Technics and Tradition Inside Out

A few recent exhibitions in Montréal1 1  - Chris Kline, Galerie René Blouin, Montréal, 2008. Yam Lau, Galerie B-312, Montréal, 2011. Lynne Cohen, Art 45, Montréal, 2011. Nelson Henricks, Galerie Leonard & Bina Ellen, Montréal, 2010. Lani Maestro, Fonderie Darling, Montréal, 2010. suggest that many contemporary artists continue to assert ambitious and innovative art practices rather than fleeing into tradition with its “well-made objects.” These exhibitions belong to “the contemporary” on the basis of their relevance to the questions we are bringing to them here, in this case questions pertaining to technics and its relationship to tradition. If tradition is a reference in contemporary art it is to the extent that post-historical or cyclical constructions of time and temporality are embraced. Some perspective on this question of tradition can be drawn from these recent works which present making, building, and viewing from the perspective of non-knowing, paradox, emptiness, and non-purposive behaviour.

It may be objected, however, that this perspective now belongs to the past, to an avant-garde movement now completed. This is the art historical view of avant-garde but an alternative exists in the conception of avant-garde formulated in historian Matei Calinescu’s argument that “avant-garde” is not primarily the name of a stylistic movement but refers to a mode of temporality that is open to the unforeseeable, to what is fundamentally incomplete.² 2 - Matei Calinescu, Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism, Avant-Garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism. Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 1987, p. 95-148. [Trad. libre] His proposal leads to a construction of art viewing on a performative model.