Gary Greenwood is not your average ‘Tourist’
Centennial professor and artist Gary Greenwood's exhibit runs at the McLaughlin Gallery until March 8.
Moving through the gallery rooms, the shapes and colours bombard your senses. A sculpture piece in the centre of the room is familiar, yet you can’t remember where you’ve seen it before. That’s what Gary Greenwood wants: to make you step back and realize the connections are all around you.
These ideas are what Greenwood tries to convey with his new exhibit Tourist, on display at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa (72 Queen St.) until March 8. Greenwood, a Centennial College professor and artist for over 30 years, thanks Centennial for helping to make the exhibit possible.
“(The college) sent me to India for the program I work in,” said Greenwood at the exhibit’s Jan. 17 opening reception. “That was great because it opened up the whole process of going through places, and when you go around the world it tends to give you a whole new horizon to work with.”
Greenwood has been experimenting with perception and sense throughout his career. A graduate of Ryerson University, Greenwood has exhibited his works across Ontario, received numerous Ontario Arts Council grants and is a former curator for the exhibit Finding Camp X which was about the allies’ secret spy camp on the shores of Lake Ontario.
Greenwood’s art is unique; he creates it despite having a visual impairment called amblyopia (lazy eye) which increases his field of view while limiting his depth perception. From a book about his exhibit, Greenwood writes: “My work is rooted in a desire/need to figure out what I’m seeing, initially to determine depth but ultimately to understand where I am in the scene, in the world.”
In Tourist, Greenwood takes guests around the world as he shows similarities that come across only with time and thought. The exhibit consists of 27 pieces ranging from photos on mantles to large sculptures and even a video. Unlike other art exhibits where individual pieces stand alone, to fully enjoy Tourist you must view the pieces individually, while constantly thinking about what has come before it in the exhibit.
“The logic of (the exhibit) is like a matrix,” Greenwood said. “In other words, something over there connects to something here. That connects to something over there. So if it feels like it’s non-linear.”
For example, when first entering the second room of the exhibit, your eyes are drawn to a large orange sculpture. The piece, called “Sarcophagus Hazard,” is an incredible work by itself, but it is actually related to a photographic piece in the other room called “Sarcophagus-Secretariat” that shows similar structures Greenwood came across during his travels in Spain.
At a time when society wants everything handed to them with an explanation, Greenwood asks his audience to slow down, take a minute and enjoy the sights around us to appreciate the beauty in everyday things.
