See It
Exalted Beings: It’s a Zoo Out There
Dalhousie Art Gallery, Halifax Aug 22 to Oct 5 2008
Corinna Schnitt Once upon a time 2005 Video Still Courtesy of the artist
Corinna Schnitt <i>Once upon a time</i> 2005 Video Still Courtesy of the artist
From Charlie Brown and Snoopy’s cartoon antics, to the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week and David Suzuki’s recent public service announcements with domesticated penguins, popular culture is rife with representations of humans’ shifting relationships with the animal world. Now, a group exhibition curated by the artist Peter Dykhuis mines the complicated and sometimes sinister undertones to these connections between people and animals in “Exalted Beings” at Dalhousie Art Gallery.
Featuring works by internationally recognized artists such as Kelly Mark, William Wegman and Corinna Schnitt, the exhibition takes a postmodern context, where distinctions between nature and culture are slippery at best, as its starting point. Each artwork consciously depicts the human figure–or traces of its presence–alongside the animal protagonists, providing a fascinating overview of the ways our representations of nature project human needs and desires onto the animal form. But, unlike domesticated pets that usually play by human rules, these “exalted beings” have other ideas about their role in the human environment. And the chaos that often ensues–such as the barnyard feeding frenzy that takes place in a formal living room in Corinna Schnitt’s video Once upon a time–serves to illustrate the persistent distance between our idealized expectations for human-animal connections and the reality that unfolds when nature takes its course. (6101 University Ave, Halifax NS)
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Corinna Schnitt Once upon a time 2005 Video Still Courtesy of the artist
