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

To anyone who lives in cities like Montreal or New York City, space is a luxury; to live in a 250-square-foot studio apartment in the downtown core, one must make creative choices to maximize the use of available space. Thankfully, artists thrive on limitations. Perhaps that’s why both of these cities have such reputable art scenes. 

From April 13 to May 6, the smallest studio in the Belgo Building invites you to Petit et Intime: Exploration de peinture, textiles et photographies, an opportunity to discover over 41 small-scale works from a group of artists hailing from Montreal to New York City. The studio-turned-gallery unites an eclectic mix of paintings, textiles and photography, all of which are 12” x 12” and under.  

When you happen upon the studio entrance on the fifth floor, you first peer into a whimsically painted corridor lined with artwork, beckoning you to wander inside. Following the trail of tiny frames, colourful fibres and canvas, you emerge into a cozy main room, flooded with light from two large windows. There, I was greeted by co-curator and figurative painter, Kara Eckler. 

Liza Sokolovskaya, painter and mixed media artist based in Brooklyn, is the other half of the curating duo that sought to gather the works of independent artists deserving of a closer look. 

“We asked the artists to submit up to ten of their smaller works, including studies that may lead to larger works in future iterations, and we selected two to three for the show,” said Eckler, “there are so many talented independent artists out there who are not represented by galleries, and we wanted to give their work the attention we felt it deserved.” 

The two curators deftly arranged the submitted works into a cohesive narrative, despite the pieces originally sharing no thematic connection aside from their scale. Featured artists include visual artist and writer Lauren Anders, painters Sophia Skayafas and Zachary Sitrin from New York City, painters Madeline Richards, Ben Williamson, Mary Hayes, Heather Euloth, Heidi Daehler, Jessica Joyce, Karine Guyon, Alex Coma, Colette Campbell-Moscrop, and Luis-Fernando Suárez, photographer Lekui, and painter and fibre artist Lea Elise, from Montreal.   

To fully immerse yourself in the experience of Petit et Intime, you must accept the invitation to stop, lean in and decipher. Though the works are small in size, each one draws you in with a powerful inquisitive force, daring you to explore far beyond the boundaries of the material. 

This challenge to examine the content through the container’s surface becomes immediately apparent with the very first set of pieces flanking the gallery entrance; Study for The World Made Strange and Study for Butterfly 1, two pastel studies by Madeline Richards. In both pieces, we see human limbs emerging from a body of water, held afloat by soft pink flotation devices. In Study for the World Made Strange, the limbs are almost disappearing below the surface, seemingly flailing to remain visible. In the second frame, a body glides at the surface, buoyed by floaties arranged in a way that resembles butterfly wings. These pieces set the mood for the exhibition, where the viewer will be in a constant state of negotiation as to whether to tiptoe gently along or dive right in.

In Pensées roses by Kara Eckler, a woman sits upright in her bathtub, gazing down at her naked body, her corporeal shape hidden by the edges of the tub. Though the scene is voyeuristic, the painting has a rather soft and tender quality. This feeling lingers as your eyes drift onto its neighbouring piece, Built a home for you by Heidi Daehler, where you observe a deer through what appears to be a porthole window. In both cases, the viewer does not wish to disturb the subject, but instead hold space for their vulnerable stillness.  

As you round the corner, the works become more abstract, such as a triptych of paintings from the series titled Touched by Jessica Joyce. The soft, bruise-like surfaces of the panels include visible hand marks, tempting you to press your digits against those of the artist, typically considered a forbidden act of connection between the art and the observer. Come closer, but keep your hands to yourself. 

Playing against this soft stillness, the brightly coloured abstract fibre work of Lea Elise vibrates alongside neon abstract works Bewitched and Utopia by Karine Guyon. In this moment, the formerly gentle signal jams, producing textures and visuals reminiscent of glitch art. You might wonder what would happen, should these threads of wool, silk, and linen unravel, or the strokes of oil pastel lift off of the page. What messages would we decode from them? What immense web would they create?

Before reaching the main room, I was intrigued by a tiny set of hands with their thumbs and index fingers joined together, welcoming us to the next stage of our journey. The Polaroid photograph captured by Lauren Anders, Untitled (Hands) is mysteriously charming. Again, the viewers are asked to pause and wonder if we are meant to understand what is being communicated through a gesture.

At the heart of the exhibition, every available surface at eye level offers delight. Unbound by its size limitation, the collection presents a satisfying range in scope of perspective, such as an interpretation of a planetary surface captured in Sué – Chibcha by Luis Fernando Suarez, or the speckled night sky in Amateur astronomer by Ben Williamson. Seeking feelings closer to earth, there is the heartwarming simplicity of Softscape by Heather Euloth or the teenage angst that exudes through the watercolour in Canicule – Étude by Mary Hayes. 

Especially after a long period of isolation brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic, there seems to be a renewed appreciation for the ways in which people might share spaces, as well as a growing need for the revival of communal artistic experiences. To Eckler, there is momentum gathering towards more collective art initiatives, and opening her studio to other artists was a small step towards much bigger things. 

  “I took over this space at the start of the pandemic, and I was working here during the lockdowns and curfews. When things started to calm down, I felt a shift, where artists were really itching to get out and make things happen,” shared Eckler, “There’s a really strong art community in Montreal. I’ve received a lot from it, so it’s nice to be able to give back and share this beautiful space with others.” 

Moving through the gallery, it was easy to forget the limitation of space and focus instead on the abundance of spirit that was gathered there. I ended my visit with Liza Sokolovskaya’s Night Pool, where I stood peering into the depths of an empty inground swimming pool. It is quiet now, undisturbed, but I know that when the sun rises again, it will come alive with all kinds of people splashing around, treading water, their bodies rendered weightless. 

Petit et intime runs until May 6 in studio 531.