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B6 THE OAKVILLE BEAVER Wednesday, May 16, 2001 Arts & Entertainment Oakville BeaverA&E E ditor Carol Baldwin 845-3824 (Ext. 254); Fax: 337-5567; E-mail: baldwin@haltonsearch.com Pop art is reinvented in art exhibition B y L o is C r a w fo r d SPECIAL TO THE BEAVER emember rainy days as a child when you built imaginary places out of packing boxes or a train out of lined-up dining-room chairs? In the winter, snow houses were created, and in the summer "tickets" - flowers or leaves - to ride on the garden swing. If friends were scarce, dolls, cars and other toys were recruited and items were plundered from kitchen drawers. Well, artist Kim Adams is still at it. At age 50 he is, envi ably, still creating imaginative scenes with stuff discovered at such places as Canadian Tire, Zellers, flea markets, and any and all toy and miniature manufacturers. He is enchanted by items of "reinvention and subver sive engineering," he told a fascinated gathering last week at Oakville Galleries in Centennial Square. His explanation was given in a slide show using exam ples of scenes he has spotted and photographed over the last 20"years. The first picture was taken while still at uni versity. "I couldn't paint", he said. So he grabbed a camera and snapped a photo of battered vehicles piled up against a hill and scattered colourfully around a car dump that had become an architectural presence in the landscape. After that Adams was on the lookout for old vehicles and how they had been reinvented. He found them everywhere, from Canada to Germany to Mexico. In Victoria, BC, he saw a wood frame hammered on top of a car, the insides gutted, a stove inserted, to create a mobile hunting cabin. In Ontario, he was attracted to an organ-mobile, the organ enclosed in a huge glass structure on top of the car. Mobile marketers were setting up at street comers, displaying their wares in and against vehicles adapted for the purpose. All of this fuelled Adams' fantastical creations. He has chopped up Volkswagens and soldered the fronts together to create a "crying shed" for the Olympics. He has attached a six-foot satellite dish to a lawn-mower and dis played it on Spadina Avenue for a month, inviting passersby to step into it. (And they did .) He has created carnivaltype rides with car parts, appliances and tracks. He has piled and soldered together a washer and dryer, topsy turvy, onto a track. He then displays these treasures and invites people to have a look, examine, play. He wants interaction with the public but doesn't always get it. "Oh, sure, sometimes people just walk by," he said. "Sometimes people want to pay me. They don't get it that I am doing it for nothing." Sometimes he gives away things, like the two-headed bicycles he gave to poor kids near the beach in Tijuana. He was working on a San Diego/Tijuana project at the time. Adams was invited to display his "projector booth" in Los Angeles, where he set up in front of Planet Hollywood. And his truck cabs have resided in front of the National Gallery in Ottawa. The Canadian artist asserts squatter's rights. He squatted in front of the massive Dubuffet sculpture in Chicago with a white-and-black piece he created from part of a drag car. And he did the same with the Picasso - and looked right at home. In Muenster, Germany, his grain silo erected on top of a gas station, is still there. The gas station was sold and the new owners turned it into a cafe. But it was too expen sive for Adams to remove the piece, and the cafe owners found it was an attraction. More recent works play off artist/photographer Jeff Wall's work, The Drain, incorporating tiny figures into a ( R Kim Adams at age 50 is still creating imaginative scenes with stuff discovered at such places as Canadian Tire, Zellers, flea markets, and any and all toy and miniature m anufacturers. The above photograph shows the artist putting together his exhibi tion which is currently on in Oakville Galleries at Centen nial Square. Parts o f this unique exhibition are seen in the other photos on this page. Photos by Barrie Erskine (See 'Pop art' on page B5) Enjoy The Rewards! Lose The Weight For $ 88°°* · No Exercise Required · Family Friendly Eating Plan · Grocery Store Bought Food Call now to book your FREE consultation! Walk-ins Welcome O p e n M o nd a y - Friday 9-7 and S aturd a y 9-4 3RD LINE gf! 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