Charles Mason Curates a Really Big Show
Attendance was light at yesterday’s press launch for the Gardiner Museum’s new show, Bigger, Better, More: The Art of Viola Frey. Such is the fate of any event daring enough or foolish enough to fly too close to the Toronto International Film Festival. Not that Gardiner staff were especially bothered by the weak turn-out; they know they’ve got a big show on their hands and I do mean BIG.
That’s Gardiner curator Charles Q. Mason, left, staring down one of Frey’s monumental ceramic sculptures. Mason led the press tour with a spirited description of the artist’s life and work, establishing her place alongside San Francisco Bay-area artists of the 1960s like Mark Rothko, Richard Diebenkorn, Elmer Bishoff, as well as fellow ceramic artists and sculptors Robert Arneson and Peter Voulkos.
Mason confirms that Frey’s works aren’t just big, they’re heavy, too. He personally assembled the sculptures with the help of the late artist’s assistant Sam Perry, who worked with Frey for 17 years until her death in 2004. “Sam is probably the only person who knows how to assemble all of her works,” says Mason, “which are constructed in pieces bolted together.
The show required two trailers to haul the requisite parts across North America. From Toronto it travels to the Museum of Art and Design in New York City and then on to the Arkansas Art Center in Little Rock, Arkansas.
