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I travel and review art exhibits in a manner that you don`t need a phd to grasp. I am attracted by clarity and dialogue rather than the usual artcentrism of specialized readings. I witness as many art shows as any official journalist, but keep in mind that I`m NOT a "writer", merely a purveyor of sentiments and impressions. Because I am based in Montreal this diary will mostly focus on its scene, but I`ll be voicing opinions on major, worldwide issues.
Tuesday, March 30, 2004
The Impossibility Of Love In The Mind Of Someone Smiling: David Blatherwick "En Pensant À Toi (Thinking About You)"
Wowee,
Came back from Quebec City this week-end where I ran
to see the new exhibit from David Blatherwick, in time
before it finishes.
This piece entitled "En Pensant À Toi (Thinking Of You)" (2004) is a simple video installation presented on the main floor`s first room of the Musée National Des beaux-Arts Du Québec (they had to add the "national
Beaux-Arts" to their name... gosh... academics... "conservateurs"... I much preferred the previous tag "Musée Du Québec").
The museum refers to it as yet the most ambitious video installation by the artist (who is also a painter, by the way). Don`t believe them: I`ve seen, or you`ve seen, other works of his that were more complex. This time, it`s a simple "carrousel", a slowly whirling structure attached to the ceiling, holding two opposite video projectors, and two sound monitors arranged at each opposite sides of a long curved pole that is positioned perpendicularly to the projectors.
The images ? Simply a woman smiling opposite a man smiling, slowly sweeping the surfaces of the walls while the engine is turning.
The sounds ? Everyday material: children laughing at school, footsteps in autumn leaves, people dining in a kitchen, urban sounds, etc....(a loop of about 5 minutes duration).
The trick ? They are two tricks: 1) the smiles are actually "performed". The artist asked these two people to sustain a smile for a very long period, that he filmed.
2) The device whirls constantly and being the audience you are supposed to feel attracted by moving toward the middle and let yourself turn with the work so you can catch all the activity. I can confirm this: before I had read anything about it, I was already valsing like a fool.
Again Blatherwick offers us a minimalistic video work about bodily tensions (breathe, head upside down, smile, etc..). But this one is the most subtle ever. Most people don`t get it. Here is a list of reviews from Quebec citizens that perceived the work as being about happiness and the beauty of smiling (!). Blatherwick on the contrary, brilliantly demonstrates what makes that we don`t actually spend our time smiling 24 hours a day: because it`s hard dammit ! It involves muscles, it`s a physical exercise ! Hah ! What a great idea. I can`t believe not one performance artist had ever thought of this, smiling over a long period of time. Ok, wait a sec.....(an hour later).. Here goes, I did it, it`s called "Smile", invite me in any event and I will sit on a chair and smile for a couple hours. This may even convey better what Blatherwick attempted. Because with all the "romantic" irony implied by the title and the cute sounds of children playing, Blatherwicks is adding unnecessary sweats to this piece. Or does he ? Smiling is an activity far from being solely related to love agenda and seducing couples. The two protagonists incidentally are not narrratively related in the piece, it turns out it was all faked. But because it plays around our expectation of witnessing a bubble-couple, it seems to me that this makes the piece evolve around notions of "perfect relationships", how impossible they are, and how joy and happiness are at best experimented in brief since they are tiring activities: we just cannot be "always happy", it`s a physical impossibility.
But smile is not propriety of personal relationships, it`s also about social conventions, and of course the piece accounts to that, but less effectively by default of all the adornment that seems to suggest a romance, a seduction, a friendship, etc... In that regard, the action of sitting and smiling publicly would have been a better solution, if indeed the focus of the piece had been social conventions. The title suggests that the piece is more about the intimate than the social, about one admitting his own limits, that he cannot be "thinking about you" all the time, because thinking, inasmuch as smiling, asks for too much concentration than is humanly possible.
The stage of social conventions is secondary to this introspective psychological realization about the self. David Blatherwick is no mere cynic, he exposes the micro-tragedies of the human body. He underlines the imperfections that we`re conditioned to live with. Like attempting to turn and follow a carousel device: you can`t do it, that`s the whole point. Let`s accept we`re not perfect as we wish we would be.
Cheers,
Cedric Caspesyan
Comments-[ comments.]
Came back from Quebec City this week-end where I ran
to see the new exhibit from David Blatherwick, in time
before it finishes.
This piece entitled "En Pensant À Toi (Thinking Of You)" (2004) is a simple video installation presented on the main floor`s first room of the Musée National Des beaux-Arts Du Québec (they had to add the "national
Beaux-Arts" to their name... gosh... academics... "conservateurs"... I much preferred the previous tag "Musée Du Québec").
The museum refers to it as yet the most ambitious video installation by the artist (who is also a painter, by the way). Don`t believe them: I`ve seen, or you`ve seen, other works of his that were more complex. This time, it`s a simple "carrousel", a slowly whirling structure attached to the ceiling, holding two opposite video projectors, and two sound monitors arranged at each opposite sides of a long curved pole that is positioned perpendicularly to the projectors.
The images ? Simply a woman smiling opposite a man smiling, slowly sweeping the surfaces of the walls while the engine is turning.
The sounds ? Everyday material: children laughing at school, footsteps in autumn leaves, people dining in a kitchen, urban sounds, etc....(a loop of about 5 minutes duration).
The trick ? They are two tricks: 1) the smiles are actually "performed". The artist asked these two people to sustain a smile for a very long period, that he filmed.
2) The device whirls constantly and being the audience you are supposed to feel attracted by moving toward the middle and let yourself turn with the work so you can catch all the activity. I can confirm this: before I had read anything about it, I was already valsing like a fool.
Again Blatherwick offers us a minimalistic video work about bodily tensions (breathe, head upside down, smile, etc..). But this one is the most subtle ever. Most people don`t get it. Here is a list of reviews from Quebec citizens that perceived the work as being about happiness and the beauty of smiling (!). Blatherwick on the contrary, brilliantly demonstrates what makes that we don`t actually spend our time smiling 24 hours a day: because it`s hard dammit ! It involves muscles, it`s a physical exercise ! Hah ! What a great idea. I can`t believe not one performance artist had ever thought of this, smiling over a long period of time. Ok, wait a sec.....(an hour later).. Here goes, I did it, it`s called "Smile", invite me in any event and I will sit on a chair and smile for a couple hours. This may even convey better what Blatherwick attempted. Because with all the "romantic" irony implied by the title and the cute sounds of children playing, Blatherwicks is adding unnecessary sweats to this piece. Or does he ? Smiling is an activity far from being solely related to love agenda and seducing couples. The two protagonists incidentally are not narrratively related in the piece, it turns out it was all faked. But because it plays around our expectation of witnessing a bubble-couple, it seems to me that this makes the piece evolve around notions of "perfect relationships", how impossible they are, and how joy and happiness are at best experimented in brief since they are tiring activities: we just cannot be "always happy", it`s a physical impossibility.
But smile is not propriety of personal relationships, it`s also about social conventions, and of course the piece accounts to that, but less effectively by default of all the adornment that seems to suggest a romance, a seduction, a friendship, etc... In that regard, the action of sitting and smiling publicly would have been a better solution, if indeed the focus of the piece had been social conventions. The title suggests that the piece is more about the intimate than the social, about one admitting his own limits, that he cannot be "thinking about you" all the time, because thinking, inasmuch as smiling, asks for too much concentration than is humanly possible.
The stage of social conventions is secondary to this introspective psychological realization about the self. David Blatherwick is no mere cynic, he exposes the micro-tragedies of the human body. He underlines the imperfections that we`re conditioned to live with. Like attempting to turn and follow a carousel device: you can`t do it, that`s the whole point. Let`s accept we`re not perfect as we wish we would be.
Cheers,
Cedric Caspesyan
