgary is pleased to present LOOK2024, an exhibition featuring the work of many of Canada’s most significant artistic talents available for auction this year. This exhibition is built upon the extraordinary generosity of our friends and supporters who have contributed to the growing success of our contemporary art community here in Calgary and indeed much further afield.

The LOOK Gala began in 2014 as an art auction and fundraiser to support the establishment of Contemporary Calgary and to help realize a new vision for the Centennial Planetarium as a centre for art in Canada. LOOK is recognised as one of the most anticipated events, one that reflects not only the breadth and diversity of artistic practices but also the beauty and strength inherent in the artistic experience. For this milestone tenth year, the LOOK Gala titled The Dada Ball embodies the spirit of renewal and resilience in times of disillusionment and increasing polarity.

Center stage at the LOOK Gala is our live and silent auction featuring the work seen in this exhibition. When you support the Contemporary Calgary auction you are supporting the artists directly as well as Contemporary Calgary’s expansive exhibitions and public programs.

We would like to thank the artists and gallerists who have graciously supported the art auction again this year, for their vision and leadership. We are also grateful to the collectors in the community for supporting the LOOK auction in the spirit of philanthropy as they help shape the future of contemporary art in our city.

Art Auction Sponsor

Heather Edwards

Art Auction Chair

Kanika Anand

Auctioneer

Stephen Ranger

LOOK 2024 Committee

Contemporary Calgary’s LOOK 2024 committee is made up of a diverse group of individuals, all of whom have one thing in common: their support of arts and culture. Contemporary Calgary and their commitment to making LOOK 2024 the gala of the year. Thank you to all of our committee members for your ideas, your time, your energy, and your enthusiasm.

Honorary Chairs

Morris & Ann Dancyger
Marcel Dzama
Faye HeavyShield

LOOK 2024 Chair

Kelly Streit

Vice Chairs

Kim Berjian
Elizabeth Middleton

Steering Comittee

Bruce Kuwabara OC, Chloe Streit, Ellen Parker, Elizabeth Middleton, Ernest Hon, Jade Davis, Kelly Streit, Kim Berjian, Lauretta Enders, M. Carol Ryder, Matthew Grieve, Michael Meneghetti, Michelle Lazo, Raechelle Paperny PHD, Samara Felesky-Hunt, Tara Cowles, Usman Jutt, Walker McKinley & Jeannie McKinley

Auction Committee

Alexandra Burroughs, Chethan Lakshman & Heather Dunn, Glenda Hess, Heather Edwards, Margaret-Jean Mannix, Michael Simmonds, Steven Wilson, Todd Towers, Tony Hailu

Artists

Vikky Alexander, Dick Averns, Ronald Bloore, Nancy Boyd, Kevin Boyle, Billie Rae Busby, Joane Cardinal-Schubert, Nathan Eugene Carson, Michael Corner, Douglas Coupland, Chris Cran, DaveandJenn, Kim Dorland, Amy Dryer, Megan Dyck, Marcel Dzama, Ben Eine, Joe Fafard, Rhys Douglas Farrell, Chris Flodberg, Anton Ginzburg, Joann Godenir, Ted Godwin, Mikel Greco, Angela Grossmann, Julya Hajnovczky, Maggie Hall, Tia Halliday, Greg Hardy, Bradley Harms, Marcia Harris, Aron Hill, Mark Holliday, Jennifer Hornyak, Neshka Krusche, Bryce Krynski, Paul Kuhn, William Kurelek, Marie Lannoo, Derek Liddington, Zachari Logan, Robert Marchessault, Sondra Meszaros, Amy Modahl, Mark Mullin, Yvonne Mullock, Erik Olson, Walter J. Phillips, Darija S. Radakovic, Anthony Redpath, Nick Rooney, Sylvia Safdie, Carol Sawyer, Aaron Sidorenko, Michael Smith, Lucy Sparrow, David Thauberger, Diana Thorneycroft, Todd Towers, Winnie Truong, Carl White, John Will

Derek Liddington
the trees weep, the mountain still, the bodies rust

April 10, 2024—August 25, 2024

The trees weep, the mountain still, the bodies rust features a recent body of work by Derek Liddington in which the genre of landscape is the central focus. Having turned away from performance and drawing in recent years to explore the medium of painting, Liddington examines how we experience the landscape rather than how we see it. He challenges the material limitations of the canvas with strategies that seek to capture transformation and movement. By doing so, he confronts the historical canon of painting as a way to reconsider its legacy.

Liddington’s dense canvases visually translate the idea of immersion in a forest so dense, our sense of orientation is hindered. Forests are worlds formed of multiple layers, not unlike the artist’s painting process. In his compositions, there are no visual clues to prioritize important elements; the rules of perspective that usually guide our gaze are discarded in favour of emphasizing the surface. As such, the essential character of each part of the composition is emphasized, from the most imposing to the most humble. In nature, a forest’s height and depth are organized according to an invisible logic: the ground’s humus contains complex life forms that are essential to the regeneration of an ecosystem that is also built up in layers, with old growth forests literally growing on the edge of one another. It’s difficult to locate oneself spatially and temporally in this type of environment because the logic that governs it is beyond our comprehension. Imagining ourselves in the forest involves the question of scale: the body and the temporality of human life become standards of measurement that allow us to put this world into perspective in order to better understand it and our relationship to it.  But perspective—something these paintings don’t rely on in a traditional way—requires stepping back to visually embrace the scene as a whole and capture its spirit. The experience of a forest hampers this reflex, or at least complicates it by reminding us that we live in an all-encompassing and interconnected world in which self-abstraction is impossible, other than to delude ourselves.

As a representation, the forest translates a relationship to the world that is the opposite of gazing out from the shoreline to the infinite horizon of the sea. Although the sight of such vastness might feel vertiginous, a certain sense of authority comes from having one’s feet firmly planted on the ground. But at the heart of a forest, reference points become blurred, perceptions are confused, fears are awakened. What’s that shape over there? Is it an animal or just the shadow from the canopy of trees? And is that a foot I see between the leaves, or just the outline of hills in the distance? Liddington plays with these illusions by revealing the artifice behind his paintings’ construction, the way they assert their flatness and bring us back to their material nature. By imagining ourselves outside of the forest, separate from the ecosystem that supports us, we adopt the viewpoint of someone who asserts their independence at a remove from their surroundings. It means that we avoid questioning the logic of extraction that has guided us until now and that has caused environmental consequences we’ve only just begun to understand. By systematically bringing us back to the surface, to what is closest to us, under our nose, Liddington shows that proximity isn’t always synonymous with clarity; it can often lead to disintegration and abstraction. Perhaps this is a comment on our current times, where decisions are often seemingly made with only short-term effects in mind because considering the bigger picture is so complex that it feels paralyzing. 

The trees weep. The bodies rust. The mountain, still, seems imperturbable. And yet, what is this camouflaged giant if not a sign of imminent danger, of the insatiable appetite of the capitalist system we have created? Like a fable, this exhibition weaves a narrative whose uncertain outcome hints at the chaos of moral disorder. We’ve been warned. 

Text by Anne-Marie St-Jean-Aubre

About the Artist

Derek Liddington (he/him)

Born in 1981 in Mississauga, Ontario. Lives and works in Toronto, Ontario

Liddington acknowledges his relationship to the land as shaped by his settler ancestry as a third-generation Canadian.

After obtaining his BFA from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax, Nova Scotia where he focused on video and performance, Liddington completed an MFA at Western University in 2007. Liddington’s work holds a continuous interest in cultural memory and its iterations through abstraction, representation and modernist forms of visual language.

Liddington’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including performances in Athens, Greece and Onagawa, Japan, and select presentations in Toronto (AGO), Madrid (ARCO), Berlin (Art Berlin Contemporary), and New York (Frieze Art Fair, NADA). Liddington has had solo exhibitions at Cambridge Galleries (Ontario, Canada), SAAG (Lethbridge, Alberta), AKA Artist Run Center (Saskatoon, Saskatchewan), AGYU (Ontario, Canada), Musée d'art de Joliette (Joliette, Quebec) and Richmond Art Gallery (Richmond, British Columbia). Liddington has had multiple publications on his work, including “the body will always bend before it breaks, the tower will always break before it bends” jointly produced by the SAAG and AGYU and “A Love Story” produced in by Cambridge Galleries for the exhibition “Every moment can be traced back to the first time the sun touched my face”.

A central part of Liddington’s practice is his use of residencies as a means of developing ideas of space and place. These have included residencies at the AGYU (Toronto, ON), AKA artist-run (Saskatoon, SK), Onagawa AIR (Japan) and most recently the Glenfiddich Artist in Residency program. Liddington has been the recipient of numerous public and foundation grants, including support from the Toronto Arts Council, Ontario Arts Council and Canada Council for the Arts as well as being a finalist for the Toronto Friends of the Visual Arts. Liddington currently practices in Toronto, ON. Liddington’s work is represented by: Daniel Faria Gallery (Toronto)

He would like to acknowledge the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council as well as the Toronto Arts Council

Winnie Truong
Curious Nature

April 10, 2024—August 25, 2024

Curious Nature expands on the intersectionality of the feminine form within landscapes, both real and imagined. The exhibition features Truong’s characteristic dioramas alongside new sculptural forms, stop motion animations and a site-specific ephemeral wall installation.

Taking place on simultaneously fertile and treacherous grounds, the works explore harmony, conflict, and play between a figure and its environment, as well as the tension that arises when the natural world traverses the supernatural. Intertwining these two realities opens up opportunity for transgression and for the creation of new realms from which we can consider a subversion of the idea of a natural order and its narrow perceptions of women’s bodies and identities. Evolving the medium of drawing beyond the conventional static image, and teasing the limits of scale are Truong’s ongoing explorations in ephemera and animation. In the manner of pressed flower collections, her wall installations are composed of individual elements of cut paper pinned delicately along a vast space, allowing viewers to explore an uncanny codex of figures, botanicals and creatures. The same hand-drawn floral and figurative collages are laboriously moved frame-by-frame to produce looping meditative large-scale projections. Both these topographies of expanded practice venture beyond the container of the frame and respond to their setting while championing new ways of physically engaging with drawing-based work unfettered by space and time for a fully immersive viewing experience.

Truong’s work provides the imaginary viewpoint of a feminist natural historian from another realm, one who undertakes their labour with great detail and care to depict the part-flora, part-creature figures by observing them in their natural environments devoid of the male presence or familiar social or biological guidelines. As these unashamed subjects shun the viewer’s gaze; they are given their own notions of agency, beauty, sensuality and purpose. These figures are seen contorted, frolicking, consuming, nurturing, conquering, and entangled in environments where you are unsure where limb ends and leaf begins.

Related Programs

This is a touring exhibition:

Contemporary Calgary, April 2024- August 2024

The exhibition is available from October 2024.

About the Artist

Winnie Truong (she/her)

Winnie Truong is a Toronto artist working with drawing and collage to explore ideas of identity, feminism, and fantasy along with a digital art and animation practice that includes public art and community engagement. She has exhibited across Canada, the US and Europe with solo presentations at Volta New York Art Fair, Pulse Miami Art Fair and Art Toronto. Truong is a 2017 recipient of the Chalmers Arts Fellowship and. Her work can be found in private collections, The Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, Kansas, Doris McCarthy Gallery at the University of Toronto, Bank of Denmark, EQ Bank, Scotiabank Fine Art Collection, RBC Art Collection and TD Bank Corporate Art Collection.

Anton Ginzburg
Surface

March 13—June 16, 2024

Anton Ginzburg: Surface is a reflection on the use of technology as it relates to cultural labour, data aesthetics and machine learning. By employing algorithms to expand on the formal elements of art, its consumption, and transmutation, Ginzburg underlines the ever-evolving meaning of representation, data visualization and automatization in our digital age. The three bodies of work presented, deliberate on surfaces that range from the architectural to the digital screen and beyond, and are especially relevant to the growing conversations around the role and ethics of AI.

The 2D paintings in the Yerevan series, the 3D sculptural forms in Film Forms and the 4D (moving image) generated video in ML CRSH, all use algorithms to comment on the role and agency of algorithms themselves. And in so doing, they articulate the patterns and relationships that define what we now know as ‘algorithmic culture.’ What are the hierarchies and narratives that these systems perpetuate and grow, and what do they reveal about larger data networks within which they play a part?

About the Artist

Anton Ginzburg (he/him)

Anton Ginzburg is a New York-based artist whose practice combines painting, sculpture, moving image, and architectural collaborations. He is known for his films, sculptures, paintings, and two-dimensional work investigating historical narratives and poetic studies of place, representation, and modernist form. He earned a BFA from Parsons, The New School and MFA degree from Bard College, Milton Avery Graduate School of Arts, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. In 2021, Ginzburg was a research fellow at the Schaufler Lab at the Technical University of Dresden with the topic of Artificial Intelligence, Technology, and Creative Labor. He is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Pratt Institute (NY) and Parsons School of Design (NY).

His work has been shown at the 54th and 59th Venice Biennales, the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston, Southern Alberta Art Gallery in Canada, Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, White Columns in New York, Lille 3000 in Euralille, France, and the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art in Singapore. His films have been screened at the Whitechapel Gallery in London, Rotterdam International Film Festival (IFFR), Dallas Symphony Orchestra (Soluna), Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, Les Rencontres Internationales in Paris, Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, Dresden Film Festival and New York Film Festival/Projections among others.

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February 2 – March 3, 2024

The Exposure Photography Festival is pleased to announce its twentieth-anniversary programme happening in Alberta in February. Exposure 2024 promises to be an expansive and exciting festival edition with exhibitions presented in galleries, museums, local businesses and outdoor locations in Calgary, Banff, Canmore, Crowsnest Pass, Edmonton, Peace River & Red Deer. This year’s exhibition programme shares a wide range of narratives, subjects, practices, and explorations of the photographic medium drawing attention to Calgary and Alberta as the site of an active, growing, creative community in the field of photography.

Exposure’s curated exhibitions, the International Open Call and Emerging Photographers Showcase, will be hosted at Contemporary Calgary (February 2 – March 3), a significant visual arts destination dedicated to modern and contemporary art. The exhibitions present a broad range of works, including photocollage, conceptual photography, politically engaged practices and works that embrace social and individual experience, as well as visual explorations of identity and personal narratives.

The Exposure 2024 International Open Call exhibition will feature the work of photographers and visual artists based around the world who incorporate, celebrate, or challenge the photographic medium within their practices. Selected by the Exposure Team and Lillian O'Brien Davis, curator and writer based in Toronto, the exhibition will present the works of contemporary practitioners based in Brazil, Canada, Ethiopia, Morocco, Slovakia, United Kingdom, and United States.

The Exposure 2024 Emerging Photographers Showcase celebrates the rich talent of early-career practitioners who are based in the province. Selected by the Exposure Team and Janine Windolph (Atikamekw/Woodland Cree), Director of Indigenous Arts at Banff Centre Arts and Creativity, the exhibition provides an insight into our dynamic and growing community of fine art photographers here in the region.

The Exposure 2023 Emerging Photographer of the Year award exhibition will also be hosted at Contemporary Calgary (February 2 – March 3). This prestigious award provides an Alberta-based emerging artist with a platform to show their work while furthering their professional practice. Exposure’s Festival Manager, Bethany Kane, mentors and supports the artist in developing their vision in the best possible way. Selected by Tiffany Jones, Publisher of Overlapse, the award recipient Elyse Longair will be presenting a solo collage exhibition during the 2024 festival.

For the seventh consecutive year, Exposure has brought the Flash Forward Incubator Program to Alberta, in partnership with the Toronto-based The Magenta Foundation. The Flash Forward Incubator Program exhibition will feature the work of students from the 2023/24 participating schools: Westmount Charter School in Calgary and Eastglen School in Edmonton.

Exposure Fence: People & Place, is an outdoor exhibition at Calgary’s Olympic Plaza, presented in partnership with the Chinook Blast Festival. Curated by Beth Kane, People & Place presents the work of visual artists based in Treaty 6 and 7 territories, also known as Southern Alberta. The work and perspectives of this dynamic group of exhibiting artists provide us with both celebratory and critical visual insights regarding the complex, intertwined relationships between people and place within these traditional territories. In addition to activating public space in Calgary’s downtown core, the exhibition promotes wider understandings and increased access to the art of photography and visual storytelling, amplifying impactful narratives and connecting artists to a wide audience.

EXPOSURE 2024 INTERNATIONAL OPEN CALL

The Exposure 2024 International Open Call exhibition features the work of photographers and visual artists based around the world who incorporate, celebrate, and/or challenge the photographic medium within their practices. The Exhibiting Artists have been selected by the Exposure Team and juror Lillian O'Brien Davis, curator and writer based in Toronto.

Exhibiting Artists are Justin Carney (USA), Pippa Healy (UK), M'hammed Kilito (Morocco), Patricia Krivanek (Ethiopia), Kristiina Lahde (Canada), Christina Leslie (Canada), Gui Marcondes (Brazil), Lisa McCarty (USA), Martin Miklas (Slovakia), Rachel Nixon (Canada), Christine Osinski (USA), Molly Steels (Canada), Han Sungpil (South Korea / Canada), Teiji Wallace-Lewis (Canada) & Tom Woodroffe (UK).

For more information on our exhibiting artists please see Exposure Festival’s website.

EXPOSURE 2024 EMERGING PHOTOGRAPHERS SHOWCASE

The Exposure 2024 Emerging Photographers Showcase exhibition presents the work of fifteen photographers and visual artists based in Treaties 6, 7 and 8 Territories in Alberta. The exhibition celebrates the rich talent of early-career practitioners who are based in the province while providing an insight into our dynamic and growing community of fine art photographers here in Alberta. The Exhibiting Artists have been selected by the Exposure Team and juror Janine Windolph (Atikamekw/Woodland Cree), Director of Indigenous Arts at Banff Centre Arts and Creativity.

Exhibiting Artists are Masoud Alipourian, Scott Christensen, Brady Fullerton, Nozomi Kamei, Taraneh Khodai, Santosh Kumar Korthiwada, Ramsey Kunkel, Kim Payne, Amir Salehi, Stasia Schmidt, Maksim Tataev, Shane Thompson, Tiffany Thomson, Christina Yao & Wynn Yunn.

For more information on our exhibiting artists please see Exposure Festival’s website.

EXPOSURE 2023 EMERGING PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR:
ELYSE LONGAIR, PICTURING THE INFRATHIN

Exposure’s 2023 Emerging Photographer of the Year award recipient Elyse Longair will be presenting her solo show Picturing The Infrathin.

Marcel Duchamp suggests that the immeasurable gap, “the possible implying becoming — the passage from one to the other takes place in the infrathin”. Elyse Longair’s exhibition, Picturing the Infrathin, evokes Duchamp’s concept of the infrathin through collage with a specific focus on her flat seamless aesthetic where the thin space or gap between image fragments approaches (in)visibility. Each collage is created similarly: embracing subtly and carefully composed using a limited number of image fragments from her archive of popular knowledge source material, predominantly National Geographic magazine images from the 70s, 80s and 90s. Her work is durational, as Longair may wait years to find a near seamless and logical image match. In this infrathin space she creates, the viewer can imagine freely the possibility of the image, and the roles of picture making and imagination.

EXPOSURE FENCE: PEOPLE & PLACE

The Exposure Photography Festival presents EXPOSURE FENCE: PEOPLE & PLACE at Calgary’s Olympic Plaza, in partnership with Chinook Blast! Festival.

Curated by Beth Kane, People & Place presents the work of four visual artists based in Treaty 6 and 7 territories, also known as Southern Alberta. The work and perspectives of this dynamic group of exhibiting artists provide us with both celebratory and critical visual insights regarding the complex, intertwined relationships between People & Place within these traditional territories.

Exposure’s free outdoor exhibition activates an accessible public space, enabling new opportunities for increased engagement with the art of photography and visual storytelling. Working with our exhibition partners, we amplify impactful visual narratives, offer novel insights, and connect artists to diverse audiences.

Location: Olympic Plaza (outdoors)
Open: 24/7 from February 2-19
Access: Location is wheelchair accessible. Exhibition is child-friendly.

Supported by

Justine Bui
Rosy and Fair

January 4 - February 4, 2024

Using bright colours and eye-catching displays, Rosy and Fair replicates how products are advertised to consumers within the beauty industry, no matter how harmful the product may be. This pop-up shop installation explores how playful marketing can hook customers and, in turn, sell them items that perpetuate harmful myths and emotional harm, while even causing negative physical damage.

Resultantly, Rosy and Fair brings forth the impacts of colourism in Asian communities while mobilizing knowledge about how our varying skin tones can change the course of our lives. As this discrimination continues to impact each generation, we must challenge the harmful notions of beauty to live happier and healthier lives without judgment.

My First Professional Exhibition (MFPE 2023) is generously presented by ContemporaryCalgary. Organized by the Department of Art and Art History, University of Calgary. With special thanks to Professor Heather Leier, Dr. Joelle Welling, and Dr. George and Susannah Kurain.

About the Artist

Justine Bui (she/her)

Justine Bui is a Chinese-Vietnamese artist who focuses on colourism in Asian communities.

She is a graduate from the University of Calgary and a multidisciplinary artist who uses photography, sculpture, and installation to raise awareness about how colourism still exists within our present-day society.

Justine’s contemporary artworks counteract the historical notions of skin lightening that impacts each generation. Utilising colourism research within the art mobilises knowledge about the physical, mental, and social effects from the products and practices. Through her creative practice, Justine strives to change the outlook of how Asian individuals view and value their own skin colour.

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Artists:
Anna Berry, Erik Benjamins & Finnegan Shannon, Atanas Bozdarov, Hannah Bullock, Bob Flanagan & Sheree Rose, Andrew Gannon, Darrin Martin, Dylan Mortimer, Liz Nurenberg, Dominic Quagliozzi, Aislinn Thomas, Alice Wong & Georgia Webber.

How do contemporary disabled artists breathe? How is breathing an athletic act, a dyad of push-pull, a feat of endurance, a political horizon? This exhibition is inspired by the scholarship of Jean-Thomas Tremblay, and his new book Breathing Aesthetics (2022). In Tremblay’s book, he uses the work of contemporary artists such as Bob Flanagan to support his scholarship around the complexities of breathing. I take Tremblay’s work as a jumping-off point to incorporate other contemporary disabled artists who illustrate Tremblay’s “breathing aesthetics” in new form and function. Breathing as it relates to disabled bodies might stereotypically be associated with “spasmic bodies” – sharp inhales, gasps, gurgling, coughs, and laboured muscle contraction, and breathing aided by technological apparatuses. Breathing is also greatly stigmatized through black bodies and police violence, and the literal physical struggle beset by our pandemic era. In the context of this exhibition, I’m interested in exploring how contemporary disabled artists make breathing more dynamic and less so dangerous; how does breathing offer other physical, metaphorical and epistemological opportunities to recast the disabled body with a range of “benign respiratory variations”? The exhibition aims to imagine breathing, and breathlessness, as a productive cause for giddiness, a sensation for whirling, and a tendency for staggering. 

Installation view, Resistance & Respiration. November 30, 2023-April 14, 2024, Contemporary Calgary. Photos by Victoria Cimolini.

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Jennifer Marman & Daniel Borins
Three Dimensions

October 19 - March 17, 2024

Three Dimensions is an exhibition showcasing the multidisciplinary art practice of Jennifer Marman & Daniel Borins. The show features three installations: Balancing Act, THX2020, and ABCD, which combine painting, sculpture, kinetics, interactivity, virtual reality, and video.

Balancing Act consists of a user-controlled large-scale claw crane game where participants can stack sculptural components and create ad-hoc compositions. Accompanying the installation are paintings depicting various combinations of the sculptures. THX2020 is an interconnected installation that combines paintings, narrative video, and an interactive headset that responds to bio-feedback by moving shapes on video screens. ABCD is a multidimensional installation incorporating diverse mediums, including AI and VR that deftly juxtaposes physical and virtual realities while exploring otherworldly absurdity.

Taken together, Three Dimensions emphasizes viewer participation and explores themes of authenticity, agency, and the digital age through performativity and interactivity.  Like many of their previous works, the installation references high and popular culture, combining science fiction, politics, and current events in a pop-minimalist setting where symbols are equalized in hierarchy. For Marman and Borins, the exhibition aims to disrupt traditional notions of reality – whether authentic or synthetic – and present dimensions that challenge the viewer’s perception.  With an emphasis on engagement, the artists prompt contemplation around visual language, mass media, consumerism, and the ways in which images circulate in the information age.

This is a touring exhibition:

Contemporary Calgary, March 2023- October 2024
KMAC Contemporary Art Museum, May 2024- August, 2024
Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, November 2024- January 2025

The exhibition is available from March 2025.

About the Artists

Jennifer Marman and Daniel Borins have been making large-format sculpture, paintings, mixed media, installation, and electronic art since 2000. Their projects extend through galleries, museums, and into public space.

In the studio, Marman and Borins work in a materials-focused practice, combining conceptual art with visual appeal – where they produce complex projects that tell stories, often conceiving of exhibitions in an intertwined and narrative-based perspective. Their artworks are situated within popular culture, examining questions of authenticity, while simultaneously referring to aspects of both modern and recent history through speculative narratives and the effects of the digital age.

Marman and Borins have lectured at galleries and institutions both nationally and internationally, including University of Calgary, Tulane School of Architecture, and SOMA in Mexico City.

Jennifer Marman is a graduate of the University of Western Ontario. Daniel Borins is a graduate of McGill University. Marman and Borins both graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design, where they started their collaboration.

Marman and Borins’ work is in the collections such as the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Art Gallery of Hamilton, the University of Toronto, York University, and the City of Toronto. They are represented by Cristin Tierney in New York, where their third solo show with the gallery opened in June 2023.

Marman and Borins' work is in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada, The Art Gallery of Ontario, and the Art Gallery of Hamilton.

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Sara Lydia Tuell
Waveforms

October 5 - December 14, 2023

In this exhibition of print and installation work, Tuell presents her thesis work as a Master of Fine Arts candidate at the University of Calgary. 

The artworks explore abstract concepts in quantum physics through perceptual experience. An interactive installation using polarized film in the grand windows of Bow View Hall encourages the viewer to investigate their relationship with the quantum world. Meanwhile, on the ground floor, Tuell’s large-scale print work functions more like a Rorschach Test, enveloping and inviting the viewer to impress their own consciousness upon the work.

Tuell’s work intends to inspire curiosity and promote integration of the arts and sciences as a means of developing human knowledge, understanding and problem-solving in an age that demands creative solutions. The viewer need not be savvy to the complexities of quantum mechanics in order to discover and appreciate the beauty of light and nature: all that is required is to be a curious observer of the world.

About the Artist

Sara Lydia Tuell

Sara Lydia Tuell is an artist and engineer from the United States currently living in Calgary. She earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology in 2016 and worked as a machinery engineer until 2020. In 2021, Tuell began work as a Master of Fine Art student at the University of Calgary.

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Geoff McFetridge
These Days Are Nameless (The Drive, The River, And Hills)

September 20 - October 29, 2023

These Days Are Nameless is an exhibition of Geoff McFetridge’s three short videos from 2020 and the gouache works on paper used to animate them. The sounds and moving images included consider the curiosities of the human condition at the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic. Where are we going? How do we get there? Does it matter?

 In his typical minimalistic style, McFetridge draws on the familiar and the timeless- sounds of the city and of nature, sounds that transport you to different places and times. We hear, and we also see moving colours, shifting faces, flowing water, a dog barking or a cricket chirping, a pause, a thump, gentle music, static.

Geoff McFetridge’s works invite you to ponder on movement and the in-between while focusing on the specificities of the ordinary and mundane.

CIFF TRAILER | Geoff McFetridge: Drawing a Life 

A documentary about the Alberta-born artist "Geoff McFetridge: Drawing a Life" will open the Calgary International Film Festival on September 21.

About the Artist

Geoff McFetridge (he/him)

Throughout his long and diverse career, Geoff McFetridge has worked across a vast array of mediums from poetry to animation, graphics to sculpture, textile and wallpaper to paintings. McFetridge has exhibited in galleries worldwide including Louis Buhl, Detroit (2022); Gallery Target, Tokyo (2023); Cooper Cole, Toronto (2021); Half Gallery, New York (2021); V1 Gallery, Copenhagen (2023); Blum and Poe, Los Angeles (2020);  PlayMountain, Tokyo (2013); Heath Gallery, Los Angeles (2011) and New Image Art, West Hollywood (2006). Included in the Beautiful Losers exhibition (curated by Aaron Rose and Christian Strike) which debuted at CAC, Cincinnati in 2004, he has, also, been featured in exhibitions at the Walker Art Center, Vancouver Art Gallery, Yale University Art Museum, Contemporary Calgary and Geffen Contemporary at MoCA Los Angeles. As a designer, he has worked extensively with brands including Hermès, Vans, Undefeated, Patagonia & Apple. Recently he has made public works for LA Metro & SOFI Stadium LA. Dan Covert's documentary on his oeuvre, Geoff McFetridge: Drawing a Life, came out to critical acclaim in 2023. Winner of the 2016 Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian National Design Award and the AIGA Medal in 2019, McFetridge received his BFA from the Alberta College of Art & Design and an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts.

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(Re)Imagining Inclusion
Community-based art with racialized immigrant women artists

Artists: Medina Ardic, Firuze Avci, Melika Forouzan Pour, Shiyao Fu, Tayebe Joodaki, Maryam Mahdavian

Research and facilitation by Nurgül Balaç Rodriguez

(Re)Imagining Inclusion is a community-based art project, engaging individuals who have experienced re-emerging into an art community. This project investigates the diverse communities of artists who are members of invisible/racialized minority groups in the city of Calgary and focuses on the role of racialized women artists when confronted with cultural gatekeeping.

This is a project in which seven racialized immigrant women artists are invited as participants to share their immigration stories in their own words and artworks. They (six of them) made one collaboration with the facilitator and one individual work. Using the format of an interview to facilitate a process of self-expression and representation, this project allowed participants to reflect on their experiences. The art tells their stories.

The project is initiated and facilitated by Nurgül Balaç Rodriguez, artist and educator; and currently a PhD student at the University of Calgary.

Re-Imagining Inclusion allowed both the researcher Nurgül Balaç Rodriguez and the artists to realize the importance of community-based art in developing and maintaining public interest in othering and belonging. The relationship between the immigrant artists, the researcher, and the art organization will strengthen the ties of the diverse and growing arts community in Calgary.ill strengthen the ties of the diverse and growing arts community in Calgary.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Medina Ardic

My name is Medina Ardic. Originally, I am from Baku, Azerbaijan. I graduated from Baku State University as a Geographer and later pursued education as an accountant. Though my work life wasn't related to art, I have always been interested in it.

My first encounter with Ebru Art happened in Baku, Azerbaijan, in 2004 during an exhibition of Turkish artists. I was drawn to the pictures created using the Turkish water marbling technique. They looked distinct from other paintings, exhibiting a captivating lightness, tenderness, and sensitivity.

In 2009, my family and I moved to Ankara, Turkey. It was in December of the same year that I began taking classes from Ebru artist Ms. Hulya Ozyildiz. I learned the traditional techniques and patterns of Turkish Marbling Art, Ebru. Turkish Marbling Art Ebru involves creating colorful patterns by sprinkling natural earth pigment dyes on viscous water, which is then transferred onto paper.

In 2011, we relocated to Canada, and I brought along some art supplies and materials for Ebru. This gave me the opportunity to continue working with Ebru art. I actively participated in workshops, festivals, and art exhibitions. Since 2015, I have been teaching Ebru in the Turkish Canadian Cultural Association of Calgary.

Firuze Avci

Firuze Avci is a self-taught Turkish ceramic artist based in Calgary, AB. After graduating in Sociology in 2016, she discovered her love for ceramics with wheel throwing and decided to infuse her art with themes close to her heart, such as feminism, immigration, and empathy. She practiced traditional pottery with master potters and then developed techniques in ceramics, such as slip casting, mould-making, glaze-making, and sculpting. Utilizing her skills, Firuze creates artwork which carries traces of her thoughts about social dynamics and societal norms. For the past 1.5 years, Firuze has been living in Calgary, where she established her own craft-focused studio. She seeks to expand her artistic horizons, collaborate with local artists, and engage with the cultural climate of the city.

Melika Forouzan Pour

Melika Forouzan Pour is an Iranian multidisciplinary artist living in Calgary, Canada. She graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts and Master of Art in Photography from the University of Tehran, Iran. She took her second Master of Fine Arts in Painting from the University of Calgary. In her works which are mainly based on the concept of place attachment and memory, she constantly shifts between photography, painting and printmaking to explore identity and a sense of belonging through her connections to places and referring to personal and shared memories. 

Her academic background in photography and her vast experiences in painting have helped her to combine the visual language of photography and painting in her artworks. 

She has published articles in the field of family photography, collective memory, and the role of personal photos in shaping collective memories and social history in Iranian Art Journals.

Shiyao Fu

Shiyao Fu is an emerging visual artist with an interdisciplinary practice, involving painting, ceramic, sound, text-based art, and installation. She grew up in China and now resides in Mokinstsis, also known as Calgary. Her work concentrates on issues of identity, borders, language and translation. She explored individuals' place attachment in her sound installation. “Place” is a major element in her artworks. Her experience in early childhood of going back and forth between two cities made it more difficult for her to identify with these two places. Shiyao received her BFA (with Distinction) from the Alberta University of the Arts in 2018. After graduation, she has been working in contemporary art galleries in Beijing and Calgary to apply for her Canadian permanent resident status. Shiyao has recently participated in the Calgary Allied Arts Foundation artist residency program and is pursuing her MFA study.

Tayebe Joodaki

Tayebe Joodaki was born in Iran, a country with a long history in art and culture. When she was a little girl, her family recognized Tayebe’s talent in painting, but they did not favour her becoming an artist in the future; nonetheless, she did not give up and tried to attend painting classes during summer breaks. When her parents saw her talent and interest in painting, they started supporting her. Even though Tayebe participated in university exhibitions and was recognized for her talent, she only started painting seriously after graduating in Agricultural Engineering. She learned realistic painting under the tutelage of famous and skillful artists in Iran. She decided to start teaching art and chose to be a full-time artist. She was recognized as a successful and talented artist within a short time.

Tayebe immigrated to Canada in 2015 and received the New Canadian Artist Award from the Mayor of Calgary, Naheed Nenshi, in 2016. Also, she was honoured as a  Finalist in the 22nd Annual Immigrants of Distinction Awards (2018). One year later, in 2019, she received the 30th International Artavita online art Contest Award. She was invited to publish her paintings in the book “Current Masters” and submit her work to international galleries in New York such as  Artexpo. Tayebe has worked as an accomplished instructor with the Calgary Board of Education, Kerby Centre, Swinton‘s Art, YYC/LRT public artwork/studio, and the “Paint Ur Art Out” Gallery.

Maryam Mahdavian

My name is Maryam Mahdavian. I was born and raised in Iran. At the moment, I am a PhD student in Educational Research at the University of Calgary. In addition, I have been drawing cartoons since 2004. I believe that cartoons as a form of visual art goes beyond amusement and laughter and can act as a powerful communication tool to convey disparate concepts to people and affect their attitudes. Most of my cartoons depict social and political issues from a critical lens. 

ABOUT THE FACILITATOR

Nurgül Balaç Rodriguez is an artist with an interdisciplinary practice, and a second year PhD student at Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary. She has an active individual practice of disciplines and media including porcelain, installation, handmade paper, printmaking, three-dimensional pieces, and more recently socially engaged and collaborative projects. Her work is social, political, and personal with a focus on issues of immigration, diasporas, borders, and cultures. She explores becoming a diasporic individual during identity formation within a new culture. Nurgül settled in Calgary in 2009 after many nomadic years of living in Turkey, the United States and Spain with her family. She currently lives in Calgary making, writing, teaching, collaborating and always learning. 

The Art & Story of Stampede Saddles

July 6 - July 30, 2023

Contemporary Calgary is pleased to present The Art & Story of Stampede Saddles.

Saddles come in many different styles, shapes and sizes. They can be practical, for hard work on the ranch, impressive works of art, and everything in between. Each has its own character and story and was manufactured by both local saddle makers like Riley & McCormick, or further afield like Hamley & Co.

These eight saddles, on loan from the Calgary Stampede Collection & Archives, represent a range of time periods and stories, from the very first Stampede in 1912 to almost the present day. 

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Carol Sawyer
The Natalie Brettschneider Archive

June 29 - October 29, 2023

Contemporary Calgary is pleased to present Carol Sawyer: The Natalie Brettschneider Archive.

The Natalie Brettschneider Archive is an ongoing series of photographs, texts, music recitals, that together reconstruct the life and work of a genre-blurring historical performance artist. Brettschneider is fictional, but her story is laced with references to real people and places. The archive starts with her childhood in British Columbia, continues through her participation in the Parisian avant-garde between the wars, and includes evidence of her eccentric music and art-making practice in large and small communities across Canada after her return from Europe in the late 1930’s.

This project is a feminist critique of art historical narrative conventions: it aims to illuminate what gets left out of these stories, and the ways in which photographs are used to support cultural assumptions about gender, age, authorship, and art-making. Brettschneider is a stand-in for all of the female artists who have slipped through the gaps of history only to languish in obscurity, gain notoriety as models or muses of more famous male artists, or perhaps, like Claude Cahun, be “rediscovered.” The archive disrupts photographic hierarchies by mixing snapshots and studio portraits, tiny fragments and advertising paste-ups, fine art and fashion. It is stylistically eclectic, provocative and funny.

The Natalie Brettschneider Archive has been exhibited in galleries across Canada. A monograph on the project was published in 2020, as a collaborative project by the Carleton University Art Gallery in collaboration with the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, the Vancouver Art Gallery, and the Koffler Gallery. Featuring articles by Erin Silver, Assistant Professor at UBC’s Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory, as well as writings by Heather Anderson, Curator at CUAG and lead organizer of the book’s production; Michelle Jacques, Chief Curator at the AGGV; Bruce Grenville, Senior Curator at the VAG; and Mona Filip, Director/Curator at the Koffler Gallery. The book is designed by Judith Steedman, Creative Director of Steedman Design.

Video Tour

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About the Artist

Carol Sawyer (she/her) is a visual artist and singer working with photography, installation, video, and improvised music. Since the early 1990’s her visual art work has investigated the connections between photography and fiction, performance, memory, and history. In 2017 The Canada Council awarded Sawyer the Duke and Duchess of York Prize in Photography. In 2021, she was nominated for the prestigious Scotiabank Photography Award.

Sawyer earned an Honours diploma in photography from ECUAD, and a Masters in interdisciplinary arts from SFU, where she studied acting, music performance, critical theory, and music composition. As a young woman, Sawyer studied classical singing, focusing on opera and art songs, before training in extended voice with Richard Armstrong. She has performed extensively in improvised music contexts and incorporated her singing voice into her artworks in performances and videos. She has released three CDs with her improvising ensemble ion Zoo, and collaborated and recorded with American composer and trombonist Michael Vlatkovich. The much-awaited Natalie Brett Quartet LP was launched in December 2022, with music recorded at the Warehouse Studio, using vintage microphones, plate reverbs, and other historical analog gear.

Presented by

Irene Bakker
Cheryl Gottselig, K.C.
Sharon Martens
Nuvyn Peters
Carol Ryder
Karen Radford
Jan Tertzakian

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Ksahkomiitapiiks Resident 2022-2023

Star Crop Eared Wolf
Niitoyis

Artist Statement

Niitoyis is a Blackfoot word that means lodge or home and were, traditionally constructed from materials gathered from the land. Often Blackfoot lodges are painted with designs that depict stories and personal experiences by their owners.

Through the use of Blackfoot symbolism, the artist has deconstructed a painted lodge as well as brought in other aspects of Blackfoot designs in order to explore the relationship between people, and the environment. The stories and experiences reflect the interconnectivity encountered from living on the land.

The Blackfoot symbols used represent stories that emerge past, present and future together while allowing the viewer to experience the connections found between people and the land.

Ksahkomiitapiiks (Earth Beings) is an annual residency resulting in dynamic commissions that respond to our relationships with the land while introducing alternative and dynamic ways to approach land acknowledgements.

Interpreted in English as “Earth Beings,” Ksahkomiitapiiks is an inclusive term serving as both a noun and a verb; embodying who we are and what we create as guests on this earth.

Developed in consultation with an Advisory Committee of Indigenous Community Members and Elders comprised of Faye HeavyShield, Clarence Wolfleg Sr. and Adrian Stimson, we are excited to welcome Star Crop Eared Wolf as the inaugural Ksahkomiitapiiks resident and Niitoyis as the first annual commission. The work is sited at the center of the atrium, the very heart of Contemporary Calgary, itself located on the traditional lands alongside the Bow River in downtown Mohkinstsis.

Niitoyis is a Blackfoot word that means lodge or home, a structure that is traditionally built of materials gathered from the land. Often Blackfoot lodges are painted with designs that depict stories and personal experiences of their owners. Informed by Blackfoot symbolism, Niitoyis presents a deconstructed painted lodge that draws upon Blackfoot culture as a way to explore the relationship between people and the environment. Their stories and experiences signify the connectedness and shared knowledge gathered from living on the land. The Blackfoot symbols Crop Eared Wolf uses represent stories that merge past, present and future, and prompt the viewer to reflect on how the land has impacted them and cultivated meaningful bonds between diverse peoples and the land.

Star Crop Eared Wolf is a Niitsiitapi multidisciplinary artist and member of the Kainai Nation. Crop Eared Wolf graduated from The University of Lethbridge with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Native Art and Museum Studies. Her past and current media include painting, sculpture, photography, video and beading. She uses her art practices to explore themes centered around Land, culture, social and political issues impacting Indigenous peoples.

Star was mentored by Adrian Stimson, a member of Siksika (Blackfoot) Nation. He has a BFA from the Alberta University for the Arts and an MFA from the University of Saskatchewan and is an interdisciplinary artist who exhibits nationally and internationally. Adrian was awarded the Governor General Award for Visual and Media Arts in 2018 and REVEAL Indigenous Arts Award – Hnatyshyn Foundation in 2017. He was awarded the Blackfoot Visual Arts Award in 2009, the Alberta Centennial Medal in 2005 and the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal in 2003.

About Ksahkomiitapiiks (Earth Beings)

Ksahkomiitapiiks is an annual residency of dynamic public programs and responsive art works that interrogate and nurture our relationships with the land.

Ksahkomiitapiiks, interpreted in English as “Earth Beings,” is an inclusive term serving as both a noun and a verb; embodying who we are and what we create as guests on this earth. An invocation for a blessing whenever spoken - a call for prayer, witness and inspiration, we are Ksahkomiitapiiks. This series is an introspection on our ever-evolving languages and ordnance of how we choose to honour the land we occupy, as well as our ancestral custodians. 

Developed in consultation with an Advisory Committee of Indigenous Community Members and Elders, Faye HeavyShield, Clarence Wolfleg Sr. and Adrian Stimson. Each annual art work will be placed in the center of Contemporary Calgary’s atrium, over Helena Hadala’s original Mosaic (1979), a piece that represents the Earth with Calgary at its center. By way of a workshop with the team, we’d like to reflect on our personal and collective connections with the land.  

Each artist will be paired with an Indigenous mentor, working together to build a creative and empathetic partnership. For the first commission, installed on June 21, 2023, we invite Adrian Stimson as our mentor. Our inaugural artist will be announced on September 30, 2022.

We’d like to invite the larger Contemporary Calgary family and community, which includes visitors and members, to also reflect on the land. This reflection is dependent on a grounded understanding in the past and the future, in knowing who we are today has been informed by those who lived before us, and who will become is dependent on who we are right now. It is time to understand what it means to acknowledge the land and honour our relationships to Mother Earth and her keepers. Under the guidance and understanding of artists and elders, we will explore what it means to be Ksahkomiitapiiks.  

About the Artist

Star Crop Eared Wolf is a Niitsiitapi multidisciplinary artist and member of the Kainai Nation. Crop Eared Wolf graduated from The University of Lethbridge with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Native Art and Museum Studies. Her past and current media include painting, sculpture, photography, video and beading. She uses her art practices to explore themes centered around Land, culture, social and political issues impacting Indigenous peoples.

Star will be mentored by Adrian Stimson, a member of Siksika (Blackfoot) Nation. He has a BFA from the Alberta University for the Arts and an MFA from the University of Saskatchewan and is an interdisciplinary artist who exhibits nationally and internationally.

ADVISORY COMMITTEE OF INDIGENOUS COMMUNITY MEMBERS AND ELDERS 

Faye Heavyshield

Faye HeavyShield, of the Kainai (Blood) Nation, was born and raised on the Blood Reserve in Southern Alberta, and is a fluent speaker of her first language, Blackfoot. 

Heavyshield studied at the Alberta College of Art in 1980 - 85 and focused her art on images of memory, environment, body and language in a minimalist sense with Land and rivers as significant influences.

HeavyShield has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions across Canada and the US. Her work is found in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada, the McMichael Museum, Alberta Foundation of Art, the Glenbow and in other public and private collections. HeavyShield is a recipient of the 2021 Lieutenant-Governor of Alberta Distinguished Artist Award and the 2021 Gershon Iskowitz Prize.

Clarence Wolfleg Miiksika’am: Warrior, Leader & Teacher

A member of the Siksika (Blackfoot) Nation.Elder Miiksika'am holds an Honorary Doctor of Laws Degree from Mount Royal University, his exemplary leadership in Calgary, Alberta and Canada is recognized around the city. Born in 1948 in the Siksika Nation, Broken Knife, as he was called as a child, was barely seven years old when he was taken to live at the Old Sun Indian Residential school for five years. It was there he was named Clarence Wolfleg.

Miiksika'am went on to attend public school, graduating from Crescent Heights High School in Calgary in 1966. At 17 years old, like his father had done before him, he joined the military, serving in the Canadian Regular Forces with the Royal Canadian Horse Artillery where he would earn three medals.  

After serving in the United Nations' peacekeeping initiatives in Cypress and NATO Forces Continental Europe missions during the Cold War,  his military service came to an end and soon after he became a  police officer with the Blackfoot Tribal Police, which he eventually headed. His other roles included directing outpatient services at Siksika Alcohol Services and serving ten terms on the Siksika Nation Council. He was also recognized with a headdress, given the name Miiksika'am, initiated into the Crazy Dog Society, and was bestowed a sacred bundle and warrior pipe from the Horn Society.

Elder Miiksika’am now speaks to younger generations about restorative justice, residential schools, and stories from his past. He is also a spiritual advisor for multiple groups and organizations and played a major role in facilitating the creation of the Blackfoot Crossing Historical Park

Adrian A. Stimson

Is a member of the Siksika (Blackfoot) Nation. He has a BFA from the Alberta University for the Arts and an MFA from the University of Saskatchewan. Adrian is an interdisciplinary artist who exhibits nationally and internationally. His paintings are primarily monochromatic, often depicting bison in imagined landscapes. Melancholic, memorializing, and sometimes whimsical, they evoke ideas of cultural fragility, resilience and nostalgia. Stimson is renowned for his performance art, particularly his persona, Buffalo Boy, whom he embodies to consider the hybridization of the Indian, the cowboy, the shaman and Two Spirit being. His installation work predominantly examines the residential school experience; he attended three residential schools in his life and has used the material culture from Old Sun Residential School on his Nation to create works that speak to genocide, loss, and resilience. Stimson was awarded the Governor General Award for Visual and Media Arts in 2018, Reveal Indigenous Arts Award - Hnatyshyn Foundation in 2017, Blackfoot Visual Arts Award in 2009, Alberta Centennial Medal in 2005, and the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal in 2003.

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Diane Arbus
Photographs, 1956-1971

May 11 - September 17, 2023

In 1956, photographer Diane Arbus (1923–1971) marked a roll of film with the number 1 and her career as an artist began. Over the next 15 years, she produced a body of work that would revolutionize not only the portrait genre, but the medium of photography more broadly.

Working mostly in and around New York City, Arbus selected her subjects—couples, children, nudists, suburban families, circus performers, and celebrities, among others—for their singularity. “I would like to photograph everybody,” she declared in a letter to a friend in 1960. Arbus aimed to describe, in vivid detail, a range of human difference, at a moment when visual culture strove instead to emphasize uniformity.

This exhibition, drawn from the Art Gallery of Ontario’s collection, presents the full chronological arc of Arbus’ work. From the early, intimate 35mm format prints to the sharply focused square format she embraced after 1962, these photographs allow us to trace the artist’s evolving vision as part of a changing social landscape.

Diane Arbus: Photographs, 1956-1971 is organized by the Art Gallery of Ontario.

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About the Artist

Diane Arbus revolutionized the art she practiced. Born in 1923, Arbus grew up in an affluent New York family that owned a department store on Fifth Avenue. At age 18 in 1941 she married Allan Arbus and for a decade the couple worked together - he as photographer, she as stylist, producing photographs for fashion magazines. Although she started making pictures for herself in the early 1940s, it was only in 1956, when she numbered a roll of film #1, that she began seriously pursuing the work for which she has come to be known. During the 1960’s she published more than 100 photographs in leading magazines like Esquire and Harper’s Bazaar. Arbus was awarded Guggenheim Fellowships in 1963 and 1966 for her project, “American Rites, Manners and Customs”. The photographs she produced in those years attracted a great deal of critical and popular attention when a group was selected for the legendary 1967 New Documents show at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. When she died by suicide in 1971, she was already something of a legend among serious photographers, although only a relatively small number of her most important pictures were widely known. In a career that lasted little more than fifteen years, Diane Arbus produced a body of work whose style and content have secured her a place as one of the most significant artists of the 20th century.

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Contemporary Calgary is pleased to extend The Eye of Silence, the video segment of The Desert Turned to Glass, an ambitious exhibition by acclaimed Canadian artist Charles Stankievech.  Presented in our Dome gallery, this panoramic and immersive video is accompanied by an emotive soundscape composed by Stankievech.

The Desert Turned to Glass forms a place where the cosmic and the chthonic collide. From March 2 to May 7 this transmedia installation inhabited both the planetarium’s dome and the subterranean space below, whereby the visitor experienced a stratified ecosystem spread across multiple levels within the building, while representing vast distances in space and time.

As in the larger project, Stankievech’s video work The Eye of Silence, explores alternative theories of the origin of life, consciousness and art. He marshals high atmospheric video recordings of the Albertan Badlands, the Utah Salt Flats, Icelandic & Japanese volcanoes, and a meteorite crater in the Namibian desert. Visualizing the Earth at the critical moments of its evolution–this presentation speculates about the moment when life on the planet was seeded from a frozen meteorite. 

Accompanying the visuals, temporality and timelessness entwine in a sonic fugue, combining both subterranean beats and cosmic noise—inviting the visitor to meditate on deep time, deep space, and deep listening. In dialogue with contemporary scientific research, the exhibition also comprises original field recordings by Stankievech of solar rays (whistling within the earth’s ionosphere), hydrophone recordings of crackling Arctic ice and flowing Yucatan cenotes (created by a meteorite impact), and ambisonic recordings captured within the Canary Islands’ volcanic calderas.

Spanning the abyss of space and the depths of the earth, The Eye of Silence is an epic meditation on origins, endings, and infinity.

An accompanying publication edited by Dehlia Hannah and Nadim Samman is set for release later in 2023. 

About the Artist

Charles Stankievech (b. Okotoks, Canada) is an artist, writer and curator, whose award-winning work has been shown at institutions including the Palais de Tokyo, Paris; HKW Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal; Kunste Werke, Berlin; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark; National Gallery of Canada; TBA21, Vienna; as well as several biennials from Venice to SITE Santa Fe. He has lectured at dOCUMENTA (13) and the 8th Berlin Biennale, and his writing has been published by Verso, MIT, Sternberg Press, e-flux, and Princeton Architectural Press. He is an editor of Afterall Journal (U of Chicago Press), a co-founder of the Yukon School of Visual Art, and was Director of Visual Studies at the University of Toronto from 2015-2021, where he is currently Associate Professor. For 2022-23, Stankievech is a visiting researcher in the Department of Architecture at the University of Tokyo.

Visit givergy.ca/L23K to explore the live auction items or start bidding on an incredible selection of silent auction items.

Contemporary Calgary is pleased to present L23K—an exhibition featuring the work of many of Canada’s most significant artistic talents available for auction this year. This exhibition is built upon the extraordinary generosity of our friends and supporters who have contributed to the growing success of our contemporary art community here in Calgary and indeed further afield.

The LOOK Gala began in 2014 as an art auction and fundraiser to support the establishment of Contemporary Calgary and to help realize a new vision for the Centennial Planetarium as a centre for art in Canada. LOOK has grown to become one of the most coveted events in Canada, bringing people together to support and celebrate contemporary art in our community. Center stage at the LOOK Gala is our live and silent auction featuring the work seen in this exhibition. When you support the Contemporary Calgary auction you are supporting these artists directly as well as Contemporary Calgary’s expansive exhibitions and public programs.

We would like to thank the artists and gallerists who have graciously supported the art auction again this year for their vision and leadership. We are also grateful to the collectors in the community for supporting the LOOK auction in the spirit of philanthropy as they help shape the future of contemporary art in our city.

Auction Details

The online auction will open on May 4, 2022, and close at 11:30PM on June 3, 2023. The live auction will commence at Contemporary Calgary at 8:45PM on June 3, 2023.

How to Bid and Donate

• Use the top-left menu to view Silent Auction Items, access My Bids or Make a Donation.

• To bid, select an item, enter your amount and then click 'Place Bid'. Use the 'Max Bid' function and the system will automatically bid for you up to the amount entered.

• Register your details and then 'Confirm Your Bid'.

• Receive outbid text notifications and bid again!

• If you are at the event, keep an eye on the leaderboard screens to see if you're still the winning bidder!

View the Artworks In-Person

From May 4 to June 3 you can visit Contemporary Calgary to see these amazing pieces in person. Our galleries are open Wednesdays – Saturdays (12pm – 7pm) and Sundays (12pm – 5pm). 

Art Auction Sponsor

Heather Bala Edwards

Art Auction Chair

Ryan Green

Art Auction Curator

Ryan Doherty

Auctioneer

Brett Sherlock
Christie's International Consultant

Artists

Shelley Adler, Nura Ali, Laura Anzola & Matthew Waddell, Dick Averns, Ronald Bloore, Karl Blossfeldt, Dianne Bos, Nancy Boyd, Shary Boyle, Kevin Boyle, David Burdeny, Billie Rae Busby, Joane Cardinal-Schubert, Nathan Eugene Carson, Michael Corner, Douglas Coupland, Chris Cran, Chris Curreri, Paul deGroot, Mark Dicey, Amy Dryer, Marjan Eggermont, Shawn Evans, Scott Everingham, Erica Eyres, Rhys Douglas Farrell, Chris Flodberg, Chitra Ganesh, JoAnn Godenir, Ted Godwin, Julya Hajnoczky, John Hall, Maggie Hall, Bradley Harms, Marcia Harris, Alicia Henry, Robert Houle, Geoffrey Hunter, Marie Khouri, Paul Kuhn, Marie Lannoo, A.C. Leighton, Derek Liddington, Kris Lindskoog, Kenneth Lochhead, Eric Louie, Lyle XOX, Jennifer Marman & Daniel Borins, Andrew James McKay, Miville, Ron Moppett, Mark Mullin, Erik Olson, Stu Oxley, Tanja Rector, Anthony Redpath, Jean-Paul Riopelle, Simone Rochon, Nurgül Rodriguez, Dina Roudman, Ryan Sluggett, Colin Smith, Michael Smith, Barbara Steinman, Cassie Suche, Takao Tanabe, Diana Thorneycroft, Joseph Tisiga, Winnie Truong, Lauren Walker, Rhonda Weppler & Trevor Mahovsky, Carl White and John Will.

Art Auction Contributors

Megan Bradley & Antoine Ertaskiran, Alexandra Burroughs, Daniel Faria & Madeleine Taurins, Ryan Green, Chair & Megan Paterson, Jarvis Hall & Shannon Norberg, Deborah Herringer Kiss, Colette Hubner, Christine Klassen, Paul Kuhn & Esther Krasnow, Ian Loch, Jeannie McKinley, Viviane Mehr & Hesam Rezaei, Brett Sherlock, Yves Trépanier, Kevin Baer & Judy Ciccaglione, Cristin Tierney, Helen Zenith & Tamar Zenith.

Gallery Contributors

L23K Committee

Contemporary Calgary’s LOOK committee is made up of a diverse group of individuals, all of whom have one thing in common: their support of Contemporary Calgary and their commitment to arts and culture. Thank you to all of our committee members for your ideas, your time, your energy, and your enthusiasm.

HONORARY CHAIRS: Robert Houle, RCA, Suzanne Rogers, Wendy Tilby & Amanda Forbis, Hung Vanngo

GUEST OF HONOUR: Jean Grand-Maître, C.M., LL.D. h.c.

L23K CHAIR: Kelly Streit

VICE-CHAIRS: Kim Berjian & Elizabeth Middleton

Kevin Krausert
Bruce Kuwabara OC
Chethan Lakshman & Heather Dunn
Chad Larson
Michelle Lazo
D’Arcy Levesque
Margaret-Jean Mannix
Walker & Jeannie McKinley
Michael Meneghetti
Patricia Moore OC 
Katy Bond
Alexandra Burroughs
Tara Cowles
Chris Cran
Erin Donnelly-Ferguson

FREE First Thursday Partners

Commemorating the centenary of the planetarium as an architectural type, Contemporary Calgary presents an ambitious project by acclaimed Canadian artist Charles Stankievech. 

The Desert Turned to Glass forms a place where the cosmic and the chthonic collide. A transmedia installation that inhabits both the projection room of the planetarium’s dome and the subterranean space below, the visitor experiences a stratified ecosystem spread across multiple levels within the building, while representing vast distances in space and time.

Thematically, the project explores alternative theories of the origin of life, consciousness and art. Projected onto the overhead dome, a newly commissioned video work marshals high atmospheric video recordings of the Albertan Badlands, the Utah Salt Flats, Icelandic & Japanese volcanoes, and a meteorite crater in the Namibian desert. Visualizing the Earth at the critical moments of its evolution–this presentation speculates about the moment when life on the planet was seeded from a frozen meteorite. 

Accompanying the visuals, temporality and timelessness entwine in a sonic fugue, combining both subterranean beats and cosmic noise—inviting the visitor to meditate on deep time, deep space, and deep listening. In dialogue with contemporary scientific research, the exhibition also comprises original field recordings by Stankievech of solar rays (whistling within the earth’s ionosphere), hydrophone recordings of crackling Arctic ice and flowing Yucatan cenotes (created by a meteorite impact), and ambisonic recordings captured within the Canary Islands’ volcanic calderas. In the cavernous space below, bacteria consume pools of petroleum rippling with infrasonic waves, underneath an ultrasonic sound installation for bats.

Spanning the abyss of space and the depths of the earth, The Desert Turned to Glass is an epic meditation on origins, endings, and infinity.

On the evening of the opening, Stankievech will perform a live concert inside the planetarium dome as part of a series of site-specific performances entitled The Glass Key (including in James Turell’s Tree of Light, Merida, Mexico and a volcanic tube at Buenavista Vineyards, Lanzarote). 

An accompanying publication edited by Dehlia Hannah and Nadim Samman is set for release later in 2023. 

About the Artist

Charles Stankievech (b. Okotoks, Canada) is an artist, writer and curator, whose award-winning work has been shown at institutions including the Palais de Tokyo, Paris; HKW Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal; Kunste Werke, Berlin; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark; National Gallery of Canada; TBA21, Vienna; as well as several biennials from Venice to SITE Santa Fe. He has lectured at dOCUMENTA (13) and the 8th Berlin Biennale, and his writing has been published by Verso, MIT, Sternberg Press, e-flux, and Princeton Architectural Press. He is an editor of Afterall Journal (U of Chicago Press), a co-founder of the Yukon School of Visual Art, and was Director of Visual Studies at the University of Toronto from 2015-2021, where he is currently Associate Professor. For 2022-23, Stankievech is a visiting researcher in the Department of Architecture at the University of Tokyo.

February 3 – February 16, 2023

The Exposure Photography Festival announces its February 2023 programme. Returning for its nineteenth year, it will present the work of over 160 exhibiting visual artists hosted in galleries, local businesses, online and outdoors.

Exposure’s curated exhibitions, the International Open Call and Emerging Photographers Showcase, will be hosted at Contemporary Calgary, a significant visual arts destination dedicated to modern and contemporary art. The exhibitions present a broad range of works, including photocollage, conceptual photography, politically engaged practices and works that embrace social and individual experience, as well as visual explorations of identity and personal narratives.

The Exposure 2023 International Open Call exhibition will feature the work of photographers and visual artists based around the world who incorporate, celebrate, or challenge the photographic medium within their practices. Selected by Michèle Pearson Clarke, Artist, Writer, Educator and Photo Laureate for the City of Toronto (2019-2022), the exhibition will present the works of contemporary practitioners based in Canada, France, Greece, Iceland, Japan, Netherlands, UK, and USA.

The Exposure 2023 Emerging Photographers Showcase celebrates the rich talent of early-career practitioners who are based in Alberta. Selected by Tiffany Jones, Publisher, Overlapse Books, the exhibition provides insight into the dynamic and growing community of fine art photographers here in our province.

Exposure’s 2022 Emerging Photographer of the Year award recipient Raeann Cheung will be presenting her solo show ‘WE ARE IMMIGRANTS - The Hidden Hardships and Legacy of Early Chinese Canadian Immigrants’. The exhibition will explore the resilience of the early Chinese Canadian immigrants whose perseverance and hard work helped strengthen the geographic boundaries, armed forces, and economic capacity of this country from mid 19th century onward.

Exposure Fence: People & Place, is an outdoor exhibition at Calgary’s Olympic Plaza, presented in partnership with the Chinook Blast! Festival. Curated by Beth Kane, People & Place presents the work of five visual artists based in Treaty 6 and 7 territories, also known as Southern Alberta. The work and perspectives of this dynamic group of exhibiting artists provide us with both celebratory and critical visual insights regarding the complex, intertwined relationships between people and place within these traditional territories. In addition to activating public space in Calgary’s downtown core, the exhibition promotes wider understandings and increased access to the art of photography and visual storytelling, amplifying impactful narratives and connecting artists to a wide audience.

Exposure will also bring an exciting city-wide public exhibition to its audiences in Calgary. In partnership with Pattison Outdoor Advertising, Exposure Billboard will show the work of 31 international and local artists and photographers via digital billboards located throughout the city. Photographs will be hosted in three different locations for a three-week duration. Exposure continues to provide innovative ways for Calgarians to engage with the arts.

EXPOSURE 2023 INTERNATIONAL OPEN CALL

Juried by by Michèle Pearson Clarke, Artist, Writer, Educator and Photo Laureate for the City of Toronto (2019-2022), the Exposure 2023 International Open Call exhibition features the work of photographers and visual artists based around the world who incorporate, celebrate or challenge the photographic medium within their practices. The exhibition shows a broad range of works, including photocollage, conceptual photography, politically engaged practices and works that embrace social and individual experience, as well as visual explorations of identity and personal narratives.

Exhibiting Artists are Anthony Gebrehiwot (Canada), Glenna Jennings (USA), Jaiden George (Canada), Jake Eshelman (USA), Kelly O'Brien (UK), Khim Hipol (Canada), Leia Ankers (UK), Linda Heiss (USA), Panos Charalampidis + Mary Chairetaki (Greece), Sarah Christianson (USA), Sarah Mei Herman (Netherlands), Serena Dzenis (Iceland), Shanen Louis (Canada), Takako Kido (Japan) and Valerio Geraci (France).

For more information on our exhibiting artists please see Exposure Festival’s website.

EXPOSURE 2023 EMERGING PHOTOGRAPHERS SHOWCASE

Juried by Tiffany Jones, Publisher of Overlapse, the Emerging Photographers Showcase presents the work of fifteen photographers and visual artists based in Treaties 6,7 and 8 Territories in Alberta. The exhibition celebrates the rich talent of early-career practitioners who are based in the province while providing an insight into our dynamic and growing community of fine art photographers here in Alberta.

Exhibiting Artists are AJ Kluck, Amir Salehi, Angela Boehm, Brady Fullerton, Danny Luong, Elyse Longair, Haley Eyre, Kaitlyn Kerr, Levin Ifko, Megan Hamilton, Melika Forouzan, Mitra Samavaki, Saeed Abdollahi Alavijeh, Stephen Chan and Tekoa Predika.

For more information on our exhibiting artists please see Exposure Festival’s website.

EXPOSURE 2023 EMERGING PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR: RAEANN CHEUNG

Exposure’s 2022 Emerging Photographer of the Year award recipient Raeann Cheung will be presenting her solo show ‘WE ARE IMMIGRANTS - The Hidden Hardships and Legacy of Early Chinese Canadian Immigrants’. The exhibition will explore the resilience of the early Chinese Canadian immigrants whose perseverance and hard work helped strengthen the geographic boundaries, armed forces, and economic capacity of this country from mid 19th century onward.

EXPOSURE FENCE: PEOPLE & PLACE

Exposure, in partnership with the Chinook Blast! Festival, will present an outdoor exhibition at Calgary’s Olympic Plaza. Curated by Beth Kane, People & Place presents the work of five visual artists based in Treaty 6 and 7 territories, also known as Southern Alberta. The work and perspectives of this dynamic group of exhibiting artists provide us with both celebratory and critical visual insights regarding the complex, intertwined relationships between People & Place within these traditional territories. In addition to activating public space in Calgary’s downtown core, the exhibition promotes wider understandings and increased access to the art of photography and visual storytelling, amplifying impactful narratives and connecting artists to a wide audience.

Chitra Ganesh
Astral Dance

13 October 2022 – 9 April 2023

Contemporary Calgary is pleased to present Astral Dance, the first solo exhibition of works by Chitra Ganesh in Canada, and a significant survey of her practice spanning more than twenty years.

At its core, Ganesh’s work engages with aesthetics and subject matter that elude national and conceptual boundaries that often perpetuate an “othering” of historically marginalized subjects and narratives. Drawing upon iconography from the South Asian subcontinent, science fiction, queer theory, vintage comics, Surrealism, Bollywood posters, and more, Ganesh delivers fantastic, dreamlike worlds where the past, present and future are merged into new, speculative propositions.

Astral Dance brings together drawings, paintings, photography, collages, wall installations, animations and sculpture in a site-specific exhibition that reveals the depth and diversity of Ganesh’s practice. Whether through multi-panel comic installations or large immersive murals with three-dimensional elements, her hybrid cultural visions challenge perceived ideas of sexuality, power, desire and authority. Her early comic series, Tales of Amnesia, recontextualizes the widely read comic Amar Chitra Katha, a collection of instructive children’s stories based in Hindu mythologies and Indian history. She transforms these folk and children’s forms into non-linear narratives replete with enigmatic female protagonists that destabilize meaning, tradition, and authenticity. Elsewhere she invokes the world of silent cinema with dramatic charcoal renderings of iconic moments from Karma (1933) or Metropolis (1927), exploring the relationship between science fiction, epic myth, and Orientalism. Throughout Astral Dance, Ganesh weaves everyday life with the magical, mythological, and erotic, offering seductive new narratives swirling within realms of possibility.

About the Artist

Chitra Ganesh (b. 1975 Brooklyn, New York, USA) received a BA in Art-Semiotics and Comparative Literature from Brown University, Providence, RI in 1996. She attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2001 and received her MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University, NY in 2002. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, USA. 

Across a twenty-year practice, Chitra Ganesh has developed an expansive body of work rooted in drawing and painting, which has evolved to encompass animations, wall drawings, collages, computer generated imagery, video, and sculpture. Through studies in literature, semiotics, social theory, science fiction, and historical and mythic texts, Ganesh attempts to reconcile representations of femininity, sexuality, and power absent from the artistic and literary canons. She often draws on Hindu and Buddhist iconography and South Asian forms such as Kalighat and Madhubani, and is currently negotiating her relationship to these images with the rise of right wing fundamentalism in India. 

Ganesh's work has been widely exhibited in the United States and internationally, including solo shows at Brooklyn Museum, NY,USA; MoMA PS1, NY, USA; The Kitchen, NY, USA; The Rubin Museum of Art, NY, USA; The Andy Warhol Museum, PA, USA; Gothenburg Kunsthalle, Sweden; and Times Square, NY,USA. Her work has also been exhibited in important group exhibitions at The Walker Art Center, MN, USA; the Baltimore Museum of Art, MD, USA; The Queens Museum of Art, NY, USA; The Asia Society, NY, USA; The Bronx Museum, NY, USA; The Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX, USA; the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, CA, USA; the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, CA, USA; the Boca Raton Museum of Art, LA, USA; the Hayward Gallery, London, UK; Saatchi Museum, London, UK: Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Italy; Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno, Italy; the ZKM Center for Art and Media, Germany; Göteborgs Konsthall, Germany; Arthotek Kunstverein, Göttingen, Germany; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai, China; the Gwangju Contemporary Arts Centre, Korea; the Prince of Wales Museum, Mumbai, India; Indira Ghandi National Centre for Arts, New Delhi, India; Devi Art Foundation, India; the Kochi Biennial, India; the Dhaka Art Summit, Bangladesh among others.

Ganesh’s work is represented in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, NY, USA; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA, USA; the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY, USA; The Brooklyn Museum, NY, USA; The Art Institute of Chicago, IL, USA; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; The Ford Foundation, NY, USA; University of Michigan Museum of Art, MI, USA; The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, PA, USA; the Devi Art Foundation, India; Kiran Nadar Museum, Delhi, India; the Saatchi Collection, London, UK; Burger Collection, Hong Kong; Deutsche Bank, among others.

Ganesh is the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards, including grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts; Printed Matter; the Art Matters Foundation; the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in the Creative Arts; the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award for Painters and Sculptors; and the Hodder Fellowship from the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University, and the Pollock Krasner Foundation.

Supporters

Human Capital

13 October 2022 – 16 April 2023

Curated by Tak Pham, Associate Curator, MacKenzie Art Gallery.

Artists: Nura Ali, Aleesa Cohene, Darija Radakovic, Chantal Gibson, Jeannie Mah, Esmaa Mohamoud, Nurgul Rodriguez, Marigold Santos, Farihah Shah, Florence Yee, Jin-me Yoon and Shellie Zhang.

The exhibition is presented in partnership with the MacKenzie Art Gallery.

Human Capital presents work that offers insight into the impact of Canada’s immigration policies and history: how it treats humans as capital, and the role it plays in shaping the complex and contested formation of a “Canadian identity.”

Canada, like most Western nations, has a long history of immigration campaigns that promise economic prosperity to both the state and immigrants. As a result, Canadian immigration policies have historically focused on maximizing economic contributions while minimizing disruption to the “fundamental character of the Canadian population,” as remarked by Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King in 1947.  

Canada’s current, points-based immigration system, in place since 1967, attempts to provide a non-discriminatory framework for assessing individuals and collectives and directing them to strategic economic and geographic sectors. Once inside Canada, new immigrants are expected to boost the country’s economy by producing more for less. The system has little regard for existing marginalized communities, as it continues to reinforce “Canadian values” with an ever-growing intake of immigrants, whose admittance is driven primarily by the economic demands of the country. For all these reasons, the exhibition asks: What else is lost when human potential is measured as units of capital? 

Supporters

23 June – 18 September 2022

Canadian artist Chris Curreri’s work focuses on the idea that we constantly contend with things outside ourselves and, crucially, with other people. These relationships create a network, a fabric within which we are enmeshed. To what extent, then, do we open ourselves to, or close ourselves off from this fabric?

Working across photography and sculpture, Curreri presents an expansive exhibition for Contemporary Calgary with works produced over the last decade, including a newly created large-scale installation.

Presented in partnership with the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, this exhibition explores bodily porousness as a form of vulnerability. To be a body is to be penetrated.

About the Artist

Chris Curreri is a Canadian artist who works with film, photography and sculpture. His work is premised on the idea that things in the world are not defined by essential properties, but rather by the actual relationships that we establish with them. Recent exhibitions include: A Surrogate, A Proxy, A Stand In at Agnes Etherington Art Centre (Kingston, Canada), Thick Skull, Thin Skin at Esker Foundation (Calgary, Canada), The Way We Are 1.0 at Weserburg museum für moderne Kunst (Bremen, Germany), Sleeping with a Vengeance, Dreaming of a Life at Württembergischer Kunstverein (Stuttgart, Germany), The Ventriloquist at Daniel Faria Gallery (Toronto, Canada), 2017 Canadian Biennial at National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa, Canada), Compassionate Protocols at Callicoon Fine Arts (New York, USA), La Biennale de Montréal 2016 at Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal (Montréal, Québec). His films have been screened at: Image Forum Festival, Japan; Festival Internacional de Cine de Mar del Plata, Argentina; and the Toronto International Film Festival, Canada. He holds an MFA from the Milton Avery Graduate School for the Arts at Bard College.

Supporters

Community Partners

23 June – 18 September 2022

Curated by Wanda Nanibush

The exhibition is organized by the Art Gallery of Ontario, sponsored by TD Bank and generously supported by Maurice Law Barristers & Solicitors which is the first—and only—Indigenous-owned national law firm in Canada. The exhibition will travel to the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC, May 25, 2023 - June 2, 2024.

Robert Houle is one of the most influential First Nations artists to break into the contemporary art world. His work blends abstraction, modernism and conceptualism with First Nations aesthetics and histories. Houle went from residential school to art school to museum boardrooms and on to the art world stage as an artist, curator and writer.

Robert Houle: Red is Beautiful consists of large installations, paintings and drawings created between 1970 and 2021. Themes in the exhibition include Sacred Geometry, The Spiritual Legacy of the Ancient Ones, Beyond History Painting, The Aesthetics of Disappearance, Residential School Years, and Sovereignty.

Houle is a colourist working in oil and has painted an impressive body of work that challenges our understanding of Western and First Nations art history.

Works from 1970 to 1983 are marked by his exploration of abstract expressionists such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman and Jasper Johns and the pure abstraction and geometry of Mondrian and Malevich. Houle brings an older Indigenous abstract tradition to this history and, in the meeting of the two, he emerges as a new voice in modern abstraction that values immediacy, gesture, the spiritual qualities of colour, piercing the canvas with organic materials, Anishinaabe geometry and Indigenous sacred belongings.

This exhibition shows iconic works, such as Kanata, a reworking of Benjamin West's The Death of General Wolfe, and Parfleches for the Last Supper, addressing his respect for Indigenous spiritual traditions. 

Houle’s large-scale paintings and installations challenge commercial appropriation of First Nation names like Pontiac and Apache and bring Indigenous land rights to the forefront for the public. Houle's work also addresses major resistance movements and global topics.

As a curator, his first exhibitions began a brand new discourse on contemporary First Nations art. His work challenged audience expectations of what First Nations art looked like. Houle stayed independent from the trends and stereotypical cultural performances of the day. 

Bravely, Houle also brought the residential schools era into sharp relief. His work Sandy Bay (1998-99) dealt with his own experience of being torn from his home. Later, in 2009, he began to deal with his memories of abuse in the school through a series of visceral drawings and paintings. Houle turns to the spiritual power of the ancient ones providing a new vision for an Indigenous future that holds the complexity of contemporary First Nations identity in its grasp. 

This exhibition is a walk through fifty years of what matters to First Nations and Settler relations today with an artist who was always ahead of time.

About the Artist

Robert Houle (b. 1947, St. Boniface, Manitoba) is an Anishinaabe Saulteaux contemporary artist, curator, writer, critic, and educator. For more than fifty years, he has worked to advocate for First Nations artistic representation and sovereignty and has established himself as an essential force within the artistic community in Canada and around the world. Houle studied at the University of Manitoba, McGill University, and the International Summer Academy of Fine Arts in Salzburg, Austria, and for many years taught Indigenous Studies at the Ontario College of Art and Design. From 1977 to 1981, he was Curator of Contemporary Aboriginal Art at the Canadian Museum of History (formerly the Canadian Museum of Civilization). As a curator, he is also responsible for landmark exhibitions such as Land Spirit Power: First Nations at the National Gallery of Canada (1992).

Houle’s various solo exhibitions include Lost Tribes, Hood College, Maryland; Indians from A to Z and Sovereignty over Subjectivity, Winnipeg Art Gallery; Palisade, Carleton University Art Gallery, Ottawa; Anishnabe Walker Court, an intervention at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Paris/Ojibwa, Canadian Cultural Centre, Paris, Peterborough, and Windsor; Shaman Dream in Colour, Kinsman Robinson Galleries, Toronto; Looking for the Shaman, John B. Aird Gallery,Toronto; Robert Houle: Pahgedenaun, Carleton University Art Gallery, Ottawa; and Robert Houle: Histories, McMichael Canadian Collection, Kleinburg, Ontario. 

He has also participated in several important international group exhibitions, including Recent Generations: Native American Art from 1950 to 1987, Heard Museum, Phoenix; Traveling Theory, Jordan National Gallery, Amman, Jordan; Notions of Conflict, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Real Fictions: Four Canadian Artists, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia; Tout le temps/Every Time, 2000 Montreal Biennale; We Come in Peace...: Histories of the Americas, Musée d’art Contemporain de Montréal; Sakahàn, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Before and After the Horizon: Anishinaabe Artists of the Great Lakes, National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, and Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; and Toronto: Tributes and + Tributaries, 1971–1989 and Every, Now, Then: Reframing Nationhood, both at the Art Gallery of Ontario. 

His artistic achievements have garnered him numerous awards and accolades, including the 2001 Toronto Arts Award for the Visual Arts; the 2015 Governor General’s Award in the Visual and Media Arts; and most recently, the 2020 Founder’s Achievement Award from the Toronto Friends of the Visual Arts. He has been awarded two honorary doctorates, one in 2014 from his alma mater, the University of Manitoba and a Doctorate of Laws from the University of Ontario Institute of Technology in 2016. Houle has also served on various boards and advisory committees, including those of the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto, The Indigenous Curatorial Collective, A Space, The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, and the Native Canadian Centre of Toronto. 

Supporters

Community Partners

On display are independent artists Skye Nicolas and Jonathan Wolfe, and Bloom collective artists Ben Thomas, David Lisser, Dexamol, Hannes Hummel, Icki, noCreative, onyro, Stephan Duquesnoy, Shavonne Wong & Tina Eisen.

Perhaps it is time to think of digital art as a new center, a point we have arrived at; the rebellious teenage offspring of traditional art and the 21st century.

Maturing at an incomprehensible rate, movements that once took decades or centuries to establish happen in weeks, or even days with the advent of digital creativity. Renegotiating the definition of space, artist, community and viewership, crypto artists are re-introducing the union between art and technology to establish an unprecedented legacy.

In our global LOOK2022 collection, our NFTs showcase diverse creators focused on visual experiences expanded with sound and scent, merging URL and IRL. Curated by Alia Aluma, a graduate in the field of decentralized societies and CryptoArt history.

JONATHAN WOLFE
LOOKING IN
2022
MP 4 Still, ACRYLIC AND GOUACHE ON WOOD PANEL 16" X 20"

VALUE $28,000
MINIMUM BID $14,000
LISTED ON SUPERRARE MARKETPLACE THE FIRST NFT COLLECTOR WILL RECEIVE A TANGIBLE, IRL PAINTING FROM WHICH THE NFT IS RENDERED.

Jonathan Wolfe is a 22 year old artist based in Calgary, Alberta. He studied at the Alberta University of the Arts for painting. Wolfe’s art often deals with humor, color, and play while exploring many different mediums such as acrylic, gouache, digital animation, and print. His work has been featured in both URL and IRL exhibitions, including “Fabricated Fairytales” on Nifty Gateway in 2021, where his work sat beside notable NFT artists FEWOCiOUS, parrot_ism and Odious, influential and defining figures in the playful world of anti-hierarchical creation. “Fabricated Fairytales” auctioned Wolfe’s work, Living in my Head, for $55,555.55 USD.

Wolfe’s work has been discussed in Artsy (2020) and Toronto Star, with the young artist's playful pieces appearing on Super Rare (2020 & 2022), Dart Milano (2021), in Albert Einstein Foundation (2021), and $MEME (2021), and in collaboration with Nike & RTFKT Studios with his own AirForce1s in 2021. This local artist has become a significant member of the NFTism movement, a moment in art focused on collaborative, community focused creation and sale, renegotiating what it means to have agency as an artist.

SKYE NICOLAS
IN BLOOM: FLOWER WORK #1
MP4 Still

MP4, 1 of 5 Works, Exhibited at: Bang & Olufsen showroom, Königsallee 61, 40215 Düsseldorf.

Born in Manila, lives and works in
New York (NY), USA Ranging from large format paintings, filmmaking, photography, video installation, public space interventions, sculpture, and street wear design, New York-based post-conceptual artist Skye Nicolas blends socio-political commentary with elegantly composed amalgamations of vivid imagery and pop culture references through various means of precisely executed appropriation and witty subtextual conversation. In doing so, he explores the fundamentally potent tactics of Twenty-First Century marketing while revealing the systemic trappings of modern day consumerism as a way of life. At the core of his work, Nicolas pinpoints the pulse of a living transmedia consciousness: a fully plugged-in and engaged technology- driven culture that engorges itself on mass-produced content and information.

BEN THOMAS
ARCHIBOLD
JPG

JPG, 1 OF 5 WORKS, LISTED ON ETHERSCAN. CURRENT COLLECTOR: M3

BEN THOMAS, is a UK-based Artist and Art Director working in the medium of 3D. His work is often inspired by dreams, human connection, world affairs and mental health. He also counts music as one of his biggest daily inspirations.

Ben Thomas is an Art Director at Cape & Monocle where he predominantly works on projects in the Entertainment industry and advertising sector for clients such as Sony, Universal, Island Records, BMG and Warner Music. He has also been making my own art and exhibiting in traditional spaces for over a decade.

Outside of client work, Ben has been part of the NFT industry since November 2020 and first minted in February 2021. All of his pieces listed have sold out, including my recent submission as part of the Bloom Collective drop on Nifty Gateway which sold out in under 15 minutes.

DAVID LISSER
GROTTO
MP4 Still

MP4, MINTED ON FEBRUARY 1, 2022.
LAST SOLD: 3.0Ξ ($8,284 USD).
CURRENT COLLECTOR: @PADDYSTASH

DAVID LISSER, is a UK based artist working across digital and physical media. He has a background in sculpture and his work has been shown widely in Museums and Galleries across the UK and Europe, including at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art and MIMA. He is known for his cultured-meat artworks, which interrogate the relationship between technology, nature and consumption – and utilize the digital simulation of life to unpick our understanding of ‘the real’. He is deeply embedded in the NFT landscape, and works to bridge the gap between the traditional art-world and this newer space. He is on the Curation Committee for Fingerprints DAO and was an artist advisor for the inaugural Vertical CryptoArt artist residency programme.

DEXAMOL
GENESYNTH
MP4 Still

MP4, MINTED ON SUPERRARE, APRIL 26, 2021.
LAST SOLD: 2.2Ξ ($4,381 USD)
CURRENT COLLECTOR: @PLAYDRESS

DEXAMOL, is an artist who produces animations and
digital images, as well as physical sculptures. Dexamol’s
art bypasses engendered dichotomies such as natural vs artificial & finds beauty in the small things. His work was most recently shown at Art Basel, the billboards of Shibuya Tokyo and at Wieden+Kennedy in a charity exhibition in support of Rainforest Trust.

HANNES HUMMEL
ARTIFICIAL FLORILEGIA – ACT 1
MP4 Still

MP4, MINTED ON OCTOBER 13, 2021.
LAST SOLD: 9.0Ξ ($32,211 USD)
CURRENT COLLECTOR: @TAPPYSF

HANNES HUMMEL, is a German-based interdisciplinary Designer and 3D Artist focusing on contemporary imagery. His recent digital artworks focus on the mesmerizing complexity of organic structures—symmetry, tessellations, and patterns within patterns capturing fragments of nature. In addition, his work often references a wide variety of historical art movements, reimagined through the digital medium. Hummel’s work was showcased at Art Basel Miami, on multiple Billboards in Tokyo and Beijing, and at the world’s first exclusive NFT gallery. Superchief Gallery. in New York City. Besides creating digital art, he has worked as a freelance motion designer for top-leading brands such as creatives such as Sony Japan, Nike, Iris Van Herpen, BMW, and more.

ICKI
META-PLAGIARISM
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MP4, MINTED ON JULY 20, 2021. LAST SOLD: 1.55Ξ ($3,087 USD) CURRENT COLLECTOR: @KRYBHARAT

ICKI, is an independent creative with more than 10 years of commercial experience operating across consultancy and commercial creative positions based in London, UK. He is known for reimagining ‘conceptual and minimalist’ art within the digital domain and exploring themes that transcend Crypto native and non-native perspectives.

NOCREATIVE
EN ROUTE.
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MP4, MINTED ON SUPERRARE, MAY 5, 2022.

NOCREATIVE’S work, En Route, takes the erratic nature of a piece of cloth in the wind, displayed through seamless

looping. In doing so, he has created a contemporary art installation viewed through a screen. While his inspiration, Hans Haackes, was restricted by basic physics, noCreative is not. With this freedom, noCreative declares, “I have done the impossible—this is art in transformation.”

SHAVONNE WONG
THE KISS
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MP4, MINTED ON SUPERRARE, SEPTEMBER 2021. BOUGHT FOR 4Ξ ($7,967 USD), CURRENTLY LISTED FOR 5.15Ξ ($10,257 USD). CURRENT COLLECTOR: @JO7_VAULT

SHAVONNE WONG, awarded Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia,
is a 3D Virtual Model Creator and NFT Artist. Building on her experiences as a Fashion and Advertising Photographer for the past decade, she creates life-like virtual models and places them in surreal environments and the metaverse. Wong has collaborated with Vogue Singapore, Sotheby’s, the World Economic Forum and the World of Women project. She also created a 500 pieces project, Love is Love, a reflection on the expression of love and identity that enabled its collectors to have a say in determining the generative artwork’s outcome. Notable collectors include Idris Elba.

STEPHAN DUQUESNOY
RUINOUS OPULENCE
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JPG, MINTED ON MAKERSPLACE, SEPTEMBER 25, 2021.
LAST SOLD: 1.25Ξ .($4,995.11 USD). CURRENT OWNER: @404ART

STEPHAN DUQUESNOY’S work is easily recognizable due to his unique combination of romantic aesthetics with hints of classical sentiment and melancholy. To create his work, Stephan uses an unique mixture of craftsmanship in combination with custom-made procedural tools. His works often feature lush ornaments and flowers in combination with strong feminine characters. Both his compositional elements and work philosophy are heavily inspired by the pre-raphaelite brotherhood painters.

TINA EISEN
AYUTHIA
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MP4, MINTED ON SUPERRARE, NOVEMBER 27, 2021.
LAST SOLD: 5.22Ξ ($10,396.83 USD)
CURRENT OWNER: CRYPTINISH

Tina Eisen, is an editorial and commercial beauty and fashion photographer based in London, UK. With over 10 years of experience in the industry. Her artwork revolves around macro self portraits, where she explores the beauty of the focused minimal, combined with her expertise in the beauty industry. Sometimes exploring the dark sides of human nature.

Tina’s Beauty Photography workshops in Europe and North America, her publications and online beauty photography tutorials are popular amongst a global audience.

Tina is a regular speaker and educator for photography equipment and software brands such as Canon, Profoto and Capture One and is regularly showcasing her craft at national and international trade-shows.

Art Auction Sponsor

Heather Bala Edwards & k.d. lang

Art Auction Chair

Deborah Herringer Kiss

Auctioneer

Brett Sherlock
Christie's International Consultant

LOOK2022 Committee 

Contemporary Calgary’s LOOK committee is made up of a diverse group of individuals, all of whom have one thing in common: their support of Contemporary Calgary and their commitment to making LOOK2022 the party of the year. Thank you to all of our committee members for your ideas, your time, your energy, and your enthusiasm.

LOOK2022 Chair

Kelly Streit

Honorary Chairs

Douglas Coupland, OC, OBC
M. Ann McCaig, CM, AOE
Kelly Oxford
Adrian A. Stimson

Vice-Chairs

Kim Berjian
Erin Donnelly-Ferguson

Committee Members

Ryan Atkins, Alexandra Burroughs, Elizabeth Carson, Tara Cowles, Chris Cran, Chaitali Dave, Lauretta Enders, Samara Felesky Hunt, Matthew Grant & Carly Duerr, Arif Hirani, Ernest Hon, Usman Jutt, Deb Kerr, Steve & Zoe Klintberg Nagy, Kevin Krausert, Bruce Kuwabara, CM, Chad Larson, Michelle Lazo, D'Arcy Levesque, Margaret-Jean Mannix, Walker & Jeannie McKinley, Michael Meneghetti, Elizabeth & Ross Middleton, Pat Moore, OC, Ellen Parker, Jenn Rallison, M. Carol Ryder, Robyn Silverberg, Chloe Streit, Peter & Jan Tertzakian, Todd Towers, and Jan Wittig.

Factory Dinner Sponsor

Food & Beverage Sponsor

Andy Warhol: One Night Only Sponsor

Studio 54 Reception Sponsor

After Party Sponsor

Entertainment Sponsor

Community Partner

Travel & Accommodations Sponsor

Media Sponsor

LOOK2022 Patron

In-Kind Sponsors

Andy Warhol: One Night Only

Andy Warhol: One Night Only, an interview with Don Kottmann.

Andy Warhol: One Night Only, an interview with John Will.

For One Night Only, Contemporary Calgary is thrilled to share a selection of works by one of the world’s most significant contemporary artists, Andy Warhol. Drawn from collections within Calgary, the works on display reflect a diverse range of Warhol’s prints and other ephemera. From the glamour of Marilyn Monroe to the commonplace Hamburger, seminal works like these were foundational to the artist’s development of Pop Art and his reflections on consumerism, material culture, celebrity and the banality of contemporary American culture.

Andy Warhol: One Night Only is a rare and exciting addition to the LOOK gala that extends this year’s theme drawing upon the magic of Studio 54 and Warhol as one of the clubs most alluring and regular guests. Disco, Pop, glamour, sexual freedom, and extreme exclusivity made Studio 54 a cultural phenomenon that captured a moment in time at once dizzying, ecstatic and rife with an unbridled lust for life. Warhol’s artistic practice and cultivation of celebrity thrived in this milieu, a club where many of his subjects, including Mohammed Ali, would be found dancing the night away.

This exhibition is generously sponsored by Masters Gallery and we are delighted to announce they have included Dollar Sign, a one-of-a-kind serigraphic print on silk handkerchief, as a work not only on view, but available for purchase. Dollar Sign is included in Masters Gallery exhibition of Andy Warhol launching June 17th with a percentage of the sales going to support Contemporary Calgary’s exhibitions and public programs.

Factory Dinner Sponsor

Food & Beverage Sponsor

Andy Warhol: One Night Only Sponsor

LOOK2022 Art Auction Sponsor

Heather Bala Edwards & k.d. lang

Studio 54 Reception Sponsor

Studio 54 After Party Sponsor

Entertainment Sponsor

Community Sponsor

LOOK2022 Patron

Media Sponsor

In-Kind Sponsors