Adaptation: Interspecies Investigations

The Power Plant’s latest exhibition, “Adaptation: Between Species,” reflects on our relationship to animals, not only commenting on what separates our species from others but also exploring the histrionic efforts we make to bridge the divide. With contributions from more than 20 contemporary artists, the show surveys all variety of animalia and otherness.

Camouflage, mimicry, and modification absorb the central gallery, with John Bock’s video Gast introducing the show with humor and cunning. Bock’s large-scale projection tracks a rabbit through a maze of improvised traps and widgets with editing so precise and exhilarating that he makes it difficult to pause over the art historical references that resonate within the work. The gallery around Bock takes on the feel of a teenager’s bedroom and FASTWÜRMS dominates with a panoramic installation of posters, banners, videos and text that maps the cultish and the cute in equal measure. Marcus Coates rounds out the dorm room with two videos that mesh cultural and sociological address with pratfall imitations. The challenge is in staying long enough with the pieces for them do their work. It is an intensity that sets the tone for a star-studded show that is exhausting but rewarding.

Mark Dion’s Maquettes present a touching collection of miniatures modeled after his own work. The portable museum stands on the crates it arrived in, like the bizarre vestiges from a surfaced time capsule, begging to be reburied or catalogued. Meanwhile, Lucy Gunning’s The Horse Impressionists, from 1994, discreetly lines the wall within view of Bock’s bunny. A series of women framed in soft winter light whinny like horses, the frost on their breath like so many shaking tails. Likely the most mimetic and direct inclusion in “Adaptation,” Gunning’s horse impressionists do what they do with earnestness and a measure of pride. Similarly, the video pieces from Shaun Gladwell and Javier Téllez approach interspecies relations with pause and quietude.

Senior curator Helena Reckitt, who completes her tenure at the Power Plant with this exhibition, asks in a preface panel, “What happens when humans, animals and the natural world meet? What forms of communication . . . ensue?” The answer, it seems, is video. Nearly half the show’s 29 works are videos, whether archived, transferred, projected or otherwise. What does it say about our relationship to other species when the medium we choose for its contemplation is the one we associate with baby’s first steps, graduation ceremonies and water rafting stunts? Video produces literal impressions; it records without invention, it parlays the immediate. The first words of Reckitt’s text are, “Civilization notwithstanding, we live with and among nature and animals.” We do, but it pays to remember that civilization does indeed stand: and, like the show, it stands prominently, in all its technological glory. (231 Queens Quay W, Toronto ON)

“Adaptation: Between Species” 2010 Installation view / photo Steve Payne