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.

The new series of paintings by Sébastian Maltais, beautifully presented at Galerie Dominique Bouffard, is a superb achievement of black and white encaustics, largely inspired by the existentialist writings of Albert Camus, which were written in the turbulent post-war era of disillusionment. Camus said that the creation of meaning is a logical leap which evades the worldâ€s true problems. Is Maltais saying that the creation of meaning in ideologies and religion is what leads to the human catastrophes he paints? The simple fact of existence brings those capable of reflection to ask such questions, and what better guide through life than philosophy?

A native Montrealer and devoted painter with over twenty years of experience, Sébastian Maltais is a contemporary master of the age-old medium known as “encaustic”. He has been exploring the medium in depth since 2000. Encaustic is a complicated process which involves heating and pigmenting wax, applying it with a brush or other tools, then reheating the surface to fuse the paint. As wax dries very quickly, this makes the normal process of painting much more difficult than painting with oil. Despite these limitations, Dominque Bouffard assured me that Maltais enjoys the challenge.

The history of encaustic stretches back to 5^th century B.C.E. Greece—and was widely used for icons, few of which survived iconoclasm—and the consequent Greek influence  over later Egyptian art and philosophy following the conquests by Alexander the Great. The tradition likely emerged from pigmented dyes used to seal ships, and was then used by Greek artists in place of tempura for its greater longevity. The most famous encaustics are probably the Fayum funeral portraits, which were placed over the mummies, signaling a confluence of Greek and Egyptian culture.

Encaustic fell out of favour with artists for centuries and then enjoyed a revival from the 18^th century onward to varying degrees. Modern artists such as Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg also explored painting with wax, but Sébastian Maltais†persistent dedication to the medium as well as the depth of his philosophical and humanitarian concerns in his work will assure him of a place in history as one of its masters.

Le poids des ombres portées, or The Weight of Projected Shadows, contains two related bodies of work, Propagande and Territoires. The former utilizes images of children used in propaganda, reclaiming their images in a long meditative process, bringing a degree of humanity and respect back to their images through the painstaking brushstrokes of the artist. Territoires reclaims the land on which crimes against culture and history were committed. At first glance these images seem to be not much more than faded blown-up newspaper clippings. Yet a closer reflection on these tragic images makes us view them with empathy, through the waxen blur of tears, memory and time, leaving one with a lingering sadness and concern for the future of humanity.

The moon, titled 40 Days in the Desert, sits high above the exhibition, a light softly glowing, reminding us of the light in the darkness. Yet the full moon also calls to our primal, animalistic selves, the root of such violence. It perhaps represents the influence of temptation. The Territoires contain such outrages as the empty caverns which once contained the massive Buddhas of Bayiman in Afghanistan, dynamited by the Taliban in 2001, and the ruins of Palmyra, further ruined by Isis during their occupation of the site of antiquity. The exhibition is also watched over by Camus, cigarette dangling from his mouth, and then a portrait of Pope Pius the XII, pre-war critic of Nazism who called for love, charity and compassion to rule over war—although Nazism was proclaimed from many Catholic pulpits in Europe. This is followed by the artist in autoportrait, pensively observing the viewerâ€s observation.

Images included in Propagande include child soldiers with hard eyes in the soft face of youth, and Helge, who is Helga Goebbels, one of five children of Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister who murdered his offspring before committing suicide with his wife during the fall of the regime.

These works challenge us to not give in to death and absurdity, or to the madness of cruelty and hate that swarm around us today, to endure our forty days in the desert, and they reminded me of the tender concern we should have for our fellow travelers on this earth.