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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.
Monday, March 29, 2004
Projecting The Self-Illusive: Barbara Prokop`s "Britney: Still Me" and Julie Andreyev`s "Stereoscope" At Gallerie Articule
Toodles, me here again with yet another late art review but some cool links for your viewing pleasure.
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I really enjoy the recent refurbishing of Articule gallery. Physically it`s becoming one of the best art space in Montreal. They have devoted a salon for meetings and chance encounters but I`m betting some artists will be infiltrating it once in a while with their projects.
The two new "exhibit spaces" are both enclosed within their own boxes.
At the entrance we are forced to surround the first of these boxes which
is actually the "second" gallery, that is normally reserved for smaller projects.
Then we have to switch into a u-turn to get to the "main gallery", what is confusing because it is but only slightly larger than "gallery two". Nevertheless, the new settings offer interesting dynamics, and I`ll be curious to see what the "insitu" artist Gary Mcneill will make of this architecture during his residence at the gallery next month of May.
I was curious to visit the Barbara Prokop show since I had read articles about this artist previously. I was wondering about the results of one of her projects for which she invites people to portray other people or characters they admire (The full "lecturer`s name of a serie" is "Subcultures, Cultures, and Careers: Stereotyping Each Other’s Lives"). I`m not sure if the work "Britney: Still Me" (2003) presented at Articule is representative of the serie, but I reserved mixed feelings about it. The work is simply a monoband video, presented in loops without credits (they are on the wall) in a room painted black. I`m describing this in case you read anywhere people refer to it as an "installation", a term that is much too loosely used to describe mere video projections. Loops often serve precise formal and aesthetic roles within video works, but here the only focus was the practical repetition of a 7 minutes clip. Pipilotti Rist had developed a better way to deal with viewing clips when she had fabricated a remote control in which you could select and start the clips whenever you desired. With such a system it could have been a solution for miss Prokop to present a couple more examples of what she does. I mean it: she urgently needs to vary her subjects before her audience start believing that she simply indulges in banging on Britney.
Because the impression that the piece presented here gives is that it`s a mere pastiche of the type of mtv spotlight documentaries that are used to promote pop artists. It looks like your typical humor fake-docu mocking Britney`s ego, and/or the music industry that supports her, the self-importance they implement on such ridiculous mass media oriented entertainment artist. But the bias is that this woman we see interpreting Britney and singing her songs is actually supposed to be a "fan" of the artist. The video is also "about her", and I`m not certain if this fact communicates very well. The excessive montage and ultimately parodic mise-en-scène seems to suggest much on the way I should be interpreting this, and I found it all overlapping to the original aim of the project.
Now, judging from other more official "readings", I should have understood that the fan here casted an "empowered" and "determined" version of britney, while public opinion generally infer that`s she just a puppet from the music`s industry. But I still stand that regardless of my interest for the philosophy behind her work (we always somewhat illusion ourselves toward the people we love), the artist is disrespecting her intention by adding too much extraneous comical effect. What helps the video function on its own, provoking smiles or laughter, distanciates it from the original goal of transcribing the character`s feelings about her personal object of desire. Besides, any drag queen could have elevate the sense of campiness that emanated from this video (and trust me they do "love" their material). Or if you`re in for fierce hilarity on the subject I suggest the gay-friendly film "Britney Baby, One More Time" (2002) by Ludi Boeken. Let`s admit it: Britney was too tough a subject: she`s an easy joke. Perhaps with multiple fan interpretations we may have come across a portrayal on how a whole generation of teens perceive, and is moved by, her. Unfortunately here I`m not getting much information about this lone fan`s vision of her idol. It`s as though she`s been "directed". The gallery`s paragraph about the video insists that she`s not. But what basis prove me that she is such a fanatic in the first place ? She could be anybody. This work dwells on my trust of the protagonist`s authenticity, that she is an absolute fan of Britney Spears, but here is how it fails: there is just too much artifice enveloping that authenticity and hiding it from me.
Show me more.
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In the "main room" Julie Andreyev is presenting "Stereoscope" (2001), a work that has been travelling a lot: there`s even a book written about it (!). Surprising for such a simple work, consisting of two large similar photographs of young people in an arcade (the frame actually shifts to the right (or left, depending your view) for two inch and a half), installed at both ends of a cubicle, including a stand with a little mirror cube at the top, and two psychedelic light projections. It`s a chance there was an explanatory board at the entrance cos some visitors walking by didn`t know what to make of it. Here`s how it works: when you bent toward the tiny mirror cube in the middle of the room, eyes at a pretty close distance, you get the image appear in 3d (yippeah). Remember Viewmaster(tm) ?
They aren`t many artists in Canada that are internationally reknowned, but one of them is Jeff Wall, and Stereoscope couldn`t feel more directly linked with Jeff Wall (well,the older Jeff, not the one of the overtly flamboyant recent material). The topic of hyper-reality, the use of precise poses from the characters (who may not be actors, but they seem to stand like mannequins), the contemporary reference to works of classical painting (here it`s Antoine Watteau's "L'Enseigne de Gersaint" (1721)), the use of digital or "virtual" effects, etc: all these elements are shared with mr. Wall`s work, and had I seen the picture standing alone in a museum, I would have try and guess it was his. Luckily for Andreyev, she adds her own layer to the aura of Wall. By using a stereoscopic device, she use ancient technology to transcribe an interesting concern about present days` "virtual reality". For a starter, there is already a conceptual position within the photograph, when the models are standing aside one arcade game player which is sitting back against us, concentrated in riding a motorcycle video game (the position is similar to the character scrutinizing a canvase in Watteau`s painting). The motif functions like a double-arrow: We enter virtuality in the same direction as he does, while the cube is pointing toward our eyes. Further, the artist arguments her choice of a simplistic mirror trick because it allows us to see the "real life" spectators in the gallery on either side of the mirror, as flat subjects. An artificial 3d world materializes as we become its opposite two-dimensional canvas. It seems wrether we look into the device or not, a potential "virtual" dimension exist within the room, overimposed in space upon standard reality. So adding thoughts, the piece reveals to more intrigue than its first sight suggested. Perhaps the topic feels a little cold and intellectual, perhaps you`ve heard already enough about the problematic of virtuality and you`ll feel like crossing out. But I thought it was a well-expressed comment about our fascination and emprise of the devoid and fake, and speaking of strict virtue, there was not much to reproach against its design either, apart from the fact the photos should have been levelled with the cube arriving at standard eye sight (the "performance-driven" spectator-bending was actually a flaw).
3d`s cool anyway. It`s always a little cheesy but that`s why we like it. The decorative lights in the installation was just enough to balance it with pure glasshouse fun. I`m sure a museum will end up buying the piece.
Cheers,
Cedric Caspesyan
Comments-[ comments.]
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I really enjoy the recent refurbishing of Articule gallery. Physically it`s becoming one of the best art space in Montreal. They have devoted a salon for meetings and chance encounters but I`m betting some artists will be infiltrating it once in a while with their projects.
The two new "exhibit spaces" are both enclosed within their own boxes.
At the entrance we are forced to surround the first of these boxes which
is actually the "second" gallery, that is normally reserved for smaller projects.
Then we have to switch into a u-turn to get to the "main gallery", what is confusing because it is but only slightly larger than "gallery two". Nevertheless, the new settings offer interesting dynamics, and I`ll be curious to see what the "insitu" artist Gary Mcneill will make of this architecture during his residence at the gallery next month of May.
I was curious to visit the Barbara Prokop show since I had read articles about this artist previously. I was wondering about the results of one of her projects for which she invites people to portray other people or characters they admire (The full "lecturer`s name of a serie" is "Subcultures, Cultures, and Careers: Stereotyping Each Other’s Lives"). I`m not sure if the work "Britney: Still Me" (2003) presented at Articule is representative of the serie, but I reserved mixed feelings about it. The work is simply a monoband video, presented in loops without credits (they are on the wall) in a room painted black. I`m describing this in case you read anywhere people refer to it as an "installation", a term that is much too loosely used to describe mere video projections. Loops often serve precise formal and aesthetic roles within video works, but here the only focus was the practical repetition of a 7 minutes clip. Pipilotti Rist had developed a better way to deal with viewing clips when she had fabricated a remote control in which you could select and start the clips whenever you desired. With such a system it could have been a solution for miss Prokop to present a couple more examples of what she does. I mean it: she urgently needs to vary her subjects before her audience start believing that she simply indulges in banging on Britney.
Because the impression that the piece presented here gives is that it`s a mere pastiche of the type of mtv spotlight documentaries that are used to promote pop artists. It looks like your typical humor fake-docu mocking Britney`s ego, and/or the music industry that supports her, the self-importance they implement on such ridiculous mass media oriented entertainment artist. But the bias is that this woman we see interpreting Britney and singing her songs is actually supposed to be a "fan" of the artist. The video is also "about her", and I`m not certain if this fact communicates very well. The excessive montage and ultimately parodic mise-en-scène seems to suggest much on the way I should be interpreting this, and I found it all overlapping to the original aim of the project.
Now, judging from other more official "readings", I should have understood that the fan here casted an "empowered" and "determined" version of britney, while public opinion generally infer that`s she just a puppet from the music`s industry. But I still stand that regardless of my interest for the philosophy behind her work (we always somewhat illusion ourselves toward the people we love), the artist is disrespecting her intention by adding too much extraneous comical effect. What helps the video function on its own, provoking smiles or laughter, distanciates it from the original goal of transcribing the character`s feelings about her personal object of desire. Besides, any drag queen could have elevate the sense of campiness that emanated from this video (and trust me they do "love" their material). Or if you`re in for fierce hilarity on the subject I suggest the gay-friendly film "Britney Baby, One More Time" (2002) by Ludi Boeken. Let`s admit it: Britney was too tough a subject: she`s an easy joke. Perhaps with multiple fan interpretations we may have come across a portrayal on how a whole generation of teens perceive, and is moved by, her. Unfortunately here I`m not getting much information about this lone fan`s vision of her idol. It`s as though she`s been "directed". The gallery`s paragraph about the video insists that she`s not. But what basis prove me that she is such a fanatic in the first place ? She could be anybody. This work dwells on my trust of the protagonist`s authenticity, that she is an absolute fan of Britney Spears, but here is how it fails: there is just too much artifice enveloping that authenticity and hiding it from me.
Show me more.
----------------------
In the "main room" Julie Andreyev is presenting "Stereoscope" (2001), a work that has been travelling a lot: there`s even a book written about it (!). Surprising for such a simple work, consisting of two large similar photographs of young people in an arcade (the frame actually shifts to the right (or left, depending your view) for two inch and a half), installed at both ends of a cubicle, including a stand with a little mirror cube at the top, and two psychedelic light projections. It`s a chance there was an explanatory board at the entrance cos some visitors walking by didn`t know what to make of it. Here`s how it works: when you bent toward the tiny mirror cube in the middle of the room, eyes at a pretty close distance, you get the image appear in 3d (yippeah). Remember Viewmaster(tm) ?
They aren`t many artists in Canada that are internationally reknowned, but one of them is Jeff Wall, and Stereoscope couldn`t feel more directly linked with Jeff Wall (well,the older Jeff, not the one of the overtly flamboyant recent material). The topic of hyper-reality, the use of precise poses from the characters (who may not be actors, but they seem to stand like mannequins), the contemporary reference to works of classical painting (here it`s Antoine Watteau's "L'Enseigne de Gersaint" (1721)), the use of digital or "virtual" effects, etc: all these elements are shared with mr. Wall`s work, and had I seen the picture standing alone in a museum, I would have try and guess it was his. Luckily for Andreyev, she adds her own layer to the aura of Wall. By using a stereoscopic device, she use ancient technology to transcribe an interesting concern about present days` "virtual reality". For a starter, there is already a conceptual position within the photograph, when the models are standing aside one arcade game player which is sitting back against us, concentrated in riding a motorcycle video game (the position is similar to the character scrutinizing a canvase in Watteau`s painting). The motif functions like a double-arrow: We enter virtuality in the same direction as he does, while the cube is pointing toward our eyes. Further, the artist arguments her choice of a simplistic mirror trick because it allows us to see the "real life" spectators in the gallery on either side of the mirror, as flat subjects. An artificial 3d world materializes as we become its opposite two-dimensional canvas. It seems wrether we look into the device or not, a potential "virtual" dimension exist within the room, overimposed in space upon standard reality. So adding thoughts, the piece reveals to more intrigue than its first sight suggested. Perhaps the topic feels a little cold and intellectual, perhaps you`ve heard already enough about the problematic of virtuality and you`ll feel like crossing out. But I thought it was a well-expressed comment about our fascination and emprise of the devoid and fake, and speaking of strict virtue, there was not much to reproach against its design either, apart from the fact the photos should have been levelled with the cube arriving at standard eye sight (the "performance-driven" spectator-bending was actually a flaw).
3d`s cool anyway. It`s always a little cheesy but that`s why we like it. The decorative lights in the installation was just enough to balance it with pure glasshouse fun. I`m sure a museum will end up buying the piece.
Cheers,
Cedric Caspesyan
