The Gift
PATRICK CRUZ
RAYMOND BOISJOLY
TIFFIN BREEN
JOHN BURGESS
LUCIEN DUREY
ERIK HOOD
MONIQUE LEVESQUE
ANDREA LUKIC
LES RAMSAY
BENJAMIN RAYMER
KURTIS WILSON
December 9 – 30 2010
Curated by Jenn Jackson
Opening Reception December 11, 7pm
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Lucky’s Gallery is pleased to present the forthcoming group exhibition The Gift with Vancouver artists Patrick Cruz, Raymond Boisjolly, Tiffin Breen, John Burgess, Lucien Durey, Erik Hood, Monique Levesque, Andrea Lukic, Les Ramsay, Benjamin Raymer, and Kurtis Wilson. For The Gift, eleven artists have been invited to produce new works as donations, responding to the idea of gift giving. The various materializations inhabit mental, social, and physical space, presenting themselves to a multitude of expectations. Given without any explicit agreement for immediate or future reward, the exchange is left incomplete. A desire for outcome lingers within each voluntary exchange, and reciprocity, a customary character of the gift, is challenged. A multitude of potential intents are instinctively assumed: charity, contribution, obligation, and sacrifice, among others. The gallery becomes a recipient, exploring the act of exhibition as an occasion of presentation within a set of traditional customs, the artist as donor and the artwork as gift. The conventions of gift giving are enforced by a variety of social structures, supported through a complicated network of public critique and value judgment. Postulating a variety of possibilities for contemporary exchange, The Gift positions the analogous relationships between creation/production, sharing/distribution, and reception/consumption.
