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Robert Wiens: The Ethics of Conservation

Susan Hobbs Gallery, Toronto Mar 20 to May 3

Robert Wiens <i>White Pine (Burn)</i> 2007 / photo Cheryl O’Brien Robert Wiens White Pine (Burn) 2007 / photo Cheryl O’Brien

Robert Wiens <i>White Pine (Burn)</i> 2007 / photo Cheryl O’Brien

Robert Wiens made his name in the 1980s as a postmodern sculptor of monumental fragments, but for more than a decade he has shifted the terms of his interest in fragmentation by making large-scale, meticulous watercolours showing closely cropped trunks and limbs of tree species such as white and red pine from Ontario’s old-growth forests. In his new show, Wiens extends his White Pine series with four new watercolour paintings and also presents a constructed drawing of the trunk and branches of a single butternut tree. As always, the illusionist detail in Wiens’s watercolours is arresting. His realism, however, is not a style choice so much as moral and ethical stance: a provocation to see the fragments as part of a large whole in need of conservation. (137 Tecumseth St, Toronto ON)

Robert Wiens <i>Butternut</i> 2008 Detail /

Robert Wiens Butternut 2008 Detail / photo Cheryl O’Brien
This article was first published online on March 20, 2008.

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