BRIAN JUNGEN: More than a Curators Artist

Upon entering the gallery on the opening night of Brian Jungen’s exhibition at the Musée D’Art Contemporain De Montréal, the voice of curator Daina Augaitis, from the Vancouver Art Gallery is heard over a large crowd assembled to listen to an informative discussion with Brian Jungen. The dialogue provided an introduction to the audience and a greater understanding of the installation of Jungen’s major ten-year retrospective. Jungen’s exhibition began its tour at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York City and has since traveled to the Vancouver Art Gallery and the Musée D’Art Contemporain De Montréal.

The exhibitions begins with six ink drawings that range in sizes varying from 12”x9” and 14” x 10 3/4” created between 1993 and 1997. Five works are untitled and all six are mounted significantly in a group. These drawings link and symbolize Brian Jungen’s creative journey and deal with issues and desires informed by his “mixed heritage” identity. In the first untitled piece, two road signs read -- First Nation, Second Nature— and strategically point in opposite directions. The middle drawing suggests the space where Jungen is spiritually as three birds in flight propose some kind of freedom. In the last couple of drawings we get a sensual glance at some politically charged pieces, as highlighted in Mountie Bottom, a drawing of an Aboriginal man sodomizing a male Royal Canadian Mounted Police Officer. These works offer insight into Jungen’s vantage point and become the critical link that guide us through most of the works thereafter.

Brian Jungen
Isolated Depiction of the Passage of Time, 2001
plastic food trays, television monitor, DVD, wood
Collection of Bob Rennie, Rennie Management Corporation, Vancouver
Photo: Trevor Mills, Vancouver Art Gallery

Following the gallery flow, Isolated Depiction of the Passage of Time, 2001, is the next piece we are meet. It is an installation made of approximately 1500 plastic food trays, covering a television monitor that beckons the voice of actor, James Earl Jones in a dramatic conversation within prison confinement from the soundtrack of the filmThe Great Escape. At first glance, the work seems unassuming. However, after closer examination, the work impressively proves to be one of the most poignant political works. It encourages discussion of the large percentage of male aboriginals incarcerated in prisons across Canada and the discrimination that continues to be endured. Isolated Depiction of the Passage of Time profoundly repositions itself and holds a strong presence in the installation.

Each gallery space serves as stepping-stones for the larger recognized pieces we shall encounter. Hints of masterworks are within eyeshot as we witness a continuation of Jungen’s exploration in materials, complete with the popular Nike presence that starts to infiltrate among smaller floor and wall works. Little Habitat I and Little Habitat II, lead us to Modern Sculpture, that are all comprised of Nike produced materials such as product packaging and soccer balls. This work extends a large part of a message that references Duchamp's early surrealist works in which Jungen reinvestigates the readymade. These works successfully dance between shelter, window dressing, consumerism and sculpture.

Brian Jungen,
installation view of Prototypes for New Understanding (1998-2005).
Photo: Trevor Mills, Vancouver Art Gallery.

A glimpse of the Prototypes for a New Understanding, draw us into a sensitively curated room. A complete selection of 23 masks / prototypes are installed, unaffected by Plexiglas barriers, granting the viewer an intimate opportunity to closely observe the collected works. The masks, constructed from the Nike Air Jordan’s series, transcend contemporary commercial design, in which they supersede their initial intent as effortless references as objects of sacred ceremony of the Haida Nation of British Columbia, Canada. The Prototypes for a New Understanding initiate questions like; Is the human hair from Aboriginals? What is the Artists relationship to ceremony? How will these pieces effect the Artists continued production? These are questions that only Brian Jungen can answer.

The gallery directly outside from The Prototypes for New Understanding illustrate Brian Jungen’s journey through large wall drawings that illustrate his passage from art school to working artist by engaging with the museum space and the outside world. The wall drawings refer to his time spent probing the street searching for public response to what the general populace’s thoughts were on what Aboriginal Art should look like. Collecting such images of dream catchers and Lysol cans, he then reproduced the drawings made by the public in the gallery, by enlarging and engraving them with a Dremel tool deep into the wall’s surface. These works establish clear links to graffiti brought from the streets to an institution space and raise their level of social consciences while at the same time investigates new extensions in drawing.

Brian Jungen, Talking Stick, 2005.
Photo: Trevor Mills, Vancouver Art Gallery.

The baseball bat series Talking Stick 2005, offers works engraved with phrases such as Collective Unconscious, Work to Rule, and First Nation, Second Nature. The baseball bats have similar mystic qualities of the Prototypes for New Understanding and transcend something beyond their physical and surface structure -referencing spirituality, traditions and ceremony. Among the various text panels in the exhibition, there is no direct reference to totem poles, but the format of the presentation, technique and graphic messages on the baseball bats demand a physical connection to iconic Totems of the West Coast. The bats take on suggestion of something invasive or proactive; more so than the masks do. The bats suggest commitment to take action by the nature of their intended purpose. These sentiments are reiterated in Jungen’s commentary in the video interview with curator Daina Augaitis where he discusses the piece Work to Rule in relationship to worker unions. A baseball bats function is to be swung and when linked to a phrase such as “Work to Rule”, it conjures images of conflict resolution during such times as labor strikes.

Study for Evening Redness in the West, 2006, a replica of a single human skull constructed out of baseball skins is also included in this gallery space. The skull is signed with pen marks that take on reference of tattoos. The jaw line and prominent brow bone is jackal like. The spirit of the work resonates an urban feel, summoning a street edge. There is a certain raw quality about the skull that extends a fascinating dynamic.

The final gallery presents the series that is most famous and anticipated. The wall captioning reads, “…these are the first of Brain’s three monumental whale skeletons…”

Brian Jungen
Cetology, 2002
plastic chairs , Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery, purchased with the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts Acquisition Assistance Program and the Vancouver Art Gallery Acquisition Fund, 2003 Photo: Trevor Mills, Vancouver Art Gallery

The caption suggests that this will be a direction that we can foresee the Artist continuing to investigate. As far as we know there are only three of these sculptures and they are all present in this room. If this is the first of three, it suggests that there will be more of these works to come. From a distance, three white large sculptures seem to float in space, possessing a pristine eminence as they soar collectively in the air in a dreamlike state. They physiologically take the audience to the cool depths of the ocean, then to atmospheres of the airy boundaries of a swimming pool deck and then back to the starkly contrasted exhibition space. There is an enormous sense of movement in the installation.

The skeleton structures are mass-produced deconstructed plastic garden chairs that take on a dense yet fragile bone like quality. Upon closer investigation of Cetology 2002, there is something tremendously guttural about the work. By looking into the stomach cavity of the beast, we witness the physicality of the process, to view stories of construction told by metal nuts, bolts and transparent fishing wire that hold the piece intact. A greater sense of our direct relationship with the environment occurs upon closer examination. There is a reflective component that initiates the viewer to contemplate humanity’s current space as to how we govern our resources while developing relationships with other creatures and ecologies of this realm.

Brian Jungen distinctively investigates timely issues of humanity’s place in artificial and natural environments. His installations engage an experimental mystery while his mastery is extended as he approaches his subject matter and materials with conviction. The touring exhibit, presented at the Musee D’ Art Contemporain de Montreal, delivers sequences of work from the last decade that are poignant and relevant to Jungen’s heritage while builds bridges into the populace reflecting something that scales beyond borders.

Brian Jungen is more than a Curators Artist. He has an audience and intention that spans far beyond academic and institutional appreciation. The opening events were well attended by the Arts and Media community. It was also a pleasure to have a large contingency from the Ottawa and Toronto membership of the Aboriginal Curatorial Collective present.

© Jason Baerg 2006