5333, av. Casgrain, #205A
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There's nothing mediocre about Atelier Punkt
By Meaghan Thurston
If you're looking for an out of the ordinary gallery-going experience, you'll have to look hard to find Atelier Punkt. At the locked door to 5333 avenue Casgrain, the advertised address, you will be directed by a small notice to the backdoor entrance on avenue de Gaspé. From there, you will make your way through a series of horror movie hallways and stairs in your search for the gallery. Best to carry a compass — or, perhaps be trained in the Jedi force — in order to navigate the concrete maze before you (tip: the gallery is on the second floor to the left of the staircase). Two small rooms no bigger than my living room make up Punkt, but, the space is used to its full potential.
On a cold winter night in December, I was somewhat apprehensive when I finally arrived at the strange and intriguing universe of Atelier Punkt for my second visit. I first heard of the space this October and attended the opening night of the installation "Off and On" by Roadsworth. That night the formidable gallery mistress, Melinda Pap, made more of an impression than what was on the walls. I encountered Ms. Pap in the gallery's back room, smoking and lamenting the state of the Montreal art scene, while a crowd of street-art enthusiasts crawled all over the place. Sure, the installation was good, but I guess Roadsworth's post-street-art-guerilla stuff seemed 'out of place' in a gallery. That's not to say that Punkt is not an ideal space for such art; indeed Ms. Pap is trying hard to make this the place for art and design to come together. It's just that I'm a purist about his work. I was there in the days when lane dividers became zippers, and cross walks became boot prints over night.
Ms. Pap was surprisingly frank with me, about her distaste for 'art wonks'. So it was with some sense of déjà vu that this time, I listened while she let off steam. A lack of civic appreciation for the kind of design that is being conceived and displayed by the artists affiliated with Punkt is her main beef with this city. Especially since the powers that be make such a fuss about its cultural prowess. She makes no bones that Atelier Punkt is showing what she considers the best stuff in Montreal, but isn't getting the credit it deserves. "This is Art and this is Design" she says of the work that is displayed there. This flirtation of the one moniker, 'artist' with the other, 'designer,' seems to be what interests Ms. Pap and her members most. And what's on display at Punkt is good, for the most part living up to Ms. Pap's claims of Punkt's international repute. Whether or not the state of the Montreal art scene is as dire as Ms. Pap claims, however, I'll leave to another day.
Boutique Punkt, which ran until December 23rd, was a fundraiser for the Atelier and a showcase of member's work. I fell immediately in love with the paper-cut collages of Annie Descôteaux. She employs a child-like style that at first glance conceals the unnerving subject matter. Ms. Descoteaux fashions a carnal feast — an 'offering', if you will (drawing a title from one of her works, displayed on her website in the 'viande-meat' section. In one of the collages, womens heads are mounted on platters, flanked by steaks. In another, a banquet of reproductive organs and breasts are garnished and presented for the eating. While Pap was talking, I couldn't help but peek over her shoulder at the one of the little girl whose skirt is being tugged off by a pack of wolves. Awoooo! If I'd had the cash, that's the one that would have come home with me.
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| 'Étude de moeurs V', 2006, Paper Collage, 16" x 14" image courtesy Annie Descôteaux |
Likewise appealing for the eyes if not the sitting are the chairs of Étienne Hotte, a designer with a flair for the asymmetric line. Three chairs from his series, 'Frédérick' were shown, one in matte steel, one in reflective steel and the third in red spandex, woven and tied around the frame. Mr. Hotte claims on his sleek website that his aspiration is to find poetry in his work. What kind of poetry, I wonder, would one find on the odd angle of a Hotte chair? Something with the ever enticing interaction of a strict set of rhythmic rules, and a sense of playfulness, I think. I wasn't blown away by Mr. Hotte's stuff, but it's likable.
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| Frédérick, Reflective Steel, photo courtesy Etienne Hotte |
Though not officially on display, if you linger long enough you might also be able to get a tour of Ms. Pap's own chair designs: a feather chair, and a portable, aerodynamic 'picnic seat' for the city dwelling bottom, both of which I coveted. For the show, she made a wicked red dress entirely from meticulously folded pieces of fabric, mirroring Mr. Hotte's 'origami' mood. According to Ms. Pap, the Quebec actress, author and theatre director Marie Brassard has her eye on it for an upcoming performance. I also leafed through Ms. Pap's art books of prints in the back room, which proves she is an artist of many talents. Ms. Pap's blog is worth poring over too. She has a particular penchant for Japanese designers.
Other gems of the show included the slide carousel of 'truths of modern life' by Marc-Antoine K. Phaneuf and Jean-Francois Proulx; graphic designer Karine Cosset's photos of 'found detritus' (I can never get enough of that); and the lamps of Alexandre Berthiaume, whose other luminous designs, are endowed to my delight, with such names as 'chicken-ass' and 'drunk.' I nicknamed the lamps on display at the Boutique "that black plastic thing I accidentally melted on the stove, and then turned into a lamp". I challenge Mr. Berthiaume to come up with something more true to form than that.
Worth following up on is the work of Juliana España Keller. The three photographs exhibited at Punkt of an inverted head of a woman were true to Ms. Keller's typically creepy style of portraiture. Each portrait offered the viewer a different perspective on the bust of the woman, the final of the triptych resembling a kind of astrological map of the corporeal. If I were to wax poetic, I'd say that her portraits suggest death and resurrection. But for the record I'm going to make an even more arcane claim—her work is 'edgy' (it is).
Take for example the piece she created for RAW or Operation Rapid American Withdrawal 1970 – 2005, an extensive multimedia art event that was exhibited in the Ice Box Project Space at Crane Arts in 2005. The photo-realistic offering to that show bore the title, if people were forced to eat what they killed, there would be no more wars. Let me just say that this piece makes Ms. Descoteaux's 'meat-heads' look ever more like child's play. And try this one as well.
Before heading out into the blizzard of a Montreal evening I asked Ms. Pap about the name of the Atelier. I wondered if the name makes some reference to what the photographic theorist Roland Barthes called the punctum, because the name of her blog is Punktum. The punctum is defined as the wounding, personally touching detail in a photograph, which connects the viewer personally with the object or person within it. Most famously, the word is associated with the photograph of a young man, Lewis Payne, who tried to assassinate American Secretary of State William H. Seward in 1865 as part of a Lincoln assassination conspiracy. The photographer Alexander Gardner photographed Payne in his cell, where he was waiting to be hanged.
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| Lewis Powell, conspirator to assassination, after arrest, 1865. |
The 'knowledge that this man is about to die' is the punctum: that 'thing' in the photo that affects us deeply. Is that concept the origin of the gallery's name? Not so, Ms. Pap says. "Punkt is what my mother always said when she finished a sentence. Punkt! Point final." So it is that Ms. Pap carries on what seems to be a family tradition of saying it like it is, making a strong point and not caring what anyone thinks about it.
Sadly Boutique Punkt's run has ended, but don't fret. Another show is already in its place. The invitation for the opening of NOIR was most alluring. It read
Contempler la noirceur sous toutes ses formes, les créateurs, avec humeur ou humour, ont empli Punkt de leurs idées noires :images, objets et autres. La vie l'hiver ce n'est pas toujours rose, mais ne vous faites pas de bile: Punkt connaît la couleur de votre mélancolie.I'm intrigued by the concept and given that the month of January has got me scrounging in the pantry of my soul, I think this show might just fit my mood.
