Gallery X – The Concordian

It’s usually easy to wander into a gallery; you can step inside, browse around, and leave as quickly as you entered.

Unfortunately, Gallery X isn’t convenient to meander into. Secluded on the second floor of the Visual Arts building, it goes unseen by most students, despite the affordable coffee shop and art-filled walls.

However if you’re feeling up for the venture, Gallery X’s first show of the year, The Staff Show, started this week, and it’s sure to entertain your eyes after long hours of staring at new class schedules.

“It’s always good to have something broad for the first show of the year. You don’t get a lot of work at the beginning, because people don’t have any ready this early and they usually don’t want to show stuff from last year,” says Amanda Craig, a studio arts student and co-curator of Gallery X. According to Craig, The Staff Show is made up of artwork done by artists who work and run Café X.

“For at least three years, the first show of the season is work by Café X staff. It’s great because students see them on a regular basis, serving coffee, but the show helps give a better idea of who they really are,” says Clinton Glenn, an Art History student who is back for his second year curating Gallery X.

All shows at Gallery X last two weeks, so Glenn and Craig recently called for submissions in preparation for the second show. Submissions are generally accepted at the beginning of the fall and winter semester, but they take art submitted later as well.

“When people submit their work, we look at the content, theme, and medium of what it is, and see if we can pair it up with other submitted works,” explains Glenn. “It’s kind of backwards from normal curating but it works.”

Gallery X also received a modern makeover over the summer. Last year’s teal and red walls, which Glenn describes with some distaste, have been repainted in warm beiges and spicy greens. With perfectly matched furniture that’s comfier than it looks, the space is looking sharp for the upcoming school year.

The Staff Show will have their vernissage on September 11 from 6-8pm. Snacks, drinks, music and fun will be plentiful.

Stepping into the VA building’s Café X, guests have two options: turn immediately to the left and be greeted by a glass cylinder full of food, a smiling face, and a giant chalkboard of tasty options, or turn immediately to the right and be greeted by a topless, bald, androgynous monster-human spewing paper fortunes out its mouth.
That’s right. Art in Action is still happening.
Gallery X, which inhabits the walls of Café X, is hosting the works of seven of the 30 artists who contributed to the 2012 Art in Action exhibition that ended March 4. The gallery will continue to show the pieces until March 24.
For those who can’t go—or those who just want something to read—here’s the rundown.
As mentioned above, the gallery decided to place the most shocking and unappetizing work closest to the entrance and directly next to the food. Shaw Desjean’s La Logorrhee comprises three pieces: two square canvasses, and that alarmingly ugly (in a good way) human form, which is meant to represent man’s inadequacy in expressing feelings in words.
To the left is Naomi Large’s Our Boxes, a group of brightly painted squares with vague human forms. The pieces attempt to explore “the human form in its natural state,” and the societal boxes in which its sexuality is constrained.
Turning around, visitors can take a seat on what looks like one half of a 1980s family sofa. On the way there, it’s hard to miss Karen Boyles’ Lighten, a giant graphite drawing of a kind of patchwork parachute-tent attached to strings weighed down by bricks. The description states that the structure “suggests our capacity to construct new environments. Environments that are transient, nomadic, adaptive, inclusive: created from a diversity of materials from a diversity of perspectives.”
Across from the partial couch is the second half of the gallery, located inside a turquoise painted room. Here, as before, guests have two options. Turning to the left, one can peer out the wall of windows overlooking the construction on Bishop Street. Or, looking to the right, one can ungracefully lean over someone studying in an effort to examine Keara Yim’s selection of high-colour photos that illustrate Canadians’ relationships with the land they inhabit.
Although Yim’s bright outdoor-themed photos (one two three tree) mirror the openness created by the wall of windows, the feeling of a room wide enough to walk around in is just an illusion. The room is pretty narrow. All the artwork is on the walls, but all the seating is up against the walls, too, underneath the artwork. Therefore, visitors can’t really see anything if they choose to sit down.
Him, Her, Us by Bianca Hlywa offers an examination of subtleties in gender differences through the representation of similar androgynous figures. Opium Dreams by visual artist Emily Yun Ching Claire and literary artist Ryan Kai Cheng Thom has strong messages of diaspora, queer desire and gender fluidity, and requires a lot of looking-at time.
So while the student strike may last for another week, Art in Action proves that there is certainly room for art in the Concordia fine arts landscape, no matter how many students it takes to meet quorum.

Art in Action runs at Gallery X (VA building, second floor, room 229) until March 24. For more information, visit www.gallery-x.com/current.