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January 14 - February 26, 2011
Battat Contemporary: A Plaid Scarf and Baby Bjorn Affair of Strange Sensations
By Meaghan Thurston
Art writer to Gallery Coordinator: "Est-ce que je peux prendre des photos ici?"And so my night began at Battat Contemporary. With my writing deadline looming, I took a hint from the Hour's 'hit list,' made an early dinner, and set off in my parka to the almost two-year-old contemporary art gallery. The Hour's plug promised me "a world of strange sensation" at the vernissage for artist Beth Stuart's exhibition, Two Sticks in a Shed, or Deux Batons Dans un Shed (not quite as snappy in translation, non?). Though I hadn't heard of Beth Stuart, or the gallery before. Neither has it seemed have a large number of Montreal's gallery goers. That's not to say the place wasn't packed — it was — but seeing as how the gallery is located in the obscurity of a north of Jean-Talon side street, the unofficial dress code at Battat Contemporary was notably less 'hipster' than expected. I'd describe it instead as a "plaid scarf and baby bjorn affair." So many babies in the audience! So many modern dads in plaid scarves! Right off the bat, this took me off-guard. If I'd known, I imagine I could have rustled up at least one of these 'Battat staples' (a scarf, a baby, a dad). Alas, I stumbled around the room with the handy exhibit map in hand, soon realizing I had my sweater on backwards while struggling to keep the camera I had around my neck from swinging dangerously at my glass of wine, which was I might add dutifully refilled by handsome bowing waiters (score one point for Battat Contemporary).
Gallery Coordinator to Art Writer: "Yes, you can speak English."
Art Writer: "Um..."
Gallery Coordinator: "Ok, you can take photos, but not of me."
Beth Stuart is a Toronto-based artist with a BFA from Concordia and a MFA from the University of Guelph. Ms. Stuart cites both proto-feminist discourse around the predominantly abstract work of female artists in the 1960s and the "interrupted illusions" of the surrealist painters of the 1920s as major influences to her work. She describes her Two Sticks work as "circling around the sensation of joinings; clasped palms, cigarettes cupped between the lips, fabric bunched in a crevice". The University of Guelph's line is that her paintings "may be misinterpreted as abstraction. Having recently transitioned from image-based figurative painting, Ms. Stuart's new work occupies a place between the formed and the formless, the fragmented and the whole"[1]. What they're not telling you is that apparently in some of Ms. Stuart's earlier work she interprets childhood photographs in painting, transforming her subjects into vampires. The more stuff I hear like that about this artist, the more I like her.
I'm not interested particularly to go on about whether the Two Sticks stuff is abstract or not because I thought it was. I can say that the work is "evocative." Evocative, specifically, of the kind of dreams and nightmares you might have after dental surgery. By that I mean that while each piece makes you feel that you know what you see in your Tylenol 3 influenced mind's eye is somehow familiar, its true form is concealed.
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| DADODADODADO, 2010, 20" × 24"; oil on plastered linen on panel. Photo Meaghan Thurston |
My favorite piece in the show was undoubtedly DADODADODADO. From the first glance, I got it in my head that this one depicts two birds kissing. Looking again I see other ideas emerge: two eyes look out from Rapunzel's hair; a life form emerges from an autumnal landscape. I also found myself staring at Twist or Wale for what might have seemed to others as an awkwardly long time. Is it a bum? A woman's tightly squeezed cleavage? A baby wrapped in a babushka?
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| Twist or Wale, 20" × 16"; oil, acrylic on plastered linen on panel. Photo Meaghan Thurston |
Ms. Stuart uses an interesting technique of covering the canvas with plaster before painting, so the works are thick and stand out from the wall. Happily, they reminded me of the fake "pyramid stones" hawked by young men in markets in Egypt, which are basically postcards of the pyramid's facade glued to pieces of concrete (it's wondrous what can be sold to a tourist).
The lone sculpture in the room also got lots of attention. Ms. Stuart is interested in braided textiles and woven structures and she's made a fine piece from this fascination. Like her paintings the sculpture is mysterious in form, seductive even. Are you not tempted to hoist the chain and peek under the 'skirt'?
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| Heddle and Reed, variable dimensions, porcelain, linen, gesso, watercolour. Photo courtesy Battat Contemporary |
After a couple of glasses of wine I got up some nerve and started talking to more people at the show. One person helped me to see why the painting First Blush is so titled. I won't tell you why as I encourage you to check it out for yourself, but thank you anonymous person for helping me to "get" the title. I asked anonymous what she liked about the work. "They're much thicker than I expected" she answered. "And I like how that by this width the paintings mirror the sculpture."
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| First Blush, 2010, 25" × 24"; oil on plastered linen on panel. Photo courtesy Battat Contemporary |
Unfortunately, the art baloney was also sliced pretty thick at this show. It was claimed in the extensive literature to be read at the front door that Ms. Stuart's work occupies "a no-man's land between subject and form" and that they are of the "abstraction-representation, figure-ground, image-object" genre, her plaster practice echoing the grand tradition of the fresco. Fresco?! Ok, I mean I guess in the sense that her work is a related painting type done on plaster there's an echo of fresco, but to call her a frescoist feels like a stretch to me. I can only guess that they were laying it on because this show had Ms. Stuart up for the 2010 RBC Canadian Painting Competition.
To surround these otherwise small, abstract, organic images with such big talk actually detracts your attention from what is good about them. To appreciate the quirkiness of the work, while at the same time digesting bulky theory didn't jive for me. For example, the show provided each visitor with a small booklet, entitled Joinery/Menuiserie, which delves (apparently) into the theoretical aspects of the works of art. Engaging three characters, Paul Klee, Marguerite Porete and Georges Batialle in the roles of reason, love and soul respectively, Ms. Stuart excerpted text from Klee's On Modern Art, Porete's The Mirror of Simple Souls, and Baitaille's Story of the Eye, to create a critical dialogue on creativity. I struggled to find the connection between the booklet and the show except that the dialogue explores a passionate relationship between woman and an image of her love (a painting). There are some passages, however, that recall the Two Sticks work by means of the sheer absurdity.
For example:
The Soul (aside to an audience): Upon my asking her what the word urinate reminded her of, she replied: terminate, the eyes with a razor, something red, the sun. And egg? A calf's eye, because the colour of the head (the calf's head) and also because the white of the egg was the white of the eye, and the yolk of the eyeball. The eye, she said, was egg-shaped.What I am getting at is that when viewing Ms. Stuart's work one should be put in the mood for a hearty spoon-full of her nonsense, with no expectations for 'higher learning'. I don't think this show should have been injected with so much theoretical venom (as per the little booklet and the show description). Rather, it's worth visiting the show simply to revel in how an image can recall at once "the white of the egg and the yolk of the eyeball." Yes Ms. Stuart's Two Sheds work is interesting because it flirts with different mediums: textile, sculpture and painting. But, they are essentially light and easy to look at and I don't need to pretend that she's developing some grandiose dialogue between subject and form to appreciate them. The paintings themselves don't demand you understand their imagery and from everything I can find about Ms. Stuart, she talks about her work with humor. For example, in a recent interview posted on the art blog LVL3 she was asked: "If you had to explain your work to a stranger, what would you say?"
"I'd say that I make paintings. And then they'd say 'of what?' and I'd say - 'exactly!' 'Oh, that one's looks like licking frozen metal!' or 'those two together look like a conversation between my libidanally challenged aunt and my randy teenage girlfriend,' I'd be getting somewhere."[2]. Whew, thanks Beth. Now we're getting somewhere.
