September 21- October 7, 2023

liza-sokolovskaya.com

Liza Sokolovskaya’s first solo exhibition, It is the Closest We Will Be, is a humorous and poignant exploration of materials and memories, featuring oil paintings, textile works, acrylic skins, small sculptures, and papier maché objects. The concept for the installation is an artist’s live-work studio, the environment filled with images, detritus, and treasures from Sokolovskaya’s life, sometimes autobiographical, and at other times fictional. The works in this show are strongly suggestive of the idiosyncrasies of memory, its permeability, the way it fades and is distorted. Certain things, people, places, and questions haunt us. The show is focused on Sokolovskaya’s experience as an immigrant and her migratory life, travelling from Uzbekistan to Montreal, to New York, and then returning home. This show is a sort of homecoming as she was raised in Montreal, but left for several years to study in New York City.  Sokolovskaya was born in 1989 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and her family immigrated to Montreal when she was a child. 

Sokolovskaya moved to New York City in 2016 when she began studying at the New York Academy of Art. NYAA has an esteemed MFA program, and is known for classes which focuses on technique and working from live models. After graduating, Sokolovskaya maintained a strong studio practice, during which she has explored painting pleinair painting, oil painting on mylar, textile art, making shaving cream monotypes, and more. Her experience at the prestigious NYAA refined her painting practice, but also seriously loosened her up and gave her oeuvre a sense of cohesion. She learned how to paint the figure from life, to work more quickly, and to paint more boldly with larger brushes. The result is that her paintings are more dynamic, immediate and approachable and they mesh successfully with her more experimental and playful pieces. 

When you enter It is the Closest We Will Be, you start with a mix of new and old, prints, paintings, and two fibre works, on the whimsically-painted early 20th century walls. The choices make more sense as you take in the entire exhibition. To our left, we see the distended torso of a woman with long brown hair hanging in tendrils like Medusa’s snakes, a fragment of the artist. We cannot see her face, but this oil and oil pastel painting’s title, Disease or Desire, asks the question most on the viewer’s mind. Golden Tooth, Beaded Eyes a stuffed and beaded textile piece that looks like a mask almost seems to mock or threaten us as we approach, like a gargoyle warding off those who may not appreciate the show with its bared beaded teeth and beady eyes. On the walls of the hallway leading to the main exhibition room, we see two more fresh oil paintings from this year. Curved, in cool violet, blue, and lemon yellow, is a self-portrait nude torso  that shows a body that seems to bend in a stretch, or perhaps just an odd position as she uses the selfie camera on her phone. Also pinned up in the hall is a painting of the arm of the artist’s father painted lovingly and softly against the luminous folds of a pink duvet. The works in this transitional space set the mood for self-reflection and family history.  A bright abstract acrylic skin shows us that things are about to get weird. 

Entering the unconventional main exhibition space, the viewer is probably unsure whether they are intruding upon a private studio, as there is an odd combination of coloured walls, paintings on the wall, odd works scattered about, furniture, and objects which are not normally seen in an art gallery. In the corner to the right of the entrance is an artist’s working station. On a drawing table are a sketchbook, a few art supplies, and a papier mâché Opus card that would definitely not get you a ride. Upon closer inspection we find a lumpy paper cup with questionable ability to hold a drink, and a papier mâché painted apple core, surprisingly detailed, evoking an image of the artist having just left off sketching and snacking. Set up near the work station are a bra with detailed eyes, both seductive and creepy with beaded eye-whites. You can imagine a needle piercing the eye again and again, and lower eye lashes dangle strangely. Above this bra, as if just stripped out of it, are pearlescent white papier mâché sculptures of the artist’s champagne glass breasts. Kitty-corner to those works is the shape of Sokolovskaya’s belly, and above it, gold-tipped breasts. 

Attention grabbing works a bit further into the space are the bright acrylic skins hanging near the middle of the gallery that are made to look like human skins. They are both funny and grotesque, draped over coat hangers suspended on a closet bar, as if the dotted paint garments are the artist’s human self waiting to be put on. The skin, our largest organ, allows us to feel, to touch and be touched, and to a figurative painter, the skin is so important. The way human skin looks in different light, the way it can reveal our inner workings, our muscles and bones underneath, the ripple of cellulite, the pulse of blood, our fragility, our textures. To paint skin well is to have mastered one of the most difficult things there is to paint. 

Pinned unstretched on the wall near the skins are oil paintings of Sokolovskaya’s lover posing with them. It is a bit meta, since the acrylic skins are rendered in a painterly, almost pointillist or pixelated way, and then we have two paintings from this year of the skins posed with real humans. In My Bed, shows lovers’ legs stick out from under the bed covers along with the feet of her acrylic skin. It makes me think of someone sitting with the memory of a person who is about to fade away, vanish into little dots of colour. These paintings show intimate scenes, that are a bit comical and also sad in a way. They remind me of how we sometimes cling to outworn relationships, to who we thought our lovers were, to the memory of them. On the other canvas, Your Arm, Sokolovskaya’s lover’s arm is embracing the skin of her body left behind, as if she shed it like a snake and he remains in bed with what is left of her. The human experience is inherently tied up with mortality, with wear and tear, with love and loss. Sokolovskaya touches upon this with quirky curiosity and a touch of existentialism. The unstretched canvases themselves speak to the transitory nature of the artist’s relationship between New York and Montreal. They were rolled and put in her luggage and brought on the train from city to city.

In painting, Sokolovskaya often makes portraits, painting models in class, friends, and most typically, herself. She is interested in moments that are unposed, unusual, funny, and even unflattering. Conventional beauty is not a primary interest to her in making work, and she even explores what many would call ugliness, and yet her work is often beautiful because of her skill with light, colour, and her ability to seemingly effortlessly render skin, bone, and body through a series of dynamic, rapid, yet keenly observed brushstrokes.

Perusing the show feels as if you are creeping in voyeuristically on a private space of the artist in an intimate moment. The ghost of Sokolovskaya—painted loosely on a clear curtain— showers nude in a corner, while on the bed a slice of New York margarita pizza waits for her. Blue-rimmed bowls from her childhood in Uzbekistan and round, hearty Uzbek bread are memories waiting to comfort her, while on the futon bed is a Tarot spread of three cards perhaps indicating a question about the future. The thick cards, the Tower, the Fool, and the Magician, set the tone for change and upheaval, with a touch of hope.  The cigarettes which discretely fill the space, in corners, on the sheets, in a bowl, suggest the persistence of a habit, or anxiety. The butts glow with life, skillfully painted, they seem hot and flammable. Some are long with ashes, and some are even gold, as if they are fantasy cigarettes. Sunny side up eggs are scattered around on paper plates, and even loose on a shelf, making the place appear both strange and lived-in. Are these dreams of eggs? Who is this messy, hungry person? 

We find her painted loosely in the corner on the shower curtain, a nude brunette, soaping her pits. Acrylic skins of a one-piece bathing suit and bra and panties hang beside. Perhaps the artist is showering paint from her body, or returning from the pool, and will get dressed afterwards, have a cigarette, and think about her next painting while eating her slice of pizza or finishing her eggs. On the bed we find an acrylic skin of a sock that looks like it could have come out of a Phillip Guston painting.  Papier mâché Opus and Metro cards make it especially clear the on-the-ground relationship to both cities Sokolovskaya has, and they are strikingly accurate, but also cartoon-like, somehow, in the way they are rough and thick, the opposite of what the sleek familiar cards are. The most erotic painting in the show, Red Body, is an oil painting tacked up by the shower, a pink torso of Sokolovskaya done from a steep perspective that calls to mind nudes one might send to a lover late at night, as seemingly huge fingers graze the bare surface of her pubic mound and her breasts fade off into darkness. The image is faceless.

There is a zest for life here, a hope for the future, and a nostalgia for the past, what could have been, what was and what wasn’t. The works call to mind the way that memory functions, they are wobbly, melting away in a moment. Memories are not as clear from year to year, and eventually they become memories of memories, cartoon-like. Sokolovskaya’s first solo show is a synthesis of everything that came before, and a promise for what is to come, when she returns to Montreal—as this exhibition foreshadowed—to live and work. As in Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, however, she doesn’t return empty-handed. She returns with new knowledge, new skills, new relationships, and the drive to create new works. She also returns with the aim to create community, which she has been doing for a few years now with her Artist Confluence project that she is bringing to Montreal. 

It is the Closest We Will Be is a strong first show from an artist keenly interested in personal reflection, materiality, and experimentation. Deeply considered and finely executed, the works in this show don’t take themselves too seriously. Sokolovskaya seems to have an innate understanding that life is best felt deeply and lived lightly. To do being human well is to be powerfully present while remaining skilled at all the release and letting go that necessitate the mortal experience. In this installation there is a fascination with the self that is the pursuit of many figurative painters, especially young ones—the questions “Who am I? Where have I come from? Where am I going? Why am I here? Can I make others understand me?” arise from all deep thinkers and feelers. But beyond the personal, there is also a fascination for what it means to be human, what it means  to deeply inquire, to deeply seek to understand and interpret one’s own human journey, which, although unique, is an experience we all share.

@Liza.Sokolovskaya

Daniel Barkleyâ€s latest exhibit at Galerie Dominique Bouffard is a celebration of the male form. The show consists of three bodies of work ranging in medium from acrylic on canvas or wood to watercolours, in a combination consisting of some studies as well as larger tableaux. Barkley is an artist who appreciates the immediacy of working in acrylic while painting like an oil painter, and his works are much more textural than one might expect from acrylic paintings. Their skillful rendering is an homage to the beauty of the male nude, while also being true to the modus operandi of many of the best portrait painters. Barkley revels in the authenticity of the individual while placing them, sometimes uncomfortably, in varied roles. Once you know that Barkley works in theatre with carpenters and other set painters, and that these are often the model base he typically draws on, appreciation for his work is further enriched. Barkley has an interest in medieval art, as well as images from the Soviet era which idolize the proud and manly worker. While each influence can be felt in his work, not one is overwhelming. You can feel the roots of Quebec in Barkleyâ€s paintings, from his upbringing as a Catholic to the socialist vein that runs through the province. Although these paintings are undeniably homoerotic in their adoration of the male nude, they are not exclusively so, and can be appreciated by any viewer who enjoys the male body, has a healthy love of myth or skillful portraiture. Undoubtedly, they can be admired for their virtuosic rendering as well as their mild humour and playfulness.

These works span a trinity of themes: exorcism, Lazarus and faune. A commonality through them all is the act of complicating the human figure with some kind of substance, from gold leaf to white paint to deer netting. At first I sought the symbolism in each, which can be found to be sure, but the more I looked at the skill of Barkleyâ€s work, the more it seemed he was trying to make painting the figure a greater challenge for himself, wondering what would be fun and difficult to paint. My guess is that for an artist like Barkley a true challenge is the most fun one can have in art. The palette of these works is his usual one, perhaps a little lighter, with the flesh rendered in cool tones of quinacridone red, cool blues and various pale tones, but never yellows, which the artist idiosyncratically asserts ruins every painting they occur in. There is a clear love of art history conveyed in Barkleyâ€s work, with particular fondness for Grünewald and Bosch. For recent correspondences, Lucien Freud, Jenny Saville and Odd Nerdrum were the first to come to my mind.

The eroticism of the male nude is not seen often after the predominance of Greek art in which the ever-human in character gods were portrayed in their unclothed perfection, nude bodies in gleaming marble or draped in cloth. Later, in a repressed fashion we encounter the male nude in the Christianity-dominated era, where Jesus and saints were tortured, spread, pierced and revered. There is a certain eroticism of the everyday in the types of men and youths that Barkley chooses, as well as a tender rendering in the loving brushwork which cuts in at subtle and finely observed angles, from the eye which so keenly sees and the hand which is so in tune with it.

Lines, scratches and a multitude of unexpected marks free the viewer largely from the relentlessness of Barkley’s skillful representation. His works are very much about drawing and process, as well as precision of colour, line and form. This can be seen from the fact that this exhibition is largely bolstered by studies and watercolours, which, from many artists, would serve as finished works. He is also known to be a masterful draughtsman, and a book of his drawings was recently published. Barkley is a formal artist, but one unusually connected to myth, which is less common in contemporary art than one might think.

Lazarus

Daniel Barkley has long been intrigued by the biblical story of Lazarus, which he conveys here as the nude male covered in a white liquid substance, which is partly dried to the face at times. Since Lazarus was raised from the dead by Jesus, I thought of the white lye poured on dead bodies, although in art history he is usually portrayed as rising from the tomb wrapped in strips of white linen.  The white material covering these figures brings to mind milk and purity, according to the artist. Paradoxically, there are many associations the white substance conjures up in a viewer, which manage to be an engaging combination of transcendent and erotic, even dirty, as they could also be thought to have been thoroughly baptized in come. 

The Lazarus nudes are tumescent, half-erect, about to rise like their namesake from the death of sleep. Their eyes are closed, and some seem to be struggling to stretch and move their bodies once more. The oil on wood triptych, entitled Lazarus (Triptyque / Triptych) is presented as if for worship in a religious format, portraying a tense figure in the middle panel, shoulders raised to his ears, perhaps condensing his form to pass through a birth canal. The figures on either side of him gesture with their hands as if opening their chests, their hearts. The blue background is the colour of spirit, of sky right before the depth of night, and red lines and scratches are dug through, which could stand for vitality or for life’s visceral hardness which intersects with the divine experience.

One of the most striking works is Big White Face, drooling, provocative, with profound visual depth, as the man closes his wet white-lashed eyes with his mouth wide open. The watercolour Lazarus paintings are done dry, and Barkleyâ€s technique is to only moisten his paper for the initial stretching. The boys lie upon black rectangles like coffins, tense, as if reawakening or contracting in orgasmic bliss. Perhaps birth is just such an experience. These models were covered in paint, and, of course, painted with paint, so essentially it is an artistâ€s comment; paint is all that clothes them much as flesh clothes the spirit and paint adorns the canvas.  Every moment of our existence consists of layers of revealing and concealing.

Faune

Daniel Barkleyâ€s lovely fauns are young men with heavy leather belts holding together skirts of deer netting as if they are black mesh tutus. These paintings are playful and reminiscent of actors in an amateur production of Midsummer Nightâ€s Dream. These Pucks are a little ungainly, as if theyâ€re still growing into their bodies and their masculinity, captured fauns in deer netting unsure of their sexuality and identity. The netting is rendered meticulously, yet with a certain looseness. The rough, manly hands and feet seem to reveal a certain work ethic, perhaps they are the carpenters or stage hands Barkley works with, since they donâ€t look like actors or dancers. They are mawkish as they attempt to hold a ballet first position, they seem to be playing a role, and are in various states of comfort or discomfort with it, reminiscent of all of us in the varied roles we play.

Many of the canvases in the Faune series are broken into multiple, different-sized panels to form diptychs, again echoing religious iconography, yet they represent the “forbidden”, they convey homoerotic desire. They also recall those days on the stage when boys played women. Particularly lovely is Faune with Green Toenails (Dipytch), who stares at us intensely as he reveals himself, and poses, of course, with lime green toenails. These fauns are tamed creatures, posing, submitting, but a little wild, a little uncomfortable, and they provoke us while making us uncomfortable about our gaze. One of the larger works of this series, and to my mind the most successful, is Faune- Personnage Secondaire, who is the only young man bearing horns. His feet are painted black, but only on the top front portion, as if they are meant to loosely convey the idea of hooves in an amateur theatrical. In anointing the feet of this young man in black paint and giving him hooves it is doubly heathen, since it also brings associations of Mary Magdalene anointing the feet of Jesus. Again, there is a bit of irreverence, more than hinting at homoerotic expression in a typically religious format of diptych and triptych, a format meant to fold up and be revealed for intimate worship. There is an awkward, moving humanity, a vulnerability to the masculine in these boys. Faune 9 is in a lovely pose, arms above his head, relaxed and saucy, seemingly more confident in his nudity and attire than the others. The thick brown leather belts which hold the black netting in place resemble what a monk might wear over his habit.

Exorcism

This exhibition contains two large exorcism paintings and several small painted studies. The exorcism paintings show one young man expelling his double through his mouth and the toes of the “demonic” figure appear to be stuffed in the mouth of the one who was possessed.  The dynamic movements of the twisting, escaping figures are very effective in their naturalism even though they are propelled through the air. The use of emotion particularly in the body language of the possessed ones are very convincing and engaging. The possessed figure contorts and contracts, seemingly in pain or shock.

The use of gold leaf in the Lazarus paintings—rendered expertly in paint, not applied to the canvas—is due to Barkleyâ€s interest in medieval art, as is the theme of these works. A popular medieval subject is a demon being purged from the body of a person through the mouth, with the foot of the creature still in contact. In Barkleyâ€s paintings, the painted gold leaf flies through the air as the expelled body undulates through the atmosphere, born out of himself. Against gritty industrial backgrounds, the nude men stand in water upset by ripples, and paired with an image of exorcism, baptism comes to mind. Symbolically, water can convey emotion in dream realms, a conductive sphere of influence where the fluidity of state change is imminent and everything is connected.

Barkley likens these images to Ouroboros, the snake who eats his own tail. If the man is possessed by himself, what is he exorcising? His erotic desires? His doppelgänger? Is he in a constant process of purging layers of self? Again, we come back to musing on actors, with the world as a stage, and the many-layered personae we bear within ourselves. The erotic is also present, the orifice filled with a lowly foot, the contorted bodies, the mirrored image in homoerotic desires which could, symbolically, point to a yearning to connect to, and penetrate, the higher self. There are phallic interpretations to one devouring oneâ€s own tail, as well as self-sufficiency implied in such wholeness. One also can think of Narcissus and his mirror image. Are these characters exorcising an image of themselves, an addiction to narcissism? As in all good art, we arenâ€t provided with obvious answers, only potential ones and a plethora of questions.

Daniel Barkley is an artist with a certain insistence on physical reality even when he is expressing moments of magic. I asked him why only the foot was coming out of the mouth, why not just a hand emerging or why didnâ€t the mouth of the possessed one is open like a snake. Barkley rather recoiled from the idea, saying it would be weird, the image of some other artist. Although his works are imaginative, there is a certain formalism, the portraitistâ€s respect for natureâ€s proportions and limitations. A bit out of left field from the other exorcism paintings is Hermes, a close-up acrylic painting of a very well-kempt pair of feet decorated loosely in gold leaf, with a vague impression of wings around the ankles. These are the feet of Hermes or Mercury, god fleet of foot, god of transitions and boundaries who moves freely between worlds.  Exorcism 2 shows a tension in gripped hands, a contraction of the stomach, as if a birth through the mouth, expelling of breath/life. The surprise on the boyâ€s face and pose in Étude pour exorcism 1 I find freer than the larger exorcism paintings, and there is an engaging, slightly wicked expression in the face of the boy expelled. In Étude pour exorcism 3, the escaping one sleepily clutches himself like a newborn baby, which returns us to the rebirth theme introduced in the Lazarus paintings.

There is a power and a sense of drama to the large works in this exhibition–particularly the Exorcism paintings–which is counterbalanced by an intimacy and freedom of gesture in the studies. Barkley paints nudes because they are timeless and don’t indicate class. There is a purity and sanctity to these nudes, as well as a high degree of honesty. Even though the paintings are allegorical, they seem very specific, more within the realms of portraiture and not of archetype, which is where they differ from classical art or Renaissance painting. It appears to me that the artist perceives the erotic and the holy in the everyday man, and thus paints them democratically and with worshipful rigor, glorifying his models as imperfect gods. Daniel Barkleyâ€s latest works are irreverent in that Québécois way where the worst curse words are ecclesiastical in origin. However, these paintings are also oddly reverent in their own, more secular way, where the body is a holy temple and art is the highest way to ponder human existence through form, the transcendental place where body and mind meet, on the canvas.