"Body of Work" 11th Easter Art Tour, Mahon Hall, Salt Spring Island, BC, Canada (April 13-23, 2017) Exhibition curated by Anthony Matthews. Part of the 11th Annual Easter Art Tour. Artists featured in the annual event: Susan Benson, David Borrowman, Ojima Clarke, Diana Dean, Lynn Demers, Stefanie Denz, Alli Hames, Martin Herbert, Greg Klassen, Ramona Lam, John MacDonald, Bob Masse, Pat McCallum, Alanda Nay, Renee Sanden, Jeanette Sirois, Kathy Venter, Nicola Wheston, Mel Williamson, Janis Woode, O.J. Clarke.
In this blog post, I would like to explore the idea of "presence" as it is articulated in some of the works in the exhibition, which closed on April 23.
In this blog post, I would like to explore the idea of "presence" as it is articulated in some of the works in the exhibition, which closed on April 23.
"Ella" and "Curtains," Stephanie Denz; "Contemplation" and "Serenity," Lynn Demers The first body I encounter as I walk into the exhibition space is Ella's, the pre-pubescent girl depicted in Stephanie Denz's portrait of the same name (left corner). Ella exudes presence. Immersed in her own nascent sensuality, she only has eyes for herself. She is uninhibited. The two children in the painting next to her, "Curtains," also by Denz, return my gaze, eyes sparkling with curiosity. What do they know that I don't? I wonder. The wisdom of the child. Their experience of the world is pure and unmediated. Their bodies and minds are soft and malleable. Ella's body exudes a delicate sensuality, but the boy on the left has his gaze fixed on me: "I'm here," his eyes say, "I'm present. I see you too. I know." Mind and body. Childhood as the place where body and mind, the sensual and the intellectual, have yet to become separate entities.
Below, Lynn Demers's bronze head sculptures "Contemplation" and "Serenity" convey another kind of presence, a confident sense of being that emanates from their polished surfaces and perfectly symmetrical features. These are idealized representations of the body conforming to traditional canons of beauty. The children are also idealized, that's true, but their sense of self remains connected to their bodies, while Demer's sculptures symbolize a "higher" state of being beyond the body, perhaps in the Platonic realm of eternal ideas or in the superconscious state beyond the senses and the intellect— the Atman or all-encompassing consciousness of Vedanta philosophy. Transcending the body to attain a state of pure presence. Presence through absence.
Below, Lynn Demers's bronze head sculptures "Contemplation" and "Serenity" convey another kind of presence, a confident sense of being that emanates from their polished surfaces and perfectly symmetrical features. These are idealized representations of the body conforming to traditional canons of beauty. The children are also idealized, that's true, but their sense of self remains connected to their bodies, while Demer's sculptures symbolize a "higher" state of being beyond the body, perhaps in the Platonic realm of eternal ideas or in the superconscious state beyond the senses and the intellect— the Atman or all-encompassing consciousness of Vedanta philosophy. Transcending the body to attain a state of pure presence. Presence through absence.
"Teenage Girl," Renee Sanden Absence. A theme explored, from a different perspective, by Renee Sanden's plexiglass sculpture "Teenage Girl," part of her "Invisible Ones" series. Situated behind Demer's "Contemplation," this piece speaks of the anguish and emptiness of adolescence, that transitional and ambiguous space between childhood and adulthood. The joy and confidence of childhood has given way to uncertainty about the self and her place in the world. There is a void at the centre of this girl's being. She needs to be seen but does not know how to make herself visible; sometimes she hopes she could be truly invisible. The girl is still only the shadow of the adult she is to become, and yet she shines. The plexiglass confers solidity to the absent figure, giving her a hard edge and making her absence both tangible and visible. Renee Saden's "Teenage Girl" affirms Paul Klee's famous dictum about the function of art: to make visible the invisible.
"Emily," Alanda Nay Amanda Nay's underwater photograph "Emily," presents the body in confinement. I see her body as doubly bound here, first by the material she is wrapped in, and then by the water. Like a foetus inside the womb, protected yet constrained. There is something ghostly about the image, too; she reminds me of an ectoplasm— the materialization of spiritual energy that mediums conjured up in their seances— as if the body was always in process, never finished. I also think about the phantasmatic body posited by psychoanalysis, the primitive body of pure physical sensations, a kind of archaic, malleable body before the constitution of subjectivity. For Jung, "water means spirit that has become unconscious." Freud used the image of an iceberg to represent the conscious and unconscious minds, with the larger unconscious instinctual part hidden underwater. Both concepts are articulated in Nay's photo. Interestingly (and controversially), Freud referred to female sexuality as "the dark continent of psychoanalysis."(The Question of Lay Analysis, 35) Body or spirit ? Or maybe something else. A suggestive image that refuses to settle on any one interpretation. Art that pushes against its own limits.
Pencil Drawings by Martin Herbert
In contrast, Martin Herbert's delicate pencil drawings of women, located to the left of Nay's piece, bring my attention back to the present, reminding me that art is also about real people in the world. These drawings project a sense of the body at ease with its surroundings, of bodies that are comfortable in their own skin. They do not aim to transcend the moment; they are rooted in the moment. These women inhabit the present with grace and confidence. Everyday bodies, everyday situations.
 "Morning Wash," Diana Dean | At the other end of the hall, Diana Dean's "Morning Wash" reminds me that, sometimes, the spiritual can manifest itself in the most ordinary situations. With its rich red tones and grainy surface reminiscent of a Roman fresco, Dean's painting captures an intimate moment in the life of a couple (modelled on Dean herself and her husband), their morning wash. The scene is bathed in an intense light that appears to shine through the wallpaper pattern in the other room, giving it the appearance of stained glass in a church. This almost supernatural light, along with the figures' stillness, transforms an everyday scene into a sacred space that speaks of the mysteries of marriage. Despite its religious connotations, this is not a religious painting in the narrow sense of the word—it does not celebrate the Christian institution of marriage. Rather, it asks the viewer to see the ordinary as an occasion for contemplation and reflection. It tells us that we can find the sacred in the body's everyday gestures. Love's Mysteries in souls do grow But yet the body is his book. John Donne, "The Ecstasy" |
"Portraits of Older Women," Susan Benson The body as a book is a well-known metaphor. Susan Benson's beautiful portraits of old women, located in the main hall, explore the ways in which experience is engraved on our bodies. Benson's attention is focused on the face, on the way the skin folds and gathers around eyes, cheeks and mouth, its sagging contours. Asymmetry is an important theme here: traditional canons of beauty favour balance and symmetry, but as we age, we lose our balance, we become crooked. Benson wants to draw attention to these crooked moments, when the body becomes an unknown country. "This is no country for old men," Yeats laments, "An aged man is but a paltry thing." ("Sailing to Byzantium"). And for women?, Benson's paintings ask. Is age "but a paltry thing' too? Perhaps —age is unkind to all of us, but can you see these women's indomitable spirit? Their very special beauty, the joy in their eyes— also their sadness, their resignation, their acceptance. Life as it really is, here and now. Susan Benson's portraits capture these women's essence, what life is about: "Life," Virginia Woolf reminds us, "is what you see in people's eyes; life's what they learn and, having learnt it, never, though they seek to hide it, cease to be aware of—what? That life's like that, it seems." ( Virginia Woolf, "An Unwritten Novel")
"Crouching Man," Mel Williamson Just opposite, Mel Williamson's nude "Crouching Man" presents the viewer with a powerful, almost visceral, exploration of the materiality of the flesh. Williamson uses bold, dramatic painterly brushstrokes to convey the body's almost brutal physicality. I see the body in its purely physical dimension. At the same time, the figure remains bound by strict rules of proportion. There is definition in the muscles: no excess of flesh. And yet, when I look more closely at the area illuminated on the man's back, I see something forming, a new shape. Is this human skin? Or is it something radically other? The shape I see emerging has the contours of a piece of meat. I think of Francis Bacon's bodies mapping an "undecidable zone between the human and the animal." (Gilles Deleuze) The more I look at this patch of flesh, the more I notice the shape and texture of the brushstrokes, the consistency of the paint—skin as paint or paint as skin? The two blend indistinguishably. As I experience the materiality of the body, I become aware of the materiality of the paint (the material prima) its consistency: warm, oily, earthy, somewhat viscous, slightly waxy. I realize that this painting is as much about the body as it is about the process that James Elkins calls "the alchemy of substance and action," about paint itself, "its masses and colours ... and moods." (James Elkins, What Painting Is, 5) Skin, flesh, oil paint, canvas. A true "body of work". A work from the body, of the body.
"Self-Portrait of the Artist as Neil Young," John MacDonald Paint as substance, a mixture of different materials—pigment, resin, solvent and additives—applied on the canvas. Its textures and colours, lights and shadows. Hard and compact in places, soft and pliable in others. John MacDonal's "Self-Portrait of the Artist as Neil Young" is less interested in representing the body of the painter (his own body) than in dramatizing the material act of painting itself: the movements of the hand across the canvas, the smaller details, body and hand changing positions, moving to an unknown rhythm. This painting is about movement, even if the main figure is at rest—the movement of the light, of the colours, the eye, the hand, the mind ... I have to admit there is something about the explosion of colours, the faceless figure and the expressionistic brushwork that makes me uncomfortable. My eye cannot settle on the objects depicted on the canvas; as soon as I try to fix my gaze on a recognizable image or colour, they begin to disintegrate ... I am overwhelmed by an excess of paint: "Every painting captures a certain resistance of paint ... in the same moment that it captures the expression of a face." (Elkins, 2) It is the materiality of the painting, its exuberance, that disturbs me. Its resistance to my gaze. Its unavoidable presence.
Janis Woode sculptures in wrapped steel wire
In contrast, Janis Woode's twisted steel wire sculptures seem to emphasize stability, while at the same time exploring the tension between negative and positive space, delicacy of line and strength of structure, motion and stasis. Sturdy yet buoyant, these figures make me think of the metaphors we use to describe the sculpted bodies of athletes and dancers: wiry, sinewy, fibrous, ropy, stringy— all words associated with everyday materials. In fact, it is the material that keeps insinuating itself through the humanized shapes, the metal, with all its connotations of artificiality, technology and machinery. Instead of graceful gymnasts, suddenly I see automatons, mechanical beings with human form but lifeless, inert. The human and the inhuman inhabiting the same mesh of wire. It is only a fleeting image, but one that stays in my memory. These figures remind me that the border between the animate and the inanimate is not fixed but porous and fluid.
From the moment Narcissus saw his own image reflected on a pool, human beings have been compelled to create images of themselves, driven by the desire to recapture that first moment of self-recognition. But it is not only the self that we are compelled to represent. We are also drawn to the other, who is so similar to us and yet so different. The encounter with the other is always complicated by conflicting emotions: fear, excitement, hope, anxiety, doubt, joy ... We long to see ourselves reflected in their gaze, to be recognized or to be mirrored back "simplified," to paraphrase Joni Mitchell ; sometimes, to feel that things are more complex, that there is more to discover.
What we seek in the other, then, is a transformative experience, " a metamorphosis of the self." (Christopher Bollas, Collected Writings) Many times, we approach a work of art with the same trepidation, the same desire to be recognized and, thus, transformed by the aesthetic experience. Perhaps this is what we want from art, a change of perspective, a renewed awareness or simply the realization that some mysteries defy explanation.
Walking through the exhibition space and looking at the different representations of the body through the gaze of the other —different eyes, different media and materials— I felt as if I was encountering those bodies, as if they were presenting themselves to me, for the first time: children, teenagers, elderly people; the body in its social and spiritual dimensions; confined bodies; invisible bodies and exuberant bodies; bodies in motion and bodies at rest; the fleshy material body; the human and the inhuman. I also felt another kind presence, something I am not always aware of or sensitive to: the body of the work itself, the paint in all its unavoidable materiality, its allure and also its resistance to my controlling gaze. I became aware of the different materials used by the sculptors, their thematic significance and emotional weight. More importantly, I felt that these bodies— these works—were not fully finished but in the process of becoming, of being continuously transformed in my eyes, the eyes of the viewer. I knew then that I was the works' own "transformational object," the mirror on which they need to see themselves reflected. Art as an endless process of becoming, for the work and for the viewer. This is the true aesthetic experience.
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