Works on Paper
December 16 - January 13, 2007
Works on paper: Alexandre Castonguay, Michel de Broin, Jérôme Fortin, Karilee Fuglem, Dil Hildebrand, Mike Patten, Ed Pien, Michael A. Robinson and others
Alexandre Castonguay
"Have you reason to believe that your workers are really happier because of the work that you have done on fatigue study? Do they look happier, and say they are happier? (If so) then your fatigue eliminating work has been worthwhile in the highest sense of the term..." 1.
Motion Studies
Motion Studies are dry point etchings that adopts the idiom of the unmediated gesture. The array of fine lines exist in an indexical relationship to the movements of the hands of the artist. A technical process extracts and re-introduces the gesture of the hands of the artist occupied at different tasks. To create the images, the left and right hand index fingers sport a blue and red LED that are used by a custom program that analyzes the images from a video camera placed above the workspace to track the positions of the hands as they move about on the mouse and keyboard. They accomplish a number of tasks associated with the artists at work such as, working on a PureData patch for motion tracking (this present case), editing an image in photoshop, surfing the web, checking email and chatting on irc. The coordinates are saved as lists of points that are then sent to a reclaimed plotter. A dry point stylus (that belonged to Albert Dumouchel) is placed in the plotter pen holder. The plotter reproduces the paths of the hand movements onto the resist of the copper plate. The etching was realized by Carlos Calado at the ateliers Graff. A study of such gestures finds an unsettling echo in the work studies performed by Frank and Lillian Gilbreth. At the turn of the last century, the couple used time lapse-photography to analyze the motions of workers and propose efficient ways to execute tasks and cut down on superfluous gestures. Industry seized on these studies to increase the efficiency of their workers. The reference is used in a tongue-in-cheek way as it relates to how artists and software authors spend their time.
bio/statement on Alexandre Castonguay
My work uses both obsolete technology and open source software. This choice provides a perspective on the artistic uses as well as on the discourse (both artistic and corporate) surrounding media art and the commercialization of the tools with which it is normally practiced. This critical point of view was informed by my role as a founding and active member of the not-for-profit media lab Artengine, that seeks to explore the artistic potential of new technologies while addressing concerns of inequality of access to media tools. Recent works occupy the uneasy space between the exploitation and criticism of media art practices. Works I judge as successful display a closed logical loop while inviting the viewer into an apparently open system.
1. From Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, Fatigue Study (Easton: Hive Publishing Company, 1973 ; reprint of 1916 ed.) pp. 149. from http://www.arts.arizona.edu/buildingbetterhumans/hm_2.html
Michel de Broin
Since 1993, significance in Michel de Broin's work lays on recognizable patterns of experience. Such borrowings from art history, allusions to social mores are not ends in themselves, rather, they produce contexts likely to prompt semantic reversals, transformations that seem to accept constructed identities only to turn them inside out like a glove through a metaphorical process potentially open. Through multiple forms and means of expression, de Broin puts irony to work in a strategy by which he first examines the possible conditions of a given context, then posits an absolute, and finally, invents an unprecedented outcome.
Born in 1970, Michel de Broin lives and works in Berlin, and he obtained his master's degree in visual arts from Université du Québec à Montréal in 1997. His most recent exhibitions solos have been at Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (2006); Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec; Réparations (2006), Galerie Isabella Bortolezzi, Berlin (2005); Tenir sans servir c’est résister, BF15, parcours associé à la biennale de Lyon (2005); Galerie Pierre-François Ouellette, Montreal (2005); La Vitrine, Paris (2003); Galerie 44, Toronto (two-person show with Ève K. Tremblay, 2003); Villa Merkel, Esslingen, Germany (2002) and the Centre des arts actuels Skol, Montréal (1999).
A series of drawings, Anthropometrie (2004), helps make up for the disappointment. It consists of a reading grid into which holes have been pierced. If the Cartesian framework was invented to measure the world, the roughly-hewn holes in the grid allow one to slip into it while avoiding the calculation. For more information on Michel de Broin consult his extensive website.
Jérôme Fortin
At 34, Mr. Fortin has participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions. His installations have been selected for significant exhibitions such as "La Biennale de Montréal 1998", "Officina America" at the Galleria d'arte moderna, Bologna, Italy (2002) and "L'envers des apparences" at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (2005). During a residency in New York in 2001, he produced work that was to be presented as part of the exhibition Growth and Risk - Québec New York, but that was tragically interrupted by the events of September 11. The New York Times published on 11 September 2001 a major article on his process of creation: “Plumbing a City's Curiosities in the Name of Art” by Randy Kennedy.
His first solo show within the institutional framework of a museum, Ici et là, was presented in 2002 at the Musée d'art de Joliette and recently toured throughout Canada. It was also presented in Tokyo and Washington in 2006. His work can be found in the collections of the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, the Musée d'art de Joliette and several private collections.
With his sculpture-installations, Jérôme Fortin combines his work with cabinets of curiosities — the 17th century's private museums — and the 20th and 21st centuries' practice of mass consumption. Corks, plastic bottles, books, matches, nails, and tin cans are cunningly handled and assembled in several series of visual curiosities. Their colours, forms, textures, and volumes suggest the flowers, seashells, jewelry, and amulets once collected by the curious for their exotic flavour. The poetic, mysterious allure of Fortin's sculptures sets aside the usual aspect of everyday objects so as to exalt in our contemporary gaze.
Screens, first seen in the group show L’envers des apparences at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal in 2005, are large in situ installations created with simple sheets of printed paper taken from comic books that he cuts end-to-end and glues onto a wall. He creates variations on motifs which, by it patterns and sheer size, recall movie screens and monitors, where the basic unit pixels are revealed in an estranged way. These works continue his formal exploration that he examined in Tondos. The series of prints presented was developed during a residency in the Spring 2003 at the Ateliers Graff. Inspired by his previous body of work Seascapes/Marines, these prints are collographs made from bands of shredded paper.
"This form of printing uses materials that are arranged in a collage form. Through the repetition of gestures involving folding, the motifs that emerge remind some times rosettes and at other times the agitated surface of the sea. The gallery is presenting the entire series of prints, each published in an edition of 10. We are also pleased to announce that the first two prints of the series, Tondo I and II, have been acquired by the National Library of Quebec for their permanent collections of print.
Art, for Jérôme Fortin, is quite obviously an activity to which he devotes unstinting practice; and he does it with skilfulness that verges on magic. In his endless play with materials, printmaking in Fortin’s work is unexpected; his prints, moreover, renew the genre. From the outset, they intrigue us: we wonder about the underlying technique. Simple sheets of printed paper, generally taken from a single book, cut end-to-end and glued onto a round cardboard.
While relatively uniform visually, they each have a personality. Here is an astounding investigation into variations of some motifs – variations on a theme, as musicians say. Tirelessly, though never tiring, Jérôme explores a whole range of textures, constructions evocative of Aztec or Inca drawings, of ancient writings, of plant or fabric. One can draw up a long list of associations, for the allusions are intricate.
Before our eyes, a bouquet of nuances – greys, whites, blacks. Whether blurred or sharp, the series explores countless varieties of these hues, inviting our gaze to follow its meandering course. And yet, the objects that served as plates, the moulds, are as fascinating as the prints themselves. Distinguished by their colour and low relief, they are works in their own right. In truth, while dexterity plays an important role in the production of an art work, time and effort are also a factor." - Pascale Beaudet
For more information on Jérôme Fortin please consult his extensive personal website.
Karilee Fuglem
The "Water Drawings" are series of drawings and installations that explores the limits of visibility. Karilee Fuglem`s "water drawings" use elements of drawing (repetitive gesture, water, paper) in an intuitive use of a traditional discipline, taking into account the collaboration between the material and the artist in her exploration into "the indefinite something that exists between what is knowable and what is not". The artist states:
"The process involves drawing circles over and over in water, circling in water, complete river systems on paper. Paper is the repository, a transfer point as in writing and reading; the final object is the wrinkled residue of once-was-wetness. The drawings are nearly invisible in the making as I must continuously move around to catch the light reflecting off the pools before they evaporate, eventually drying into relief maps of my perceptual struggles." This work is subtle, but challenging in that it is not obvious what it is, inviting a closer inspection. It would integrate well into an environment where it will be lived with on a daily basis.
Karilee Fuglem is interested in revealing that which is invisible at first sight. Using translucent, delicate and supple materials, she can make the air we breathe and the space we are living in tangible. The magic of Karilee Fuglem's installations, drawings and photographs comes from an aesthetic approaching nothingness, where negligible elements, such as bubblegum, dust, plastic bags and nylon thread, are charged with unforeseen potential.
Originally from Southern B.C., Karilee Fuglem's art encompasses various disciplines, both learned and invented, often combining body-mimicking characteristics with bug-imitating methods. It is supported financially by graphic design contracts and artist grants, and in every other way by the generosity of her young family. Her work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions across Canada, most recently in Oakville (Ontario), Edmonton and Quebec City.
Dil Hildebrand
For 10 years Dil Hildebrand has created theatrical scenery for film, television and theatre, and it is from these environments that he draws inspiration for his work. This context allows him to take a mediated approach to his portrayal of nature, where the wilderness becomes an artificial stage intended for narrative interaction. Just as optical tricks and simulation are required to create these types of spectacle, he uses the qualities of his materials and various points of view to build an abstraction of nature that is filtered through and framed by the conventions of entertainment media. Dil Hildebrand was born in Winnipeg. He obtained his Bachelors degree in Visual Arts from Concordia University in 1998, and is currently a Master's in Visual Arts candidate at Concordia. He lives and works in Montreal.
Mike Patten
Originally from Regina, Mike Patten lives and works in Montréal. He holds a BFA in painting and drawing with a minor in art history from the University of Regina. Patten has participated in solo and group exhibitions nationally at artist run, commercial, and university galleries including Neutral Ground (2005), Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain (2006) and the University of Bishops (2006). Patten is interested in themes of identity, memory and interpersonal relations through painting, drawing, electronic media and digital video.
Ed Pien
Ed Pien was born in Taipei, Taiwan and moved to Canada when he was 11 years old. He received his Master of Fine Arts from York University in 1984 and his BFA from the University of Western Ontario in 1982. He has exhibited nationally and internationally, in venues that include The Drawing Centre, New York; The New Paradise, Tapei; La Biennale de Montréal; W139, Amsterdam; Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; Museum of Contemporary Canadia Art, Toronto; Canadian Cultural Centre, Paris; Middlesbrough Art Gallery, UK, Parkhaus, Berlin; Museo Ex-Convento del Carmen, Guadalajara; Centro Nacional de las Artes, Mexico; Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal. Ed Pien’s work is in the collections of the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, the Hamilton Art Gallery (Hamilton), the Kamloops Art Gallery, the Museo de Arte y Diseno Contemporaneo, Costa Rica, Museum London, University of Toronto Hart House, Vancouver Art Gallery, Walter Philips Gallery (Banff) and the Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, USA.
Ed Pien draws on sources both Eastern and Western to create his work, including Asian ghost stories, hell scrolls, calligraphic traditions and the works of Hieronymus Bosch and Francisco Goya. Ed Pien creates sensual, drawing-based installations using ink and translucent paper like Earthly Delights in the collection of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. The spectator is invited to walk into these floor-to-ceiling environments and approach the half-human, half-animal monsters within. In his most recent body of work, Ed Pien has replaced ink and gouache with an xacto knife in order to produce large-scale paper cuts. In the summer of 2004, Pien travelled to China to continue research on myths and legends found in Chinese folklore; he returned from the trip excited about a form of art that is centuries old in its tradition.
The artist states: “I resort to the use of large-scale to counter this craft-based process and attempt to avoid and sense of sentimentality and preciousness that seem to go hand-in-hand with most paper-cuts”
Throughout his career, Pien has considered himself indebted to both western and eastern sources for his imagery. He has looked to American artist Kara Walker who took the tradition of paper silhouettes, producing large-scale installations of them that deal with race, gender and sexuality. Pien, in a paper-cut that consists of three life-sized figures crouching and sitting in a tree, presented at Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain in 2006 (see image#), has directly referenced the work of 17th century graphic artist Jacques Callot. Callot was considered to be one of the first great artists to practice graphic arts exclusively. He is perhaps best remembered for a series of etchings documenting the Thirty Years’ War entitled Les misères et les malheurs de la guerre. The particular work that interested Pien was a gruesome etching of people hanging from a tree; Pien has toned down the violence of the imagery by placing his figures in the tree, lending work a more playful and poetic tone. The scale of the work (260 x 488 cm), however, continues to intimidate – we are unsure of what these figures are doing tucked away in the tree. Are they hiding or waiting to attack?
It is this incongruity in Pien’s work that is both disturbing and engaging: the delicacy of paper is juxtaposed to the night marish images that emerge from the intricate cuts, the folklore tradition of the paper-cut is turned inside out to reveal images that both alarm and lure us with their intricate beauty.
1. Gordon Hatt, Tila Kellman & Linda Jansma, “Ed Pien: In a Realm of Others”, Southern Alberta Art Gallery / Robert McLaughlin Gallery (01/2006), p36-37
2. Linda Jansma, p36-37
Michael A. Robinson
Michael A. Robinson works with an emotionally charged body of work — sculpture, drawing, and cast works that transgress dominant notions of art and artistic genre. The works confront the nature of creative expression and the situation of the artist, directly and literally. Mixing the figurative with the formal, the conceptual with the expressionist, Robinson develops an approach in which his works purposely play upon the candid and vulnerable acts inherent to art-making.