Art Reviews: Montreal, New York, Your Town.

Oh my..this one will be long....take a coffee and read your morning papers first.

I got to admit that I returned to the exhibit and realized a few shocking things and changed my article a little. I will put a "BZZZT! WRONG:" note to
each comments that I added later.

Here:


Dominique Blain have been altering ready-mades throughout her 30 years career, often genuinely, in order to better criticize politico-social issues such as colonialism (and post-colonialism aftereffects), racism, world armement, women rights, and other themes of more precised (or wider!) concerns. The new retrospective at Musée D`Art Contemporain is simply fan-tas-tic, one of the best I`ve seen there in a while, and surely one that will appeal to popular taste. That is because Dominique plays with powerful in-yer-face imagery and iconography, that she assembles in ways that confine meaning instead of begging for inferences like a majority of other artists do. Sadly, this is what mrs. Blain have been often critiqued for: for being too straight-edged, self-indulgently simplistic, or at worst, overtly and blatantly manipulative at aestheticizing her virulent opinions. But why attack someone with such good intentions ? Sometimes I feel artists are becoming cynics that only care about their carreer and promoting their ego without much having to say about the going-ons of the world they live in. Since the magnificent Shirin Neshat exhibit (also accused of being a manipulative aesthete, and with whom mrs. Blain has been exhibiting in selective group shows all across Europe), I can hardly remember going to an exhibition recently containing such strong political stands (apart from James Rosenquist retrospective at Guggenheim, New York, or actually, the new Shirin Neshat piece Taboo that was playing close to it). It was really a fresh breathe to be presented with this artist`s works, that truly deserved this show, and I`m glad that most of the pieces were new to my eyes (and nearly none of the ones I expected to see were present).

If one thing, the show could have been bigger, including a couple more of her large pieces, amongst a dozen other tinies. Perhaps this is only meant as a mid-career resume and that some future "fuller" retro could be installed in a dozen years (Ottawa?). Everybody fell for her robe in recent Quebec group show "Doublure(s)", made of factory workers pants, and it`s a miss that Montreal didn`t include it.


(BZZZT! WRONG: The show does present a few ethical problematics that will become important or not depending on the artist`s own engagement toward her work)


I`m tempted going through the 30+ pieces by general themes, in order to better circle what Blain is shouting against, but I suggest you go see the show and come back later to read this if you will, because much of Dominique`s art uses tricks and surprises that will only work at first sight (what doesn`t mean that their signification dies minutes after...who had ever forgotten the Psycho shower scene?). Truth is...and here I will use a similar "come close and I`ll reveal" Blain`s effect: (whispering) "not all works are truly "good"...shhh, no way.....only about half of them"...but the reason I still consider the exhibit as how I expressed it above is simply because, away from critic, I will always firmly encourage artists able to demonstrate such compassion in their works, regardless of their quality. Thus that is me deciding that "message sometimes surpass the art", a claim Dominique would ABSOLUTELY REFUTE, but hey..it`s mine....And now here for the "real" critic:

oh...but before....yes, while we`re at it....there is one thing I can reproach to mrs. Blain: it`s her constant whining about being tagged a political activist. Come on...."Of course YOU ARE a political activist, Dominique. And so who cares ? You`re also an artist, a fine one at that, one thing doesn`t contradict the other." Here let us proof how:


Consumerism VS Third World Exploitation:

The bunch of "Duty Free" (1989) bags open the show, aligned on a wall as though you could pick one (but you cannot). They were offered as part of a courageous project in airport shops (not courageous from Dominique, but especially from the shop owners) in order to make people feel very guilty ab....err...let me reiterate that: in order to make people consider the distance taking place between our consumerist world and other nations who live in much more humble conditions, working hard at producing a great portion of occidental goods. I am not certain if the fact that the bag depict women holding packs on their heads means that the work holds any specific women related issue (maybe), but because they are women, the best way to hit the nail with this would have been to offer them through fashion shops, though I`m sure Benetton designers since then have proposed similar ideas. Then across from those, the "Something / Nothing" installation-maze uses mise-en-scene to trap us toward the unveiling of the origin of one cute little girlie`s face photograph. I hardly believe that such a motif as a hard-working girl was ever printed on a (ALERT !! SPOILER !!) businessman tie, but if this is true (and Blain usually makes good researches for her images), than yes it conveys the point but it`s a little bit too peculiar and exaggerated. It`s a great concept (one image appearing per corner, giving us clues as we approach the end), but the choice of image is "surrealistically" strong, hitting just a little too hard. No one will recognize themselves in such a monster, whatever metaphor it represents about third world exploitation. That seemed more like an item constructed for Ripley`s Believe It Or Not museum. "Core" (2003) hits just one other monstreous nail: Montreal is photographed in superimposition with a young kid holding bricks. The "centre of this world`s problem", the photo claims, is evidently that modern western world exists at the expense of the Third World. How are we getting this ? Couldn`t that kid live in Montreal ? Why says not ? Simply, I was told that most bricks and concrete was being produced in poor countries. But the only real success of this piece is the dramatic effect of having putting it as a drape in front of the MACM, which is an insite piece of art in itself. I wonder if The Met in New York would have pulled it if Dominique had chosen that city as the background, but to treat such a delicate subject it is better that she has kept things to her homeground. "Dress" (1993) is a man`s camisole suffering the weight of two dozen military medals and I could only decipher about this work that greed, honor, and ego can emprison or kill integrity of the"naked" man (camisole is the minimal dress of man) or...errr... You can spot an olympic runner that move slower each round he wins because his medals make him decelerate. Will that fit ? Yeah, well I`m being reallllyyy descriptive for once that Dominique is not, what a shame.... Try Poetry, Ced ?

Women Cause:

For some reasons Dominique Blain is a little weak in her digital collages and photomontages. It`s hard to explain why. It`s simply as if she doesn`t choose the right images and topics, or she gets a little bit too centred on very specific events. "Bamyan"(2003) is the print with the veiled woman hidden in the rock mountain formation of a middle-orient village. You hardly notice her, she has been encasted within the rock in such a way that it makes her disappear (made me think of the disappearing woman, encasted in a tree from the recent installation Taboo by Shirin Neshat). I wasn`t even sure what the piece was about until Blain mentioned it in the video interview. I think that this subtle piece unfortunately erases itself from the rest of the show for lack of "punch congruosity". "Japan Apologizes"(1993) is wayyyy too specific so that people can easily understand what it is about. This is where you can spot how Dominique can become the real activist that she refutes to be: at her worst she "reacts" (reactionary activism is even more of a taboo) spontaneously to her emotions (meaning: anger) after reading the morning news, and in such case that the work resounds like a quick direct "daily response" more than a work meant to last. So..story goes that Thai women were raped by Japanese during Second World War, and the Japan government refused to adress the evidences. "WHAT THE F..??", argued Dominique on that early morning, and evidently, after having spilled all her coffee, she ran to order a Thai male nightgown and printed all over on the lower inner-sleeve (open at genital levels), the title of that morning press clip, "Japan Apologizes". So... are we supposed to infer all of this ? When I first saw the robe I was thinking Pearl Harbor, and something about seduction and treachery ...But I was really confused. Now I see it more as an hit and run, like a local graffitti. But now don`t feel too discouraged, the "good stuff" in the exhibit is coming up. (BZZZT! WRONG: My mom went to see the show and understood the "Japan Apologizes" piece, and so apparently the event had much more press and importance than I thought. My idea of rape and war is that I hear they are happening all the time and I never knew that the Japan case was this perticular.)


More Precised Political Actualities:

"Boat People" (1980) is worth a glance only because as an early work it establishes Blain`s caracterial use of found journal footages, but this bunch of paper clips assembled and laced on top of each others about the boat people who emigrated en masse to America from Asia in the early 80`s left me underwater. Seriously I didn`t get it: she hides the text with soft paper, only showing the center photograph (a woman holding her baby on her back), while they are many other layers of journal stuck right behind, as if criticizing that the medias never helped change the gravity of the situation (?). Or it`s some sort of luggage-portfolio meant as a commemorative to the events. "Groznyi" (2003) is on the contrary, given that they are similar works, one of the exhibit STAND-OUTS, and a very clear success at transposing, a few years later, the terrible event of Russians completely destroying this Tchetchen town, quarter by quarter, in September 1999. If I remember correctly, they are two satellite overview photographs of the town (one before, and another after the event), apposed to the inside of a gigantic "golden" book, the type of which you can find in city halls (filled with official signatures), and from which all pages have been burned. This time Blain used a precise historical event and some could argue that the effect is disappointedly literal unless they try to read it the way the artist would like them to read it, as a broader piece about war often implying the extinction of whole peoples` history and culture. A really magnificent piece, a monument of compassion (who else in Canada made a work about Grozny?).


War and Armement:

One of the major topic of Dominique Blain has been the denunciation of war culture, commenting on the atrocities of living in a militaristic world filled with enough artillery to destroy it many times. Some of the finest works by Blain support that theme. "An Intelligent American`s Guide To The Peace" (1991) is filled with irony and cynicism, as the book from a former US secretary (who had been disposed for being gay) is installed on top of 12 x 9 gun cartridges of a current, popularly used caliber (they are huge..). Peace resting on a trigger...Again, some may find this a little bit too upfront but I take it as a necessary caricature. We need that sort of work, however blunt, like this other "Sans Titre" (untitled, 1987) piece that juxtapose western consumerism with war by lining up in row a cigar (money), a military cartridge (power), and a lipstick (sex), over a wood plank. This is Adbusters Magazine style years before it was born. "The World" (1993) is another very simple piece, less successful, where a red book named as such is inserted between two large army boots, as a way to portrait rather blatantly how we on earth emprisoned ourselves within militarism, which reminded me a phrase dicted by Mark Wigley, writer and architecture teacher at Columbia University, New York, and Princeton University, during a symposium a few years ago (at Canadian Centre for Architecture) about Post-World-Trade-Center agenda: "Security Creates The Threat"... Speaking of threats, a good selection of war-related Blain works cover the topic of mine bombs. One of the best work in the show is the famous "Rug" (2000), which she confectioned with pakistanese threaders over the course of many years, and which looks at first sight as any standard pakistanese rug until you realize the repeted motifs depict a variety of mine bombs (apparently, they are 26 models !!). Unless you have no heart, it`s very emotionally shocking to just pass your foot over it. Could anyone have imagined a better way to treat this topic? I`m sorry for the stupid pun but this work is-a-B-O-M-B. You go
girl !! And to better underline the link with americans, who evilishly sell all this artillery that is used within those countries, the artist completed two photomontages ("Dans La Maison Blanche" (2001) and "Au Palais Des Nations Unies De Genève") where USA government offices (White House and the Swiss Office in Geneva) are subtly adorned with the same rug above. Unfortunately, they are not very easy to spot, and it took me a minute to realize what was going on with these photos, and I`m not sure you can get it without having seen the rug first, what makes me suggest to the artist that she justaposed an overview photograph of the rug near them in case she ever published those in magazines, where they would really function at their best (Adbusters ?? Hints, hints ??) Dominique absolutely needs to do more and more public works: journals, posters, public monuments, and the likes. Her work exists to reach the widest audience possible, and wrether she wants it or not, museums are mere confinements for the cultural elite. A few other works about mine bombs: the deceptively titled "Mine Games" (2000), which is a cute series of 21 kitsch little landscape oil paintings from every parts of the world, manipulated so that each are hiding the contours of a mine bomb design. Quite adressed, considering that a few art theorists have announced in recent books that art as we figure it nowaday may also be doomed to die (or that certain types of "art" are already considered dead or unefficient, such as pop`s good old oil landscapes). Than, "N. Y. Times, March 17, 1996" (1996), that has nothing to do with any event occuring that day, but is simply the date of a paragraph enumerating facts about mine bomb deaths across the world, that Blain cutted that morning (post-coffee anger reaction again?) from the Times to emboss it on a pair of kid shoes. Again, the same trick used in Rug and many other pieces when a rather innocent object is revealing an obscure and violent subject as we approach it. Messages in Blain`s works are often so strong that they sometimes leave the impression that they lack in poetics, but that is because the intentions, contrarely to a vast majority of art, speak very thoroughly here, away from euphemisms and other periphrasis, and their metaphoric impact if any are aptly as direct and violent as the subject they depict. The treatment of political subjects in art often makes you ponder about ethics, about the necessity of art itself, when it`s always better to provide food to the hungry than to sculpt a bread in his hommage or memory. But when we come to term with art that it is never going to be perfect, and nothing that will ever surpass Mother Theresa, than only we may consider it as what it is, an activity that exists to help people share their views and opinions about the world. When we realize that we observe how Dominique excells at moments at communicating the views that a good portion of people share without ever taking the time to adequatly express them as she is. Okay..now, let`s move on..."Inner Sanctum" (1994-95) and "Eritrea" (1991) are two works that move further within the association between war and childhood. The first is a series of black boxes upon which an open cut let us discover photographs of children playing with guns or having fun at imitating dictator poses (including a kid next to Hitler), or being confronted with military settings. I`m impressed by the research that lead to the assemblage of those photos (!), a project that vehemently brings to light the causes and effects in the cycle of human violence. "Eritrea" is less successful, perhaps for being too upfront (and less about "revealing war secrets") at juxtaposing a picture of children engaged in military activity, engraved on one of two tiny schoolboards with a brush that as you may guess, can`t erase it. "Oh so that is what we teach out children !!..."..Hmmm..... Obviously, Blain controls her subjects more than her art, since it often takes her a couple attempts before she ends up reaching her highest form ("excellency", if you will), but always working within the peculiar character that made her the standout artist in Quebec that she truly is. If one thing the exhibit served to point, is that when there is an urgency of an issue you need to expell through art, you might as well work on it under various perspectives, exploring your style, so that you end up creating once in a while works that are highly superior from the rest. And I`m not worried for Blain cos it seems she understood that, commenting intermittently through the years on a series of issues that she really took at heart, as from someone`s whose sense of revolt stays authentic, in whatever ways she may communicate it.


Colonialism And Post-Colonialism:

The other major theme of Dominique includes intimidating works that radically deals with old colonial exploitation, and that serve here as "retro-evaluations" in order to better critique or remind us how western society have come across to the state it is today. "Le Monde Colonial Illustré No 1" (1987), "Travel Log" (1995) and "India" (1997) are all collaged journal prints, commenting on the western condescending view of the third world, like with the ridicule if not insulting exoticism of naming a company "India Tires" in England when Uk have been colonialising this country since ages (the journal ad is juxtaposed to a photograph of women walking with head baskets), bringing their cars, rolling over their entire culture. In "Travel Log", a text is reversed as an attempt to feedback the original book`s vision of Africa to its own author. Many works here deal rather successfully with African colonialism, the best one being "Details" (1992, one of the best "shot" in the exhibit), where 12 little photos of black men all seem rather innocent, until their origins are revealed on the other side of a wall, filled with photographs of happily smiling white belligerent travellers being transported on foot by slaves. Very uncomforting.... And as Blain expressed, for those who think that this is mere past dirt rehashing, they`re presented here to warn us about the unapparent wrongs in present society: in other words, "what is it we could be doing today that is utterly wrong without us even noticing it ?". Blightfully up to its point! What about the way, for a start, we constantly present verocious images of people dying on the news ? (BZZZT! WRONG: I went to the show a second time and realized that one thing that we do accept well nowaday is a piece of art made of really charged ready-mades, what defines a fair portion`s of Blain`s work. There is one very important ethical issue that needs to be stressed now I realize: it`s how these art pieces are evaluated as material products. I feel Blain can be accused of appropriation if she sells such works as "Details" and "Rug" in museums at expensive art market prices. There is a point in art when you just cannot embrace the occidental market anymore if you wish your views to come across in full ethics. Wihout diminushing the impact of what already has been done, I would advise the artist to mention that her works are not made to be sold in the future, if she wish to keep cool with ethics, otherwise she becomes like this white evil daughter of colonialists making a career out of the photographs found in the attics of her parenthood. She can`t distance herself from institutions unless she play tricks with them or use them or get out of them, taking as much care about her ethics than she does about her material. If I come and tag the price that Dominique Blain gets for her rug and the price she paid to pakistanese threaders, we are getting close (or not)to a scandal, and this is not Dominique`s fault if we assume how the market of art usually works around here, but it is her responsability to make clear to her public that she respect ethics within that market. Period.)...
Ok,what next.. In "Horizon" (1994), two tiny oval photographic canvases are put in balance to reveal the absurdity of a situation where indian militaries are lifting up a white person on a chair unto the platform of a boat. Lift up the king that provided you a war ! But the pendulum scheme is not as effective (and the image too anecdotal), as the previously much powerful work "Balance" (1991), which resumed in one banging image the whole history of american slavery, and is perhaps one of the best unknown masterpieces on the subject across North America (!!!): by simply comparing the weight of cotton flowers with chains on an old food balance, pulling the cotton at lower level, Blain angrily spits out the shameful human rights scandal of a whole portion of american history. As such, it now serves as a monument, because Blain is as much interested in reminding us faults of the past than warning us about potential future catastrophies. On even wider prospect, the chance-meeting-on-a-dissected-table ready-made "Croix" (1999), a catholic cross made with an old scholar wooden rule depicting the greater moments of the discovery of America, with the biblical quote "Don`t undo to others what you don`t want them undo to you", symbolizes in a flash a whole nation based on appropriation and imposition of values, while "Denatured Africa" (1991) fragments a found book about African history into its different chapters titled "Why?, What?, How?, What Of It?" to better satiricize how the westerns refuse to take responsability on the course of the difficult recent Africa`s developments. Duchamps used to say about his ready-mades, that they only functioned as art because he carefully selected them instead of just bringing quantities of objects into a gallery, and that is precisely the force behind Blain`s work: the thorough research, the judicious selection of extremely charged object, the subtle or vicious alterations, and the appropriate topic. It seems obvious that Blain first explore materials before "discovering" a work through them, but none of these could be have been done over the course of minutes (except perhaps for the "Cross", once she found it, but then again what a brilliant idea).


We Live In One Unique World, For F* Sake!!!:

This last section cover works of very broad agenda, mostly providing links
between diverse motifs or sources, in order to demonstrate how every events
going on in this world is related to each others, earth and all human life functioning interdependantly within an osmosis, as such. Think buddhism cos we`re coming there..."Village" (2004), is the most recent work shown here, strangely ressembling a "Tower" recently built by Francoise Sullivan in her recent retrospective at Musée Des Beaux Arts De Montréal. Why ??.... At any rates, this tower is made of a system of small cutten rectangle houses (just doors and windows), that both looks like an assemblage of third world "casas", such as those found in middle east mountain villages, or as a whole, forming the shape of a carton skycraper, with white lights coming from the inside, with the main effect being that this structure is wallpapered by various historical press articles and photographs about wars and other world related dramas. In short, it`s a resume of Dominique Blain`s career and concerns, and a work that should have been kept as to conclude the show (in its own dark room) instead of as it is presented now, as an appetizer at the entry of the exhibit. Now...I`m sure they are tons of kid works in schools across the world that use a very similar idea to communicate a similar value, the "global village" that we`ve been all talking about since the 60`s, so this piece won`t be reminded as Dominique`s most original work, but as with any of them, they`re always right up their point, and Blain`s most sensible point here is the architectural link she provides between the old, minuscule, and fragile primitive structures and the newer, gigantic and massive sights of western civilization. "Traces" (1991) is too literal as an installation, but the large photographs of indian or african refugees (or prisoners) hidden behind wooden fences provoke the contrary reaction than with "Village", when here we are underlined how much we are separated in the Western World from the extreme difficulties of poorer worlds. Shouldn`t we be destroying this fence, help these people out? Or do we really prefer to keep it, so that we may still idle in our own ideal and comforting world? The work functions like a question mark, but we lack a little info about the people they depict, and what situation is exactly being shown. Two other works each juxtaposed found photographs of similar graphics but varied sources with a sculptural piece: Locum Sanctum (1995) forces the viewer to insert himself behind a huge red velvet curtain, in order to confront a red wall showing 9 photos of people wearing masks or veils (war plane driver, klu klux klan member, a government official hiding his face, medieval revival, etc..). In general, the impression we get is that each time a mask is involved, it means something really bad is going on. They`re not fun, and they`re not welcoming. The work reveals how masks are often motifs pointing out to war or other violent situations, and usually automatically identify the position of the people who wear them. The work is particularly genuine for the mise-en-scène: it`s great to turn the life of the viewer into a pain when you are dealing with such serious political subjects. This is the S and M piece of the exhibit, if you will. The other, "Sans Titre" (Untitled, 1990) is a work I`ve seen various times, juxtaposing in the form of a church window an amount of 21 photographs representing men thinking or meditating in various positions and contexts (scientific, religious, cultural), in the broad prospect of covering human thought, linking the mind with the spirit, while juxtaposing a shape-spousing sculpture that looks like a bomb or a tumb, depending on your interpretation. Are men preparing the death of human race through science, or meditating about our own through religion ? There is an ironic tension installed between the unequivocal "good and bad". The work sports a very cold, austere, "80`s installation" look, and is reminiscent of a portion of similar works made during that era by Blain that juxtaposed the contemporary with the religious. It`s a little fading in effect compared to the more focussed "angry" material, but as a work attracted by synthesis, it is not entirely uninteresting. The final religious-related work are the three videos "Bouddhas From The Collection Of Kaboul Museum" (2001), which depicts sculptures of Buddhas` heads with eyes constantly moving, as if irritably exhausted, or eternally attempting to remind us of their authorative presence ("Big Buddha Is Watching You..." could have been a deadpan casual alternate title). They seem to indicate how this world have been recently (if not ever) uncaring of moral and spiritual values. Bluntly, I will say that this was an important missing piece from a recent impressive exhibition on Buddhism in contemporary art that happened in Snug Harbor, New York (featuring works by Bill viola, Sol Lewitt, Yoko Ono, amongst others). It`s one other of the standouts in this show, and I wonder why Dominique isn`t working with video installation a little more.


Oh so..my review was plain descriptive. So maybe that is why I enjoyed it much, since many of the works are self-descriptive ? But I grant you to try a visit and judge by yourself, and confront your own opinions on the issue of art and messaging, when does it succeed, or not, in both plasticity and commentary.



Cheers,

Cedric



PS: there is a nice documentary by Helen Doyle called "Les Messagers" (2003)
that you really don`t want to miss if you want to get Dominique Blains`s
point of view on her own work, and in which she explains how she used seductive effects to better guide the spectator to understand the things that revolt her. A nice addendum.

PS2: Don`t miss the other show "Monuments" by Dominique Blain happening at Gallerie Uqam until April 3 2003.

PS3: this show was accompanied by a show of Kamila Wozniakowska, that I`m reviewing next, and that shouldn`t have been put "after" Dominique`s but rather "Aside" to it, because it`s even more cynical and hopeless than the work of Blain, which never distanced hersef from the realities she live in.