THE FUNCTIONAL AND THE SUBLIME COLLIDE
Belgium’s Delvoye comes to DHC/ART; Strange Geometries at Galerie 175B
Intricate designs carved into rubber tires. Tattooed pigskins hanging on gallery walls. A scale model dump truck in the process of morphing into a gothic cathedral — these are among the artworks created by the Belgian artist Wim Delvoye that are now on display at DHC/ART.
A replica of the exterior body of a Maserati 350 sports car is the largest piece by an artist who transforms pop culture into high art and stirs in contemporary issues like globalism and appropriation. The aluminum Maserati body is covered with intricate motifs hand-embossed by Iranian craftspeople that turn this status symbol of the alpha male into a delicate and feminine object.
Delvoye neither replicates nor transforms common objects. Instead, he appropriates their forms and elevates them into art through craftsmanship.
He had noticed at the start of his career in the 1980s how traditional craft and design were out of style and decided to challenge entrenched ideas about art, including the dichotomy of use and value — artisans made useful things; artists didn’t.
Delvoye used designs from specific craft traditions, particularly ones that evoke the articulations of Gothic architecture, but changed the context. His Twisted Jesus sculptures are based on the crucifix that hung in his boyhood home.
In Gothic art, the articulation of the figure intensified its emotional qualities, but the twisting of Jesus on his crucifix and exhibiting it on the horizontal plane subdues the emotional effect. Jesus seems oddly composed, rather than suffering, and experiencing a ride on his horizontal cross.
In addition, the Twisted Jesus sculptures are bronze ornaments, beautiful but decontextualized from their spiritual base. Double meanings are found throughout Delvoye’s artwork.
Delvoye’s early works included carving, embossing, and making stained-glass, but he has added modern technologies like computer rendering, 3-D printing and laser cutting to his tool box.
And he has gone global, outsourcing production to the Iranian embossers and the Chinese craftspeople who carved the intricate designs into rubber tires.
But nothing is straightforward with Delvoye. Bronze is plated with nickel or chrome. A steel dump truck, its parts intricately cut to resemble Gothic cathedrals, looks plastic. Two twisted crucifixes that lie horizontally are made of bronze, but have a dark finish that make them look like rubber.
Then there are the tattooed pigskins, framed to hang on the gallery walls. Delvoye went to China, where pigs were sedated for tattooing. Pigs are considered unclean in many cultures; tattoos, although now fashionable, have long been associated with criminality.
Yet Delvoye elevated the tattooed pigskins to the status of high art, even selling the skins to collectors while still attached to the backs of live animals.
And the Chinese tattoo artists were allowed to exercise their imagination, apparently disregarding Delvoye’s designs, six of which are on display. Three of the designs have Chinese-style seals stamped on them. Curator Cheryl Sim said Delvoye made the seals himself.
Because Delvoye’s designs come from a specific tradition, “the works become sites of tension between the object’s original vocation and its complex meaning as an art object for the viewer,” Sim writes in an exhibition text. It is just one example of Delvoye’s “preoccupation with twisting and fusing juxtaposed ideas.”
But this mixture, as Sim writes, coexists “in a kind of exquisite harmony” that provokes a reflection on the systems and discourses “that shape and affect our contemporary condition.”
DHC has a series of educational programs, guided tours, a downloadable app and texts on its website to help you appreciate this artist.
The works themselves have great beauty — this is pop culture in art-historical clothing.
Wim Delvoye continues until March 19 at DHC/ART, 461 and 465 St-Jean St. in Old Montreal. More information: dhc-art.org
CANADA’S ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS
The Canadian Centre for Architecture is taking the widest possible approach to its subject in its new exhibition, It’s All Happening So Fast: A CounterHistory of the Modern Canadian Environment.
Outsiders see Canada as a land of forests, clean water and the pristine North, but the truth is that our nation ranks low on many measurements of environmental protection, according to CCA director Mirko Zardini, curator of the exhibition.
The truth is sobering: Canada ranks No. 82 among the world’s nations in forest conservation and No. 111 in protection of biodiversity, and the list goes on.
Zardini calls it a crisis of overconfidence, citing the unexpected consequences of “progress” on the environment.
A photograph of Hazeltine Creek and the dying trees on its banks shows the effects of the bursting of a dam in British Columbia that contained mine waste that also endangered Alaska’s salmon fishery.
The exhibition is a catalogue of everything that’s wrong: dams concentrate mercury; the North Atlantic is overfished; nuclear waste is stockpiled; fracking injects gases into the water supply and can cause earthquakes; and more.
“If we want to do something, we must be honest about where we stand,” Zardini said during a media tour.
He added that no solutions are purely local, citing the superstack in Sudbury, Ont., that protected the local area from acidic fumes but dispersed pollution over a larger area.
Environmental groups have been most successful on the local level, but the efforts must be shared and co-ordinated, Zardini said.
And the environment can’t be left to environmentalists to protect. Greenpeace can’t do it alone. “All must contribute.”
The exhibition does report progress, including the resistance of indigenous peoples to despoiling the lands they claim. The Northwest Territories legislature in Yellowknife, which was designed to maximize the connection between the building and the natural environment, is an example of construction in a culture of sustainable architecture that already exists in Europe.
The environment doesn’t have a central role in Canada’s 150th anniversary celebrations in 2017, yet 80 per cent of Canadians named the environment in a poll as their No. 1 priority, Zardini said.
Much more information is available on the CCA website. There is also a 364-page book, It’s All Happening So Fast, available at the CCA bookstore that looks at 15 instances of environmental manipulation that had unexpected — and dire — consequences to Canada’s environment.
It’s All Happening So Fast: A Counter-History of the Modern Canadian Environment continues to April 9, 2017 at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, 1920 Baile St. More information: cca.qc.ca.
STRANGE SHAPES AT GALERIE 175B
If the CCA documents the reality of the degradation of the Canadian environment, three artists participating in Strange Geometries visualize something of what is at stake.
Strange Geometries is the initial exhibition of Galerie 175B, which doubles as an events room at Boxotel, a new long-term hotel near the Quartier des spectacles.
“It’s time to be active in our vocalizations and visualizations regarding the environment,” said Lorraine Simms, curator of the exhibition.
The picture is a healing one at street level, where Laura Millard directly exposes pedestrians to a video projection of leaves floating — not falling — in an autumn woods. Millard photographed from a drone that stirred up leaves on the ground, creating an overhead view that is seen from within the gallery by looking up.
Millard also shows photographs from above of a frozen lake with overlapping circles created by a snowmobile.
Ross Racine also takes an overhead view in his drawings of suburbias in gridlock. What appears to be a well-planned development is anything but — the streets circle around each other with few connecting points. There are no bike paths, but many parking lots.
Sylvie Bouchard is a painter, formally connected to the other artists by the circular interiors she creates.
In Antichambre, a monkey stares at a denuded tree covered with detritus left in the wake of some disaster. The bleak and surreal scene is countered by an appealing interplay of colours.
Bouchard always introduces elements that aren’t in perspective but work in the painting, Simms said in an interview.
“The strange architectural forms that float on the surface of the painting appear to be symbolic,” she said. “The elements are not anchored by an underlying real space, so it compels the viewer to try to understand their meaning.”
The room was designed by hotel manager Marie-Jean Rivard, for whom architecture and environment are major interests, Simms said. “She feels out the space in relation to her body and how the space can embody a lived experience.”
Rivard wants this to be a hub for the area, with the gallery and café and its proximity to the Musée d’art contemporain, Simms said.
As for her own thoughts on curating, Simms said she is always looking for a transcendental experience, and “group shows create an opportunity for that experience.”
“I love group shows that pull us in with works that aren’t straightforward and let us make our own connections.”
Strange Geometries continues to Feb. 19 at Galerie 175B, 175 Ontario St. E. More information: boxotel.com.
BRIAN KOKOSKA AT L’INCONNUE
In my Dec. 3 column, I mentioned some of the background of Leila Greiche, founder of the art gallery L’Inconnue at 4863 Notre Dame St. W. in St-Henri. I listed two places where she had worked, but they were actually internships.
However, Greiche did receive a Masters in Art Business from Sotheby’s Institute of Art in New York and held paying jobs in London for a contemporary art gallery and for Phillips auction house.
L’Inconnue (linconnue.biz) opens its next exhibition — featuring the work of New Yorkbased Brian Kokoska — with a vernissage on Jan. 19. Kokoska, a painter of imaginary beasts and monsters, participated this year in exhibitions in China, Australia, Italy, Mexico and the U.S.