Western Canadian artists enliven local galleries,
Michael Dumontier was recently at the Plug-in Institute of Contemporary Art in his hometown of Winnipeg to talk about his goodsized career survey showing there. To the surprise of few, Dumontier’s visual aides included page after page of illustrations from children’s books, and more than a few drawings by kids themselves in all their spindly, disproportionate, naturalistic glory.
Equally unsurprising, then, is Dumontier’s work now on display at MKG127 on Ossington Avenue here. In a corner, a delicate arrangement of dark thread is pinned to the walls, mimicking the form of a crudely line-drawn pine tree. A red sock is tucked in the wedge where the floor meets the wall. An oblong disc with an impossibly thin, carefully hand-sawn crack perches on a plywood shelf (it’s called “Untitled: Cracked Egg”). A sheet of paper, meticulously-crafted from MDF, has a careful rip in its midsection.
Dumontier started his career with a bang as a 20-something member of Winnipeg’s Royal Art Lodge, which gained a significant international following through the 1990s for its shared aesthetic of the homespun fantastical. While the Lodge, in its dissolution, has spawned one bonafide international art superstar with New York-based Marcel Dzama, other members have quietly gone about the business of honing their own identities, and Dumontier’s is among the most distinct. Since those days, Dumontier has drifted from the fantastical into a kind of homespun, warm-fuzzy version of minimalism, and his material enthusiasm in that context is voiced in a delicate whisper. His love of prosaic materials is mirrored in the objects he creates from them, and the simple gestures he makes transform the commonplace into quietly beguiling, lovingly-made representations of the same. Dumontier’s eye is drawn to the things most of us look past, and his focused attentions give us the chance to see them anew. Not so quiet is Calgary-based Jason de Haan, whose grabby show at the Clint Roesnisch Gallery clamours to be seen. De Haan’s own enthusiasms, material or otherwise, are at once heady, sensual and immersive, and his fascination with the cosmic and the intersection between science fiction, mysticism and faith produce some of the most engaging work I’ve seen. “Year Zero,” works within the unaccountable rift between the knowable and the infinite with engaging cheek. From subtle gestures like a deep-blue cyanotype made by placing a coin on the surface before exposing it to a lunar eclipse, to a pair of monumental collages rendered from torn fragments of science-fiction paperbacks, de Haan builds a quixotic display aimed at the human impulse to make sense of the forces that exist at a scale of time beyond our ability to comprehend. Collage works knowingly echo the Surrealist urge to plumb the unconscious for clues to the origins of being, but with culty references like totems and monoliths that speak to an irresolvable urge doomed to futility. De Haan confuses in moments: “Cannon Ball,” a rough, fist-sized sphere forged by melting one coin from every single one of the world’s active currencies, has a satisfying heft and materiality, but seems vaguely pedantic in the context of de Haan’s more poetic impulses. But mostly he soars: specifically to my mind a gorgeous spindle of driftwood that de Haan has shorn just-so, to expose a gold ring embedded inside its thin trunk. Projected forward from his Nuit Blanche work last fall, “100 Ages,” in which he placed gold rings on branches of 100 trees all over the city, de Haan suggests the impossible – a tree continuing to grow around and through a human intervention, decades before — but also makes a crystal clear point about history, knowing and forgetting. What do we really know of the past, or for that matter the future? Belief is all we’ve ever had. Michael Dumontier, “the middle of the air,” continues at MKG127, 127 Ossington Ave., to April 14. Jason de Haan, “Year Zero,” continues at the Clint Roenisch Gallery, 944 Queen St. W., to April 21.