Barbara Steinman Exhibition 2016 :Olga Korper Gallery

Barbara Steinman

October 6, 2016 – November 12, 2016

Steinman presents a selection of works that respond to the anxieties of our time. Fascinated by the ‘look of sound’ the artist created Red Carpet (From Here to There) in the aftermath of September 11th. The waveforms woven in wool resonate with the latest etched glass waveforms of her series, Tablets, created after more recent events.

The works themselves have all the trappings of official display, from the sumptuous red carpet rolled out in the gallery by way of glass tablets with their commemorative feel. Despite the decoding provided by the works’ titles, the meaning of these clusters of grooves remains opaque – as if the words drowned out by the continual noise of our time had lost their substance and become no more than shadows themselves.

Barbara Steinman’s work examines the intersections between the passage of time and flashes of memory, as well as the vulnerability of the individual and the weight of history. … Over the years she has developed an art that one could call a hollowing out of forms. Formerly more explicit in their political, historical and social content, her works have been progressively pared down as if seeking a core, like a crystal that radiates diagonal forces. This visual reduction produces powerful tensions: a photograph of a crystal teardrop could be mistaken for an unpinned grenade, about to explode. On a wall, neons spell out Paradise and Lost in incandescent letters, mischievously reviving the last embers of Milton’s epic poem.

Ji-Yoon Han, 2016

Steinman’s works in diverse media (video, photo, neon, installation) are known for their conceptual intelligence and deceptive calm. Glass, light and the dimension of time are features of her work since her earliest multimedia installations. In 2002, Barbara Steinman received a Governor General’s Award for Distinguished Career Achievement in Visual & Media Arts and in 2015, she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from Concordia University.

Her works have been shown in numerous exhibitions including the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, the Art Institute of Chicago as well as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Seoul. Her works are represented in public collections including Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris; Fnac, Fonds national d’art contemporain, Paris; the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), Toronto and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts as well as private collections throughout Canada and in Paris, Brussels, Tokyo and New York. Barbara Steinman was born in Montreal where she resides.