Art Burn

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Michael Dumontier's untitled clock (SUPPLIED)

Unseasonably, unreasonably warm December temperatures may leave us wondering if the river trail is ever going to freeze enough for superstar architect Frank Gehry to build his much-anticipated warming hut, but many of our artist-run galleries and smaller alternative spaces are nevertheless going to need a few more weeks to fully defrost for the new year. Since you and I don’t have the luxury of closing shop while we finish sifting through the wreckage of 2011, let’s take this bit of relative downtime to search for bright spots on the forbidding horizon of 2012.
   
Speculating about shows before they open is dangerous — especially if one isn’t exactly known for one’s boundless optimism and agreeable nature — but still I try to keep an open mind. Maybe that touring Norman Rockwell survey that lands at the WAG in March will be eye-opening! Stranger things have happened! Maybe it only seems like aceartinc. is featuring yet another anemic-looking horror(-themed) show, and Marigold Santos’ forthcoming haunted / talisman (the title alone is one free space short of art cliché bingo) will actually be rewarding. Maybe! We’ve at least got ascendant print-based artist Suzie Smith’s first Winnipeg solo show at the gallery to look forward to — in 2013. If the world hasn’t ended, that is.
   
New Year’s resolution: brush up on concept of "open-mindedness."
   
Nearer in date, Plug In ICA is hosting a pair of promising shows, both curated by Micah Lexier and opening on Jan. 28. The first, A Moon or a Button, presents a selection of work by Michael Dumontier (or, as I think of him, "the only good to come of Royal Art Lodge"), and Like-minded, an accompanying group show that should, if the list of 36 (!) artist names is any indication, be pretty dazzling. Dumontier’s soulful take on conceptualism is no insignificant draw itself, but the prospect of seeing his work brought together with that of "like-minded" fellow practitioners such as British A-lister Martin Creed and national treasure Arnaud Maggs, among several dozen distinguished others, has me feeling my closest approximation of giddiness.
   
Among broad trends, though, the most encouraging for 2012 is the ongoing florescence of grassroots alternative spaces, many of which have already made good on their potential to broaden Winnipeg’s cultural landscape by providing venues for the kinds of risky ventures that more established institutions aren’t always able (or suited) to take on. Relative newcomers such as Golden City Fine Art and RAW Gallery continue to mature, while 2011 brought us the mixed-use ATOMIC Centre, co-piloted by curator Milena Placentile, which sits at a stimulating crossroads of fine-art practice, ethical entrepreneurship and political partying, as well as Negative Space, a rental gallery and studio complex that, without obvious precedent in this town, has already managed to host shows and events a person might actually wish to see.
   
Winnipeg seems temperamentally hostile towards the ultra-hip apartment and warehouse galleries that, for their oftentimes-unbearable cliquishness, energize the art scenes of other cities. Maybe 2012 is  the year that our homegrown initiatives, being largely more grounded and more socially conscious, prove themselves the better option.
   
Steven Leyden Cochrane is an emerging artist, writer and educator. He is not exactly known for his boundless optimism and agreeable nature.