Daniel Olson
"Daniel Olson" by Peter Dubé, Summer 2009, p. 102
The hush reigning over the Expression gallery space during Daniel Olson’s recent exhibition was of a specific nature: less silent contemplation and more, it seemed, a kind of anticipatory held breath. Not surprising, I suppose, since the show covered more than 20 years of work and constituted an unofficial mid-career retrospective; it comprised about 75 works, including 29 videos, and introduced all the attendant questions about the past and future possibilities. But it made sense in other ways too.
Olson’s work is often fragmentary or processdriven, begging questions of what happens next, of steps taken, steps forgotten—in short, it concerns itself with narrative. The bluntest examples of this tendency in the show were text-based works such as The Good Book (1994), which consists of all the italicized words in the King James translation of the Bible. The excised elements oblige the viewer to fill in the story. In a similar vein, the video Printer’s Devil (2004) is a compendium of all the footage containing text in the 1944 film Phantom Lady. In other works, narrative is present in subtler ways; for example, it underlies Olson’s musical toys and their conjuring of memory through altered—and only semi-recognizable—tunes.
Olson’s investment in storytelling is furthered in works that play with the conventions of detective fiction, such as the video projection Beside Myself. He evokes other well-known narrative genres by recasting the cover of John Buchan’s novel The Thirty-Nine Steps as a self-portrait, for example, and through his recuperation of James Stewart via Hitchcock in Self Portrait (Vertigo) (2005). In the masterful installation Private Investigation (1998–), Olson recreates a classic private eye’s office, right down to the worn wooden desk and bottle of scotch (which adds an element of fragrance to the environment), and then furnishes it with dozens of enigmatic and playful multiples.
There are many other ways to read Olson’s delicate, frequently beautiful work, but it’s this inherent respect for the emotional power of storytelling that helps Olson’s oeuvre sidestep the cerebral iciness that sometimes creeps into work done with this degree of conceptual rigour. This is what makes Olson unique. So let me close with a telling piece—the double portrait Give and Take (2005), which shows the artist on a wooded path; one image depicts him coming towards us, the other shows his back, as if he is moving away. The two images are hung on opposite walls; the viewer stands between them. Written across the photos is a line paraphrased from Gilbert and George: “All my life I give you nothing and still you keep asking for more.” The implied narrative of the artist approaching, and then passing by, points to our own passage through the experience of art. It evokes transience, movement, change—the things that storytelling is about…and yet struggles to escape. It recalls the ache and hunger that lead us to make things, and to make things up, despite their inevitable failure to ultimately satisfy. Olson’s work reminds us that art is never enough, but it’s better than anything else we’ve got.
Subscribe to Canadian Art today and save 30% off the newstand price.
