Exhibit Challenges Notion of Stuffy, Black-Clad Artist

Summary

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In this show, two prints by Dave Muller form a work called He Could Sell Ice To..., and they lampoon what may have been [Andy Warhol]'s most bizarre bit of art: The Oxidation Series, a 1978 exhibit for which Warhol and several friends urinated on specially prepared canvases, with the results displayed in one of New York City's ritziest galleries.

Perhaps the funniest part of this, however, is that Warhol himself intended the Oxidation Series at least partly as satire -- the works resembled the "drip paintings" of Jackson Pollock and his fellow abstract expressionists, a group of hard-drinking, macho types who were the leading figures of American art in their day, and who had nothing but scorn for Warhol's more sensitive outlook.

Unfortunately, a DVD by renowned Vancouver artist Rodney Graham wasn't working the day of my visit, though it's since been fixed. Graham, who's part of the so-called "Vancouver School" and one of Canada's biggest international art figures in the last few decades, doesn't show here in Winnipeg very often, making the technical glitch all the more unfortunate.

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Exhibit Challenges Notion of Stuffy, Black-Clad Artist

LORNE ROBERTS

IT'S an old stereotype that artists dress in all-black wardrobes, take themselves far too seriously (although some of them do, of course), and come no closer to laughter than a condescending sneer.

A touring sho...

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