A network of experience
Gordon Lebredt’s By the Numbers
Robyn Loewen
Upon entering By the Numbers: painting)programme(photography, the vibe is purely nostalgic. The images, reminiscent of a parent’s photo album, immediately transport the viewer back to the time of aviator sunglasses. The ‘70s are reincarnated in this retrospective exhibition of Gordon Lebredt’s work, curated by Robert Epp.
Soon after graduating from the University of Manitoba, Lebredt commenced his career as a contemporary artist through exhibitions at the Winnipeg Art Gallery and the Plug In ICA. Lebredt entered the U of M’s School of Art in 1972, so it is appropriate that a retrospective exhibition of his work from the 1970s be shown in a U of M gallery.
By the Numbers consists of 21 haphazardly arranged numbered images mounted onto the gallery’s four white walls. Spot lighting illuminates the paintings, graphite drawings, serigraph prints and three-dimensional steel constructions. The installation format invites contemplation and communication. Cubed seating in the centre of the room allows for those who wish to ponder the painting from a comfortable distance; however, space is left for people to discuss the work as they meander throughout the room.
Lebredt attempts to search out an image’s most indivisible element of meaning — the core, which was not necessarily evident in the exhibit. It’s clear that the images form a network. Referred to by Lebredt himself as the “grammaticalization of the visible,” this network alludes to sentences formed by letters in the alphabet. The installation of the related images paralleled the idea of a network, for their placement on opposing walls allows for a spider web effect.
One recurrent link is the transposition of a photographic image to a larger print, as seen in both “Natural Facts — Red X Yellow X Blue” and “Title: not specified”, alluding to a mathematical algorithm. “Natural Facts — Red X Yellow X Blue” is a large serigraph print transposed from a small photograph on which a grid system is applied to create an exact replication of the image. Aside from the representation of cells, the grid encloses the original photographic image, placing boundaries on what has the potential to be limitlessly multiplied.
Just as Lebredt translated “Natural Facts — Red X Yellow X Blue” from a photograph to a larger image, so did he in Title:not specified. The difference in the latter, however, is the resulting medium is a painting rather than a serigraph print. Again, Lebredt imposes a grid system to re-create the components into a larger format. He did not view the piece as a whole until each cell had been re-created, paralleling the blind creation of Dot drawing.
In “Dot drawing”, a graphite on paper portrait of a man, marks were impressed upon the paper by pushing graphite through a circular hole in a template. This piece was fully conceived without even the slightest touch of the artist’s hand touching on the paper.
The emotionless creation matches the emotionless subjects. When standing in front of “Title: not specified”, one is met with two expressionless stares. The eyes of the subjects bore into the viewer, changing it from a work to be admired from a distance, to an imposed dialogue, holding the viewer captive.
Like the program of a language, Lebredt’s explores the bare bones of an image’s meaning — the point that cannot be broken down any further. This reductive exploration enables the later construction of an image. Proven in the use of grids imposed upon the photographs is the precision of such a construction, for the enlargement algorithmically replicates the original. The notion of incessant multiplication, infinitely snowballing, parallels the notion of a network.
Once the viewer identifies the bond from one work to the next, the viewer’s process of thought progresses to include the newly affiliated work. Thus, like the unending possible products of the combined elements of language, Lebredt’s network of images sustains the idea of the infinite. Throu gh his production of an image from an already existing image, comments on the relevance of interconnections between the elements of our own experiences.
By the Numbers runs until Jan. 27 at Gallery One One One, located on the main floor of the FitzGerald building.
