November 24, 2016-December 24, 2016

The title of Nika Fontaineâ€s solo exhibition at Joyce Yahouda Gallery was called Heimat. The word Heimat apparently cannot be translated exactly, however it loosely means “homeland” in German. I believe that Fontaine is using the word in its purest sense, not suggesting any kind of national pride. Through the title she suggests a spiritual homeland, in which the true home of the soul is not this plane, but another beyond, and her art explores this theme. The works in this show range from boxy glitter Rothkoesque canvases, to paintings which burst with movement and colour, to kitschy creations in velvet and tassels.

Nika Fontaine is a multidisciplinary artist who is first and foremost a painter, although she is also so diverse in her output as to range from making music, designing gloriously glam coffins and performing in drag. Fontaineâ€s paintings, in general and in this exhibition are primarily in glitter on canvas, but she has of late been returning to purely painted works, as can be seen on her Instagram. Montreal born, Berlin-based, Fontaine is a French-Canadian transgender woman, but does not consider herself to be a transgender artist, as her works explore other themes mostly spiritual in origin, dealing frequently with death, astral experiences and energy, but they are also largely concerned with style, aesthetics and fun.  Fontaine recounts that she gained New Age influences from her mother and aunt, which have informed her work for many years now. There are elements of craft, of little girl art, of the ubiquitous glitter stickers of the 80s, of fabric and play and dress-up. However, these works carry a distinctly adult, evolved and a sometimes dark or sinister contemporary edge. Ever since losing her father at a young age, Nika Fontaine has had a fascination with death. Combined with her female relatives†interest in spirituality, this clearly created a powerfully imaginative, spiritual and feminine environment to grow up in, one that nurtured her to become the artist she is today.

A painter of increasing international renown, Fontaine was a finalist in the RBC painting competition for 2016, as well as one the honorable mentions for the prize. It was one of her Schnell Schnell paintings—the series heavily featured in this solo exhibition—that garnered her this recognition. The most successful paintings in this show, in my opinion, are many of these Schnell Schnell paintings (“quickly quickly” in German) which Fontaine calls her Accelerators. The ones that resemble small, glittering Rothkos feel boxed in, static, almost trapped and claustrophobic, though still containing visual delights and harmony. Fontaine told me that those with greater movement were painted more recently, and they are the ones I found more profoundly moving and hypnotic. It is clear that Fontaine wishes the viewer to experience an acceleration of consciousness, energy and happiness while enjoying her work, and this is indeed a successful effect, depending on the openness of the viewer. It is possible to experience a distinct sense of mirroring in your own body and sense the feelings portrayed on the canvas through colour, the reflections of light upon the glitter and the sense of surging upward. There is a sense of movement of energy, of colourful play through a body, which could be an etheric body or an astral one. They have a very human feel, a sense of embodiment as well as freedom from such a state. The sense of being more than one is in the earthly sense. These paintings often have the shape of a body, of a face, sometimes of breasts or eyes. Their glittering energy seems to travel upward, like the flush of excitement or emotion, the rush of thought or the movement of kundalini through the chakras. They also seem to express desire and pleasure at the same time, which is a rare feat to accomplish so effectively in an abstract work. These Schnell Schnell paintings do seem to have a cross-over to her Astral Bodies series, which are about beings she encounters after putting herself into a trance, then painting. Boundaries are not as rigid as we imagine, especially in creative endeavours. The Accelerators also include paintings I would call space paintings, which seem to be directly inspired by the glittering night sky, and seem less about a body or being, and more about awe and freedom. I would love to see her abstract works, these space canvases in particular, painted quite large to increase their sense of overwhelming peace and wonder.

Nika Fontaine has said that her interest in kitsch materials comes mainly from aesthetic preference.  She is not afraid to be decorative. This is an artist skilled in blending high and low-brow art; her use of materials such as velvet and tasseled curtains would send an artist less bold  running in shame. There is a good sense of humour, both about the role of the artist and about herself, which successfully lightens the mood of work that many could find “woo-woo” or taking herself too seriously.  Theyâ€re fun, light-hearted, pretty and just serious enough. The kitsch works are less interesting to me personally, but they add some humour and playfulness to a show that would otherwise be too ponderous for many. The most effective of these was the most ironic, a purple glowing glitter planet painted on the notorious black velvet, titled Zeta Pupis. Somehow the black seemed as black as Anish Kapoorâ€s vantablack. It is the black of the void, black as a black hole and deeply hypnotic. The center of the purple planet was lighter than the outer edge of the sphere, giving it a dimensional feel. The edge was trimmed in velvet, and even the most serious connoisseur could hardly mind, as the piece was so effectively mesmerizing. It also could be associated with a mandala, or an energy-being centred in a very peaceful place, hovering over the void.

Fontaineâ€s large, chaotic, representational glitter-sticker tableaux were among the most striking. They allowed long examination and enjoyment, and sparked many conversations amongst visitors. More figurative than her other works, they were very engaging, drawing the eye to riddle out the chaos to find in the glittery nebula of satana ye te boco: a devilâ€s mask with a long tongue protruding like Hindu images of the goddess Kali, electric green space-vomit emitted from a jar or urn, a long, rope-tongued floating serpent, a green and black scarab beetle, a black sign of clubs, flames one might see on a childâ€s toy race car and other less easily decipherable symbols. The most perplexing and intriguing of the less easily distinguished symbols was a somehow humanoid tuber portrayed in ochre glitter. It seemed root-like as well as intestinal, but its meaning was quite evasive. American Delight features a barber pole, another gut-tuber, a banana split, a viridian ET-like creature, an electric blue scorpion, musical notes, flames and a sword, among other lesser symbols and signs. The meaning seems less important than the primordial soup of imagery which comes from a frenetic imagination. These feel like dream-clutter or the jumble of images one encounters while attempting to still the mind in meditation.

While it feels a bit unfair to keep returning to Rothko as that influence is only one part of Nika Fontaineâ€s work, Rothko’s paintings, energetically devoid almost in their Zen emptiness, feel like a place or a mood, while hers feel much more human and joyful. Their presence, their boundaries, the thrust of their desire, their limitations and their expansive joy rises and ascends, and for me, they are at the core of the success of this exhibition.  Her Heimat is the homeland of the heart.

The post Heimat: Nika Fontaine first appeared on The Belgo Report.

Dan Braultâ€s new exhibition of work, Peinture générale…ou Presque, at Galerie Laroche Joncas has the chaotic ambience he has become known and appreciated for. These acrylic and oil paintings operate along the tension-line between mechanical and handmade, the expressive and the slickly stylized. Brault plays on the outsider art aesthetic, and is obviously influenced by street art, digital technologies and pop art.

It is often said that Dan Braultâ€s work is playful and positive. In fact, Brault said to La Presse[i]:

“Il y a une part de naïveté dans mon travail. On y trouve mes réflexions sur la vie, sur ce que c’est que d’être un citoyen responsable et la raison qui justifie de créer une image de plus dans le monde, aujourd’hui.”

Deeper and sometimes darker concerns can be detected therein with longer viewing and a wry commentary on the nature of our society.

To be sure there is a certain joy in the sheer visual abundance, in the free association, in the jazz-like riffs, in the effusion of colour and form. Viewing them is a somewhat frustrating experience however, it is like dealing with a particularly infuriating puzzle. Sometimes the attempt to riddle out the references in these works, to struggle to parse meaning from symbols yields little. Yet, telling a story doesnâ€t really seem to be the point here. The works entertain on one level to be sure, especially visually, but they also reveal what seems to be a sophisticated commentary on the nature of looking and naming, and the history of art from the early 20^th century to present day.

In 2014, Brault was selected to be one of the one hundred artists featured in the book 100 Painters of Tomorrow, by Kurt Beers, of Beers London. Beers was originally a Canadian gallery but has now been operating out of England for several years, and it has obtained an esteemed reputation there. This has contributed to Braultâ€s rise in success, but it is clear that his work has a deserved place in Quebec painting and in the scheme of contemporary art, particularly in the popular genre of faux outsider art. Braultâ€s work openly betrays the influence of his former professor, David Elliot, in the use of painted collage and cheerfully chaotic mood. Other influences can be spied in Basquiat-style childlike doodles and there are numerous neo-expressionist elements to be found in these paintings as well.

Ultimately, trying to parse meaning out of the chaos of symbols feels like a fruitless task in this mad carnival. They feel as if they are about the joy and the torment of existence, the explosive nature of the youthful mind when one is just starting to pick out meaning and symbol and shape. It could be a depiction of the mind of a child starting to recognize signs, when perception begins to fall away from unbiased pure awareness and becomes a mind that judges, separates and names, and in fact becomes obsessed with doing so.

We encounter a plethora of elements borrowed and collaged especially from lowbrow sources such as design, pop art, street art and so on. References to digital culture and the nature of new and old media abound, as well as marks which declare the presence and absence of the artistâ€s hand, and Brault is known to work with a stencil-maker to create many of the machine-made features.  The constant references to the dichotomy between mechanized making and the handmade signature of the artist, which bears the direct trace of humanity in the remnants of the brushstroke, raises questions about what is true art, and what is valued and what is not.

These works also call up ideas tendered by deconstructionism, of the relationship between the signified and the signifier. To my mind, the works bear a certain relationship to Derridaâ€s compelling notion that words and signs can never fully express what is meant, only talk around the thing with other words and signs. These paintings seem to express the impossibility and absurdity of true communication, the futility of establishing meaning or order in a chaotic, overwhelming, visually overstimulating and commercially over-saturated society.

We are overwhelmed by the surfeit of choices we have today, yet in some ways we also seem to have less and less choices and freedoms. Our paths narrow, the divide between rich and poor widens. In a world where we are told by the media that we can have it all, we end up with little, mired in acquisitiveness and consumer culture. Where everything is disposable, nothing is valued over anything else. And that is what these works seem to embody, collaged chaos, they celebrate the random and the anti-aesthetic to some degree, and not much concerned with traditional means of expression, composition, or beauty. It sometimes feels like an ironic critique of consumer culture while itself being part of it, and this one of the persistent paradoxes of the business of art.  Ultimately, however, the work doesnâ€t seem to pass judgment, in fact, it seems to elevate stencilled designs used in the tackiest advertisements and the cheapest decals for home décor to the same level as iconic images of influential artists like Phillip Guston.

To give a sense of the work, let us look at the characteristic larger piece Watchtower which is dominated by a raven on a stump with a thought bubble and a spider inside, a cloud emitting a lightning symbol and a pixelated digital flame. The canvas also features band-aids, a worm shaped like a cigar, a Guston-style eye, a digital/painterly hybrid cloud of smoke, some elements of nature, and a small pile of olives which make me think of eggs because of the bird. In the centre there is a large stencilled flower which glows like a sun.

In Heatwave we are inundated by a cactus, a hand making an OK gesture, clouds, a cupcake, a snail, a not-dead (according to Laroche) bluebird thinking of a Tetris-like symbol, an oak leaf, a potted plant, wallpaper, another Guston eye, coin slots, and what is perhaps a pixelated campfire. Swoops of orange-hot Photoshop-like lines likely represent hot air. There is a blue background, blue sky, the blue water of summer and what seem to be two large painterly blueberries at centre. A cactus reminds us of desert climes. The repetition of the Guston eye makes me think of the nature of seeing and perception.

Perhaps a synesthesiac homage to music Blazing Raw Vibes! also conveys the sensation of heat, digitally rendered and emanating from the large red and orange amorphous shape that is marked like a player piano reel on crack. Video-game faces are rendered in an expressive style while a gramophone spits out candy music. Snakes, band-aids and the ubiquitous Tetris symbol squabble in the picture plane. What appears to be a bullet hangs centrally in suspension like the sword of Damocles.

Lingering in Timeâ€s House features a skull penetrated by a fishhook which suspended over a black and white patterned surface like a kitchen or bathroom linoleum floor. Traditionally still lives, appropriately called in French nature morte are assembled with fruit and various objects, classically often depicting reminders of mortality. This one features bottles dripping with wax or paint and a coffee mug, all loosely painted, and an apple and the skull arenâ€t far away. Random objects such as stencilled binoculars—another reference to the nature of looking—a pumpernickel bagel, a barber pole, a loosely painted bowling ball and a cartoon Flintstoneâ€s club also hover around the picture plane.

While both Laroche and Brault maintain that the paintings have individual and personal meaning, and Iâ€m sure that is true, that was not my overall impression. I believe that the meaning present is irrelevant and superficial, and that it is intentionally so. The paintings are more about the subject of meaning itself, or the lack thereof. They deal with how meaning is constructed and deconstructed, how we strive to communicate and how we fail to do so. They are about how pictures are made, how images make up our culture and fill our awareness, for better or for worse, from the highbrow to the lowbrow. These works are also about the methodology by which images are formed within our minds, how labels and names are given and sorted. They also deal with how what is considered acceptable visually and artistically is in a constant state of flux, how we use images commercially, and the effect that has on the state of art as a whole.

[i] Éric Clément, La Presse, January 3, 2015

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Tenir des Murs was a group exhibition at Joyce Yahouda Gallery, literally translated as “to hold up the walls”, a French expression meaning “hang around”. The paintings in the group exhibition were placed on the floor, in effect holding up the walls, allowing a different vantage point from which to view them. I found it a refreshingly casual approach, giving the experience the feel of a studio visit, allowing the viewer to hang around the artwork and indulge in leisurely visual pleasures.

Presented this way, but in their own wing of the gallery as a solo, were four summer night-lush 2015 works making up Benjamin Kleinâ€s Exhibition, from what the artist calls his “Bugs” series, a world he created as part of his MFA thesis exhibition at the University of Guelph that was later shown in his show Generator in Montreal. The word “generate” is still very relevant here.

Generate: “To bring into existence, cause to be, produce. To create by a vital or natural process. To reproduce, procreate.”

In these four never-before exhibited works, we see the characters and features Klein has been working with for years, a plethora of bioluminescent life, of ladybugs, snails, fluorescent planets, spiders and glowing orbs all dwelling within nocturnal landscapes where the hinterland and the garden or park meet. Vital and natural are two very apt words to describe these paintings.  The work is vital to the artist, and their existence is vital. The natural process of painting, highlighted in expressive brushwork which clearly shows the hand of the artist, is the perfect medium for such scenes. Benjamin Klein is an artist who welcomes a variety of interpretations to his work. My interpretations are mine alone, perhaps, and I have only been face to face with six of his paintings, but they were enough to make me stand back and almost gasp at their dark beauty and power upon first entering the room they were displayed in. Because of their size, energy, luminosity, the subtlety of their colour variations and the sensitivity of their brushwork, these are works that must be seen in person to be fully appreciated. Something about seeing his works face à face gives insight into what the paintings tell you about yourself, but more insight is perhaps afforded from keeping an open mind to the myriad possibilities which can shift from day to day with your perception.

Francis Bacon said “the job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery”, and Klein does his job exceptionally well. Not only does he create mystery, his paintings evoke the magic and imaginative force of childhood, no mean feat in a world of contemporary art which sometimes seems to extol irony and that which can be comprehended by the intellect alone above all.  In my opinion, it is also an especially brave and laudable approach for a male painter working in an expressive style, an inheritor of the legacy of de Kooning, Bacon, Soutine and so on. In this body of work there is also a relationship to the work of Van Gogh, Chagall, certain paintings by Matisse, and, of course, our contemporary masters who work with playfully serious painterly force, Dana Schutz and Allison Schulnik to consider, among others, but Kleinâ€s painterly signature is unique. The notion of lila—Sanskrit for play—comes to my mind with his work. Lila is a game with a serious edge in which the entire universe is generated by the creative play of the divine.

The fact that he chooses to paint in what at first glance seems to be in an utterly direct, honest and almost naïve manner, in actuality is something informed, considered, layered, subtle and skillful. It also appears to reflect a depth of philosophy, a balance of male and female principles within, and a consciousness that art speaks to us on an elemental level as well as a mental. The vast majority of artists who paint in an expressive, figurative way do so because they are engaged with the ability of paint to convey emotion as well as thought through subject and form, and Klein is no exception. This style and these choices are in no way inferior to other ways of making art, yet they continue to be disparaged as somehow lesser than other ways of making.

Why ladybugs?  Klein tells the story of the genesis of the ladybug theme, how he encountered what he calls a ladybug graveyard in his studio, which he found “oddly compelling and beautiful, memorable and uncanny”. Ladybugs, though associated with luck and the innocence of childhood, viewed so largely and painted so boldly make the viewer feel like one of them, part of their story. It also causes their colour to be in the foreground of our perception. Red and black, primal colours, often signify blood and the deepest shadows. Thus, they bear a paradox in their very form, making them appropriate vehicles of story and meaning. The deceased ladybugs are given new life in paint by Klein, reanimated through colour and energy as they play out their psychodramas and intrigues. The stories become almost archetypal when you place yourself in the ambiguous positions of the snail, the spider, the ladybug or the firefly.

The first piece I encountered was Different Roads. All of these paintings are large, and first I was struck by the overwhelming hot and pure cadmium red of the ladybugs, alternately perceived to be drowning in a disintegrating landscape and emerging from the earth under a beautifully rendered deep blue sky exquisitely subtle yet expressive, looming darkly above softly detailed grass twinkling with fireflies. Ladybugs move through a sea of grass, almost as if they are forming out of it, numinous. Black forms in the background echo the shapes of the insects. What are the different roads? Perhaps the title refers to the limen, the borderland where one must choose the wild or the garden, or elsewise it could suggest the varied paths we walk in life portrayed via the endlessly travelling and busy insects, or the interspecies differences between the lone snail and the myriad ladybugs in the foreground.  These bugs do seem to be newly generated, in a state of prolific, joyful procreation, re-animated through colour and movement, vibrating with energy. We see the secret lives of creatures practically unknown to us, living deep within what could be a city park at night.

Allowed to hum on a wall of its own is All Through the Night, the macrocosm to the ladybug microcosm. My first thought was that the title was borrowed from the familiar lullaby, but Klein recalls the 80s love song of the same title by Cyndi Lauper. Over a hot pink dripping ground, jubilant brushstrokes tangle with cadmium yellows, burning sun oranges, buzzing ultramarine and Prussian blues that are exceptionally hard to do justice to in a photograph. When I look at the cosmos depicted, I think of artist as creator, and the pure joy of the potential to depict all things from the microcosm to the macrocosm, insects to galaxies.  Is it a world before humans? Klein suggests it could be the sky above the ladybug world.  Of the four works shown here, this one is the most abstract. It is a part of our solar system, but not, an alternate Saturn surrounded by quantum suggestions of form in paint.  It is like the famous experiment in which tiny bits of matter—paint—are shot at a screen—canvas—and quantum waves of potential paths, when watched by the viewer, coalesce into specific form. Personally, I saw cellular structures, honeycomb, male genitalia, and a smiley face. Klein says: “Iâ€ve always found it impossible to paint something that isnâ€t a representation, even in the cases of virtually abstract images, thereâ€s always a fusion of subject and form.” In this world devoid of humans, consciousness and feeling are nevertheless ubiquitous, mirrored in the insect exploits in their occult world. The handling of paint and the subject matter show the balance of control and abandon, order and chaos, a theme echoed in the garden/woodland relationship throughout the Bugs series. The title suggests what transpires in the sky while we are in bed.  I canâ€t help but picture a cosmic world above lovers and return to the quantum theme, envisioning in this, exploding stars dying yet shining and forming new patterns in direct relation to their embrace.

In Sweeter than Ever, a dream viewed through the looking glass, a pink luminous snail with a blue shell and a beneficent mien is surrounded by floral abundance, dancing firefly-stars and a mysterious glow which comes from under a hill at the waterâ€s edge. Reflected in the water in the place where we ought to see the reflection of the snail, instead we spy the distorted reflection of a blue spider, another recurrent player in Kleinâ€s Bugs series. Are they lovers? Do they long for each other? Or is it an approaching menace, hovering over the snail and about to descend, a watery warning?  This is the most enigmatic piece in the exhibition. There seem to be allusions to love or life being sweet, with the blooming flowers, inner glow and aqueous reflection. Love and life are never completely safe, even at times of peak happiness, there is always a danger of loss or change.

The last painting was Awake at Dawn, which must depict very early morning when blue light is cast all around, because the sky is primarily dark, yet, the overall feel is of a day-glo Van Gogh landscape. The orbs which I normally interpret as fireflies, here I read as stars which twinkle through the atmosphere in variegated colours, seemingly self-determined in their freedom to float where they will.  A soft, verdant mushroom cloud of foliage is supported or projected by the shaft of a radioactive-looking yellow trunk.  Glowing energy and power push from under the earth. Blades of glass shine with tiny lights among the ladybugs, who seem to be travelling through a swamp of liquid green alongside stars; playing with perspective and space is a recurrent technique of Kleinâ€s which helps to bring us a dreamlike state of perception.

Joseph Bueys said: “Imagination, inspiration and longing all lead people to sense that these other levels also play a part in understanding.” Benjamin Kleinâ€s paintings have long been solely crafted from his imagination and hand, and the role of imagination is especially strong in these evocative paintings. They bring to mind the magic of childhood, when in every one of us, creativity is as natural as breathing and for many, existence is fraught with deep meaning unfathomable by the conscious mind. It is a time closer to the origin of life and consciousness, a time close to the heart of many an artist. The force of childhood—that crucial time of our emergence into this world—weighs on all of us for good and ill, and we would do well to recall what truly nourishes the heart. It is interesting that the meaning of these works is a mystery even to the artist, their symbolism shifts and is uncertain, fluid. These paintings function as dreams do, but their world is a dream which can be collectively shared.

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