Each year, Dazibao invites an artist to curate an exhibition entitled Carte grise. Drawing freely from the work of nine artists, Roy Arden has assembled a collection of studies of things. They show various living organisms that sustain Arden’s reflection upon the notion of description, for which photography would be a privileged vehicle.

Living Things is an exhibition of photographs of plant and animal organisms that I have chosen from the very different oeuvres of a group of artists I admire. My purpose is not to illustrate a theme, but to ask aloud a question I have lately been asking myself; what does it mean to depict the natural world today? One of the very first tasks of depiction was to create images of human, plant and animal. Despite all of the recent avant-gardes and other larger revolutions in art, naturalistic depiction seems an almost eternal constant. When as a teenager I first saw Dürer's The Great Piece of Turf I was shocked by it's "nowness" as I had come to expect all old pictures to seem distant. Most of the works here differ little from The Great Piece of Turf of 1503 in their naturalism and even some Ancient Greek or earlier examples share essentially the same characteristics.

While depictions of living things have been made for many different reasons, from the totemic to the sacred and scientific, all of the artists here make autonomous art. In the present epoch it could be argued that this autonomy is the same as an expression of bourgeois consciousness. Among these artists, Jochen Lempert, a trained biologist, is perhaps the only one who even possesses any specialised knowledge of his subjects - yet he, as much as the rest is engaged in a purely poetic project - regardless of his quasi-scientific methodology.

All of the images here are seen within the normal range of human vision as it can be mimicked by cameras. I have purposely forgone the microscopic lens so that while Moyra Davey’s photos of dust or Anthony Hernandez' picture of algae might suggest the presence of micro-organisms, they are not identifiable as individual beings.

I hope that my picture Solar displays the violence inherent to appearance, as the light that makes something visible is at once nourishing to the organism, but also corrosive. I learned this first from looking at the photos of Wols.

I have included subjects living and dead in order to ask what changes when a life ends - and when exactly does a life end? In Wols' photo of a dead rabbit it is obviously no longer alive but it is still a rabbit - so when does the rabbit cease to exist? When the heart stops? When every last molecule is separated? In Jeff Wall's Clipped Branches we see a living thing that has parts of it removed. We invent ideal or normative forms from our experience of the particular but it would seem that things can survive in less than ideal form.

Olga Chagaoutdinova's picture of her family and Genevieve Cadieux's photo Hand both register the emotional expressivity of the face and body while Stephen Waddell's depiction of a woman made from behind denies facial expressivity - what can we know about the inside from the outside

This exhibition is not motivated by any extraordinary appreciation of nature. It's not that I love nature particularly - but more because I enjoy looking. Perhaps living things are generally more interesting to look at than minerals or man-made things because they have an inner life.

Roy Arden

Roy Arden is an artist from Vancouver. Interested by images as a meeting place between the traces of the past and the abrupt irruptions of the new, Arden has contributed to several publications and curated numerous exhibitions. Since 1980, his photographs and video works have been presented in North-American and European institutions and are part of several important museum collections.

Geneviève Cadieux lives and works in Montreal. Since the eighties, large-scale photography holds a central role in her practice, which focuses on subjects such as the body, landscape and language. Her work has been presented in the context of numerous solo and collective exhibitions in Canada, the United States and in Europe. In 1990, she represented Canada at the Venice Biennale.

Originally from Russia, Olga Chagaoutdinova has completed in 2007 an MFA in Photography at Concordia University in Montreal, where she is now based. In its Winter 2008 issue, Canadian Art magazine has listed her as one of the ten most promising university graduates in Canada. Her work has been exhibited in Canada and in Russia. She took part in the Havana Biennial in 2009.

Born in Canada, Moyra Davey is now living in New York. In her photographs and video works, she uses the camera to isolate details or reorganise what is being seen. Her work was recently presented at the Kunsthalle Basel (Switzerland), at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Madrid) and at the Chicago Art Institute (USA). She is the author of essays and many articles.

Anthony Hernandez lives and works in Los Angeles. Since the mid-eighties, his practice shows images where the human presence, although invisible, is undeniable. His works have been exhibited at the Seattle Art Museum, the Musée de l’Élysée (Lausanne), the Centre national de la photographie (Paris) and at the Vancouver Art Gallery. His work is part of several public and private collections.

Jochen Lempert lives and works in Hamburg. Possessing an unending capacity of observation and research, he compiles images from a large specter of sources from rather banal views to structures tending towards abstraction. Often borrowing from the encyclopedic form, his works have been presented in numerous exhibitions in Europe and is presented for the first time in Canada.

Stephen Waddell lives and works in Vancouver. Mainly photographing in public spaces, he investigates description, never far in his case from a state of contemplation induced by the attentive act of looking. His work is regularly presented in North America and in Europe and is part of public and private collections.

Jeff Wall lives and works in Vancouver. In response to abstract art, Wall has developed a practice reactualising the concepts of subject and narration, playing a key role in the acknowledgement of photography as an art form. His works have been presented in numerous museums, galleries and international manifestations amongst the most prestigious in the world. He is one of the most influential photographers of his time.

Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schultz, know as Wols (1913-1951), is an artist who has practiced watercolour, drawing, painting and photography. Although his favorite themes come from nature, Wols pioneered a new style of expressive abstraction and is now considered one of the most influential artists of the Tachisme movement.

Dazibao wishes to extend warm thanks to Roy Arden, all of the artists, Galerie René Blouin, Murray Guy, ProjecteSD, Clark and Faria and the Christopher Grimes Gallery for their generous collaboration as well as its members for their support.

Dazibao receives financial support from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and the Conseil des arts de Montréal. Dazibao is a member of the Regroupement des centres d’artistes autogérés du Québec.