The Pillar That Wasn't

I'm not worldly.  I've never been to the Louvre, MOMA, or the Tate.  I've been to our National Gallery, which was a total hoot, as a supplement to my Canadian Art History course in my fourth year of university.  I'm a member of Vancouver Art Gallery, and get down there at least twice a year to see the exhibitions. However, I still feel a certain, how shall we say... backwardness? when it comes to knowing what contemporary art looks like. I guess I mean relevant art. It's easy in hindsight to see what was important art, but to know it in its time?  How many masters died in poverty because they weren't recognized in their time... it's a funny little quirk in our industry - not to know what's great when it's current.  Blah, blah, what I'm really trying to say is that "Peak Year" is awesome, and I think I'm looking at some of the greatest contemporary art being produced today.  With every drop of melting ice that I hear hitting that metal bucket, every person I see leaning over the viewing platform railing, and every visitor who walks by Otto's white pillar thinking it to be another white pillar and finding on their third pass that it's a sculpture... I marvel.  This is it folks, this is what it's like to look upon art that is relevant to its time.  This ecological crisis is one of many crises that our species is facing, and who knows which will take us all in the end, but for now, these ten works are doing what excellent art does - stares us in the face and dares us to think about it.