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Meghan Price and Tia Halliday at Parisian Laundry | Maskull Lasserre at Cote-Des-Neiges Maison De La Culture | Art Matters | David J. Romero at Art Mur | Slightly Uncanny at Galerie Push | Pavilion Projects
posted by Stacey DeWolfe - March 2nd, 2009.
Galleries across Montréal have come together this month in a celebration of all things student, opening their doors to emerging artists from Concordia’s various Fine Arts programs. Shows at local stalwarts Parisian Laundry and Art Mûr as well as a host of smaller exhibition spaces reveal the degree to which this city’s newest generation can hold their own - producing work that is witty, provocative, and in some cases, astoundingly beautiful.
Meghan Price
Meghan Price’s whimsical sculptures, now on view in Collision 5 at Parisian Laundry, are exemplary of the latter category. As a person lacking both the patience and digital dexterity to even contemplate a project of this nature, I find her work almost unfathomably intricate and fragile. An MFA candidate with an emphasis in textiles, Price is also an avid collector of antique lace and her thesis project investigates the impact of new materials and alternate contexts on the practice of tatting (the traditional looping and knotting technique used to create lace). The resulting sculptures are as light as air. Hovering on the surface of the wall like mysterious hand-doodled creatures, they cast soft shadows, restful, as in the moments before flight.
Sharing the stage with Price are five other MFA candidates representing sculpture, drawing and painting. Tia Halliday’s project, Strange Love, is another stand out. Compelled by a fascination with social networking and other forms of technologically-mediated human interaction, Halliday’s female figures are digital-age explorers. Seeking companionship or communion, they attempt to merge with the virtual, but their efforts are thwarted by the inherent limitations of the synthetic images they create. One piece that is particularly touching in its portrayal of human longing is a drawing of a woman who has wrapped her naked body in hot-water bottles, as if trying to create a sense of comfort that is otherwise missing from her life. Like all of the women in the series, the figure is derived from Halliday’s own image, but the work transcends self-portraiture, speaking to that which is universal: the need for warmth and the desire for love, no matter how strange.
Maskull Lasserre with one of his sculptures
Across town, at the Côte-Des-Neiges Maison De La Culture, a show of new work by Maskull Lasserre is equally unfathomable, but in a very different way. In a word, Lasserre’s sculptures are heavy: both physically - in one piece, participants are invited to make music by dragging a three hundred pound table underlaid with piano strings across a concrete floor - and intellectually. A student of philosophy, Lasserre locates his work clearly outside of any art-historical context, though viewers will likely see a connection to Duchamp’s readymades. In person, Lasserre is thoughtful and articulate, with an artistic sensibility and sense of purpose that seems rare in someone so young. The work itself is impressive, resonant on a number of different levels: thematically, aesthetically, and often, logistically. In one piece, a stack of newspapers, compressed into a solid mass by a bun press found in an abandoned bakery, becomes the building block for a detailed carving of a human skeleton. From a distance, it is impossible to discern the materiality of the sculpture, but on closer inspection, the layers become visible, and the form takes on new meaning - speaking to the material necessity of the work and freeing it from any form of trickery or illusion.
David J. Romero, Poppers
Reaching into all corners of the city, Art Matters, Concordia’s student-run festival, is also up and running for the next two weeks. In addition to celebrating the work of undergraduate artists (it is closed to MFA students who have more opportunities to exhibit outside of school), the festival provides invaluable experience to up-and-coming curators. Over thirty students have organized shows across Montréal, selecting works from a list of roughly two hundred and fifty submissions. You’re Too Close: Body Politics, Spatial Relations at Art Mûr is one such show. Originating with a vision to explore the ways the body is affected by the space in which it is located, the show includes works by nine young artists. One of the most provocative is a series of images by David J. Romero who asked his subjects to remove their clothes long before he was actually prepared to photograph them. The resulting images are compelling. Abandoned in their nakedness, vulnerable and alone, the models seem acutely aware of the space that surrounds them. And we, as viewers, are made to feel complicit as our gaze only seems to add to their awkwardness.
Stacy Lundeen, Sneering Plastic Bag, 2008, C-print
On the topic of curators, a recent visit to Galerie Push has strengthened my opinion that gallery owner Megan Bradley is someone to watch, a curator whose shows thus far have revealed a clarity of purpose, a distinctive voice, and an eye for good work. Her latest is Slightly Uncanny, featuring the work of Stacy Lundeen, Patrick Lundeen, and Kyle Beal. Moving between the logical and the irrational, Stacy Lundeen’s Sneering Plastic Bag is an example of how the artist uses light and colour to anthropomorphize the inanimate, seeing in the everyday the possibility of something lurking with intent. In Patrick Lundeen’s video, Sin Will Find You Out, the exhibit’s themes are perhaps most explicitly felt. With echoes of Harmony Korine’s Gummo (such as the old-timey music and the disembodiment and randomness of the camera eye), the film plays with the persona of the superhero, locating its masked man in the most unheroic of situations.
And finally, the good folks behind Pavilion Projects, Robin Simpson and Maryse Larivière, had a brilliant revelation last month when they launched the first of hopefully many dinner projections at dépanneur-cum-diner Le Pickup. Featuring two short films by French artist Aurélien Froment, the evening was a delight as we were able to enjoy the two videos in their entirety (something that is not always possible or desirable when seeing video work in a gallery setting), followed by a delicious four-course meal. A brunch event, featuring videos by Heather and Ivan Morison, took place this weekend and subsequent events will be announced later in the month.
Stacey DeWolfe is a Montreal filmmaker and teacher. She has written for C Magazine and is the arts writer for the Montreal Mirror.
Parisian Laundry: http://www.parisianlaundry.com/
Collision 5: Concordia Graduate Thesis Show continues until March 7.
Côte-Des-Neiges Maison De La Culture: http://www.smq.qc.ca/mtd/museumguide/datasheets/institution.php?ID=50-55-1169
Maskull Lasserre: Rubric opens on March 19 and continues until April 26
Art Matters: http://artmatters.concordia.ca/
At various venues until March 15.
Art Mûr: http://www.artmur.com/
You’re Too Close: Body Politics, Spatial Relations continues until March 15
Galerie Push: http://www.galeriepush.com/
Slightly Uncanny: Kyle Beal, Stacy Lundeen, Patrick Lundeen continues until March 22
Pavilion Projects: http://www.pavilionprojects.com/