Andrew Grassie at the Rennie Collection

(photo by L. Madziag)

It was the perfect rainy weekend to go check out the latest exhibit at the Rennie Collection. Jill, Dave, Lukasz, Peter and myself hit up the Andrew Grassie installment on Saturday afternoon. The show was challenging, I found. It wasn't art that I particularly liked. It was very metaphysical, I thought, in that the artist liked to create art about art. Am I losing you?

One example: he would take photographs of himself painting with egg tempera and then he would take those photos and create a painting out of that. So it's the process of him painting that becomes the artwork, and calls into question what exactly is artwork, how does it become considered artwork, etc etc etc?!

It was a bit too much! But I did enjoy being in the Wing Sang building as always, and look forward to the next exhibit there. This one? I wasn't a huge fan, but I did enjoy the end product of that egg tempera painting, titled Smiley Face:

Two other pieces I liked were paintings of Bob Rennie's, (the collector's), home apartment, painted 3 years apart by the artist.  Otherwise, I found the exhibit to be very minimalist. There's a lot of space that can be used, but the works are tiny and look even tinier in the large empty gallery. Perhaps that too is part of the point? You'll have to go and see for yourself!

If you haven't been to the Rennie Collection before, I do recommend it. It's a private art collection, so you have to book yourself a tour in advance. You are then led around the gallery by an art history student who will give you a very informative tour of the space and the exhibit. (Thanks Robin!)

The Andrew Grassie exhibit runs at the Rennie Collection until February 9th, 2013.