Randall Anderson

In these new works by Randall Anderson, under the exhibition title “Clouds,” there is a pronounced and remarkable shift from his previous work, specifically in the presentation but still consistent with his interests, in their attention to public and private spaces. This recent show is comprised of a series of works— “interventions” might be closer to describing their intent—that take up different postures within the entire exhibition space, which is a refinished industrial space and which exploits the notion of display to its full. “Clouds” is a generic title Anderson has given to what are essentially a variety of pinboard compositions, works that are derived from, and resemble, notice boards to be found in any university, community centre or laundromat—anywhere communities exchange services, rent, buy or announce events, typically as a notice sheet with pull-off tags. Anderson has been intrigued not only by the “event action” embodied in these locations but also in the overall organization of these spaces as visual phenomena. He has already explored the notice boards in situ, by rearranging and composing them into a variety of configurations, such as turning them over to expose the blank rear of the sheet. The present works clearly develop out of these interests.

In the collaged space of the notice board, Anderson has distilled the formal dimension of public notices by paring them down and eliminating entirely their semantic reference and significance, rendering them purely as shape and form. A compelling example is Bleed, a large wall composition of green paper sheets individually cut to resemble notices or flyers that provide an intense field of lime green literally bristling with undulating surfaces of collaged paper, each sheet unique in shape. The work is an intense visual field virtually embodying the space of the viewer by the presence of its colour.

Ghost as a counterpoint is equally imposing, the two works clearly dominating in their scale, and, installed on the second floor, serves as the closing bracket to this group of works. Here Anderson has taken rubbings of notices on individual sheets of Mylar that have then been mounted with push-pins. The idea of ghost in the title is apt to the emotional response to the work, as a paper rubbing of a sheet of paper is itself an act where the firmness of presence is pushed to the limits. The transparency of the Mylar produces a density that is visually forceful, given the ephemeral quality of material and gesture.

Taking this process one step further in Cloud 2, Anderson, rather than a rubbing, made a 3-D digital scan of a notice board and faithfully reproduced it through rapid prototyping, then cast it in Forton with metallic filler to play off the metal furniture of the gallery office and positioned it where it could, in fact, be a notice board. Clearly, there is a deliberate play in these works through their variation of formal properties and material that serves to accentuate both the function and elimination of specific visual signs and meaning. Given the exchange basis of public notice boards that are both additive and subtractive (analogous to sculptural and collage processes, as well), with the removal of illustration and text, Anderson seems to tug at early conceptual art in its displacement and reduction. If, by comparison, Lawrence Weiner’s 1-by-1-metre wall removal, a wall stripped of plaster or wallboard from 1969, played at exposing the architecture of exhibition and the art work as gesture, Anderson in his turn plays at exposing the notion of display, as both these works are oriented, in their time, to the meaning of the exhibition space. There is, throughout the gallery, a series of small and understated works of actual notices turned over to reveal the blank page collaged into frames no bigger than a standard 8 ½-by-11-inch format. Looking a lot like paintings, “Notices” occur in the most unlikely places that bring the entire show together in a dialogue with the space.

This group “Notices” is indeed indexical and functions to key the exhibition in the dual registers of event and form, action and object, painting and installation. Anderson clearly underlines “event action” as a strategic function for this group of works, which are indeed reflexive and rhetorical in their understated presence. Obviously, these works take on a broad sweep of visual culture. They do this by differentiating sites of exposition with processes of public interaction in order to intercept media-scapes and position their relevance as meaning-bearing entities in an exhibition setting. ■

Randall Anderson, “Clouds,” was exhibited at Parisian Laundry in Montreal from February 17 to March 4, 2006.

Trevor Gould is an artist teaching sculpture at Concordia University.