Gary Pearson: 1 2 3 Soliloquy

1 2 3 Soliloquy is an exhibition about expressions of everyday realities, and our often strained and ambiguous distal relationship to those realities. It includes Kelowna-based artist Gary Pearson’s recent Soliloquy videos and his related “short fiction” photo-prints combined with works selected from the McMaster Museum of Art’s German collection, expanded to include American Hollywood photography of the period, and contemporary European work.

I make no secret about my attraction to and affiliation with the arts of the Expressionist period—roughly between 1905 and the mid-1920s. They were about the human drama, the living theatre, encompassing an artistic examination of the self and society, and mainly concentrated on regional socio-economic demographics in Germany.

Today the exposition of this “living theatre” is largely the domain of mass media in a global culture, and artistic caricature of the public has been replaced by public self-caricature. But reality still exists, colloquially speaking, on the ground, which was from where the Expressionist artists constructed their representations and where, in spite of the over-mediated existence of vast segments of the global population, “reality” still ostensibly exists.

1 2 3 Soliloquy is an intriguing kind of double exhibition that includes my recent Soliloquy videos — which make oblique references to art and theatre in their staging and dramatic understatement—my related “short fiction” photo-prints—combined with works selected from the Museum’s German collection, expanded to include American Hollywood photography of the period, and contemporary European work. In the end, it  is an exhibition about expressions of everyday realities, and our often strained and ambiguous distal relationship to those realities.

– Gary Pearson, artist and Associate Professor, Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies at UBC Okanagan

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts which last year invested $17.1 million in visual arts throughout Canada.

Nous remercions de son soutien le Conseil des Arts du Canada, qui a investi 17,1 millions de dollars l’an dernier dans les arts visuels à travers le Canada.