Broadsheet published in association with Presentation House Gallery, for opening of the installation Bridge by Reece Terris, 1763 McSpadden Avenue, Vancouver, BC, October 7, 2006.
REECE TERRIS: THE SOCIAL BRIDGE
The only works of art America has given are her plumbing and her bridges.
"The Richard Mutt Case", The Blind Man 2, May, 1917, New York: Marcel Duchamp, H.P. Roché, Beatrice Wood, eds.
In a city like Vancouver, where the spec
tacular view is the spectacle of nature (blurring the resource econom
ics of its base), viewism counts highly in the architectural market. Properties are priced accord
ing to their view potential and sold before another is built in front; trees are cut illegally to i
mprove the view, especially in high-end neighborhoods. Access to view is the operating principl
e. This regime of visuality, with its Panoptic Benthamite undertone, is the driving force
behind the cityıs real-estate market. Reece Terris' Bridge enters this conversation, prov
iding the hierarchic focus of an overview, seeing from above, with its suggestion of omnis
cience, the 'big picture', and attendant corollaries of pleasure, control and
authority. (This privileging of the point of view was made literal in Palladio's Teatro Oli
mpico in Vicenza, where the prince's box located the focal point of the scenic perspe
ctive; and in the indoor circular Panoramas of the 19th century, where the spectator was placed at t
he centre of an all-encompassing view.) Bridge retains an imprint of the belvedere, the buena vist
a, the beauty of looking from a height across a landscape or cityscape. It combines an image of sco
pophilic visual delight, like flying in a small plane,
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