June 10 – July 15, 2023
Atelier Suárez, Belgo Building #325
As you enter the space you are aware that this is something different. It is not a white formal cube. You might even be a little confused. You’ll stop in your tracks for a moment, trying to figure out if you are welcome or trespassing. At the entrance, you are greeted by 4 large scale paintings and as you look around the space, you see a chair with some clothes on it, white socks and high heels on the floor below it, red candles burning, a wig and with the corner of your eye you notice a blue shirt hanging on a hanger. Right in front of you, there is a big blue painting. A man is standing with his back to you, in a blue bathroom, brightly lit by the sun coming through a window. Does the shirt belong to the man depicted? He is naked and is taking a step towards the sink. You are witnessing an intimate moment and you are unsure if your presence is known or not. Will he be surprised if he turns around? Are you allowed in?
These are the questions the viewer is facing in this show. What For My Maddened Heart I Most Was Longing presented in Atelier Suárez, is Kara Eckler’s first solo show in Montreal, which displays works spanning two decades. The title comes from Sappho’s Hymn to Aphrodite translated to English by William Hyde Appleton. In the hymn Sappho treats themes of love, devotion, desire, religion, and heartbreak, Kara Eckler’s show touches upon themes of intimacy, sexuality, eroticism, and mysticism. There are ten large scale paintings on the walls and 16 smaller pieces that are presented off the wall. The space around them is filled with familiar objects like lingerie, bottles, candles, ropes, bags, shoes, and wigs which complement the work. This presentation heightens your awareness that these paintings are part of lived reality, they are the artist’s experiences. In this show, you can’t help but feel a little voyeuristic, shy, and awkward, facing things that are usually kept private.
Sex and intimacy so often stay behind closed doors, in password protected folders, in erased browser histories and whispers. However it is also an important element of our human experience that we cannot ignore. Kara Eckler courageously opens up, allows you to witness her and her loved ones, which hopefully prompts you to open up in return. The nudity isn’t shocking as one might expect, it’s vulnerable and real. It isn’t the lustful gaze of a voyeur, searching scenes that titillate, but the loving gaze of a participant, someone who shared these moments. You are privileged to be invited into the world of those depicted.
Two narratives emerge in the show, the one of the painted world and the one of the real life objects. These objects play a double role, some are a way into the painting, an element that comes to life and allows you to understand what is happening, others present a riddle. In the forefront of The Witches’ Sabbath, which depicts two female figures reclining in bed, you see a wine bottle and a glass, you’ll notice the same dark glass bottle, right underneath the painting, sitting on the floor, like a relic of moments past. On the floor by Watching, Waiting, Waking, a dark red canvas, depicting a reclining female and a small, curled up male figure in the background, you see a candelabra. Are these candles here for illumination or part of a magic ritual? You notice the female figure’s harness and the hint of wings on the male. The piece feels both calm and eerily gloomy, as if the two are stuck in some sort of wasteland or limbo. The uncertainty you feel about the meaning of this piece is repeated in others and heightened through surreal elements of extra limbs, doubling, recurring characters, and fantastical elements throughout the show.
Kara Eckler’s foray into mysticism started early. In 2002, after receiving her BFA in Painting and a BA in Creative Writing in Albany, NY, she moved to Canada to study Tantra and meditation. You can clearly feel the influence of that, both in the paintings as well as the presentation.
Kara Eckler has undeniable skill and ability to paint in an idiosyncratic way. You can connect to her works through their humanity and vulnerability as well as by appreciating the beauty of putting oil paint to canvas. She is striving to show the viewer the reality she has witnessed or participated in, but she is also allowing her medium to enhance that. She is not here to spell out everything for you. She might render a plant, a glass, a foot, a breast, but she is also allowing the freshness of a quick first layer to show in a hand, a window, or a bed. These painterly moments make you wonder, is this a memory or a fantasy? Are those your memories and fantasies?
In the middle of the room stands a painter’s stool, with coils of rope and a paintbrush, which feel like metaphors of the themes of the show. The brush points to a visible love for painting, particularly oil painting. Large canvases, bold thick brush strokes, saturated colours, and human figures almost life size are the hallmarks of a painter in love with the medium. Rope on the stool that we see tied as a pentagram harness in The Witching Hour remind us of power exchange practices, magic, rituals of binding and constricting, but also the incredible need to trust the world and to let go, just as a painter does in the studio.
What For My Maddened Heart I Most Was Longing is a bold challenge thrown at the viewer. The taboo surrounding the themes explored might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it is undeniably daring to open yourself up as Kara Eckler does. These paintings depict nudity, sex, and mystical practices. The scale is imposing, the people real. No-one is hiding under the hairless, peach coloured, blended skin of french academicism. What you see, is what was lived.
Liza Sokolovskaya
