white-wash

wilfredo prieto, dimunitive and speaking through a middle-aged translator, giggles about his conceptual colour-free installation: a library of 6000 black, white-bound books, individualized, leather-bound, paper-back, perhaps coyly alphabetical even, with imaginary white author names (not White, although that question surfaces)...

he says we learn from experience, not from words.

oh i beg to differ.

for the library is a space for hiding and seeking...words.

yes, yes, it is an "experience" to open a book and have strands of hair fall into your lap and the lingering perfume of another reader slip out...but is the romance not in the *words* you've both read? prieto's library is clinical, clean, cold. nothing is shared because you can leave no traces, there is no ink to bleed into your oily fingers and leave impressions of elsewhere. there are no corners for hiding. every secret is conspicuous an automatically ruined of its secret-status...

i thought it was a reno of the white cube, but nothing more clever. i longed for someplace musty.

prieto, from cuba, is currently exhibiting "Mute", a seizure-inducing disco installation, at the McMaster Museum of Art. "White Library" belongs to his representing gallery in Barcelona, Norgueras Blanchard.

after the holiday hiatus...

i know that the first sin of blogging is to brashly abandon the thing for months at a time. oh well.
this weekend the G & M (a publication i am sort-of boycotting due to its lame behaviour in december over heather mallick's column on noam chomsky...details of which i will not go into but which can be found at rabble.ca) had a piece in the toronto section by bruce farley mowatt about how fabulous the art scene in hamilton has become. the article praised the young galleries at james north & colbourne:

blue angel gallery 243 J.N.
loose canon gallery 150 J. N. (no that is not a typo)
mixed media 174 J.N.
you me gallery 330 J.N.
hamilton artists inc. 3 colbourne (where cathy cahill will unveil TOTEM this friday, like the one pictured here! my apologies if this feminist art site has been a bit phallic of late...on with the yonis...)