Parallaxe, Jonathan Plante at Galerie Division by Greg Stone

Galerie Division
1368 Greene Avenue
+1 514 938 3863

When I sit down with artist Jonathan Plante to talk about his new exhibition, we talk about a lot of things. A lot of serious things. We explore the density of European art movements. We discuss technology shifts. The dawn of motion picture. Austerity. Modernity. Perspectives. "But," Mr. Plante cuts in during our conversation, "firstly, this exhibition is a very stupid proposal." And I remember that I took this photo of myself at the gallery, and yeah, I see what he's saying.

The author

"Yeah, I designed those," he tells me. "I made them one by one. At the opening, it was beautiful to see everyone with those big glasses." I wish I had been there to see that. I really do. A swank opening of an art exhibition (in Westmount of all places) and everyone wearing a seven-year-old's robot goggles. Stupid and beautiful. Parallaxe, Mr. Plante's latest exhibit at Galerie Division, was excellent at this kind of juxtaposition; where, stuck to the wall, the serene and the absurd hold hands and watch you react.

Jonathan Plante is a young, Montreal-based artist who has studied mainly here at Concordia, and at De Ateliersin Amsterdam. He's shown at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal. He's soft-spoken but enthusiastic about what he does, and articulate about it as well. Parallaxe was shown during the month of February at Galerie Division.

In this exhibition, Mr. Plante's work primarily explores anaglyphs, you know where an image is doubled, layered over itself and shifted slightly, one red and one blue. And, when seen through a pair of red-and-blue glasses, it creates a three dimensional effect on a two dimensional object. You know it. It's sprinkled throughout your childhood like dandelions. In his series titled Famille De Stijl, Mr. Plante uses this ageing but modern medium to present 19th-century portraits. Portraits that just fell into his hands. But, I'll just let him tell the story:

While I was in Amsterdam, I was taking photos outside one day, and there was a woman who saw me taking photos. I don't know how she deduced that I was not a tourist, but she did. And she said, "Are you a photographer," and I said yeah, and she said, I have something to show you. So I followed her and she showed me some photos that she kept from her roommate that died, and they were huge photographs of 19th century portraits, like family portraits. So I thought it was amazing, and we talked a bit, and she said, if you can do something with these, take them. A total stranger.

So take them he did.

Practically, an anaglyph is a very technical object. The two images have to be identical, the lines perfect, the shift precise, to create the most effective three dimensional experience. As you might expect, a computer does the trick nicely. Mr. Plante, on the other hand, uses watercolour. "I started doing these portraits in red and blue in pastels, and it was working. I love this weird thing between the technology and the medium, and the representation of the technology by a traditional medium, and I switched to watercolour because it was even more absurd because watercolour is the most subjective thing, so the two over-lapping portraits are obviously very different." The effect is surreal. When you look at the portraits with red-blue glasses, you certainly don't get the standard three dimensional effect, but a more subtle, skewed, hesitant three dimensional effect (sometimes wearing the glasses upside-down is more convincing). It's ghostly. Which is perfect because Mr. Plante is trying to show how subjective technology can be. He wants to suggest that precision can often be more misleading than uncertainty. That sometimes, the more information you've got in your pocket, the harder it is to find your keys. "If I wanted the three dimensional effect to work, I would have never done it with watercolour. I would have done it with Photoshop, or with photos. This is the most stupid and absurd way to do 3D. Obviously with watercolour it doesn't work, but just enough to know that it does, and it doesn't."

Composition 2 (Famille De Stijl) Watercolour on paper, 24" x 18" 2010. Image courtesy Galerie Division

In calling this series Famille De Stijl, Mr. Plante is referencing the early 20th-century Dutch art movement De Stijl, where the artist takes a subject and removes all the information you need to understand it, resulting in basic primary colours and immensely simplified composition. Mr. Plante did the same thing with these portraits. He stripped them of colour and form and this, argues Mr. Plante, ultimately creates a more substantial rapport between the portraits and the observers. "An abstraction is always something you relate to in time, and at the end, there is an identity to it, you relate to it. And I find the same thing with these portraits. You don't know the person, but with time you relate to the portrait, you create a relationship with that figure. The figure becomes something personal."

Composition 6 (Famille De Stijl) Watercolour on paper, 24" x 18" 2010. Image courtesy Galerie Division

But Parallaxe is more than just these resurrected portraits. Much more. There's Open Widow, a video Mr. Plante put together that is thick in historical art context. In the video, also done using anaglyphs, Mr. Plante himself approaches Marcel Duchamp's masterpiece The Large Glass and opens the window. Mr. Plante explains to me that this gesture was meant to "air out modernity," to allow a new perspective on a definitive modern sculpture. The anaglyph provides a nice tweak on the piece as well. The title refers to sexual aspect of the piece. I won't get into it too much, but the top half of Duchamp's masterpiece houses a lonely bride, the bottom half her nine bachelors. Duchamp left them separated for all of time, until Mr. Plante decided that the window needed to be opened and the bride reunited with her bachelors. It's a declaration of a video; a bold anthemic gesture.

Still from Open Widow Animation Video Edition of 3, 2010. Image courtesy of Galerie Division

And then there’s the one that grew on me. Titled, A Rose is a Rose is a Rose, this sculpture is literally sitting on the floor of the gallery, like it's growing there. Mr. Plante did this sculpture using anaglyphs too, offsetting the blue and red rose. So, ahem, it's a three dimensional sculpture in 3D. You don't get much more absurd than that. Once I realized that, the piece gained massive points with me. And Mr. Plante's explanation helped too. The red rose is obviously a symbol for love. The blue rose, on the other hand, doesn't exist naturally. You have to use dyes or genetic modification to get a blue rose. In other words, it's technology. Or virtuality. It's "unachievable and achievable at the same time," as he puts it.

A Rose Is A Rose
Is A Rose Pigmented clay 28" x 10" x 8" 2010. Image courtesy Galerie Division

Another excellent piece in Parallaxe is Palindrome, a short (quite possibly, endless) video loop of a simple horse running. The piece has its roots in the fabled 19th-century debate over whether or not a horse's feet leave the ground when it's running. Leland Stanford took it upon himself to prove, using then-current photography techniques, that yes, all hooves are off the ground at one point. The discovery did much more than just answer this question; it may have invented motion-pictures. The video Mr. Plante created, using scotch tape, reflects on this story. He took the basic image of the running horse, and reversed the legs. So the body goes one way while the legs go the opposite. "At first it was very scientific. It had nothing to do with art." If Mr. Plante can't contextualize art historically, no one can. "Stanford was deconstructing the movement of the horse. He was trying to get the true, exact movement. As for me, I'm trying to do the opposite. I'm trying to not deconstruct, but reconstruct it... So basically I'm doing an animation with the image that he did, but instead of being scientific and true, I am trying to bring it to total subjectivity... And it's very subtle, but what it says about technology and progress is that it's a moving image, but it's still." Right, a palindrome. Technology can go forwards or backwards, but in the end, you end up right where you began. It's a demanding but poignant critique of progression as static. That technology is basically an oxymoron.

Parallaxe basically refers to vision and perspective. It means the shift of the position of the observer in relation to the thing being observed, which creates a shifting perspective and a shifting vision. It's downright scientific; early astronomy relied on it and it's integral to technology like microscopes, binoculars and computer screens. But, just like the running horse, Mr. Plante plucks this idea from the tree of science and bakes an art-pie with it. "Vision itself is parallax because we have two eyes, we see in stereo. And we have approximately 6 cm between our eyes, which means that our eyes never see the same thing. We have two different images but the brain makes one image. For me, Parallaxe is the space between, the space between the two images, the blue and the red, and the shift that exists. And of course the shift between what you see and what you understand in reality." Parallaxe is an excellently thoughtful exhibit, full of context and humour. If its intent was to shift perspectives on the technologies we rely on for information, then well done Mr. Plante. If its intent was to make me look stupid in upside-down space goggles, it did that. If it was intended to make me laugh, it did that too.

Corps Étranger, Sarah Garzoni, Galerie Art Mûr Part Two: Revenge of the Taxidermist By Greg Stone

Art Mûr
5826 rue St-Hubert
+1 514 933 0711
January 8th to February 26th

As sure as the tides will change, Sarah Garzoni, artist and taxidermist of the exhibition Corps Étranger, now showing at Galerie Art Mûr, responded to my email an hour after my review of her show was published. So, Part 2: Revenge of the Taxidermist. And since I did all of the talking in Part 1, I'm going to let Ms. Garzoni take the reins on this one: We conducted it in French but I translated it since all of what has been written here has been in English. (However since I am not a professional translator, I have left the French version here for you to read as well – if anyone has a better translation, please let me know.)

Greg Stone: Why did you become interested in taxidermy as an art form?
Comment, pourquoi t'es-tu intéressée à l'art de la taxidermie?

Sarah Garzoni: In general, my work questions the relationships that we have with animals. I think there are a few fields where humans behave paradoxically. I always ask, by what means, throughout history and different cultures, can animals become a god, or even how a simple piece of raw material becomes a functional object, like a leather jacket? By what psychological processes, what criteria, decides whether an animal will become a companion, or will end up on our dinner plates? Since the beginning of time, we have used animal skins, animal fat, flesh, horns, scales and secretions... to produce fragrances (musk, amber)... jewelery, dyes, food... deconstructed, transformed, aestheticized the idea of the living animal out of our minds so that the idea of the animal itself becomes a very abstract concept because of our conventions. Cigarette papers, photographic film, candies made from gelatin... applications and animal derivatives are ubiquitous in our daily lives, and appear well anchored in our habits. Using taxidermy to give these animals their original forms, in effect, industrializing the animal, turns that concept [of the abstract animal] on itself. Taxidermy is an in-between, a transitional equilibrium point where the animal, motionless, has both cultural codes (related to the reification of the animal), and a return to its status of being alive.

For example, in Masquerade (2005), the fur coat becomes the animal itself, since all the elements that allow for identification (head, ears ...) were kept. It's the same for Boudoir (2008): The failure to eliminate certain parts of the animal causes a feeling of discomfort, which emerges from the ambivalence. This principle is based on a Kafkaesque metamorphosis, similar to a hallucination in which objects become incarnate and come to life.

D'une manière générale, mon travail interroge les rapports que l'on entretient avec l'animal. Je pense que rares sont les domaines où le comportement de l'homme parait aussi paradoxal : Je me demande toujours quels sont les mécanismes qui, à travers l'histoire ou les différentes cultures, vont mener l'animal au rang d'un dieu, ou bien d'une simple matière première qui deviendra un objet fonctionnel comme une veste de cuir? Par quel processus psychique, sur quels critères, choisie t-on de faire qu'un animal deviendra un compagnon ou finira dans notre assiette? De tous temps, on a utilisé sa peau, ses graisses, sa chair, ses cornes, ses écailles ses sécrétions... pour produire des parfums (musc, ambre...), des bijoux, des colorants, des aliments… Ainsi, déstructuré, transformé, esthetisé, la trace du vivant est très loin de nos esprits, et l'idée de l'animal devient alors une notion bien abstraite au vue de nos habitudes. Papiers de cigarettes, pellicules photos, bonbons de gélatine... les applications et dérivés d'origines animales inscrits en filigranes dans notre quotidien sont omniprésents, et semblent bien ancrés dans nos moeurs. En redonnant leurs formes originelles à ces animaux grâce à la taxidermie, le processus qui va de l'animal vers l'objet dans l'industrialisation, se retourne ici sur lui-même. Il s'agit d'un entre-deux, d'un point d'équilibre transitoire où l'animal, figé, présente à la fois des codes culturels (liés à sa réification), et un retour à son statut d'être vivant.

Par exemple, dans Mascarade (2005), le manteau de fourrure redevient l'animal lui même, puisque tous les éléments qui permet de l'identifier (tête, oreilles…) ont été conservés. Il en va de même pour Boudoir (2008) : Le fait de ne pas éliminer certaines parties de l'animal, provoque un sentiment de gêne, une inquiétante étrangeté, qui se dégage de ces ambivalences. Ce principe est basé sur une métamorphose Kafkaïenne, de l'ordre de l'hallucination, dans lequel les objets s'incarneraient, reprendraient vie.

GS: In general, how did you obtain the animals used in Corps Étranger?
En general, comment as-tu obtenu les animaux que tu as utilise pour Corps étranger?

SG: For the most part, the animals for Corps Étranger were carefully selected from farms, just as we choose bacon. It was part of the process. It would have been ambiguous for me to use only the leftovers from the food industry. I wanted to go through with my reasoning, remain consistent. My goal is obviously not to offend, or to look like some moralist, but simply to raise questions.

Pour la plupart, les animaux pour Corps Etranger ont été consciencieusement choisis dans des élevages, exactement comme l'on choisirai du bacon, cela faisait partie de la démarche. Il aurait été ambiguë de ma part de n'utiliser que des restes de l'industrie alimentaire. Je voulais aller jusqu'au bout de mon raisonnement, rester cohérente. Mon but n'est évidement pas de choquer, ou de porter un regard moraliste sur certaines pratiques mais simplement de susciter des questionnements.

GS: Have you received any messages or comments from animal rights groups?
As-tu reçu des messages ou commentaires des groupes des droits des animaux?

SG: No, not yet. However, I have had 'skin deep' reactions. Notably during a school tour at one of my shows: a father was very shocked that we exposed this kind of thing to children. Although I find some TV programs or images you see on the internet much more violent, I think his reaction was very interesting: No one is shocked at the sight of a leather armchair, but if it still has the head of the animal, it is scandalous, indecent... On the other hand, since taxidermy is a treated skin and "tanned," and covers a certain volume, mimicking an animal form (although now often made of polyurethane), then what about wearing a leather or fur coat? Couldn't we then be considered a kind of "walking piece of taxidermy?"

But more importantly, what about the numbers killed industrially? Which for the most part is hidden from society. They kill nearly a billion animals annually in France alone.² Should we also hide McDonald's Restaurants from children out of fear that they might figure out the changes that their hamburger went through to become a hamburger? But again, animal sacrifice seems more legitimate, more "natural." Yet, as Jacques Derrida reminds us: "the consumption of meat has never been a biological necessity. We do not eat meat simply because you need protein - protein can be found elsewhere. It is the consumption of the animal, as in the death penalty elsewhere, that is a sacrificial structure, and therefore there is something "cultural" associated with archaic structures that persist which we must analyze.³

Which is more important, creating functional objects or just creating?

It is precisely this kind of problem that interests me. Just like Jean-Baptiste Jeangène Vilmer wrote, for whom 'art reveals, reveals a suffering already existing, it shows what we prefer forcing, in our everyday moral schizophrenia'.¹ For him traditional taxidermy is a "trauma," a subversive taxidermy, through its staging confronts the viewer with a reality which has been carefully hidden, it plays the role of revealer.

Non, jamais pour l'instant. En revanche j'ai eu des réactions "très épidermiques". Notamment à l'occasion d'une visite guidée d'une école lors d'une de mes expositions : Un père à été très choqué que l'on fasse visiter ce genre d'expositions à des enfants. Bien que je trouve beaucoup plus violents certains programmes TV, ou images véhiculées par le net, je pense que cette réaction est très intéressante : Si nul n'est choqué à la vue d'un fauteuil de cuir, en revanche, si celui-ci présente encore la tête de l'animal, cela est scandaleux, indécent… D'autre part, en partant du postulat qu'une taxidermie est une peau traitée et "tannée", qui recouvre un certain volume, imitant une forme animale (bien souvent aujourd'hui en mousse polyuréthane), que dire alors du fait de porter un manteau de cuir ou de fourrure : Ne serions nous donc, finalement, pas si loin de sortes de "taxidermies ambulantes"?

Mais surtout, que penser de la cadence industrielle, qui loin de nos yeux, abat près d'un milliard d'animaux par an et ce rien qu'en France?² Faudrait-il aussi cacher aux enfants tous les Mac Donald's, de peur qu'ils ne devinent tout le chemin qu'il a fallut à leur hamburger pour qu'il ne devienne hamburger… Mais là encore, le sacrifice animal parait plus légitime, plus "naturel". Pourtant, comme nous le rappelle Jacques Derrida : "la consommation de la viande n'a jamais été une nécessité biologique. On ne mange pas de la viande simplement parce qu'on a besoin de protéines — et les protéines peuvent être trouvées ailleurs. Il y a dans la consommation de l'animal, comme dans la peine de mort d'ailleurs, une structure sacrificielle, et donc un phénomène « culturel » lié à des structures archaïques qui persistent et qu'il faut analyser.³

L'art du palais serait il plus important que l'art de créer?

C'est précisément ce genre de problématique qui m'intéresse. Cela rejoint le propos de Jean- Baptiste Jeangène Vilmer pour qui, " l'art dévoile, révèle une souffrance déjà existante, il montre ce que l'on préfère refouler, dans notre schizophrénie morale quotidienne".¹ Pour lui, alors que la taxidermie traditionnelle efface le "trauma", la "taxidermie sabotée " (botched texidermy), à travers la mise en scène, confronte le spectateur à la réalité, à ce qui a été jusqu'ici soigneusement caché. Il joue donc le rôle d'un révélateur.

GS: Will you continue to use taxidermy as an artistic medium?
Est-ce que tu vas continuer à utiliser la taxidermie comme un médium artistique?

SG: Not necessarily, I would not want to fall into a routine. Taxidermy has proved to be the form that has best served my purpose, but I think there are many mediums that could allow me to fulfil my artistic process. I think for example as tools, scientific devices are not so far from my thoughts.

Pas nécessairement, je ne voudrai pas tomber dans une sorte de recette. Ici la taxidermie s'est avérée être la forme qui servait au mieux mon propos, mais je pense qu'il y a beaucoup de médiums qui pourraient me permettre de nourrir ma démarche. Je pense par exemple à des outils, des dispositifs scientifiques qui finalement ne sont pas si loin de mes préoccupations.

Footnotes:
1 Jean-Baptiste Jeangène Vilmer : Animaux dans l'art contemporain : La question éthique Jeu. Revue de théâtre, Mars 2009
2 Florence Burgat, l'Animal dans les pratiques de consommation
3 Jacques Derrida, l'Animal que donc je suis

Corps Étranger, Sarah Garzoni, Galerie Art Mûr By Greg Stone

Art Mûr
5826 rue St-Hubert
+1 514 933 0711
January 8th to February 26th

When I walk into the exhibit room for Corps Étranger at Galerie Art Mûr, I get the sensation that I'm seeing something I'm not supposed to see; that I found this place by accident and that if anyone found out I'd been here, they'd want an explanation. It's located at the very back of the gallery, after three other rooms full of unassuming paintings and photographs, right beside the freight elevator. So, because of this and mainly because of the content, I feel like I've stumbled into some mad-genius' attic full of botched experiments. Or remember the scene from Beauty and the Beast where Belle, ignoring the strong advice of the clock and the candlestick holder, tiptoes into the west wing of the Beast's castle and finds the enchanted rose? OK, I'm stretching it with that analogy, but really, this exhibit is riské. There's a tension in the room that could be finely sliced, but a personal curiosity that spreads like mayonnaise. I mean, it's taxidermy art.

The day I went to go see the exhibit at Galerie Art Mûr at 5826, Rue Saint-Hubert was the biggest blizzard the city had seen this year, so I bundled up and headed out (wait, didn't Belle brace a similar snow storm to get to the castle in the first place? Ok, ok, I'll drop it). When I get to Art Mûr, it provides the shelter from the storm I'm looking for. Well-lit with track lighting and staffy smiles, I chat quickly with an employee and no, the artist, Sarah Garzoni is no longer in Montreal. She's from Paris and went back last week but I can try to email her. I did try, but never heard back. Unfortunately. I had and have so many questions for her. But I did learn a couple things about her. I know that she is a visual artist who focuses on taxidermy and a connection between the human world and the natural world. Like I said, she's French, and she's young, only 29. Her website says that she has only been exhibiting since 2005. She studied art, mostly in Paris, but, there is a Canada connection; she also studied at OCAD in Toronto in 2007.

Corps Étranger isn't a big exhibition. In all, there are only 11 or so pieces. But it feels way bigger than that. It feels downright expansive. The first piece that got my attention, and will likely get yours, is the pig in the middle of the room. Taxidermied in mid-trot and titled Boudoir, this pig has gotten Ms. Garzoni a lot of attention, not just because it's so nicely stuffed, but because it's upholstered like a chesterfield. Ms. Garzoni punched buttons into its sides and back and connected them with seams. And it's shocking. Obviously, there's the statement about people making couches out of animal skins. For sure that's there. But the title is also revealing. A boudoir is a woman's bedroom and the word comes from the French verb bouder, to sulk. There are indications that Ms. Garzoni is targeting the human neurosis here. That people's own egos blind them from their habits and from ideas like the only difference between a stuffed, upholstered pig and a stuffed, upholstered leather couch is its form.

Boudoir by Sarah Garzoni, Taxidermied Pig 110 x 61 x 31 cm, 2008 Photo Greg Stone

Mascarade by Sarah Garzoni Taxidermied Chicken, Rabbit 62 x 24,5 x 29 cm, 2005 Photo Greg Stone

If Boudoir isn't the first piece you're drawn to, then it will likely be Mascarade. The tag on the wall lists the materials used to create it: a chicken, a rabbit, taxidermy materials, zipper. Ms. Garzoni took a rabbit, skinned it and put a zipper on it to make a tiny fur coat. Then she took a chicken, plucked it and taxidermied it to stand upright, and fitted it with the rabbit coat. It's Orwellian to an uncomfortable degree. And again, there's the obvious message about the de-naturalization of animals, and the ethics of fur but there's also this bigger question of neurosis. Fashion and clothing are things that cover us over. They can let you smother yourself with color and form. Not that this chicken is having neurosis problems, but there's no doubt that fashion, ego, and compulsion are becoming themes here.

Another focal point of this exhibit is Narcisse. Hommage à Isodore et Charles D. Using a taxidermied peacock grafted to a sewing machine, it presents the peacock sewing its own brilliant tail feathers. I really like this one a lot. In some ways, it's her most cynical piece. And it's just a really, really beautiful metaphor, both in how it literally looks and in how well the metaphor works. Narcissism. Proud as a peacock. It's almost mythological in nature; a peacock so in love with itself that it's punished to sew its own tail for eternity.

Narcisse. Hommage à Isodore et Charles D. by Sarah Garzoni, Sewing machine, stuffed peacocks 95 x 74 x 86 cm, 2010 Photo Greg Stone

Breaching by Sarah Garzoni, 19th century corset, plaster, wax, shark teeth, 2010 Photo Greg Stone

Another excellent piece is Breaching, a plastered corset lined with shark teeth on the inside. OK, I'm starting to hit you over the head with this narcissism thing, but I do really like how Ms. Garzoni uses animals to connect the gap between egos and the means of fulfilling them. And they can be judgmental, these animals. Like these shark teeth, the more you bite into your ego, the more these teeth bite back. And Boudoir, the pig. You can barely look him in the eyes. There's a lot of gravity involved with these pieces. Like I said, this exhibit's only 11 pieces, but it's dense.

Honourable mentions need to go out to a few other pieces. Mimésis, for example, is an assortment of real butterflies that Ms. Garzoni took, printed images onto their wings, and pinned them to a board. The images are usually corporate logos; there's a glimmering blue butterfly with the Playboy bunny logo on the tip of either wing, for example. Or the one with the Nike swoosh. Really great idea here, but maybe a little over-the-top, especially the one with the barcode. Rhéa is another beautifully delicate one. It's a stick-bug planted in a little flower pot like a tree with extra arms grafted on, and green-painted wings attached as leaves. The cherry for this one is the glass case it's under; a statement about ownership and human influence. And Homo-Faber, a Victorinox Swiss Army Brand Knife^© with sterling silver insect parts for tools, acts in a similar manner.

Homo-Faber by Sarah Garzoni, Silver Casting, 16 x 12,5 x 2 cm, 2006 Photo Greg Stone

Some people might say about this exhibit, 'Hey! Whadda? Where's PETA on this one? Where are all the animal rights activists?' And if they did say that, they would be wrong. They would be wrong because they didn't understand Ms. Garzoni's message. Because if this exhibit doesn't send a strong message about the proper treatment of animals, about the human exploitation of creatures, of the de-naturalization of animals, then I don't know what would. I once had a friend with a very big brain who, when we got on the topic of art, would say that the best thing that could happen to the Mona Lisa, and to art in general, would be for someone to walk into the Louvre, take the Mona Lisa by the frame and smash it. Of course, I thought he was full of shit. But I heard him out. He went on to say that when people go to see the Mona Lisa, they are certainly moved by it; that it elicits some emotions in them. But to what degree? Are people so moved by the Mona Lisa that they fall in love with art and are thus compelled to preserve all art forms? No, probably not. Are people really that stunned? I know that when I went to see Leonardo's masterpiece in Paris, I was underwhelmed. So, argues my friend, someone smashes it and the world erupts in response. Suddenly everybody and their dog feels more strongly about art than ever before. Stronger measures are put into place to protect our remaining masterpieces, and, more importantly, the Mona Lisa evokes the degree of emotion that its hype suggests (though a different type of emotion). I'm still not sure I agree with my friend. I mean, it's a pretty extreme example and a difficult idea to get on board with. However, you can't help but see this in Ms. Garzoni's work. Though instead of art being the beneficiary, she's doing it for animal rights. Actually, I don't want to say animal rights. That sounds too specific and wrong. She's doing it to show the complete lack of respect we have for anything non-human. And so when Ms. Garzoni upholsters a pig, she's destroying it. She's putting it in the last state we want to see it in. And when she prints corporate logos onto the wings of a butterfly, she's obliterating everything natural about them. Call it shock value if you want, but what she's doing is rattling raw emotion out of people, which happens too rarely in the art world. Or if it isn't rare, there are rarely artists who do it so powerfully, beautifully and poignantly as Ms. Garzoni has done with Corps Étranger.

Corps Étranger is on now at Galerie Art Mûr until February 26th. You should go see it.

Awkward Moments, Daryl Vocat at Maison Kasini By Greg Stone

Maison Kasini
372 Ste. Catherine West, #408
+1 514 448 4723

By Greg Stone

Based out of Toronto's Open Studio, Daryl Vocat is a native of Regina, where he completed his BFA, and with the move to Toronto came his Master's degree in Fine Art at York University. He has had solo exhibitions across the country, from Vancouver to St. John’s, and his works have been acquired by the likes of the National Gallery of Canada Library and Archives, the City of Toronto Fine Arts collection, and the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop in New York. Mr. Vocat works mainly in the screen-printing medium.

Installation view, Awkward Moments, Maison Kasini. Photo by Greg Stone

At first glance, the collection at Maison Kasini is very simple and approachable. Warning, reader, this is not actually the case. Not at all. There are much larger forces at play here. When you walk into the gallery, the collection creates an immediately simple impression on you. The colors are few and bold; solid crayola colors for backgrounds and off-primary colours to fill in the content, and the lack of shadowing makes it all the more bright. The borders and lines are thick and black; I can`t help but be reminded of my old comic book collection. The subjects are adorably kooky; a vulture wearing a pair of thick-rimmed glasses, an unimpressed cat wearing a medical lampshade (while sitting on a LEOPARD PRINT COUCH!!!), ironic bathroom graffiti, and images from old boyscout manuals. Even the way the pictures are hung fercrissakes; no frames to speak of, and the prints all pinned to the wall using thumb tacks and paper clips. Everything about this exhibit is so accessible. A child would love it just for the aesthetics of it. A teenager would love it for its off-balanced humour. Seniors would love it for its youth. But before you know it, the fog starts burning off and Vocat's real messages start to shine through. Often, it comes from the titles. Often, after a little bit more reflection. I'll give you one example here, and get into it more later on. One of my favourites from this collection is an image of a reclined man sleeping. There`s a vulture standing on his chest wearing a pair of thick-rimmed glasses, which it just stole from the sleeping man. Haha. That's pretty funny, a bird wearing glasses. And the man, he's so comically vulnerable. Nice bright colors, too. And then the plaque on the wall revels that this piece is called Dear Mother, Centre of My Neurosis, Never Abandon Me. Now, that's a bit of a bomb to be dropping on this deceptively simple picture, right? Suddenly, it's not so funny. Suddenly, you start thinking about Freud, and your own relationship with your mother, and about your anxieties, and how all this relates to Vocat's screenprint. See what I'm talking about? The entire collection is tricky like that. You're drawn to the pretty, bright colours, and then you come to a screeching halt. In a really good, genuine, substantial way.

Dear Mother, Centre of My Neurosis, Never Abandon Me

First of all, I`d like to tip my hat to Maison Kasini for being an excellently eccentric house of art. While they are definitely a gallery, the place also is a a really cool art shop where you can find cheap, off-the-wall art including everything from t-shirts to individually-packaged ceramic teeth. Definitely worth checking it out, if you haven't already. As such, it also acts as an ideal location for Awkward Moments. The prints fit in seamlessly among all the other eye-candy housed here.

The first 6 prints are from Mr. Vocat's Practical Associations series, and when I phone him up in Toronto, he explains to me that it's all about communication. Mainly the communication that exists in our relationships with one another, and the communication that exists between yourself and cultural influences. "I was just thinking about relationships in a broad continuum," Mr. Vocat says. "And a lot of these cultural references I use are personal, and I do hope that others get them. But I don't think that’s so important. It's more about what we know and what we don’t know." The cultural influences thing I pick up right away. Mr. Vocat uses various cultural references in these prints which help to orientate the audience. And he keeps a pretty open mind about these references, as they range from Spider-Man to Charlotte Perkins Gilman. His piece, for example, titled A Gift From Araby is a reference to James Joyce's short story of a young man struggling with his sexual development. The print shows a man (likely Mr. Vocat; the entire exhibit has numerous self-portraits) gazing into the heavens, contemplating a wedding cake. The idea behind the print is there, but when Joyce's story becomes an extension of the print, the image takes on new meaning and starts shouting messages of socially-determined families and sexual identity.

A Gift From Araby

Another excellent print here is Summary of an Epiphany, which shows a bathroom wall inscribed with ironic, contradictory graffiti about love and sex. Again, Mr. Vocat is playing with the idea of how we confront each other, and in what medium.

Summary of an Epiphany

OK, let's talk about animals for a bit. How do you feel about them? Do you feel profoundly connected to them, or do you see them and think 'I have no idea what you are nor what you’re thinking?' Mr. Vocat has clearly been thinking about things like this, and it shows in his next set of prints, 12 in total, from his The Translator's Conundrum collection from 2006/2007. I really, really liked this part of the exhibit. "Part of the thinking here is of the 'other,' whatever that may be. Animals are a good way to talk about 'otherness.'" These prints explore, in part, how animals can help people articulate and define 'sameness' and 'otherness.' Mr. Vocat mixes the natural world with domestic settings to show the complexities of their relationship. "Animal imagery is often poetic or symbolic. Like the cat videos on YouTube. I'm looking at what we know, what we try to know, and what we construct." The humour used in this section is inviting to say the least. It's adorably humorous, while still staying true to Mr. Vocat's message. One of my faves is We Still Love You Even Though You Eat Poo, a heart-warming print of a heavy-eyed Dalmatian lounging in an over-the-top picture frame. Funny? Yes, very. But more importantly, the image explores human ideals of love and compassion, and that old habit we humans have of imposing these ideals on other things, like animals.

We Still Love You Even Though You Eat Poo

Mr. Vocat is a wizard at attracting the audience's attention with simple, funny pictures and revealing titles, and then getting them to stay for the meat and potatoes.

And there are other huge ideas behind this part of the collection apart from this animal thing. It's also about sending and receiving information in a social context, and sending and receiving that information through art. And then how that art is interpreted by the 'translator' (hence the puzzling title). The print Hoping This Will Wash Off addresses exactly that. It's an image of a tattoo on someone's back of a family portrait pinned to their back with a dagger. The tattoo's a form of art that's sending a very strong message, and it's up to the audience of this tattoo to translate it.

Hoping This Will Wash Off

I'm getting the impression that Mr. Vocat is showing his audience that translation of this kind is not only necessary for people to do, but it’s a fundamental human habit.

The third and final section of the exhibit is prints pulled from Mr. Vocat's Rules of the Playground collection. Again, a group of brightly colourful screenprints. But for this collection, instead of creating his own images, Mr. Vocat took images that already exist and stylized them to his liking. The prints are all composed of two images layered over top of each other on a solid-coloured background and the subject matter is also fairly consistent; the images are usually some kind of sport taking place, layered with images from instructional manuals... instructional manuals like first aid books and the boy scouts manuals. "All the images are found. I didn't draw any of them," says Mr. Vocat. I'm hoping to get some more insight into this particular section. But the instructional manuals are throwing me off. "The prints here are representations of the world seen in a skewed way. And there are bits of reality in these. In a way, I'm looking for truth in stereotypes, or looking for intimate moments that aren't there." Ok, I'm catching on. Mr. Vocat explains to me that he wanted to question how stereotypes of masculinity are portrayed in the media, and to set up a challenge to those stereotypes. He explains how there is a lot that's said and a lot that's not said about masculinity, so he's trying to let that gap speak for itself. So when I look at Communicate Using a Secret Code, for example, and I see the image of two men wrestling juxtaposed with the image from a first aid book on how to make a sling for a broken arm, I'm starting to see the intimacy involved. It's definitely an intimacy I wouldn't usually pick up on, but Mr. Vocat makes the idea very approachable. Very plausible.

Communicate Using a Secret Code

And that's it. That's the genius of his work, of his style. It's so innocently persuasive that it seems like he could make you believe anything. And it's so approachable that you want to believe it, whatever it is. I know I left the gallery believing what he had to say.

Installation view, Awkward Moments, Maison Kasini. Photo by Greg Stone

The show is 30 selected pieces from Daryl Vocat's three collections, Practical Associations, The Translator's Conundrum, and Rules of the Playground and is now showing at Maison Kasini, #408 in the Belgo Building at 372 Ste. Catherine Ouest until to February 5th. (All images courtesy Daryl Vocat unless otherwise noted).

Energy Field & Shuffling Around in the Shallows, Jana Winderen at Galerie B-312 By Greg Stone

Galerie B-312
372, rue Ste-Catherine O, #403
January 8 to February 5, 2011

By Greg Stone

"This one here is a type of Pollock." Jana Winderen puts her hand up to stop me from talking so she can hear the noises coming from the speakers. "Quite a powerful fish. Its hunting. You hear that RRRrrrruuu RRRrrruuuuuu sound? Yeah, they're following small fish." I’m trying to hear the hunting. Or the small fish. But I pretty much just hear moving water. But in my defense, Ms. Winderen has a bit more experience than I do with this kind of thing. Hailing from Oslo, Norway, Jana Winderen is an internationally acclaimed sound artist, producer, curator, and director whose two installations, Energy Field and Shuffling Around in the Shallows, now showing at Galerie B-312, showcase her recent underwater and sub-glacial recordings from around the world. Ms. Winderen has spent the past few years experimenting with hydrophones. microphones that are designed to pick up underwater sounds. She has collected recordings from pretty much everywhere, from rivers in Thailand to glaciers in Greenland.

Hear an excerpt from Energy Field by Jana Winderen

The space at Galerie B-312 is split into two rooms. The first room houses Energy Field. Originally intended as a record release on UK label Touch, Energy Field now exhibits as an installation piece. Nine speakers set up in a 3 x 3 square on stands at ear-level, emit sounds Ms. Winderen recorded at Norwegian fjords, glaciers on the west coast of Greenland, and in the Barents Sea north of Norway. Mounted on the far wall is a jumble of cables and processors, and a screen displaying still images of fjord ice fields. Ms. Winderen says that she doesn't like to hide anything or put things into boxes, so there is no mystery involved. For this project, Ms. Winderen's methods included dropping a microphone, attached to a long cable, down massive crevices in glaciers, recording sounds that don't exist on the surface. "I just had an idea. I really wanted to go to Greenland because I've heard about the sounds of the icebergs as they move past. So I bought a ticket and I went there with my recording equipment," she tells me in her yogurt-y Norwegian accent. "I went up to where the inland ice reaches the bay and recorded avalanches of that one, and underwater of the avalanches. It's mostly different recordings from up to 90 metres below the surface." The recording starts at the surface with the groaning of birds and dogs, and eventually reaches the depths of the glacier. The resulting sound is definitely not of this world. A very heavy reverb background noise is sparsely accented by dripping and steadily flowing water, something that sounds like crickets chirping, and, my favourite part, the creaking of the glaciers slowly rubbing against each other. There's so much tension in this noise, it's painful. It might be the best way to suggest the immensity of these enormous ice cubes. So why glaciers?

Energy Field, Jana Winderen at Galerie B-312. Photo by Greg Stone

"I wanted to work with the water cycles, and how water exists in different phases. So I went to Greenland to get the melting of the ice, and it became much more of a story of [the water] going from land through the ice, and down to the water... My main interest is the soundscapes underwater." Ms. Winderen's focus for this project was to bring to the surface (no pun intended) sounds that have never been heard before. Sounds we don't have up here. Sounds that you don’t even believe are natural. And if that is her focus, she has succeeded. But back to the hunting Pollocks.

The second, adjacent room, at the gallery houses Shuffling Around in the Shallows, an installation dedicated to the communication between underwater creatures. Like Energy Field, Shuffling Around in the Shallows focuses on the audio. Four speakers set up in a square face inwards, creating a kind of surround-sound effect. Again, a mish-mash of cables mounted on the wall. Nothing to hide here. Beside this, there is a screen showing a spectrogram which displays the frequencies of the sounds from her recordings. "Different species have different frequencies they work in, so they can always interact with each other. I'm now starting to look more into that aspect." She explains to me how animals, both underwater and on land, communicate with each other on particular frequencies. One species will choose a certain frequency so that they can communicate uninterrupted, while other species will do the same thing, but on a different frequency. This communicating helps animals with things like hunting and mating. Ok, I know this is starting to sound like a BBC documentary, but we’re getting back to the art.

One of the most interesting aspects of Ms. Winderen's work is the methods she uses to get her recordings. For example, to record the Pollocks hunting small fish, Ms. Winderen put hydrophones in the shallows of a fjord and waited for the tides to come in. The local fishermen helped her identify the species she was working with. When I describe her work like that, Ms. Winderen's art comes across almost like scientific research. In fact, marine biologists and other scientists have been involved with her work in the past. So what sets this piece of art apart from science? Ms. Winderen explains to me that there is a lot of research being done on underwater communication, but most of it deals with whales. "Not so much on fish. I didn't learn in school that fish were communicating. [I wanted] to find out how important audio is for the creatures in the ocean, and how ignorant we are of that. We're just sound polluting the ocean with both motorized boats and also with seismic testing for oil drilling. This is crucially bad for some species." She explains how by filling the oceans with sound pollution, people are interrupting the communication of these fish. Without communication, they can't mate. Without mating, fish populations decrease, and the indigenous populations that rely on these fish will eventually suffer. After hearing all of this, I listen to the installation again and it sounds totally different.

Ms. Winderen is clearly very passionate about her style of art. And she is enthusiastic to let others learn her ways. On January 10th and 11th, Ms. Winderen and Galerie B-312 held a 2-day workshop on the art of recording underwater sounds. Ms. Winderen walked 10 people through the equipment needed to record underwater, and then took them all out in a boat on the St. Lawrence river with all the recording equipment and taught everyone how to record sounds from the river. How cool is that? And it seems like Ms. Winderen was able to find some beauty in the sounds of the St. Lawrence; soon after I left her, and despite her very tight schedule, she was heading back out to the river. "Yeah, it sounded brilliant. You know I really started thinking about it, this river. I had a really solid, good recording, so I want to go back."

Whether Ms. Winderen wants it or not, her subjects connect her to the climate change debate. Take, for example, the story connected to her previous recording Noisiest Guys on the Planet, released on Touch records. Ms. Winderen was out on the coast of Norway, recording the crackling sounds of shrimp with fellow artist Chris Watson. At first, Ms. Winderen and Mr. Watson thought that the shrimp might be snapping shrimp, a species of shrimp that use a snapping sound to stun their prey, but quickly realized that snapping shrimp usually live further south, and wouldn't normally survive in the icy waters of the Norwegian coast.

"And I got this email from a journalist in Germany asking me, 'Can you confirm that snapping shrimp are moving north because of climate change?' And I never said that. I said that it can't be them making this sound because we are too far north, and they live further south."

Energy Field, Jana Winderen at Galerie B-312. Photo by Greg Stone

Despite this, the German journalist went to the Polar Institute in Norway and asked the scientists there if these snapping shrimp could exist in Norwegian waters. So, being good scientists, they did some research and found that the snapping shrimp had in fact migrated north, and that Ms. Winderen had in fact been recording this species. Climate change or not, this was a significant scientific discovery.

Like it or not, any artist working with glaciers will be automatically connected to the issue of climate change. And Ms. Winderen goes about it brilliantly. "Everybody has their eyes on Greenland at the moment. But I don’t want it to be predominantly about the climate change issues, it’s generally really about the sounds underwater that we're so ignorant about." Ms. Winderen lets her art speak for itself. Sure, it will be interpreted in connection to climate change. It was one of my first thoughts when I walked into the gallery. It prompted the German journalist to look deeper. And for Ms. Winderen, it's the perfect role for her art. "If [my work] can start somebody looking for a second time, then I feel it's really worthwhile. And I think in this way, you know, I'm very happy if my work can start this kind of process. It's wonderful."