Having spent the past five years invigorating the exhibition program at the Canadian Glass and Clay Gallery in Waterloo, Ontario (just under 2 hours drive from Toronto), Christian Bernard Singer will step down as curator, moving to Montreal with his spouse. The Gallery seeks a candidate to replace Singer by the end of November 2014.
“I would like to take this opportunity to thank Christian for the strong artistic direction he has provided the Gallery,” Jan d’Ailly, Chair of the Board of Directors, said in a June 17th press release. “Over the past five years, artists in his shows have addressed contemporary issues related to technology and globalization, landscape and ecology, mythology and mortality. He has conceptualized and ‘brought to life’ exhibitions that are powerful, visually arresting and beautiful.”
The most recent of these exhibits was “WAR: Light Within/After the Darkness,” which ran from September 22, 2013 through March 16, 2014. It featured seven contemporary art projects, each a direct response as to the Holocaust and the other horrors that made up the Second World War. Among the pieces was a glass memorial to the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust, sculpted by Oded and Pamela Ravek. Mary McKenzie’s contribution was a section of a life-sized house, items strewn across the floor in a way that can either suggest its occupants fled in a hurry or were forcibly removed. Tragic ends were less ambiguous in Laura Donefer’s installation, which featured cast glass footprints, some taken from actual Holocaust survivors, representative of the forced death marches of concentration camp prisoners.
The result of these and four additional pieces was an exhibition almost as haunting as the events it attempted to understand.
Singer is also an artist in his own right, best known for his work incorporating living plant life, glass, bronze, clay, video, and found objects in outdoor installations. Perhaps it is his own experience as an artist that has aided him in his role as curator.
“He has an amazing ability to stage the artworks within the Gallery spaces and to make meaningful connections between the diverse artists and their works,” said fellow artist Ann Roberts. “I shall miss him but I understand his wish to be with his partner in Montreal.”