26 August 2024 – A full-colour day that starts in monochrome. With A Monochrome Journey. Italicized like that because it is the short form of a long exhibition title at the Vancouver Art Gallery, and that’s where I start my day.

I haven’t come to the VAG specifically for this exhibition. I plan to look at some of whatever is on at the moment… and then… see what happens next.

What catches my attention, right there on the ground floor, is the dramatic entrance to this dramatic Monochrome show: +100 works by +50 artists, all from the permanent collection, exploring “the enduring appeal” of black and white and everything in between.

In the room devoted to black…

I am struck, not just by the works, but also by the way ambient lighting can throw shadows that play with the image — here adding dimensions and tones to Untitled (Black Books), by Rachel Whiteread (1996-96).

More shadows in the room devoted to white…

but this time intentional, the result of precise lighting for the acrylic installation Untitled, by Robert Irwin (c. 1965-67).

It is only an hour or so later, as I finally turn to leave the show, that I realize the impact of my immersion in monochrome. I look through the doorway, and I don’t read it as pragmatic way-finding…

instead, I see an art installation. I see myself about to enter an immersive greyscale experience.

But then I walk out the door into Robson Square, and I return to the full-colour world. I am walloped by it!

Colour in the acrylic letters of art overhead…

colour all around, in the vivid Marché signage and the foodstuffs and crafts that fill the participants’ booths…

and emotional colour also, let’s call it — the laughter and energy of people enjoying the possibilities of a late-summer afternoon.

There are free hugs on offer, here in the Marché area…

and an impromptu exercise class just beyond, tucked into one corner of the lowest level of Robson Square…

all safe and sound thanks to the gigantic red Spring (Alan Chung Hung, 1981) that apparently holds the upper level in place.

Thank you, monochrome.

The calm austerity of that earlier focus has me hyper-alert to everything that surrounds me now: colour, shapes, sounds.

The verticality of Hornby Street, as i start my way back cross-town…

the horizontality of False Creek, once I’ve reached its Seawall…

and the pop-up exuberance of this grand finale in David Lam Park.

It is the end of the two-day Cascade RSVP 2024 bike race — as in Ride Seattle Vancouver Party; as in ride from Seattle to Vancouver and then party. They’ve had the RSV; P is imminent.

I stick with the Seawall for a while longer, then cut up through this mews…

and catch a bus for home.