November 9 – December 21

Espas Sakre was Desvarieux’s first solo exhibition at Galerie Hugues Charbonneau where he is newly represented. The show was part of the Pictura triennial of Montreal painting. Here he pays homage to his many influences and shares what he has learned about painting since he began making art in 2013. The works here show a rapid progression and integration of many aesthetic interests including Modern Art, Abstract Expressionism, and Haitian art, exploring a full spectrum of figuration and abstraction in mostly large acrylic paintings. Desvarieux is an omnivorous painter, synthesizing fragments of Basquiat, de Kooning, Picasso, Hilma af Klimt, Peter Doig, and others, but rather than becoming derivative, he has been expanding his personal range. These works are idealistic, energetic, and holy. They depict a paradisiacal vision of the Haiti of the artist’s hopes and dreams.  Many of the interpretations that follow are extracted from an interview I did with the artist in the gallery in December 2023. 

installation view

What is immediately apparent is Desvarieux’s sense of colour and form, his painterly virtuosity, his sophisticated sense of rhythm, his references, and his very apparent love of creating. In many ways, he is a painter’s painter. Going deeper however, there are cultural mythologies being shared, spirits being invoked, and new ways of existing being called forth. Desvarieux said “Haiti is Vodou”, and that Vodou is in the gastronomy of Haiti, the land, the language, and much of the music.  I was told that all of the elements and all of nature are understood to be loa, spirits or deities. This animism gives practitioners of Vodou—of which there are still many in Haiti—a great reverence for the land and for the spirits they work with and for. Desvarieux learned about Vodou, his culture, his upbringing, and his ancestry through researching what was available to non-initiates and applying what he found to his painting.

Desvarieux was born in Port-au-Prince and has been living in Montreal for many years.  He comes from a political Haitian family who were art collectors, so he grew up surrounded by paintings and the works of many celebrated Haitian artists. Desvarieux came to Montreal to complete his education and discovered his true path was in making art. He is the co-founder of Montreal art collective Atelier Good People, and besides being a painter and community leader he is also a photographer. I first saw his work in person in a group show at Galerie Hugues Charbonneau, Imaginaires souverains, in 2022, and then again in a duo show in 2023 called Le langage secret de l’univers at Maison de la Culture Claude-Léveillée, Montréal. Desvarieux has also shown recently at Sargent’s Daughters in Los Angeles and at the Musée des Beaux-Arts Montreal. His painting has been rapidly progressing in very interesting ways, and with this solo show, it is clear that his work has gained enough strength to show that he is a formidable painter. 

Those who are familiar with the history of Haitian art might recognize in his influences most notably Andre Pierre and Hector Hyppolite, Vodou priests who painted scenes of Vodou who painted the loa often. The landscapes of Haiti with heavy tropical foliage, bustling with energy and life, and scenes of Vodou religious rites and loa are evoked in Desvarieux’s works such as Ogou Fè and Legba Mèt Lakou as they are in the work of Pierre. They are intrinsically Haitian with their reverence for the land, the loa, and the ideals they convey.

Legba Mèt Lakou

Desvarieux’s art practice is deeply spiritual and pulls strongly on his experience of being raised surrounded by Vodou. His process is ritualistic, intuitive, and reverent. Loa Legba greeted us at the beginning of the exhibition—you had to pass by him to go further—he stood at the crossroads between the outside world and the sacred space created for us. Legba Mèt Lakou shows Papa Legba of the crossroads, a trickster God who Desvarieux has painted many times. In Vodou you cannot do magic without Papa Legba.  He is a deity of the arts, loa of writers, painters, and he dwells in the in-between spaces where invisible becomes visible. This is also the domain of art.  Here Papa Legba, wearing a suit of red and black, sits casually in nature and it seems as if dusk is coming on and some stars are visible. He is surrounded by the lush tropical flora of Haiti by the edge of the land and water. Legba seems as if he was waiting for you, but he is in no sort of hurry. His eyes meet yours, his large hands dangle at rest, he seems to accept you, as if he may let you pass. Those familiar with the history of art will see in this painting touches of Cubism, of Basquiat, of de Kooning. Painters will admire the complex but harmonious layering in this large canvas. 

Marasa

The next paintings are a diptych, two panels placed close beside each other, titled Marasa, they seem to reference the moon and the sun, respectively.  The left panel has a grey disk rising over tropical waters with heavy plants surrounding the view, it is done mostly in cool purples and greens, a self-contained lunar scene. On the right panel, we find warm tones, solar tendrils, an expansive energy above a simple horizon line, a land in summer bleached by the hot sun, or a giant orange lily blooming in the equatorial heat. In Tantra, the left is feminine and lunar, while the right is masculine and solar. In many traditions the left hand path is considered dark, and the right is associated with light. These two panels call to mind Yin and Yang, divine feminine and divine masculine, and the harmony of opposites. Desvarieux told me that to create this diptych, he had a process that is rooted in the meaning of the painting itself. He gessoed two canvases, stuck them together, and once they began to dry, he ripped them apart, and with a resoundingly loud crack, one became two. I enjoyed hearing how his process was ritualistic, as if the painting itself is initiating some magical process which echoes the creative energies of the universe.  In Vodou, Marasa are the sacred twins, road openers, the guardians of the threshold who it is necessary to invoke after Legba before proceeding with the ritual. Esoterically the first emanation of life is where one becomes two, and Desvarieux said that he wanted to make a gesture which represents that divide, likening it to splitting the atom. In the mythology of Plato’s Symposium, humans were created with four arms, four legs, two sets of sexual organs, and a single head with two faces. These early human beings were thought to be powerful, whole, and physically perfect. The Gods felt threatened by these strange creatures and Zeus divided them, splitting the unit into two, leaving the pair forever fated to seek union with their other half, thus creating some of the modern lore of soulmates which persists to this day.

Hanging throughout the gallery were hand-dyed fabrics in purples, yellows, greens, and pinks which were sometimes one whole colour, sometimes fading from one to another, and splotched throughout. The colours and patterns mimicked the dance of vibrations in the canvases below. They both accentuated and sheltered the works, and created a sacred space within the sacred space for the small natural altar at the centre of the gallery. It was a humble ephemeral altar which paid tribute to the two lands on which Desvarieux has lived, palm for Haiti and sweetgrass for Canada. The effect of the hangings made the exhibition feel a little bit like it was on a stage. He said that Haitian Vodou is theatrical, it is both serious and joyous with a lot of ornaments, smells, food, and music. Coloured fabrics are also used in Vodou rituals to signify different loa.

ephemeral altar, closeup view

Lakou lanmou I is a pastoral which pays tribute to indigenous, green, and sustainable architecture. We see a dirt or mud house with leaves for roof amid a colourful and lush paradise at the edge of the sea. There is a horned mythological creature on the coast and the water before it feels deep, luminous, and alive. This Arcadia which shows a sacred space existing in harmony with nature. Lakou in Haitian Creole means a courtyard, a natural setting in a communal dwelling place, while lanmou means love. It is a representation of an idyllic pastoral setting, a realm that seems peaceful, lush, and safe. You can see the influence of Peter Doig in this work, particularly in the water and the palm trees. Doig is also an artist with deep connections to both the Caribbean and Canada, and his big survey exhibition at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 2014 would have been not long after Desvarieux started painting. 

Lakou lanmou I and Autoportrait dans la zone des ombres colorées

Desvarieux spoke of what is happening in Haiti right now, of the fact that Catholic and Protestant missions are still very active there in trying to stamp out Vodou. Temples have been destroyed and forests cut without respect for the land. The missions have been taking advantage of natural disasters such as the earthquake of 2010 to entrench their influence. They built schools and thus seem philanthropic but families are split apart and children are taught that their culture is evil, according to Desvarieux, the children do not even learn their own history. The shame that happened in the residential schools in Canada is happening in Haiti today. Haiti does not need help from the Church to civilize the people, without outside interference and exploitation, Haiti could thrive.

Autoportrait dans la zone des ombres colorées is a bit more personal as it depicts Desvarieux in his studio, seeming to wear as a headdress the dyed curtains that could also be seen hanging in the gallery. He said that his eye was caught by a shadow cast by a candle. He looks pensive but comfortable, and his crossed arms, just simplified white sticks, invoke Basquiat. His eyes, here painted blue, regard what seems to be a cascading waterfall. The assemblage of abstracted patterns, colours, and the turquoise water-like forms are full of movement and life, as if they could be the tumult of thoughts and feelings that move despite the stillness of the body. The self-depiction seems almost royal, the fabrics and patterns African and resplendent, but this auto-portrait is also humble and discrete. The idea  of coloured shadows is familiar to artists, even in a seemingly black shadow there are subtle reflections and nuances of colour. There is an idea in Vodou philosophy that the religion contains all duality, good and evil, it accepts the polarities of life as part of the grand scheme of existence. It stands in contrast to Christianity, where evil is seen as the realm of Satan. Vodou is judged by many in the West to be an uncivilized religion based in devil worship, animal sacrifice, and curses. Yet Vodou has much in common with the complex philosophy of Eastern religions in the deep knowledge that all is One. 

Towota Tèt Bèf

Towota Tèt Bèf is a more abstracted work, but you can see a man seated on some sort of large object, the figure makes me think a bit of Doig’s most abstracted and patterned figures. There’s more movement and rhythm to this piece than recognizable form. We find a sense of unity in the painting, almost as if between figure and ground there is little boundary. The sky is apparent with a vivid blue, while the landscape, the figure, and the bull are brought together by sunny yellow, bold purple, and various reds, along with tiny dots which often seem to signify a starry sky in Desvarieux’s works. Closer inspection reveals a bull who is be laying down with front legs extended. Desvarieux spoke of how in Haiti, a vehicle signifying status is a big Land Cruiser type of Lexus, popular with the elites and politicians. It is nicknamed tête beouf, or tèt bèf, for its size and power. The artist was also thinking of a common sight in rural Haiti, youth going to market on the back of an animal bringing things to sell. He was thinking about priorities and sustainable transportation and a slower way of life. What if being rich and powerful meant riding on the back of a bull instead of driving a tèt bèf?  In Haitian culture status symbols often come from the West, ideas imposed on the culture by slavery and colonization. Picasso also comes to mind when looking at this painting, he famously used the bull as a symbol of masculine power and with his Spanish heritage it was a favourite theme.  The fragmented forms in this painting show a softer sort of Cubism, and the diversity of painterly brushwork is engaging, they make you slow down to follow the artist’s hand. Desvarieux is invoking sustainable alternatives here through art as a sort of magical painting practice.

Ogou Fé

In Ogou Fé, one of the most striking works in the show, we find a figure standing out against black and red negative space in a way that evokes Francis Bacon’s work. He has dreadlocks reaching his shoulders and he seems to regard us with one eye open and one eye closed. The stars are interwoven with his body and he seems active, holding some materials, perhaps metals. He could be standing at a table with bowls, or kneeling at work with one foot kicked up, the forms are obscure and can be read multiple ways. Desvarieux was thinking about the shadow side of war. Ogou Feray is a popular Haitian Vodou loa with origins tracing back to the Yoruba in Africa. He is a blacksmith, a warrior, the Lord of War and Fire. Desvarieux said Espas Sakre was in part about drawing attention to the impact of technology on our lives—for him, the energies of fire and iron are its symbols. When humans discovered fire, we started to cook, and our brains started having different reactions from eating cooked food. From this rudimentary technology, eventually came the industrialization that has been destroying and polluting the planet, including the industry of war, and the technology that consumes our lives.  When does technology stop being something that helps you and when does it start devouring you?  Desvarieux said that we often live in the shadow side of this deity rather than the luminous side. The luminous side of Ogun Feray is balanced power, fertility, creation, justice. On the wall beside this painting was a found object which resonated for the artist, a metal rebar, a construction material which goes inside the concrete to reinforce a building. He found it bent like a cane and adorned with danger tape. To him, his discovery reminded him of the loa Ogun Feray.  The name Feray comes from the French feraille, or scrap metal.

installation view

In the back of the gallery, not officially part of the exhibition, was another human sort of work, perhaps a counterpoint to the self-portrait. Titled La princesse articulée, it is a portrait of a woman regarding the viewer frankly as she enters vibrant blue water.  The water is splashed up behind her in pleasing shapes. She seems to invite us to follow her, to immerse ourselves. Desvarieux says the painting is of his partner, but it is as if she has been possessed by the loa Erzulie, offering an invitation to sensuality. Her eyes are open wide and round, as if she is indeed possessed by a powerful spirit. Erzulie is a family of loa associated with love, similar to the goddess Venus or Aphrodite, and one of her colours is pink, which was used in the scarf on her head and on her dress. Erzulie is also associated with water, and one Erzulie loa—there are two—is married to Agwe, loa of the sea. Here, the woman possessed by the loa enters the water, joining her husband in unity. A major event in a Vodou ceremony is when a practitioner becomes possessed by the spirit of the loa they invoke and begin behaving as the spirit, dancing, swaying, making noises, and doing uncommon things. During this experience, the one who is possessed is said not to remember anything. Considering that the exhibition began with an invocation of Legba, the guardian of the crossroads, and Marasa, the sacred twins, this tucked away painting seemed to me to represent the conclusion of the ritual, when the spirit of the loa enters the human’s body. 

Vodou is a way for initiated practitioners of the religion to have a direct experience of the divine. 

It is deeply unfortunate that to this day Vodou is persecuted and maligned due to Western influence and judgement, and that Haiti has been fraught with slavery, colonization, and violence.  Still, Haitians are a proud people, as they fought back against their oppressors won, liberated themselves, and then defeated Napoleon’s invading army. Vodou is rooted in Haiti as protective deities that Africans brought across the Atlantic with them during the slave trade. They had to hide their religion, ensconce it in the language and traditions of Christianity and practice in secret. Some practices were defensive magic against their oppressors. The Haitian Revolution was a slave revolt famously initiated by a Vodou high priest when practitioners performed a clandestine ceremony in the woods, and then attacked under the cover of a tropical thunderstorm, deemed an auspicious omen. It is remarkable how much of African spirituality remains intact in Haitian Vodou. Vodou is a religion that can bring healing and harmony to the people and it should be protected as an important part of the country’s cultural heritage.

Desvarieux was wrestling with the idea of creating meaning through making a sacred space within the gallery, a space that paid homage to the land, the people, and the spirits through the devotional practice of painting. Desvarieux was inspired by a quote by Carl Jung in the Red Book: “We create the meaning of events. The meaning is and always was artificial. We make it.” Jung’s idea that we make our own meaning runs parallel to the creative life of artists; the artist and the spiritual practitioner work within the realms of meaning and symbolism. The artist makes meaning in the same way that the initiate makes meaning when channeling the divine and interpreting the messages and signs. Desvarieux stresses that we do not need any fabricated structures or images in order to worship, for nature itself is the temple and the God. Artists channel from their subconscious, through their culture, through art history, through their reservoir of images, through their instincts, creating what may be significant meaning for themselves and others. But is the created object natural or artificial? Is the meaning therein any less significant for being artificial? The stories we create, the languages we construct, none of it is the thing itself. Mystics say that the divine must be experienced and cannot be understood through the mind or through books. According to Umberto Eco, “If signs can be used to tell the truth, they can also be used to lie.” 

The oppression by the Catholic Church in Quebec is mostly historical, except for the indigenous here, who have not yet had justice for all the harms done to them. But in Haiti, religious oppression is still a problem. Is it risky today in often cynical and atheistic post-Catholic Quebec to make art that is so spiritual? For Desvarieux, it is a matter of courage and integrity—he says making art is for him a spiritual quest, and reception by the art world to what comes forth is a secondary concern. 

Clovis-Alexandre Desvarieux’s website

His Instagram

Photos by Jean-Michael Seminaro.

The post Espas Sakre first appeared on The Belgo Report.

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

The post What For My Maddened Heart I Most Was Longing first appeared on The Belgo Report.

In Tabula Rasa, artist Alex Coma sets the scene of the art gallery as a sacred space for ritual. In the age of capitalism the marketplace is often presented to be our temple, and gallery spaces often serve such ends. Here, as throughout the history of art, we have spiritual intent taking precedence.  Entering the exhibition, one is greeted by a pleasant violet glow cast on the majority of works from black lights, giving the exhibition an ethereal presence and a sense of altered space and perception. Hanging in the centre of Galerie Popop were four pentagonal-shaped canvases, with esoteric images on both front and back. Stepping into the middle of the quartet, one finds landscape paintings rendered with romantic and atmospheric detail, pertaining to the four elements. Upon closer inspection, the faint traces of a pentagram and magical symbols can be seen drawn under the surface of the oil painting. On the reverse, the canvases are topped with Hebrew letters, and underneath, various symbols and magical sigils. Each canvas is oriented to a direction, and represents not only an element, but an archangel. They are the visual representations of an old ritual called the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram, more on that in a moment.

Alex Coma is an emerging artist from Granby, Quebec, currently residing in Montreal but soon to head off to Spain to work on other spiritual and artistic projects. After receiving his BFA from Concordia in 2014, he had a solo show at Livart in 2018, another AVE Gallery in 2019, among others. He has worked in painting, photography, sculpture, and installation.  Coma’s work is diverse in scope, mysterious, dark and rich in mood, with a sense of expansive peace, hope, and transformational potential. 

Near the entrance the gallery was a series of casually displayed sketches, Coma’s earlier works on paper, which appear to be automatic drawings on spiritual themes. He says these indicate his former self. The purpose of this ritual, to the artist, is to transform the intellect or personality, and the journey of the exhibition follows the ritual’s stages. Turning to the right, there is a large painting on unstretched dyed linen that consumes a corner of the gallery, lit up by projected fire. This is the opening segment of the ritual, in which the magician visualizes himself growing bigger than the earth, then the solar system, and eventually feeling the entire universe inside him. To the left is our massive sun, sending off a huge solar flare in the direction of the earth and moon, which are all painted to scale. Sacred geometry and the proportions of the planets in relation to each other are important to the artist, as well as the connection of the macrocosm of the cosmos to the microcosm of the human form. Before this fabric, a star lies on the ground upon a block, and upon the star is a burnt substance, perhaps an offering.

Tabula Rasa is an installation set up to reflect the ceremonial magic ritual called the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram, originally created by the occult Order of the Golden Dawn, and one of the most widely used rituals used in western magic to this day.  The configuration of the canvases are meant to aid in Coma’s spiritual practice, as this ritual is said by the artist to purify the intellect and the personality. The practitioner of this ritual traditionally positions themselves in orientation to each direction, draws a pentagram in the air as an act of cleansing and protection. The ritual also uses the Qabalistic cross, drawing on Jewish mysticism, and uses the names and sigils of the archangels which correspond to each element. Coma says that the paintings serve as a visualization aid to his spiritual practice. 

The purpose of this ritual is self-purification, protection, and ridding one’s environment of negative forces or energies. Each canvas represents a direction, and an element. For air, we have a pink sunrise or sunset landscape, seen from atop a mountain and just above wispy clouds. Representing water, we find a nocturnal scene of great delicacy with gentle waterfalls and tree branches and leaves. For fire, we see a dynamic erupting volcano painted in creamy yellows and smoky greys, with bold orange lava. Lastly, for earth, Coma has painted a desert landscape with a simple earthen temple, shaped something between a pyramid and an obelisk, with an entry door. 

Other works that stand outside the sacred space of the hanging pentagons are a rendering of a man’s blue eye (presumably the artist’s eye surveying the scene), a figure of a woman rendered in an intuitive, outsider art style, which Coma says was done while connecting to his inner divine feminine. We can also find a blue plastic box inscribed with an eye and symbol of Aries (the astrological Sun sign of the artist).

The strongest work in the show, to me, is one of Alex Coma’s spiritual landscapes, a detailed painting of a tower that resembles a mystical rocket, presiding over a seaside forest landscape. The style calls to mind landscape painters such as Hudson River painter Thomas Cole, or Constable, but it is considerably weirder and more intriguing. The tower is burning at its base, and appears to be futuristic in nature, with glass or metal beams but it also resembles the stone towers of a castle. At the top of the tower we see symbols such as a glowing crescent moon, a blue cube, and a six pointed star. This image calls to mind the Tower card of the Tarot, which signifies abrupt shifts and change, and the destruction that often devastates before the new can be formed. Quebec is a place that suffered at the hands of religion though the oppression of the church for a long time. As such, many in this province, intellectuals and artists especially, I have found, are atheists and scorn spirituality as well as religion as childish nonsense, or worse. It is refreshing to see a Quebecois artist such as Alex Coma bringing life into mystical themes and ideas, and showing that it is possible to explore such territories anew with fresh, young eyes, bringing us a sense of hope and possibility which we all need right now.

Alex Coma’s website can be found here

The post Alex Coma: Tabula Rasa first appeared on The Belgo Report.

What I found most striking about Fait ou défait, c’est idem, Galerie Deux Poisson’s fourth show, was how collaborative it was, how well the works of these four artists worked in a sort of humble synergy that was at once nameless and named. The show was curated by artist and writer Benjamin Klein, and the curation was strong in this group show; I find group exhibitions are exceedingly hard to pull off, as they too often seem forced, like a gaggle of people compelled to hang out awkwardly. Either they don’t seem to relate at all or they are gathered simply by common theme or medium, having nothing else to bind them together. In this exhibition, however, that was not the case. It had a real grassroots feeling, a sense of true collaboration and excitement. I am going to refrain from describing each work individually; the spirit of this exhibition is the sense of unity and togetherness that makes all the pieces work as a whole. 

Fait ou défait, c’est idem, translated as “done or undone is the same”, alludes to the process of art-making. How does one know when a piece is completed? Is it ever truly done? An artist can stop working at any point and call it finished, no one can ever truly know when a piece is completed, including, oftentimes, the artist. It becomes a choice, an intuition, or it could come with being fed up or having a deadline. The word faire in French means both “to do” and “to make”, so, evocatively, the show’s title could also declare, “made or unmade, it’s the same.” One’s making and one’s doing carry the seed in the same word, as well as its opposite, as from the moment we are born—or made— we start dying. 

The first thing one would encounter when entering the gallery is, ironically, a painting by Malcolm McCormick entitled, The End. It’s roughly but tenderly composed, with black “photo corners” and white script declaring “The End” in the middle. It is plaintive, mock sentimental and also cute. Smears of mustard-paint allow one to see the underpainting as if through a screen. 

If one doesn’t strictly make the rounds, the visitor would likely then notice the impressive installations at the room’s centre. On the floor is a piano-shaped wood and cloth structure titled The Sparrow on the Hill Sees the Fool Going Around by Malcolm McCormick, a painter who also works with drawing and installations. Inside are works on paper by Mathieu Lacroix and Rachel Crummey, and ceramic hands by Michelle Furlong, along with found objects. There is a play on collaboration here, music is more frequently made in a group, multiple instruments and players create greater complexity than one individual is capable of. 

Behind this piece, on a white block rests a piece by Lacroix, another legless piece—do we have a leg to stand on without our friends and collaborators?—is a three-legged chair propped up by stacks of papers and drawings, with a ceramic hand by Michelle Furlong pointing to a spot in the stacks. After this, certainly one could not help but be drawn to the immense in situ mixed media wall piece and installation by Rachel Crummey and Michelle Furlong towards the back of the gallery, titled Experience no. 2, after a piece by John Cage. Layered with bold and gestural marks in charcoal, graphite powder, acrylic paint and spray paint, the eye follows the energy of two artists and one can’t help but visualize their process, working together, erasing the work of the other, wondering if they worked in harmony or at times, adversarily. I think of how Robert Rauschenberg came to de Kooning to ask him if he could erase one of his drawings, which was allowed. Klein told me that he witnessed the process, allowing the artists to work uninterrupted, and saw how many times it could be completed, yet a new movement and shift began. It seemed a process fraught with dynamism and energy. The piece is so energetic that it cannot be contained to the wall.

A large piece of cheap-looking wall-to-wall carpet was contorted on the floor and subjected to the treatment of paint, recalling Furlong’s crumpled painted canvases. Most of the works in this show walk a thin line between ugliness and beauty, humility and humour. A leg made of black faux fur projects from the wall, reminding me of Dada creations. The piece sports rope of a gaudy purple shade, connecting the wall to the folds of carpet like an umbilical cord, its colour standing in stark contrast to the rest of the piece’s monochrome.

A painted disc of carpet stands alone like punctation on the floor, and large strips of black velcro and fringe with what appear to be large black pasties could suggest a crude face. The sort of feminine grunge aesthetic of Crummey and the slick, cool aesthetic of Furlong make an uneasy but pleasing contrast which gives the work a sort of personhood, even beastiness. I imagined it being made with John Cage playing in the background, the artist’s gestures and erasures moving to the sound like the surges of a symphony. 

Scattered throughout the exhibition are Michele Furlong’s shiny, black-glazed ceramic hands pointing, squatting and hiding. They made me think of Thing in the Addam’s family, and their ubiquitousness felt as if they were the same hand, everywhere. They seemed at times to be the hand of the curator, invisibly and gentling guiding your attention. 

Rachel Crummey is an award-winning Toronto-based abstract artist (and writer) working with painting, drawing and installation. Her work is layered, rich, and informed. She is an emerging artist who received her MFA from the University of Guelph in 2014. Her work is most successful in series, and this exhibition has a few of her works on paper, oil pastels on paper and acrylic on board or canvas. Her play of lines and layering is often very graceful. As in Experience no. 2, her installations in charcoal and graphite look like traces left by a ghost or the residue of a spirit or slug, but it could also be a kind of unusual wallpaper, worn with time and peeled away in strips. Her small works in this show are subtle in comparison to the collaborative installation, and quite accurately she describes her work as a “softly moving web.” One of her most engaging pieces here is a network or lung of actively tangled blue lines, made from oil pastel on paper.  Much of her work is very tender and touching, and improvisation plays a strong role in her practise. 

Malcolm McCormick is a primarily a painter (and drawer) but is also a multi-disciplinary artist. He’s from Vancouver and came to Montreal as an MFA candidate at Concordia. He’s spoken of being interested in colour, the formal aspects of making, collage-style work and things that are non-monumental and subtle. His work is sometimes wryly humorous and it has a sensitive yet painterly touch.

Besides The End, another funny piece sits on the floor saying: Take Me Home. Another work is an invisible house where all you can see are illuminated windows and a hastily painted, blue-steel background with brown ground and green grass, uneven letters imploring the viewer. Does the artist wish to go home, or the painting? Every painting for sale in fact says this wordlessly, and it was charming to have it so imploringly stated as it wasn’t even hung. His other oil painting, Banging Your Head Against a Warm Rock was textured with pebbles and almonds. Overall, McCormick’s work is deceptively simple, endearingly unostentatious, but skillfully handled and exploratory.  McCormick said in an interview for his Kelowna Art Gallery duo exhibition in 2017: “ I like to make things that show an accumulation of decisions, and to leave traces of each decision so that the viewer can come into it and get a sense of how this thing developed over time”. The poetically titled, “Looking into His Ear” is a painting layered with transparent polkadot fabric, which leads one to visualize the layers and channels of the body and the delicacy of listening and looking. 

Michelle Furlong is a Montreal-based multi-media artist, a recent graduate of Concordia’s Painting and Drawing program. Her work frequently consists  of cutouts, textiles, texture, silhouettes, sharp contrasts, soft forms, stylized shapes and often, a cold, almost graphic, design. working primarily in paint, drawing and sculpture. Her work is largely concerned with the body, and hands are a major player. Her drawing sits on the floor in the corner, and is layered with outlines of hands, much as a child would use their own body as a starting point for making shapes and forms, and paint with their fingers. The effect of the ghost-like hands layered in blacks and whites and layers of charcoal, using negative space, and tucked away on the floor is at once haunting, playful, and evocative. There is a sense of ephemerality and whimsy, an awareness of temporality, of the limitations to the corporeal form in Furlong’s work. The hands play throughout the gallery, dark and shiny, slick, but not sinister.

Mathieu Lacroix is a Montreal native and multidisciplinary artist who received his BFA at UQAM.  His grid of drawings here are reminiscent of architectural drawings, but also de Chirico. Some are on vellum, some on brown packing paper. There are elements of collage, and they are all cleverly composed, contemporarily-aware works that aren’t precious at all, which is why, I suspect, he titles all of these works NON ART. They fit perfectly with the drawing theme of the exhibition and the sense that creativity will continue and art will be made regardless of the means at one’s disposal. These are unpretentious drawings, and, despite being a rather conceptual show, Fait ou défait, c’est idem is also quite unpretentious and certainly process-oriented.  Lacroix’s drawings contain a sense of resilience in their delicacy. His work uses reclaimed and recycled materials such as cardboard, ordinary, cheap substances. Art can and will continue without expensive materials and resources that often make it the domain of the privileged. Lacroix’s playful sculpture, NON ART: Chair, calls to mind the absurdity of Dada, a three-legged chair. Is it a comment on academia? The third leg is made of theory, of drawings, of studies. All of his works in this show are labeled emphatically NON ART, and then given a secondary title, in this case, NON ART: Chair. As an artist he to seek to connect to the ordinary and mundane through his subject and media, then thwart our expectations. These drawings engage with formal abstraction and imaginary space. We see a square building with grass growing out of its centre, long black hair pouring down like a waterfall; we see what may be a railroad station with water emerging through it being transformed in shape by its passage through the building, the rails of which pour with light, a power station, an A frame building overruled by a flow chart, a collision of realities and geometries, an unusual combination of formal fascination and dreamy imagination. They could be diagrams made on acid or instructions for or by aliens for human society. 

The works here as a group, and even individually, don’t say “I, I”  they say “us, we”. There is a particularly Montrealaise spirit here, a sort of “struggling artist”, communal sensibility of resourcefulness, resilience and joie de vivre. There is strong sense of line, of hesitant but necessary declaration and bold erasure. The marks made by the individual on the world, the lines that tie us together. The connections. The overlap, the influence. The give and take. This exciting and ground-breaking exhibition is a sign of innovative work both in artistic production, support for emerging artists and dynamic curation taking place at Galerie Deux Poissons and bodes well for future developments. Galerie Deux Poissons is a blessing for the artistic community of Montreal for its role in maintaining the importance of the Belgo Building as a Montreal landmark which has recently lost some important galleries.

The post Fait ou défait, c’est idem first appeared on The Belgo Report.

In characteristic style, the gallery space in Projet Pangée for this show is filled by a series of paintings complemented by a few sculptures produced by another artist. This time they had a figurative painter who is a formalist in Delphine Hennelly, and an abstract sculptor enamoured with magic and the subconscious in Mickey MacKenna. Both are a little mythical in choice of subject, riffing off of art history (early modernism and minimalism, respectively) and both artists work with line and stylized forms in distinctive ways, possessing also a dynamic, developing practise which is of keen interest.

It is difficult these days to paint something in a style that seems at once innovative and genuine, but Delphine Hennelly has achieved that with these strong paintings. Hennelly’s works are primarily formalist paintings interrupted by figuration, or figurative works interrupted by formalism. This body of work, in which all but one painting consists of figures painted over with mostly horizontal lines, was inspired by tapestries. Hennelly recently obtained her MFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts in Rutgers, New Jersey, and her BFA in 2002 from Cooper Union. She was born in Vancouver to parents who produced and acted in their own theatre productions and spent her childhood in an artistic milieu surrounded the shapes, forms, and garments of theatre production. It seems apparent that this mixture of creativity with the formal structure of family was formative to her. After that, Hennelly spent some years of her youth in Montreal, and is now residing in the United States.

Delphine Hennelly is a self-professed formalist. She has an interest in colour theory, and her colour choices are unusual, pinks, greens and browns abound, not usually the most compelling when seen together, as the combination is reminiscent of 60s fabrics and decor, but here they work with great luminosity and resonance. The unexpected colour choices and juxtapositions are highly satisfying. Speaking of being sated, the layers of these paintings were referred to on Pangée’s Instagram as “cake” and indeed they do seem moist and edible. Although they are painted without impasto, they are lush and generous and the visual placement does call to mind a multilayered cake. Hennelly cleverly combines her colours, the flavours of various styles, iconic imagery and decorative motifs.

Hennelly is an omnivore artist, gobbling up textiles, ceramics, British political cartoons, the French school of early modernism, and so on. By chance, while looking at another exhibition, she found a way to apply the construction of a tapestry to the construction of a painting. In these works, her competent hand weaves figuration and colour into the warp and woof of the canvas. She begins with the figures, then clean lines, then messes them up, or “wears” them, to capture the look of aged tapestries and their worn out threads. At other times she begins with the structure of the lines. Beyond these line-centric paintings, Hennelly has a strong sense of line in the sense that drawing seems facile to her, and she performs it without much modelling. I was surprised and intrigued to learn about the pace and timing of her process. She takes one to two days to select the colours of her painting, and can take as little as couple of days to a week or two to complete the painting itself.  Many of the images selected to sit behind the lines of these paintings are inspired either formally or thematically by classical drawing and sculpture. Yet, she isn’t afraid to use decorative elements which could adorn plates, children’s books, or fill the comic section of a common newspaper. Also apparent is her interest in feminist theory and the representation of women. Hennelly has spoken about the shift in her work to representing women with a consciousness of equality, rather than as objects to be looked at and desired. By utilizing fine art and the decorative and textile arts with equal focus for her inspiration, Hennelly levels the playing field and seems to take the stance that one is not superior to the other. Her older work explores femininity, what it is to be a woman, sensuality, and the body. Hennelly also deals with motherhood, protection, new life, maturity, different phases of life, and heavy topics such as the suffering of refugees, mass migration and world crises. There aren’t answers being provided here, rather there are questions presented upon which we can ruminate in the form of visual meditation on her canvases. 

The figures which you can see, more or less, by peering through the haze and maze of lines, are mother and child, the child in pink, which appears to be the protagonist of the series. Storytelling takes a backseat in these paintings, which don’t come off very figuratively, and even less autobiographically, rather they are inventive and exploratory. Hennelly is a sensitive artist whose works are often inspired by current events, social justice and the suffering of humanity, and while these themes seem to be part of what gets her in the studio, what keeps her there are the formal problems of painting. She is also interested in what lies behind and ahead in terms of art history and contemporary painting. She is an artist who is always pushing herself, experimenting, questioning, puzzling, exploring.

Memories of a Haecceity, shown in the gallery space literally in opposition to all her other works, is an example of her previous style before being intercepted by the lines and geometric forms which the viewer is compelled to see through, but sort of denied. We see a mother and child in simplified, stylized forms with shades of the classical and the illustrative. The mother holds a shaft of wheat and the pair seem to be climbing over a pile of boulders in a desert landscape with a sunny, partly cloudy sky. Haecceity is from the Latin haecceitas, a term from medieval scholastic philosophy. Haecceity is a person’s or object’s thisness, or particularity. The choice in titles is unusual since the imagery chosen doesn’t have a particularity, or a “thisness”, but the paintings do.

The Infant Praxiteles again shows a mother and child, and this one very tapestry-like as the lines are horizontal and not interrupted with other patterns. Praxiteles was a Greek sculptor who was credited with being the first person to sculpt a life-sized statue of a nude woman.  With its classical theme, strictly horizontal structure, and the title, I think of lineage, artistic and human. I think of how we pass down images throughout history, of influencers and influenced. I think of how objects like tapestries are passed down, and how we pass down our genetics, our ideas.

There is an intense repetition of motifs and even very particular images throughout Hennelly’s oeuvre. There is a sense of annihilation of meaning in this aggressive repetition, which could almost be likened to the practice of psychotherapy where one becomes desensitized to difficult topics by constant exposure.  The overarching theme of the exhibition is that of the mother and child. There is a sense of idealizing this familial relationship through classical, pagan means, and Hennelly has spoken about trying to get away from Christian ideology and imagery when painting such subjects. She often uses repetition in her work as a way of breaking down and exhausting an image.  Her tendency to over-produce one motif over and over recalls the mass production of advertising and posters, cue Andy Warhol. She destroys the image until all meaning is almost stripped away and we are left with the forms. 

The Matrix paintings I found almost impossible to decipher. With some difficulty I could make out the pink of a baby’s legs and some foliage at the top of the painting, perhaps a maternal figure sheltering the child, and some rocks. The composition vaguely recalls Renaissance art. The etymology of the word matrix is complex and fascinating. Stemming from mater, or mother, matrix literally means “breeding female” in Latin. It came to mean “womb” in late Middle English as well. The word effectively plays off its mathematical or formal meanings in modern use, where a matrix is “a rectangular array of quantities or expressions in rows and columns that is treated as a single entity and manipulated according to particular rules”, or structurally: “an organizational structure in which two or more lines of command, responsibility, or communication may run through the same individual”, according to the Oxford English dictionary. Perhaps the structure, the DNA foundation, the whole becomes more important than the individual here.

The typically horizontal lines that we view the figures through in these paintings call to mind digitization, as when looking through fuzzy, moving lines at a channel you aren’t subscribed to, giving the viewer a voyeuristic sensation as we struggle with our perception and desire to recognize forms. There’s a sense of the figures being imprisoned too, and bound to the surface. There’s a flatness to Delphine Hennelly’s work which lends it a perhaps stronger relationship to the abstract than one would assume, certainly more so than in her previous work. Her older work, lovely formally, is quite flat, very posterized in appearance with its uniform colours reminiscent of old advertisements in their simplicity. I like that she is engaged in a dynamic exploration, not keeping all the lines horizontal, experimenting with adding shapes as in The Matrix 1, Untitled and The Matrix 2, with their circles and triangles and squares further thwarting a figurative read. I particularly enjoyed Venus and Cupid for, admittedly, the easier interpretation of  the scene behind the jittering lines of the bars of paint, and how the pink eye of Cupid peers through, as if between apartment blinds. All in all, Delphine Hennelly is a challenging, inventive artist who is well-deserving of the mounting attention being paid to her work.

Although Mickey MacKenna, when first encountering her sculptures, seems to work exclusively formally, her pieces are self-portraits. Her process is poetic, imaginative and exploratory. She is a young Toronto artist who recently graduated from OCAD University with a BFA in sculpture, and she commences her MFA at the Royal College of Art in London this year; her career is taking early traction.

In Last You Saw Me, the perpendicular assembly of this wall piece is striking with its combination of a thin horizontal steel bar and soft organic material to be found in the sea sponge at each end, reminiscent of a crucifixion. By their placement and shape, the sponges are like helpless hands, waiting to receive, to soak, to grab. They are held mercilessly apart by the bar of steel, while the body (or twine with its clinging chamomile flowers from the tower of Bollingen of Jung) dangles down in resignation. The sponge absorbs what it can, what it must, in this case, the gutter water of Toronto. We are met with the high and low here, the delicate and the relentless, the natural and the man-made. As earthly beings we take in everything from our environment, from the base pollution of our corrupt surroundings to the flowers which bloom perennially, reminding us those who inspire and motivate us.

I was told by the director of Projet Pangée that the tall yellow standing piece, entitled Favia Blumen—made of wood, specifically plywood and driftwood, along with a wasp nest, chamomile flowers, sage and thyme from the tower of Bollingen of Jung, crushed seashells, and acrylic paint and varnish—represents the artist’s ego when feeling confident. I love the mix of playfulness and seriousness that is apparent upon delving in MacKenna’s work. Yellow is the colour of the solar plexus, the seat of the ego-self. The egg yolk yellow piece stands like a cartoon cutout, or one of those two-dimensional representations made out of cardboard of celebrities. A splat-shaped stand supports the piece which rises like a stem and then splits off in two stamens, topped at the throat of the taller section by the wasp nest which is dotted with herbs. It could be a parent and child, or a figure divided in two, or a plant reaching for the sun and reflecting that radiance in its own yolky glow. The imagined buzzing of the wasp nest suggests voice and even aggression, and the shorter protrusion, if seen as part of a singular figure, could be a little phallic. Thus, this sculpture does give a successful impression of self-satisfaction and happy egotism along with a bit of cockiness. Of course, once you know the title it sort of gives it away in that favia is a kind of coral and Blumen is German for flowers. It definitely looks like it could be part of a coral reef but knowing this piece is autobiographical is certainly more evocative.

MacKenna’s more low-sitting floor piece which could be mistaken for an end stand; The Fish that Caught the Hague is a piece of alabaster resting on a small table of lovely burned ash wood. I enjoyed the seemingly worn-down lines of wood, the way it looked gently and carefully burnt, the contrast of the moon-like alabaster, the richness of the wood-brown, and the way the edges of the alabaster were softened to suggest a skull. The title seems absurdist, a bit Dada, I couldn’t draw much in way of an analogy, but it sparked some curiosity and played up the absurdist quality of the piece itself, in that it was presented as an ordinary object or something that may be around the house, but it certainly isn’t. 

Nights with the Wild Boar is a standing, or rather, walking, sculpture made of driftwood, plywood and acrylic paint. It was motivated by MacKenna’s trip to the Black Forest. 

This gumby-legged piece in a sort of olive-ochre has a head that bites from its foot like a snapping turtle, and a hollow inner core, like a Dali figure. As in Favia Blumen, this figure is narrow and flat when seen from one perspective, and then comes to life when seen from the other perspective, much like a streamlined, less human Giacometti. Just going by the appearance of this sculpture and the title, you can sense its menace, mystery and determination. MacKenna constructs her sculptures as self-portraits and has an interest in Jung; we can read her works as pieces of herself, fragments which comprise a whole. It would be interesting one day to see many of them gathered together in a retrospective, forming a unity of Self in projection. In her solitary travels to the Black Forest, MacKenna had some profound experiences which she shared with me. I think it would be most fruitful to hear it in her own words: 

“My time in the Black Forest was an important part of a trip I took alone through Europe last fall. I stayed in Gengenbach which is a small and strange historic town nestled in a valley of the forest. Looking back on that time is a thicketed phantasmagoric montage. It was a time of psychological purging on all fronts and I’m grateful for the cosmic brew I had to swim my way out of. I spent my days running, meditating, writing and reading Carl Jung’s Memories, Dreams, Reflections which is a retelling of his life from his earliest memories. At night I had vivid dreams bordering on night terrors and panicked fevers unlike anything I’ve experienced. It was a rebirth of some sort. The sculpture Nights With The Wild Boar (2018) is a portrait of that time. I found out weeks after I left Gengenbach that the Black Forest is known for its healing properties and many rehabilitation and retreat centers are hidden throughout. Wild boars run through the forest and are responsible for a handful of human deaths each year. Many believe the Black Forest is home to fairies, gnomes and spirits. 

After my time in Gengenbach I took a job in Switzerland in the farm country outside of Zürich. All of these disparate elements came together so swiftly and sweetly. I continued reading Memories, Dreams, Reflections as I found myself wandering the streets of Zürich and Basel in stride with Jung’s recollections of his life in these exact places. I felt a strong need to at least be near the Bollingen Tower and specifically the stone carvings. On a day off I drove to Bollingen which consists of a playground, a four car parking lot and a few large houses on the lake. The tower is unmarked and not open to the public but it was a cold and rainy Tuesday in November and I recognized a turret through the thick trees surrounding the property. With wind at my back that felt as though it was Jung himself I jumped the fence, then the stone wall, skinny dipped in the lake and meditated with my back upon the stone cube he carved. I can barely describe it. It was the most magical day of my life!” 

Mackenna relates to substance in a sort of magical way, much like the ritual art we call fetishes, or how a shaman works with objects and plant medicine to cause them to relate to meaning in a way that connects matter to the astral planes, bringing healing and insight. She imbues her materials with power, meaning and revelatory identity but also sensitively works with them to draw out and highlight their own innate significance and character. Her work is magical in the sense that its creation is in tune with the mysterious, transformative process known as life, which is deeply connected to art-making itself. Magic is perhaps only something we do not yet understand, but its mystery fills us with awe and humility. Mickey MacKenna’s work reminds us of the energy we imbue in objects, and the energy inherent in matter/physical existence itself.

The post Delphine Hennelly + Mickey Mackenna first appeared on The Belgo Report.

Sarah Osborne is a young artist, who has recently completed her MFA at Concordia University and is now presenting an intimate exhibition of six paintings at Galerie Lilian Rodriguez titled Oeuvres Récentes.  The series of figurative works are marked by a bright palette and a focus on the female form. Osborne has been producing paintings of increasing flatness and luminosity which appear to be influenced by Pop Art and “Bad” Painting. This diverges from her recent focus on still lives which call to mind Warhol and various Americana, beer and other beverages, cigarettes and food products presented in a way reminiscent of advertising. Her older work was more painterly in terms of brushwork and texture, with shades of Dana Shutz and Phillip Guston, featuring plates of food which could be splashed on billboards or Instagram feeds, hot dogs, smoked meat sandwiches and so on. However, her recent work also speaks of youth and the joy of being alive, of simple pleasures and shared human indulgences.

The works in Oeuvres Récentes are painted in heightened, saturated colour—summer sky blue, dandelion yellow, lurid salmon pink, stop sign red. When we spoke, Osborne expressed an interest in painting the female figure. It isnâ€t immediately obvious that they are autoportaits because of her use of composition and cropping. We are reminded of the way women portray themselves in social media, and how that relates to the depiction of women in art history, the muse, the object of desire, the looked upon. The work doesnâ€t take a direct political stance on this subject, but can be understood as a celebration of the freedom involved in the ability to represent oneself as one wishes to the world, through the internet, through sharing images of oneself, and through painting, a realm of true agency and imagination. Her figures are largely flat, but marked with some personal characteristics, a scattering of moles, the ubiquitous red painted nails. Osborne stated that she typically portrays herself more solidly framed than she is in reality, and her washily-rendered figures often seem robustly present, although cartoonish.

With their sense of joie de vivre, Sarah Osborne creates works which seem influenced by “Bad” Painting, especially the work of Joan Brown with her sense of negative space and even, bright colour, as well as the naïve rendering of her figures and her use of the personal. In terms of “bad” painting, the perspective often isnâ€t quite right, and sometimes it is far off, the brushwork can be rough and brusque—but other times it is delicate and sensitive, betraying itâ€s “bad” style—figures seem cut-out and float in space or sink into the tiles. Flesh is rendered one-dimensionally in sunburn pink while other parts of the painting receive more varied treatment. Alex Katz also comes to mind with these recent paintings as a possible influence, with his advertisement-flat figures and arresting spaces of colour.

Pieds croisés dans les Tropiques is the first painting one encounters, just outside the little room in which her work is shown. Small and unassuming, against an orange-pink sky, tropical plant fronds frame feet clad in 80â€s style sandals, toes painted red. The style is crude, the mood is irreverent and fun. Another small painting, Journée parfait is a small canvas, a windswept landscape with a flat blue sky and a green field of Queen Anneâ€s lace. Itâ€s an American dream devoid of irony. Autoportrait avec chemise allemande is thoughtfully cropped, just a view of a neck spotted with a constellation of moles, and a white embroidered shirt, the flowers of which look like delicate stains against the pure white fabric. The blue tie for the shirt is rendered convincingly and tenderly, you can feel the playful weight of it drawn down by gravity.

Staring at the Sea reminded me of Janet Wernerâ€s recent work in some ways, as it is hyper-feminine with a focus on the strands of the blonde hair of the figure seen from behind. The enormous black bow is the most dimensional object by far in this painting, and we are more drawn into its voluptuous curves than the turbulent sea to which the figureâ€s attention is apparently directed. There is no real mood, just physicality and a sense of tranquil emptiness. It is these compositional aspects which make Osborneâ€s work is so reminiscent of Pop.

The Yellow Lobby could be a cheeky hotel guest showing up or departing clad in only chunky ankle boots and a long army-style jacket. Even the floor seems offended, the lines of the tiles curving away from her. The yellow of the lobby is indeed charming and it is offset by a green more subdued than most colours in this body of work, the stark black and white of the tiles and the shock of red nails.

Even in the most personal painting of the show, Texting in Bed at Night, remains anonymous. These could be found images off the internet, but they are not, they are self-portraits. We donâ€t get a sense of loneliness, or salaciousness, despite the view of her buttocks covered in panties boldly framed by a circular mirror, the brushwork around which is quite lovely. The wall is red as fresh blood and the curtains behind the figure are illuminated by prismatic colours, yet the night beyond seems black and lightless. Despite the isolation and fragmentation of these figures, we donâ€t get a sense of the inherent disconnection of social media culture in these works. As a millennial, Osborne seems completely ensconced in it, for those who grew up with the internet, interacting with it is second nature. Itâ€s Pop culture, unquestioned, enjoyed and not criticized.  Yet, this work does not fail to raise questions for the viewer about the influence of social media, the way we share ourselves in fragments, which are distorted views, postcards of the self. We are invited into an intimate world that is somehow also distant and removed. In making herself an odalisque, cutting herself into pieces and flattening and denying her identity, Osborne is claiming the self-image as opposed to being the muse. She has made herself her only muse thus far, but a sort of secret way, not in the show-off sense of Instagram fame. If this work is feminist at all it is understated. These paintings are more gently curious; self-curious, world curious, visually appreciative. Sarah Osborneâ€s paintings express what it is like for many to be alive and young today, infused with an appreciation for the ordinary things around them in a complicated world.

The post Sarah Osborne: Oeuvres Recentes first appeared on The Belgo Report.

In this, Cynthia Girard-Renardâ€s second solo exhibition at Galerie Hugues Charbonneau, the work was inspired by the film of the same title, Love and Anarchy by Lina Wertmüller. Large acrylic paintings in dirt brown, green and bright pink, they are fashioned in an old cartoon style. The background consists of prints from the bark of trees and the faces of the figures derive from the artistâ€s own butt prints in gouache forming the mask-like heads of the characters. We are called to remember Carolee Schleemanâ€s body prints, the sex-positive and earth-oriented work of Annie Sprinkle and the erotic, female-centric art of Dorothy Iannone. Girard-Renardâ€s paintings draw us into the sexy and amusing interplay of mother earth, performers and nurse characters with authority figures, perhaps being treated for their fascism and misogyny. We are also presented with the artistâ€s oft-present wordplay, as well as playful forays into subversive sexuality, history and politics.

While Girard-Renard seems to believe that love is anarchy and that sexuality has the power to overturn corrupt patriarchal power structures, Wertmüller has a more circuitous attitude. In Love and Anarchy, the hero is an innocent farm boy drawn into a plot to assassinate Mussolini. The drama is largely situated in an Italian brothel, and the hero is aided by an anarchist prostitute. Complicating matters, he falls in love with another prostitute, leaving him torturously torn between passionate, blissful life and a frightful, violent death. Her film raises questions about love, violence, and power while presenting problems with anarchy and revolution. Is personal love a wrench in the gears of anarchy? Is love is the opiate of the masses? Is resistance truly futile, yet heroic, foolish efforts must be made anyway? Is love is the opposite of fascism? We are reminded of the inevitability of love and death, and of the tenuous, but precious nature of freedom. The film raises questions but doesnâ€t give clear answers, as is the way with good films. Although it received criticism from many feminists of the time for how women were portrayed as prostitutes, in hindsight we can now see that there is also an anarchic side to prostitution, and the film can be seen in this light. Prostitution falls outside of tradition and marriage, and it is outside of love but comes from a place of seeking connection and intimacy. The female leads—prostitutes all—in this film were loving, human characters with real passions and struggles of their own, well-rounded characters.

At the end of the film, the quote from Errico Malatesta appears: “I wish to repeat my horror at attacks, which besides being bad, are in and of themselves stupid because they harm the very cause they are trying to serve. But those assassins are also saints and heroes, and they will be celebrated once the brutal facts are forgotten, and all that is remembered is the idea that inspired them and the martyrdom that made them saints.” Thus, Wertmüller implies that violence isnâ€t the best method whereby fascism may be ended. Then what is?  Cynthia Girard-Renardâ€s reply conveyed through this series, is that love is, sexuality is, the rise of the feminine principle and celebration of the body and the earth are the answer. The paintings in the artistâ€s series focus on earthy browns, vivid green and luscious pinks, reminiscent of the earth and tender places of flesh. In Câ€est la fin de la monde, Mother Earth reclines, reading the French translation of Fifty Shades of Gray. The eye is kept busy with the textures of the tree rubbings in the background contrasting in colour from the viridian green of the snakeskin figures dancing above her. We see figures giving way to abandon, with the reflection of a factory smokestack in the eye of one character, and a mushroom cloud, an atomic bomb, perhaps, girded by a horizon made of hearts. Do we make love while the earth burns down? It seems to say, “this horror exists, yet we do too, and we go on loving.”

Pesistons ensemble et unis features police whose power is subverted as their forms are made humourous. One officer, face bearing Girard-Renardâ€s bum print as ever, is wearing a cheetah print thong and fishnets, and his feet terminate in ice cream cones. The other officer has limbs made from tree limbs, so his body rhymes with the dark background. Theyâ€re goofy, playful, ridiculous. Their power is taken away and they are made into figures of fun.

Infirmière activism shows a nurse wearing a strange net outfit paired with a strap-on, partnered with a patient wearing nothing but boxers and argyle socks. Psilocybin mushrooms are tucked away into the corner, and the figures themselves are repeated in miniature to the left of the canvas. The atmosphere is one of the dopey intoxication of pleasure. A balm for a sick world.   In Triolet antifasciste, prints make two of the trioâ€s heads into pumpkin-like forms, one figure of which bears penises instead of fingers. Above, the birds say: les fascists sont partis ouf. These antifascists seem to be performers, their outsized shoes are transparent and one figureâ€s outfit is striped and animated by the face of a living animal. The female figure in pink has exposed breasts and vagina and embraces Mr. Penishands. She has arms made of foliage, again harkening to the idea of woman as connected to nature and pleasure.

Another pumpkin-headed figure appears in Viva la vagina, this time a woman who emits a pink cloud from between her legs which says “good spirit” while dancing with a Medusa-like figure that is standing in its head, with the words Viva la Vagina written across the chest. In a canvas also adorned with condoms and candy, we can read at various points, fou good spirit, jâ€ai bonne nouvelles, viva la vagina and “resistance against the regulation of our bodies”. This one seems to be about pure joy and celebration. Finally, Plaisir fétichiste dâ€une militante antifasciste consists of a foot-licking male figure sitting on the floor, orange penis engorged, as he reveres the elephant-faced pink female figure. He is snail-footed, and hearts emanate from his groin. The woman says “no place for hate”.

Cynthia Girard-Renardâ€s work is often highly political, insightfully historical, but always filled with love, playfulness, and humour. She never lectures or condemns or brings us down, quite the contrary. Her series Love and Anarchy takes inspiration from a classic film and gives it her own take, one filled with hope, that love and sex can be anarchic forces capable of enacting change through personal relationships. We are reminded of the absurdity of focusing on personal issues while the world is burning down, but also how life goes on, no matter what happens in the political sphere. We may as well take what happiness we can where we can find it. And perhaps that can still make the world a better place, in the small motions of joy.

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Anjuli Rathod and Vanessa Brown are emerging artists whose work interplays oneirically in The Far Off Blue Places at Projet Pangée, where the viewer becomes a shadow character from the works themselves, walking among pieces rendered alternately in two and three dimensions. Both artists present strong, whimsical, dreamy work that one can return to again and again to discover new elements and interpretations. The imagery and colour in these paintings and sculptures rhymes and riffs in a harmonious manner without feeling forced. The works in this exhibit are markedly influenced by surrealism yet also brings in contemporary concerns and display a love of materials as well as the symbolic.

Anjuli Rathod is a young painter from Queens, New York, who has been making sophisticated paintings for such a young artist. Her works in this show are acrylic and flashe, a vinyl-based, matte, opaque material. She possesses an elegant and variegated visual vocabulary, gleaned from sessions of automatic drawing. The themes function like elements of recurring dreams you try to piece together upon waking, but which resist logic and linearity. These paintings also often feel like playful clues in a hallucinogenic mystery story, strongly featuring elements such as keys, question marks, footprints, locks, notes, and knives. There are nods to surrealism in Rathodâ€s work, and you can also feel a subtle influence from such painters as Chagall and Guston. Her colours, saturated but not hyper-saturated, form a largely primary palette, muted by the thinness of the paint. There is a marked dominance of royal blue and softened electric blue.  You can tell early on that Rathod’s practice has a foundation in water-based media, and recognize her strength in drawing; not in the way of a conventionally exceptional draughtsperson, rather in her confidence of exploration. There is an awareness of uncertainty, but also a drive to push on. The movement of brushwork in this series looks windswept, always from left to right, a west wind, perhaps warm.

There is a pervasive sense of mystery to these works. Her stream of consciousness leads us on as if we are in a game of Clue. What has happened? A crime? A surreptitious romance? What secrets are kept and which revealed? Footsteps become question marks. Beyond the somnambulic imagery and process-based, intuitive approach taken from the surrealists, Rathodâ€s motif of the hole or well is reminiscent of Daliâ€s voids. Encountering serpents, candles, knives, shells, ropes, question marks and spiders, we are reminded of our forgotten dreams which fill us with a sense of déjà-vu. We are brought into a realm of fear, anxiety, wonder, and hope, a world rife with desire and uncertainty. One of the most noticeable presences in these paintings are the grasping, clawed, demonic hands and cartoon footprints, which conjure thoughts of the way we make and the way we go. Here is life as a journey or a mystery, a puzzle to be solved and concurrently, the sense of allowing it to be so.

Compared to Rathodâ€s older work, this series offers some new developments. She continues to invoke surrealism with the collage style and dreamy imagery which evades direct interpretation. However, the new paintings have a different, blue-focused palette, they are more harmonious and uniform in their use of space, while remaining inventive in the use of form. The artist works with specific imagery in each series but allows old elements to leak in.

Getting specific, Blue Shell Well features a spider which resembles an electric current travelling between two mask-like faces which are also giant pennies. A conch shell graces the foreground, and the terrain bears faded footprints you could almost miss. A butter-coloured high-heeled hoof descends, with a serpent behind. We see a hole with a rope in it, which reads like a void in the fabric of the nocturnal landscape, simultaneously muscled and made of fabric. Considering the title, this hole is clearly a simplified well. Despite being omnipresent mythologically, particularly in the Old Testament, wells are paradoxically sources of life-giving water and also present life-endangering risk, of drowning or poisoning. In Night Scene there is the spider, upside-down this time, crawling between two stage-like red curtains, with its comrade behind. With the knife floating apart from the grasping hands we are given a sense of wanting, grasping, desire and fear intermingled. Shadow and light stand apart in sharp contrast. The repeated image of the conch shell, worn by the sea snail, appears again here and pervades this body of work. Besides bearing a beautiful spiral shape, the conch is richly textured with points on the outside, and silky smooth like skin or porcelain on the interior. The conch is a important symbol and presence in Hindu mythology, for initiating a ritual auspiciously with a haunting om-like bellow, it is redolent of beginnings and purity.

On a table in Waiting is the ubiquitous, patient spider and carrots which float off to the top of the canvas. The carrot is a returning theme from Rathodâ€s older work, perhaps symbolic of desire, motivation or temptation. Behind the table is a large, inverted head with closed eyes, and behind that, a thin veil and a silhouette of a woman illuminated in the doorframe. In What Fires, a Burning Room there are footprints which turn into question marks, a large key, and a lock framed by a patchwork of colours and legs. Are they walking away, or ascending to some higher dimension? One resembles an X-ray, you can see its bones. It is as if a voice is saying, look harder, look inside. Hatch has a strong use of shadow against grey stone, cut-out shapes like paper with shadows of window panes with spiders crawling across them. These rocks are presented before a green screen, tears in the fabric of reality? A Place Called Home, my favourite of this series, shows a destabilized room, upheaved as if by earthquake, a humble table with a conch atop it. Two snakes intertwine and ascend, triggering thoughts of kundalini, the sacred energy that travels up the spine during samadhi or spiritual union, but they could also be interpreted as a caduceus in the way they are joined together.  A switched-off fan rests on the table, the night feels cool and blue. A beam of light thick enough to touch illuminates a pile of discarded socks that a ghoulish hand is reaching for.  Pennies proliferate, a thing that has value but is practically worthless. Perhaps this is the artistâ€s studio at night, as a box, table or wall unfolds itself with a white blank expanse on it, of canvas or paper. A crescent moon looks on from the window.

Vanessa Brown is a Vancouver-based sculptor who has shown throughout North America and abroad. Her seemingly delicate painted cut-steel objects in this show are sometimes reminiscent of still-lives or pop-up books, while others stand against walls as a sort of totem pole or staff of power at rest. The still life works are made from a few pieces of painted steel which fit together at angles, giving them a dimensionality that varies widely depending on which direction they are viewed from and the light available. There are sometimes cut-out shapes and bends to the pieces, and they are afterward painted in a loose manner. These sculptures have a deceptive, playful delicacy to their appearance which belies their tough nature. Their rough-hewn fragility reminded me of feminine strength. A dreamlike mix of figurative elements plays between two and three dimensions in these works.

Cosmic Screen is a blue and black piece, whose title suggests the projection of reality and how reality descends dimensionally. The artwork’s title jives with its materiality and construction, as do the other pedestal-standing works, by turning flatness into three dimensions. It is a still life, and as such, it functions as an object of meditation by making us recall how life is stilled in death. The indigo screen conjures a priestâ€s confessional or a trip to Morocco, yet it is shaped like a mountain softened by time. A hand reaches for a bottle, but is it poison or potion? There is a distinct sense of the magical, the alchemistâ€s hand as the artistâ€s. Hands are a recurring theme for Brown. Her 2016 solo show, The Hand of Camille, presented recently in Vancouver, deals inventively with Camille Claudel, lover of the sculptor Auguste Rodin. We are also reminded of the famous Dada symbol of the pointing typographical hand, but here it is the gently grasping hand, also disembodied.

Thermochrome Steel is an object of pink and purple painted shapes. Dripping white dots form a polka dot pattern, the only bar or dash melts into drips and becomes a chalky crutch. Sun Milk is made of exquisitely delicate-looking white layers which look like paper but have the strength of steel.The artwork’s gorgeous play of light and shadow features numerous shades of white and grey depending on the way it is lit. Newspaper in Flight, a bold and stark work, is reminiscent of a Franz Kline painting with its aggressive, feathered brushstrokes of black on white.

Attic Light could be a totem pole of dream imagery, or a magicianâ€s staff. It bears an orange, a hand, a window, a candle, a cloud and a fishhook.  Another staff sculpture, Breakups, has smoking lips, the moon, a boot, a French manicured fingernail, a martini glass and an upside-down plant. Are these memories of a relationship? Or ways to cope with separation? Perhaps they are objects returned or overturned, thrown about. He is given the boot, and solace is taken in a book, a new lipstick, and a martini.

Vanessa Brownâ€s works here in The Far Away Blue Places feel like added clues in Anjuli Rathodâ€s paintings. Or part of Rathodâ€s paintings that got away, came to life, and populated the space, yet they also stand on their own as sophisticated works of abstraction in the strength of their form and sense of playfulness and paradox.

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La Forêt sâ€en vient II
June 10-July 1 2017

Christian Messierâ€s exhibition, la Forêt sâ€en vient II, or The Forest is Coming II, is a presentation of an exhibition organized by Galerie Verticale that was held in the new lobby of Salle André-Mathieu in Laval, which is intended to “professionalize their visual arts presentation”. This series of works was removed amidst some controversy earlier this year due to several complaints from the public after visiting the hall for a Bruno Pelletier show. The organizers demanded that six paintings be removed, to which, after a lengthy period of debate, Messier responded that the entire show must be taken down, asserting by an all or nothing policy that they are a whole not to be divided. These works on view at Galerie Laroche Joncas were displayed as they were intended to be exhibited, uncensored. The theme of proposals from which his work was chosen for the show in Laval was “the strange, humour and the grotesque”, presumably a response to the frequent stand-up comedy shows performed at the hall. Ironically, comedy shows gain nearly all of their popularity through bawdy humour, taboo, and controversial topics, but apparently, some nudity in the hall on the way to the show was too much for some visitors to bear, or at least for the Pelletier crowd. The six paintings which were censored did not feature simple classical nudity, as some of Messierâ€s works in this series resemble, such as the canvas of figures cavorting in an elegant circle la Matisseâ€s dancers. Instead, it was the works which displayed any semblance of sexuality, through the groping of breasts, implied orgies or sexual activity that the ones which stimulated complaint.

This series of paintings centers on the notion of the forest as a wild place, far from an experience of a landscape viewed at a remove. It plays on notions of the forest as where things become strange, uncontrollable, and people behave differently. The forest has long been a metaphor for wildness, danger, and chaos from throughout literature and parable. From Lord of the Flies to Lord of the Rings and Little Red Riding Hood, we are warned of the dangers of straying off the path, going a little too crazy, having too much fun. Messierâ€s characters gleaned from internet images and screenshots from YouTube videos, explore what happens in just such cases in a way that is ambiguous and stimulates the imagination. Voodoo rituals, dancing parties, and exhibitionistic displays abound all in a mood of mystery, absurdity and release.

Messier is an artist who works in performance as well as painting; he has an artistic practice of twenty years and an active exhibition and performance history throughout Quebec and beyond. His works often deal with the body in states of extremity, both his own body and in the characters he paints. His performance art conjures up Samuel Beckettâ€s plays in a way, in their repetitive and seemingly pointless nature, and the strain they bring on the performer and the viewer through sympathy. He is often dressed in suits that seem too large for his frame, somehow adding poignancy to the trials he puts himself through. Messier performs acts of torment on his body, from beating his chest until exhaustion to dangerously riding a papier-mâché steed which he lit on fire, to shoving a whole raw onion in his mouth, causing tears to fall in the rain, to throwing himself as well as chairs across the room and so on. Watching, we are both mesmerized and filled with repulsion.

Why are artists so fascinated with the body? It is the medium for the expression of our existence, the essential material, the most raw. It is the thing we create with, when we can create with nothing else, we create ourselves. We create progeny, we make food, we excrete. The body is unavoidable, inescapable, except in death. It is a mirror for artistic production, one that we must eventually leave behind—both the mirror itself and whatever we manage to produce, even if all that is an aged and defunct form. Artists draw our attention to this, our constant companion, best friend, and ubiquitous jailer. They remind us of the nature of incorporation, and what we can never forget, our mortality, as much as we may try.

Through both his performances and his paintings, it is clear that Christian Messier is interested in what happens when the limits of the body are pushed to breaking point, to the point when emotion explodes, to the point that the physical vessel is in danger.  His 2016 show at Clark Centre, I am the God of Hellfire, and I bring you…fire, dealt with dual themes of the experience of drugs and demonic possession, exploring a  body taken over by a foreign agent. A spirit in a body is a takeover of flesh, and we all struggle with issues of incorporation, of inhabitation of our physical frame. Messierâ€s work, at its best, strongly conjures these issues. What happens when we lose control? Who are we then? Who are we in a primal state, at our most bestial? When we have been taken over by another force through drug use, demonic possession or raw emotion, are we more or less ourselves?

While I have not had the opportunity to view Messierâ€s oeuvre extensively in person, I saw his last show at Laroche Joncas, and although I found it admirable, la Forêt sâ€en vient II is a leap forward since his previous solo exhibition there. This show is conceptually and visually strong, with themes running through the works which take the viewer on a psychedelic and ritualistic journey along with him. And the ride has some interesting sights. It begins with a painting called Aurore Boréale, which features mischievous, lucid and brightly-coloured characters which could emerge from a David Lynch film, leering before a Northern Light sky, perhaps a hallucinogenic trip is beginning. This work has its own distinctive character, and that is dark, to be sure, but it is also playful and funny. In these works is clear that something naughty is going on, or about to, but youâ€re not sure what. And you feel sort of like a transgressive voyeur for even looking. In Paradise liebe, busty women cavort around a fire with a well-hung black man, while in Animal Lovers, a man proportioned like a Sumo wrestler gleefully smiles while either hanging onto his cascading rolls or groping for what is well-hidden beneath them while watching two figures engaging in ambiguously ritualistic or sensual activities. You get the sense that some suburbanites drank the wrong punch at the barbecue and the night just went awry. The bestial nature of humanity is revealed, but not explained. Messier seems to imply that is there, seething beneath the surface, waiting for the right circumstances to bring it out.

La bascule, meaning “rocker”, shows a lovely subtlety of blues, greens, and greys, the lines of the hair of the woman mimic the vertical strokes of the trees. Are they playing with the child, or is it like the story of King Solomon judging the two women who both claim the baby is theirs and declares that they must cut it in half? It could be a cheerful family playtime in the forest, but in the context of the darkness and timbre of the work, I think not. Jeu nudist, with a background of spikey trees in intense black and red, bears echoes of Gauguin and Doigâ€s work in the tropics, and of course Matisse in the circle of figures in motion, which here seem not so much to be dancing, as attempting to dance with some conflict, as young boys and older women tug and pull on each other. In Grandeur nature, a parade of pale figures with large shields and weapons look like a rag-tag group of children dressed as Roman soldiers or wearing masks who got lost or are up to some antics in the forest by the glow of a fading sunset. Épiphanie is an uplifting and enigmatic piece, a toile in charming purples and burnt violet-red tilted 90 degrees so a corner points to the floor and one the sky. It is without the element of the sinister that many of his works in this series have. The star-like drips and mist glow pleasantly, but not derivatively, conjure Doig again, and the circle of figures in the water and the full moon rising gives one a sense of magic and unity. The depths one can experience in the forest arenâ€t always dark, depraved and heavy, sometimes they are sublime.

It is important to be reminded that the ground we gain against censorship and for liberty must constantly be reinforced, fought for, and discussed. Is it valid that in a public place like the Salle André-Mathieu, the organizers of the exhibition caved to a public who demanded such works be removed, threatening to deny their future patronage? What does this imply besides a mess in terms of organization and communication? People who eagerly attend comedy performances where it is commonplace to seek laughs by raising the taboo and the offensive, can yet by offended by visual art depictions of light sexuality. Conversely, it is somehow comforting that the painted image is still that potent, that powerful still, in a culture where billboards, the internet, and magazines constantly inundate us with sexually-charged imagery. Our culture continues to be riddled with pettiness, prudery, and hypocrisy, and it is laudable for artists to hold up that mirror to their faces. The organizers of (co)motion apparently did not approve entirely of this exhibition, and it was mounted despite a few objections and the professionalism of Messierâ€s work, although it well fit the theme of the grotesque, humour and so on. It seems clear that the subject of the desired exhibition was meant to compliment the shows in the hall, but that this was not they had in mind. Sexuality is not funny to some, it is something to be ashamed of. It makes many uncomfortable, even when it is depicted with reference to art history and contemporary art, which most of the public would, of course, be largely unaware of. Does this denote an extensive lack of art education by the public? Why are some forms of entertainment permissible to tread on edgy ground while others are not? This conflict raised many interesting questions to the fore which are not easily answered. Ultimately, I believe this occurrence and consequent controversy was a benefit as it raises important questions and opens a discussion that will probably never be completely over. The progress we make in civil rights, freedom of expression, and sexual liberty are not permanently granted once gained, they are ground that must be guarded and maintained. This wonâ€t happen besides with education, but how much art education can the public be expected to obtain? Art, and especially a knowledgeable appreciation of art history and contemporary art are things one has to consciously seek out and work on. The public, en masse, generally has always had poor taste and only favours what is quite safe, conventional and pretty, what has long been established to be acceptable. Art that pushes the envelope is always necessary to stir up reactionary feelings, and that is exactly what Messier himself asserts that he intends to do: Cette ridicule étrangeté chercherait à produire chez nous le malaise dâ€un excès de pudeur face à des comportements naïfs et inassimilables pour des esprits lucides et freinés par la gène comme les nôtres.  It is my belief it was actually a good thing that this controversy occurred, as it pointed the ridiculousness of pervasive provincial attitudes and to the limitations of acceptance in our society and perhaps made many people think and feel, which is the goal of nearly every artist.

This is Lord of the Flies with adults, the wild undercurrent of humanity. Summer nights. Parties in the woods. Sacrifice. Ritual. Man as beast. The characters are dramatic and performative. Again, there is a distinct David Lynchian feel, the ordinary has turned menacing or horrific. There is a lot of shirt lifting, busty chest-exposing and grabbing, as if, with childlike glee, adults are discovering the pleasures of the human body again now that they are free in the forest. La forêt sâ€en vient II is a quite successful body of work in that it conveys a personal conception of reality, as well as an attunement to literature, contemporary culture and painting. This expressive, vivid yet mysterious style of painting well suits the subjects. As Marshal McLuhan said, the medium is the message. There is a distinct deepening and more interesting use of paint and subject since his last show at Galerie Laroche Joncas.  The themes are considerably more consistent. Messier is at his very best when he is responding to contemporary turns in painting as well as to the history of expressionist painting and is working in series with an ambiguous but narrative cohesion and with the natural energy and force that comes through in his work. This comes across less successfully in works that are more cartoony, solidly distinct, brightly-coloured and excessively dripping. They are quite gripping, lovely and intriguing when they seem to emanate from a field of energetic brushstrokes, from a haze of emotion and experience, when they emerge out of darkness and have a dynamic conversation with Peter Doig and Francis Bacon.

We are reminded by this episode of censorship that people like to confine their sexual experiences to the privacy of their own homes, or the like. They are discomfited when faced with their own appetites when they, presumably innocently, seek socially acceptable entertainment. They do not wish to encounter the absurdity and poignancy of their own bestial natures out of context, however depraved they may be in private. Not only as an exhibition of paintings but as a performance and a provocation—not as a senseless shock but rather the sort that stimulates thought—these works by Christian Messier are a success presaging interesting work for the future as well.

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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.