Brian Jungen show at the Vancouver Art Gallery: phenomenal

Wow. I saw many cool looking ads for the Brian Jungen show at the Vancouver Art Gallery (VAG) in downtown Vancouver. What little I saw looked pretty sweet. I almost forgot about the show when I saw a short blurb on him and his VAG show on Bravo while channel hopping. Again, the stuff he had made was looking mighty sweet. I decided I had to go, or potentially regret not going forever.
I went down to the VAG today to check it out. Was it as good as I had hoped? Short answer: yes. Long answer: freakin’ awesome. Best $10 I’ve spent in a long time.
I rarely go to art shows as the work being shown generally has little appeal to me. I’m hard to please. But virtually everything at the Brian Jungen exhibit rocked me; it was an astoundingly strong show of work.

My favorite pieces were the life-size whale skeletons made out of sawn white plastic lawn chairs bolted together. Beautiful, massive, mysterious, eye-candy with an implicit, but not too trite, message about what we leave behind when we’re gone. Sad, silent, ivory white behemoths suspended from the ceiling; a reminder of the past.

The other highlight of the show was his West Coast aboriginal masks made from Nike ‘Air Jordan’ shoes stitched together in creative ways. Which sounds daft but actually works; the back, white and red are the traditional colour palette of native art here. These are beautiful, weird, grotesque, majestic… I could go on. Instead, check the photos I took before (and after) a security guard informed me that taking pictures is not allowed.
I will be the first to admit that I’m not a fan of West Coast native art. Living in Vancouver, it’s everywhere; from the tacky sculptures and paintings at airports, hotels and parks to the boxes that smoked salmon comes in, to tasteless T shirts in tourist districts. I cringe when I see Emily Carr paintings (and thusly avoid the top floor of the VAG). I also find art that plays the white-guilting racial card irritatingly clich?. So it was great to see a show that was not “native art” but rather contemporary art that is strong, thought provoking and about as unclich? as any I’ve seen.

You owe it to yourself to check it out.