Moray College Gallery, Elgin, until 4 May 2007

HERE by Ian Kane.

BEAUTIFUL is not often a word I connect with installation. So often the experience of viewing such work is marred by its own explanatory jargon masking an absence of both content and technique.

HERE by Ian Kane defies this expectation on multiple levels. Accomplished in its use and awareness of visual language, this is an exhibition which invites the viewer to be still in contemplative interaction completing the work.

A suite of visual statements experienced by moving through a constructed space, HERE is the substantial sum of all its parts. It does not serve up its content as instant shock or entertainment of limited duration, but operates as a doorway nourishing both heart and mind.

This is reflected beautifully in three photographs hung together – images of red vertical light from a dimly lit inner space, expanding in sequence like a mystery, opening like a flower. Kane plays with the expectation of photographic “truth” and encourages the viewer not to see an image in an instant but to have that image expand as thought.

These photographs hung as a triptych also defy expectation of established visual language and conventions of seeing. What we expect is a main event centre stage. Instead, we see a process evolving, leading from one part of the installation to another and taking us along with it for the journey.

The works which punctuate the outer walls of the installation lead us to openings to the interior, very much like the act of seeing itself. The interior space which here consists of a sequence of constructed horizontal black sculptural marks are in this way self reflective in terms of how the viewer interacts with the space and the creative process of the artist.

Kane’s art exhibits ideas and technique in equal measure. A series of eleven square outer wall drawings using black fragments and red thread are exquisitely realised gestures.

They can be read as enormous in scale, like the staccato “Morse code” of Moray Coast war time fortifications alluded to in the inner space of the installation, or absolutely minute. As drawings they are executed with extreme care, a reflection of the strength of ideas and fragility of our physical world.

Red threads taper off like question marks, shadows of thread hover over a white ground as if seen from a distance, from the sky above or through a microscope.

These threads and black marks as drawings are as basic as connective tissue in their beauty and simplicity, a comment on the natural world through a creatively constructed one.

The sequence also defies expectation and traditional associations in number, not twelve or thirteen but eleven. We are encouraged to read the sequence organically and on its own terms. Once again our expectations about conventions of drawing materials and the reading of an image or sequence of images are challenged.

As an exploration of our environment which seems to me as much about mindscape as well as physical landscape, HERE is a deeply meditative experience. It has resonance in a specific location but has universal appeal in its innate spirituality and beauty.

The artist’s capacity to fully engage with not only the evolutionary nature of art and its creation but the act of looking at it is outstanding and significant, especially in a Highland Year of Culture that so far has done little to celebrate excellence in local contemporary visual arts or view them in an international context.

The Moray College Gallery is a wonderful space displaying its capacity to exhibit challenging contemporary work. In the context of the college and its growing reputation as a centre of excellence in Fine Art training this exhibition is no accident.

As a lecturer in the UHI Fine Art degree course at Moray College, Ian Kane’s work exhibits exploration of visual language, technique and ideas in an exciting, satisfying and dynamic way.

I look forward to seeing further development of the Moray College gallery as a ground breaking space and creative centre in our region, and to Ian Kane’s next solo show.

© Georgina Coburn, 2007

Links

• Moray College