In the art world, contemporary has shifted, and quickly, from cool, heady conceptualism to a raucously spleenful shouting match, whether about politics, identity, race, class, gender and virtually every other potential point of division that has, for centuries, carved us arbitrarily up into have and have-not. So what, then, to make of Steve Heinemann, the near-peerless Canadian ceramic artist that now occupies the showpiece top-floor galleries of the Gardiner Museum? The museum has pushed back against the dismissive notion of ceramics as mere craft, however expertly plied, and no medium for capital-A art. Essentialism is at the root of Heinemann’s deeply monastic practice, moored in contemplation, silence and slowness. Steve Heinemann: Culture and Nature continues at the Gardiner Museum to Jan. 21, 2018.

Source: thestar December 04, 2017 15:33 UTC