Where Little Wheels Power Giant Artistic Expression
Story by Katherine Fawcett | Installation Shots by Joern Rohde
Curator’s Tour of Out of Control: The Concrete Art of Skateboarding.
- Amir Zaki
Concrete Vessel 75, 2018
archival pigment print - 60 x 75 inches
Courtesy of the artist
- Amir Zaki
Concrete Vessel 89, 2018
archival pigment print - 16 x 20 inches
Courtesy of the artist
Right now, when you venture inside the architecturally stunning Audain Art Museum (AAM), skateboarders and the renegade culture of the wheeled deck are celebrated with a ground-breaking display dedicated to all things skateboarding.
Out of Control: The Concrete Art of Skateboarding explores contemporary art and skateboarding and shines a light on the crossover between the two worlds that often goes unnoticed. The exhibition brings together 16 B.C. artists, plus two American and one French artist, whose work digs deep into social, environmental, political, aesthetic, and architectural elements of skateboarding.
LEFT TO RIGHT
- Hannah Dubois
Ollie by Taylor, 2022
duratrans print mounted in lightbox - 26 x 38 inches framed
Courtesy of the artist
- Hannah Dubois
Ollie by Ryme, 2022
duratrans print mounted in lightbox - 26 x 38 inches framed
Courtesy of the artist
- Hannah Dubois
Ollie by Kai, 2022
duratrans print mounted in lightbox - 26 x 38 inches framed
Courtesy of the artist
- Andrew Kent
The Year Punk Broke, 2019
watercolour on paper and acrylic on plywood | variable dimensions
Courtesy of the artist
The exhibition, intentionally created to appeal to a diverse audience, is located just a short walk from Canada’s second-largest skate park. It covers two floors of the AAM and includes fabric arts, watercolour, photography, video, architecture, marble sculpture, and furniture design.
A standout piece is French artist Raphaël Zarka’s nine-module sculptural group called “Paving Space—Regular Score, W9M1.” Zarka, who has published three books on the history of skateboarding, designed these geometric shapes with corners and curves, and had them built in Squamish with locally sourced Douglas fir. The finished sculptures were arranged for the public to skate on at the Whistler Racket Club before the exhibition’s opening. Once the sculptures were christened with bumps, scuffs, and dents, they were moved into the AAM.
Curator’s Tour of Out of Control: The Concrete Art of Skateboarding.
- Raphaël Zarka
Paving Space—Regular Score, W9M1 (detail), 2022
Douglas fir | modular sculptures, variable dimensions
Courtesy of the artist and Michel Rein | Paris/Brussels
Installation view of the Tom & Teresa Gautreau Galleries, featuring Out of Control: The Concrete Art of Skateboarding.
- Mikaela Kautzky
Playing House (detail), 2021
mixed-media assemblage
tablecloths from the artist’s childhood sent to her when her parents moved across the country, damaged linens from a year living on Fogo Island, fabrics gifted from friends, goldenrod-dyed bedsheets, Japanese indigo-dyed silk, lupine-dyed cotton, secondhand polyester, grommets, wood, discarded house paint, screws, washers … and a small house worth of thread
9 x 5 x 8 feet
Courtesy of the artist