Leopold Plotek stays true to form
THE PAINTER’S WORK is full of references to art, architecture, philosophy and literature, even though he says content isn’t important
Esthetics play a supporting role at best in the contemporary art scene. Painters who aspire to recognition as serious artists must first emphasize the idea behind their work.
Those relatively few painters who can make art that is both high-concept and visually beautiful are the ones who are successful both with critics and the public.
The situation is a little more difficult for artists like Leopold Plotek, who put more value on the esthetics of their paintings than their intellectual content.
“I am (an intellectual), but it doesn’t help me in the studio,” Plotek said last week at the vernissage of an exhibition at Han Art of his early abstract works.
Good painting is a result of intuition and experience, he said, and an intellectual approach is not necessary.
“I don’t cram content into my paintings,” he said, ignoring the fact that his paintings are full of references to classical art, architecture, philosophy and literature.
Plotek explains: “Why do I love Mozart? It’s because the form is so exquisite. Some content is there and it doesn’t hurt to know what it is, but it doesn’t matter” to the enjoyment of the music.
Similarly, the paintings of Plotek, a Concordia art teacher, do have content. But the references enter the painting through the artist’s experience and intuition.
The paintings at Han Art are from 1978 through the 1980s, and are what Plotek calls his “first authentic works” following his student days. A trip to Italy turned his life around.
“I fell in love with Italian architecture — Alberti, Brunelleschi” and others, he said. On his return to Montreal, he “picked up a charcoal to see if I had anything to say.”
Like Italy’s Metaphysical painters of the First World War era, Plotek creates ab- stract forms that seem both architectural and figurative. A brooding human presence is felt in the minimalist abstractions, the origin of which could be the corner of a coffee table, he said.
Of the paintings in the show, Plotek noted their large size — typically 72 by 80 inches — as a telling sign of an ambitious artist in his 30s.
And of the play of light and dark in the paintings, he says, “An abiding principle is that a painting needs a beautiful sense of light.”
The exhibition at Han Art is the commercial part of a two-pronged effort to enhance Plotek’s reputation. Ben Portis, who wrote an essay in the exhibition catalogue, is curating a show of Plotek’s figurative work from the past 20 years that opens Dec. 6 at the MacLaren Art Centre in Barrie, Ont.
Plotek was a protégé of Yves Gaucher but didn’t fit into the Automatiste “narrative” as a young painter, Portis said.
Plotek wasn’t interested in purity, as Molinari and others of the time were, Portis said. His architectural forms refer to history, and his colours are simplified and emotional, Portis added.
Plotek never relinquished the abstract sensibilities from which his practice originated, so these qualities remain evident in his figurative work, Portis said. The Instrument of a Place: Paintings by Leopold Plotek continues until Oct. 20 at Han Art, 4209 Ste. Catherine St. W. For more details, visit www.hanartgallery.com. Do orangutans dislike sculpture or did they just feel threatened by Trevor Gould’s installation in their cage at the Toronto Zoo?
Gould’s video of his intervention in the lives of caged primates, part of an exhibition at VOX, shows orangutans reacting with caution to several humanoid sculptures placed in their cage. The young ones approach the sculptures, but the elders pull them away.
After hours of watchfulness, the orangutans attack the sculptures, knocking them over and breaking them.
Gould said during a tour of the gallery that he didn’t know how the orangutans would react to the sculptures, but animal behaviourists probably could have guessed.
Trevor Gould: Philosophy’s Self Image continues until Oct. 13 at VOX, Centre de l’image contemporaine, 2 Ste. Catherine St. E. Visit www.centrevox.ca. The Musée d’art contemporain opened exhibitions of the work of Pierre Dorion and Janet Biggs on Thursday.
Dorion, a Quebec artist known for his spare use of visual elements, is showing 70 paintings produced since the mid-1990s.
Biggs is showing four videos as part of an event that links artists and institutions in Montreal and Brooklyn, where Biggs is based. Montreal’s Aude Moreau, who won the Prix Powerhouse (awarded by the artist-run centre La Centrale) in 2011, will also show a video.
In January, Biggs and Moreau will share an exhibition in Brooklyn.
Pierre Dorion and Janet Biggs continues to Jan. 6 at the Musée d’art contemporain, 185 Ste. Catherine St. W. For more information, visit www.macm.org. Correction: I wrote about Nicole Gingras taking over the reins of the Montreal Biennale from Claude Gosselin, who founded the biennale.
Gingras’s correct title is general and artistic director of what is called BNL MTL. She will work with Peggy Gale and Gregory Burke, who will curate the 2013 edition.
Gosselin has been general and artistic director of the Centre international d’art contemporain de Montréal (CIAC) since founding it in the mid-1980s. CIAC produced the Montreal biennales, but the two organizations are now legally separate and Gosselin will continue as CIAC director for his own projects.