McMaster Museum of Art presents:

Max Klinger, John Massey and Joseph Calleja

the glove, the car and the mirror
May 9 – August 17, 2013

Reception: Saturday, July 20 from 2 – 4 pm

Two suites of works from the collection of the McMaster Museum of Art — Max Klinger’s (German 1857-1920) Ein Handschuh Opus VI (1881) and John Massey’s (Canadian b. 1950) This Land (the photographs) — provide an instructive comparison that bridges more than 125 years of the modern period.

Klinger’s almost film-like sequence, observing the observer at the outset, morphs into an erotic dream through different settings. Produced during the highpoint of the Symbolist period, Klinger’s work also “anticipates” Freud’s psychoanalysis.

Massey’s manipulated photographs continue his inquiry into the idealized spaces of modernity, “The perfect space invoking the perfect viewer.”

Echoing Klinger’s assertion that the graphic artist moulds the given facts of nature according to his own expressive capacity, Massey stated, “The digital marriage of the car interior and the landscape, creates a hyper-image. Both shots are from the world, but when knit together, they become imagined or commercial.”

Joseph Calleja’s (Canadian b. Malta 1924) Revolving Concave Mirror is being shown for the first time since it was initially exhibited in 1968. The content of the mirror is a reflection of the environment—the gallery space, the Klinger and Massey works, and the viewer—knitted and moulded together.