Why Can't Minimal

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Tuesday, September 20th, 2016
12:00 PM to 5:00 PM

For the average person, Minimalism, a mid-20th century modernist genre, has a reputation for being coldly intellectual, abstract, or hard to understand. Why Can’t Minimal, curated by John G. Hampton, both challenges and engages the critiques of minimalism. In his hands, art history is witty, candid, and speculative. Coming to Open Space on Friday, September 16, Why Can’t Minimal examines the playful side of minimalist work. Artists Jennifer Marman & Daniel Borins, John Baldessari, John Boyle-Singfield, John Marriott, John Wood & Paul Harrison, Jon Sasaki, Ken Nicol, Liza Eurich, and Tammi Campbell reject the assumption that minimal art requires only solemn contemplation. Why Can’t Minimal opens Friday, September 16 at 7:30 p.m. at Open Space. The exhibition runs until Saturday, October 22. John Hampton explains: “Why Can’t Minimal mines minimalism for its humorous side by pointing to a latent absurdity hiding beneath its cool demeanour. The exhibition rejects the assumption that minimal art requires solely serious, solemn contemplation, and embraces the more intuitive, jovial, and personal pleasures that occur when one has fun with the comically utopian ambitions of unitary forms. Playing with the forms, traditions and incongruities of multiple levels of minimalism, the presented works elude rational comprehension, repositioning conceptual value to make room for the types of recognition made possible through levity, play, humour and sentiment.” John G. Hampton is the Executive Director of the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba in Brandon, MB. Why Can’t Minimal is organized and circulated by the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery and the University of Toronto Art Centre and is made possible in part by a grant from the Ontario Arts Council’s National and International Touring program, and the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.