Stuff Seen - Clip/Stamp/Fold 2

Howdy!



C-

This exhibit and this exhibit have about as much in common as Zeke's Gallery and the Canadian Centre for Architecture. Earlier this year, I read this review of the show, or the version of the show that had exhibited in new York. In it Nicolai Ouroussoff wrote "Part of the magic of this show... is in the works' crude immediacy. One side of the gallery is wallpapered in hundreds of colorful magazine covers." In the version in Montreal, they decided that they should make wallpaper instead. Which leaves "the opposite wall a more detailed timeline maps out the evolution of the culture of architectural magazines." Or more succinctly this.

Which as you can imagine is perused in a way more comfortable manner, on a computer screen (or in a book) than it is in a small, brightly lit white cube of a room with three or four tinny speakers screeching stuff that I assume is significant and important, but in fact is rendered worthless because it is impossible to hear anything over the din created by the other speakers.

The thing that passes for a pamphlet (I wasn't able to find a catalogue if a catalogue had been made) had been dumped in a pile on the floor in the hallway before you, almost as if they had been left for the night cleaners to pick up once the place closed.

As Mr. Ouroussoff wrote in his review "all of this would be less interesting today if the magazines weren't simply so alluring: you immediately want to pick them up and leaf through them, reveling in their graphics and textures." So how did the CCA ruin the show, they removed the very thing that made it so darn alluring. And it ain't like they don't have them - in their library/archives/whatever they have where they ask you to wear white gloves they have every darn copy of every darn magazine mentioned in the show.

For Clip/Stamp/Fold 3 what they should do is put up a Plexiglas wall in front of the entrance to the CCA's library it would serve exactly the same purpose; inform the public that they have cool things, but let the public know at the same time that there is no way they will be able to access them in any meaningful way.