Art Reviews: Montreal, New York, Your Town.

Yawn ?

Do NOT Expect any great academic theoretical writtings here !! Try "The Body Is Obsolete" by Stelarc
if you happen to find this text by mistake. I`m not writting to be read. I`m the Henry Darger of art reviewing here, honey.

I`m pasting this text about a recent show on performance art at Dazibao gallery, Montreal, that lasted from March 4 to April 10 2004.
Here.


There used to be a great performance triennal in Montreal called Fa3 that seems to have disappeared. With its retrieval one can easily argue that the few quality events on the matter in Quebec happen either in Quebec City or in various remote regional festivals (like you can all see them listed in the excellent magazine (a rarity of its kind) named Inter).


Dazibao, a gallery devoted to the exploration of interdisciplinarity with the medium of photography, are temporarely filling this Montreal lack with a couple months of activities surrounding the practice of performance art, which will include a full day of realtime performances, not to be missed, on the
17th of April 2004.

Sort of like the Find (Montreal New Dance Festival) did a few years ago when they devoted a special programmation of shows linking dance with performance, Dazibao are proposing this time an anthology of works that challenge the standard use of photography as mere document in performance art. The recording of images here become entirely intrinsic with the works themselves.


"Point", the first of these events, consists in an exhibit of older works by "landmark" artists of the 60`s and 70`s, as a mean to prepare the terrain for a dialogue with the newer works that will be shown in the next 2 phases of this special programmation. Most of the artists here are widely known, but contrarely to the press release pretentions, perhaps only 3 of them are international influences (if we want to keep things fair), and only one of them actually a true "landmark" in the precise field of performance. That is to say that I keep reserve for a programmation that could have been a tidy more ambitious, and tightenen in its curating.


Entering the room we get confronted with a couple pieces by Vito Acconci, who is certainly one of the 10 most important performance artists ever. The poster "Kiss Off" (1971) is a good example of the strategy Acconci used to deal with the issue of the art market, which was the production of such lithographic posters that juxtaposed photo documents and various graphic remnants with handwritten scores describing the actions they were depicting. "Kiss Off" basically shows 4 close-up photographs of Vicconci putting on and taking off women make-up, kissing his arm and spreading the original "lithograph" with the make-up residue. The text mentions something obscure about expressing and assuming a feminine side and "rubbing it off" afterward. Vicconci`s works deal much with notions of consciousness of the body versus the identity. Contrarely to popular belief, many of the early performance works were about distancing oneself from the ego and the body, or rather, about using the body conceptually in order to explore and transcend its physical limits. The body was made redundant, it wasn`t always pieces about the self and "identity", the cliché topic of so many other types of art from that era. The video "Visions Of A Disappearance" (1973), also presented here, is a classic example of early performance video art, with the camera directed at the self for a long period of time (25 minutes), and which placed the technological proprieties of this new medium within the context of exploring concerns about the body. The academically accepted Rosalind Krauss theory about the video medium functioning as a mirror (because of its ability to feedback itself) is put into practice here as Vicconti is sitting in the corner of a room in front of what seems like a monitor in which he is able to see himself. The prospect is quite simple: Acconci is trying "everything he can" to disappear in front of us. Obviously he can`t, but this is about attempting to shift our level of consciousness, not about physical attributes. It`s as much about the denying and renunciation of the self (though at some point he does whine about being a solid that craves to liquefy), than it`s about the propriety of video surveillance and how it transports across time realities that perhaps sometimes should better vanished. This simple exercise is actually emotionally extreme and certainly worth the visit of this exhibiton on its own. It`s actually, trust my words, the only real "landmark" piece by a "landmark performance artist" that you will find here (meaning that the piece is cited in every video art books). There are also 3 cool short experimental silent films presented in addition, "Three Frame Studies" (1969, 10.59 minutes duration), which actually are more cinematographic essays than anything having to do with performance art as we know it, and it`s a stretch to term as such the physical phenomenons they represent. In the first part "circle", Acconci runs in circles around the camera, so we can only see him once he is in the portion fronting the camera (us). Vicconci is demonstrating that there is another reality and dimension corresponding to this frame, that he is able to run around the cameras in places where we aren`t able to see him. It`s the type of exercise you would need to indulge in doing to explain your world to an extraterrestrial people from another dimension who would catch your image on the internet. In "jumps", the idea is even simplier, attempting to enter physically a frame from out of nowhere (no need of special effects, when this works is about the confliction between the frame and the "real" ground). The third and final section "Pushes" or "Pushing" (can`t remember which), shows Acconci battling with a friend in order get each others out of the sides of the frarme. Somehow Acconci became fascinated with how the prison of the frame served as a methaphor of the prison of the human body. Wrether you are able or not to appreciate the oversimplicity of these video exercises, for the time they were conceived they were quite witty, endorsing both formalistic and conceptual experiences inherent of their period with much larger, intemporal philosophical commentaries.


Arnulf Rainer is another internationally known artist, from Austria, but hardly a performance artist. Sort of a masculine version of a Cindy Sherman, his work has been for a good part centered on the self-portrait The photograph presented here, "Les Dents Et Les Cheveux (Série: Face Farces)" (1967-72), is quite typical of his method of drawing, cutting and painting over a photograph of his face. The alterations here, including the expressionist handwritting added upon the parts mentioned in the title (tooths and hair) and the grimace of the artist`s face, almost make him ressemble a grostesque Francis Bacon figure, and frankly, it does look like a child has just been drawing over this photograph. There`s no real visual pleasure looking at it. The act of grimacing may be substantial to an act of performance, but I`m not sure if it translates into photography as being relevant to such, or rather, I`m worried that the art world would start tagging any self-portrait as performance art, that would be a little exagerated. But I understand the curator`s "point" of convincing me that such a "de-formed" portrait could serve a link between performance and traditional photography. In 2004 unfortunately the photo is loosing the impact it perhaps had in the 60`s, at the time when everybody was existential about exploring their own bodies. Or perhaps finally, on a pure graphic aspect, the artist simply didn`t pull it off. This piece doesn`t hold the flag for the rest of this series. Also, considering the aim of the work is about shaping the body, I come from a theatre background and I`ve seen a lot of grimacing in school exercises, and perhaps Rainer here is seeking to express an emotion that I can`t foresee, but being able to look at the contours of his faces one can draw some more radical expressions. What-Ever I`m trying to say...He didn`t pull it off, ok?


General Idea are the third (and final) "internationally known" artists presented in this show, but again, they are more easily linked with media manipulation than strictly performance. The group is widely known for his antecedental works related with queer issue. The poster presented here, "Manipulating The Self" (1973), is an early work consisting of a poster made with the photographs of their friends enveloping their head with an arm. Their friends are performing for them (they are not taken part in these actions), and in a sense this poster announces their interest with working within communities and general medias, away from the confinements of art institutions. We don`t need to repeat that the thematic is bluntly related to the period`s interests about experiencing the body, but General Idea are refracting away the ego by proposing a communal work, and seem to treat the subject with a certain irony ("oh..look...we all do performance art....wow.."). It`s a beautiful poster, with its shade of pink and a very cinematic center photograph in color. To tell you the truth, I miss General Idea. I miss them much. Any artist should win a trophy for being able to make so many people smile.

Max Dean is a lesser known canadian artist, and the work presented here also deals with the audient as performer. "Pass It On" (1980) consists of two black and whites "pure" documents of a device consisting of a bath and an automatic polaroid
photograph apparel. Next to them are five polaroid shots of a man entering the room, taking a bath, and leaving. The principle was that spectators were invited to take a bath in a gallery while the apparel would intermittently photograph them. Again, like with Mr. Rainer, I feel the stretch with actual "performance art" a little dubious. I see the work more functioning as some sort of voyeuristic apparel able that scrutinize an intimate part of our lives, offering to stage for us of what we don`t often have the chance to witness. Originally, the results (amongst a selection of other works), were presented in the gallery. I wonder how many people participated ? Who cleaned the bath ? I understand the power of the image of cleansing (most religions have been using water as a symbol for purification for the soul), but this work seems to dwell on our societies taboo of being nude in a public space. It`s hard to say because the title doesn`t add much. Already being naked in a gallery is an activity that is daring to the timid, so you can easily imagine the situation when you`re also being photographed. On that level of provoking the intimate with the public space, the piece is adequate, but the photos being shown here look like they only made sense within the original settings. If they are not documents, than they are artefacts. I`m not sure they stand well as autonomous pieces of art.

Suzy Lake is another well-known canadian artist, but I wouldn`t say she is an international "landmark",though she did influence a lot of canadian women artists dealing with feminist topics. I refer to her as our canadian Cindy Sherman. "Co-Ed Magazine # 1, # 2, # 3, # 4, #5" (1973-98) are 5 self-portrait photographs in which she uses different fashion magazine hairdoes for each pose, all mounted over a long period of time, so that each piece of hair actually represents a new era`s ideal in fashion (love that 80`s "permanente"?). The fact that the face of the artist is covered with white make-up accentuates the expressionism of a work dealing with the artifices of woman identity. Actually, this is perhaps one of the stand-out works of this artist`s career. Note that the difference with the Rainer portrait is that the serial motif here (she also does grimaces) let us infer that these photos were made during a performance. They look surreal enough to convey the artist`s position successfully. Lake uses her own surface to communicate a social portrait. As another reviewer slated, she links the temporality of fashion with the itemporality and blandness of her figure. These photos function like tiny fragments of a theatre pieces that runs through the duration of a lifetime.


Paul Wong "In Ten Sity" (1979, 23 minutes duration) is a canadian "performance video" that looks like it`s from an earlier period. Paul Wong, who became prominently known in the canadian video art field since, made this piece by enclosing himself in a nylon cube provided with five cameras that filmed him bouncing against the wall, dancing to punk music (they didn`t use headphones for the original), while another sci-fi ambient track runned above it. Again, video serves as the media through which the performance can be communicated. This piece is like Beckett on speed. The space functions like a living implosion. The artist radically alienates his own body, balancing himself against every walls, exposing both the limits of the space and his physical endurance, now combined and forming one entity. The mediation of his actions is cold and medical. It looks like a man being observed for insanity. There is humor implied when a lady jumped in at some points, followed by a few other people, and they are start battling. Intense indeed, like molecules on heat. Actually, I`m wrong. It helps sometimes to go back to the original text that accompanied the piece. What we see is in fact some sort of ritual dance made in the honor of a mutual friend that had provoked his suicide. Ouch...


I think they could have been a couple other pieces added to this exhibit, and perhaps a couple replaced, but the basic issues of confronting the body to the media have been overviewed (portrait, movement in time, body as conceptual matter, voyeurism, etc...). A mere didactic show nonetheless, with a couple outstanding works if you`re able to deal with the blunt and minimal (like this very blog).


Cheers,

Cedric

Dominique Blain is the art star in Montreal these days as her retrospective is ongoing at the Montreal Museum Of Contemporary Art.

This was a great opportunity to invite her to present some new (or not so new) works elsewhere, and the Uqam gallery, the best of any Montreal University galleries, jumped on the occasion.

This review is unfortunately late (the exhibition is over), because I had forgotten all my notes at the gallery, and it took me a week to figure that out.



The first thing that stroke me while entering "Monuments" (1997-1998), that "new" work by Dominique Blain, is that it looked "very Dominique Blain". Whatever topic she chooses and materials she select, she always end up creating a piece that is authentically hers. You could have guessed her easily if no names had been written on walls.

The work is simply (well, not so simply) 12 reframed and enlarged negatives of period photographs documenting the rescue of important italian masterpieces of art during the first world war (1914-18), surrounding a replica of the huge wooden case that saved the "Assomption" (1516-18) by Titien during that war (and which is the topic of actually five the photographs, to be honest). These photos are all "painted", through a serigraphical method similar as the one used by Andy Warhol in landmark works such as Race Riot , and each are casted in luxurious wooden frames, sporting their titles on metallic tags, similar to the way old master paintings are presented in your average museum. Not far from there is presented an extra selection, called "I Monumenti Italiani" (1995), of 12 tiny photo-lithographs of other italian masterpieces that were "prepared for battle" on site, surrounded by quantities of bags of sands that hide them from our view. They each hold the title of the work (in talian) as if everything was normal, as if they were copied from a standard catalogue.


Each visitors of the retrospective at the Mac should have been forced to visit the Uqam exhibit afterward. After years of using art to treat about every political subjects possible, Dominique Blain now defies those who critiqued her activist pertinency by developing a corpus irreproachably related to art history and its link with war. Finally is she able to demonstrate how her critique of "evil humanity" can be directly linked to her will and right to do art: because art, is also and always a witness and victim of war.

The tableaux are absurds, with all the people joining together, walking alongside the precious art they are transporting toward safer places. They make us wonder if we would be doing the same nowaday. They seem to invoke the sacred and the sublime, because they depict for a great part the transportation of religious works. If Dominique had opted for the specific, she could have only used shots about the Assomption and turn this whole installation into a sacred calvary (but that could have reduced the broadness of the topic). Normally I would have critiqued the charged use of negatives, but here it`s justified by the extreme surreality of the situation they demonstrate. They enhance our disbelief that these events ever occured. And the central "monument" of the replica of the wooden case does the opposite by hitting our heads up its wall. I wonder if the show shouldn`t have been simply called "Monument" (with no s), to let the word enfolds this unique sculpture. "Is there something inside ?" asks that gallery`s school educational guide. The quasi-religious austerity of this monolith encases on its own the whole memory of these events, the surrounding photographs merely picturing the context, as though argumenting that the central piece be considered for what it is called. The "other" monuments are on the tiny photos: those absurd installations of sandbags. Protecting from war, the museum changed themselves into the most radically minimalist and conceptuals environments. For a moment they looked even more daring than Dia Beacon. The link between the contemporary art world and the ancient couldn`t have been more successfully established. Because of its market, works of art have been more and more understood as objects incorporating strong materialistic values. Somehow Blain provokes us by asking why we aren`t properly protecting ourselves instead of all this art. Blain really made a big hit with this piece and this is probably why it`s been travelling.

The other issue that needs to be brought up is that no one ever will witness one "real" work of art through all these documents. The "hiding devices" are providing "the art". I thought there was an interesting link to make with contemporary copyrights issues and photographic rules in present institutions. How no one is ever able to take pictures in any contemporary museums. In certain ways we protect the art of nowaday by keeping it off the view of people, what I interprete as another way to inflige pain into our lives and against the emancipation of art. In a sense, these monuments could also represent a call to save and let breathe the dying art we have been burrying into archives that no one (but a few) is ever able to see.


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As a complement, another show at Uqam proposed works about the dying of culture.

Guy Laramée presents three sculptures influenced by the topic of his book "Biblios: Le Dernier Livre" ("Biblios: The Last Book", whose text is also exhibited).

I took the time to read the 35 pages of this quite humoristic essay, which describes in various segments the life of an imaginary ancient people (the "Biblios"), as though it was an anthropological research text (the field inwhich the artist actually studied). Influenced by a story from Jorge Borges ("Library Of Babel" ), each paragraph defines a different facet of the life of these people who "existed" under the dependance of words, writting books, and preserving knowledge, until they dissappeared under the crumble of the quantity of books they had created and amassed. For example there is a paragraph named "What?" that describes their difficulty with defining the term and pointing exactly what it was about. Or another that demonstrate how they conceived of their history through the creation and use of bibliographies One of the best moment in the depiction of these problematic with amassing knowledge, was this sentance resolving that, if you wanted to pass all your life describing your own history, you would end up writting "I write, I write, I write" all the time.

Obviously, Laramée aims to attack our present obsession with archiving information, and the surabondance of cultural artefacts we create. But he doesn`t go soft by directly attacking the nearby construction of the gigantic Montreal National Library ,
which has been subject to severe financial difficulties recently, to a point where it makes you wonder how the people in charge will be able to buy books after the building is finished. One of the sculpture, and perhaps the finest, that Laramée had skillfully produced in the matter of illustrating the thoughts conveyed by his book
is called "La Grande Bibliothèque" (2003), and it`s literally a small pathway of canyons sculpted directly into the middle of two rows of piles of a couple versions of Britannica Encyclopedia. From that standpoint, and looking at the two other sculptures installed in the blue-lighted room, you get a sense that the scape of Babylon is used as a metaphor. Here the "canyon valley" bluntly refers to the erosion of culture. It is not the first time I`ve seen an artist sculpt through piles of books, as I`m recalling a piece by Long-Bin Chen presenting four large buddha heads sculpted with yellow pages phonebooks at an exhibition called "The Invisible Thread" at Snug Harbour, New York (which was themed on buddhism). But different categories of books mean different focus, and here the artist embrace chaos and decay in order to better criticize our deification of knowledge (the press communiquee does make a referece to Shiva, god of destriction). I think Laramée assured himsef his place in the pantheon of new promissing Quebec artists with this piece, and I`m certain we will be hearing about him again very soon. The sculpture speaks for anything else he`s done and on my account is worth exhibiting in any contemporary museums, under any circumstances.


The two other pieces look both like buildings from the babylonian era. The first is "La Tour (Le Trou)" (2003), which is an inversed wooden version of an imaginary Babel Tower. In the book "Biblios", there was a mention about the "people" being divised in two clans or classes: the providers of "horizontal knowledge" were very spread and knew everything but little under the surface while the providers of "vertical knowledge" knew little information but were expert in analysing it. I like to think that this tower refers to the latter, a building built large at the top but going down the bottom through a hole, or rather a darkhole. Sort of like going down the memory lane until it vanishes. The final sculpture, "Autel D`Ordination" (2004) would be about the first group. It`s simply a sophisticated and compartimented sculpture of a computer desk, that is designed with quantities of spaces and holes for every and any types of computer documents, but also looked like a religious altar or, from further and with a little imagination, an imaginary babylonian temple constructed in pyramidal layers. The piece provoke our contemporary devotion and admiration for computer technology, which recently drastically enhanced our capacity for archiving information. With this piece Laramée is pointing that the "Biblios" people he is depicting is actually us, and the artist attempts to warn us about the inevitable dooms of knowledge, that can only logically exist to be lost again some day.

Laramée reminds you and me that this little blog you are reading right now and that I`m writting madfully for no real apparent pertinence, will disappear some day
and return to dust, that our culture will also be facing its own death. And why do we feel so concerned about preserving it ? Blain and Laramée both pose the same problematic in this magnificent exhibit, that I`ll be remembering as one of the best in 2004.


Cheers,

Cedric Caspesyan