Scott Watson (Canadian, b. 1950) is Director Emeritus and Research Fellow at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, University of British Columbia. A curator whose career has spanned more than thirty-five years, Watson is internationally recognized for his research and work in curatorial and exhibition studies, contemporary art and issues, and art theory and criticism. His distinctions include the Hnatyshyn Foundation Award for Curatorial Excellence in Contemporary Art (2010); the Alvin Balkind Award for Creative Curatorship in BC Arts (2008) and the UBC Dorothy Somerset Award for Performance Development in the Visual and Performing Arts (2005). Watson has published extensively in the areas of contemporary Canadian and international art. His 1990 monograph on Jack Shadbolt earned the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize in 1991. Recent publications include Letters: Michael Morris and Concrete Poetry (2015); Thrown: British Columbia’s Apprentices of Bernard Leach and their Contemporaries (2011), a finalist for the 2012 Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize; “Race, Wilderness, Territory and the Origins of the Modern Canadian Landscape” and “Disfigured Nature” (in Beyond Wilderness, McGill University Press, 2007); and “Transmission Difficulties: Vancouver Painting in the 1960s” (in Paint, Vancouver Art Gallery, 2006).
Daniel Richter’s iconic paintings represent a significant contribution to renewed discussion of painting’s importance in 21st-century artmaking. This exhibition presented nine boldly painted, unsettling and beautiful readings of the current psychic pulse of the new world disorder. They speak of urban alienation, global conflict and a longing for the re-enchantment of nature. The Berlin/Hamburg artist’s visual “voice” is unique because it brings revisionist politics, history painting as realistic painting and the impact of popular culture in the media (i.e., the incitement of fear, pervasive acts of violence, global threats) into sharp focus amidst zones of deliberate obfuscation. This exhibition set out to introduce a broader North American audience to the many critical dimensions in Richter’s work as they relate to contemporary German culture.
This touring exhibition of eight important recent paintings includes a selection of ephemera, a fully illustrated colour catalogue and a zine composed of reference material selected by Richter, an interview with the artist by Scott Watson and an essay by Robert Linsley.
Daniel Richter, Das Mißverständnis, 2003.
Oil on canvas, 230.4 × 270.0 cm. Collection of Bernier/Eliades Gallery, Athens, Greece.
Daniel Richter: Pink Flag, White Horse.
Exhibition catalogue.
Scott Watson (Canadian, b. 1950) is Director Emeritus and Research Fellow at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, University of British Columbia. A curator whose career has spanned more than thirty-five years, Watson is internationally recognized for his research and work in curatorial and exhibition studies, contemporary art and issues, and art theory and criticism. His distinctions include the Hnatyshyn Foundation Award for Curatorial Excellence in Contemporary Art (2010); the Alvin Balkind Award for Creative Curatorship in BC Arts (2008) and the UBC Dorothy Somerset Award for Performance Development in the Visual and Performing Arts (2005). Watson has published extensively in the areas of contemporary Canadian and international art. His 1990 monograph on Jack Shadbolt earned the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize in 1991. Recent publications include Letters: Michael Morris and Concrete Poetry (2015); Thrown: British Columbia’s Apprentices of Bernard Leach and their Contemporaries (2011), a finalist for the 2012 Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize; “Race, Wilderness, Territory and the Origins of the Modern Canadian Landscape” and “Disfigured Nature” (in Beyond Wilderness, McGill University Press, 2007); and “Transmission Difficulties: Vancouver Painting in the 1960s” (in Paint, Vancouver Art Gallery, 2006).