Love is a canvas furnished by Nature and embroidered by imagination.
~ Voltaire
Remember that serie of late reviews from December that I've never finished?
Here is the last one, from the lost and found department of my drive, but it's not yet fully edited (I will re-arrange the layout later).
PASTE:
It's always a pleasure for me to visit a new
Michel De Broin exhibit. He's one of the best artists in Quebec of recent years (with a couple others, Nicolas Baier, David Altmejd, Julie André T, Massimo Guerrera, I'd have to think about this, actually).
He's certainly "THE star" of the
Pierre-François Ouellette roaster, in my opinion (Luc Courchesne has done excellent installations in the past but he's been turning around in circles lately, literally).
You can always expect
deadpan humor with De Broin's work, the sort of cynical wit that he hides elegantly beneath his deadly serious pose, if you
ever get a chance to meet him.
The new exhibit is no exception, though it's radically different from previous exhibits by De Broin, certainly because of
Eve K. Tremblay, who becomes his partner (let's assume they are lovers in "real life", unlike with the popular television serie
"Un Gars, Une Fille" by Guy A. Lepage, of which this exhibit constitutes sort of a surreal version) for this precise installation. Eve K. here is the one that comes from photography. Michel is much more of a sculptor. As they both deal with
performance in their works, they developed this new corpus from this common ground.
And guess what? They've made their way up to a
Parachute cover with it! Go figure? I never understood that front picture and how it could've been a Michel De Broin's artwork until I got all the context right.
"Honeymoon" is a contemporary allegory on, you've guessed it,
love relationships. It dwells on various issues related to coupling, like the ritualization of
marriage,
the mythology of archaic couples (think
Adam and Eve or
Tristan and Yseult, without of course ever referencing any of this directly. The basic concept is one couple's
appropriation of their surroundings. How does one make ("mate") one with another and thus
"One" with their environment.
The installation functions like the photographic diary of a
couple's travel that went wrong. The
"honeymoon" in question becomes the plot motive to linger in all sorts of situations and
adventures. I insist on the loosely used term "installation", because some of the pictures wouldn't make sense if they were extracted from the corpus, or not associated with the nearby images. In this sense I was a bit confused by the way some of the pictures following typical narratives were mixed out throughout the space, while other were aligned in series as though they consisted of sequences. This is the major (but only) flaw of the show to juxtapose two different reading propositions.
Here is the
worst case(note that you can go and peruse the Pierre François-Ouellette site where I'm extracting my examples, and scrutinize even more pictures from the series).
The two photos on left seem to "reply" to
each other ("Honeymoon VCP (Skip)" and "Honeymoon MTL5 (moon)"). They seem to pun at the archetypal positions of the male and female
attractive poles in stereotypical
heterosexual relationships by using the
hidden formal metaphores in architecture. There is little extra connections to create in the visitor's mind than what is shown at first sight: people in a signified environment. Than we move to a few of the "forest" pictures (more on that later), intermixed with otherwise unrelated pictures, including one that should
have been with the "coast ensemble" (I'll come back to this in a minute, but let's just agree for now that on itself, this
photo of a wharf doesn't make sense with the theme of the exhibit, unless you add a huge neon above it that
mentions "honeymoon"). Maybe I'm not poetic enough to have crossed these distances ? Maybe it really supposed to mean that
Michel lights the bulb after Eve puts down the underwear ? I'm naive with sexual topics, but the
bottomline is that a path have been crossed between representation and typical codification. Now I'm asked to recline from narrativity and match an
allegory of symbols, or rather, invent narrativity from a series of abstract relations (that underwear....this bulb...etc...). I'm sort of being reminded that this is a photographic show, and that I'm able to criss-cross my reading levels between what is shown in the pictures and what pictures as graphic object can do, and this is
the part that left me with a sentiment that is not-so-ironically best described by a Tarot card named
"The Lover": glancing in between an aesthetic dilemna.
This hesitation is deriving from an option between deliberately indulging in the
"dj-ing" of a series of loose but codified associations and interactions (think of a wharf as honeymoon, think of all these fragments as metaphorical to the experience of love), and the sentimental idea of creating little narrative "niches" within the installation. Consider, for example, that the two best series of the exhibit would have been gathered each in their own spot. I'm referring to the "deep forest" series and the "coast" series.
I like the idea of gathering all the forest photographs together: the ones dealing with parts of bodies appearing amongst the bushes or within trees (at this point I'm excluding the photos dealing with urban apparatus, like when Eve stand above the kid sign). Together they form the most intriguing series of the lot. They link back with a tradition of art dealing with
Eden and the
lost paradise (
regained), as they symbolize an absolute union, not only sexual but fertile, dangerously harmonious, through the representation of a symbiotic contact of humans with an abundant nature, and here precisely upholding the
Romantic gaze as a
"diegetic world"*, without having to recall to extraneous abstraction. Maybe it is better to keep with
classical
edit when referencing classical themes ? As I said, it is all a question of options, but my main point is that it's a choice that as any need be decided.
Overall, I find these forestial photos really admireable:
the ackward kamasutra pose ("Honeymoon AP1 (capture)") , the
arm stretching out of nowhere in a deep forest landscape ("Honeymoon AP3 (game)"), the
two animals climbing a tree ("Honeymoon AP5 (Ripe)"), etc... Together they are far worth the singular photo with
the giant priapic doll ("Honeymoon CASRDQ (big B)"), that everyone seems to enjoy. The show could have focussed on these sylvid scenes: the essence of their proposal lies in them. Why has nature separated us in lonely parts and use desire to make us reach her back? Through their re-enactments of the act of love Michel and Eve seem to want to reveal all the absurdity behind their mutual attraction. This work is almost a self-critique, though done pretty humoristically, and is certainly warrant of a certain courage from our protagonists to face the limits between emotion and reason.
The other great chunk of the exhibit is the contrasting corpus of the coast series, which seems to deal with the insecurities and dark moments of relationships, when the line becomes thin again between being alone or with another. I choose the photo of
Eve calling on an emergency phone ("Honeymoon SF5 (help)"), looking at the menacing scape of ice, as a standout: brilliant work, that would mean all sorts of things on its own without ever being deprived of its power to evoke anxiety. Totally surreal. How did they find this place ? A lucky mise-en-scene! It should have been a huge format like the one when
she is with Michel and we don't know if she is supportive or dangerous to him ("Honeymoon SF8 (vertigo)", best described in an article by Udo Karl De Sauriac that I "translated" below). These artists have explored two
sides of a medal. What more could you ask?
If you ask me, these two series are what this exhibit's at, the rest is all filler.
But if you ask them they will probably tell you that I'm wrong and that they are no
separated series, that all photos must be read as a whole. I'm more of a romantic type. I don't like it when bovine imagery intervene with my
Potemkin , and I've been a strong discriminator of
VJ culture.
Pursuing the route of this exhibit, in one corner, a
selection of tiny canvases are arranged as though they form their own separate micro-exhibition. On them,
tiny photographs are associated in a similar approach than through the rest of the exhibit. The images are even more drastically outbounding. Extraneous documentation on micro-bits of life during their travels. The general outlook made me think of Malevitch, and his craft of assembling micro-planes one next to the other. Maybe I was only trying to contextualize
past De Broin interests. Or was it me being critical about their purpose? It looked like a different work altogether (perhaps it is), exaggerating to full excess the abstract associative aspect I was just criticizing. They look like the continuation of the giant picture of the priapic doll to which they are juxtaposed, a picture that otherwise would have seemed pretty cornered and alone, like coming from a different corpus.
Maybe this was a missed opportunity to create a clear division in the show between the older "narrative" series, and this new experiment with plasticity and abstraction: coming to this stages where objects (and their associations) start to speak on their own. When photos are becoming as tiny they are here (and depicting radically banal travel fragments compared with the mise-en-scene of the coast and forest series), it becomes evident that a pure plastic reading is being informed: these are constellations of chance meanings, as the work is reclining further away from classical narrative to approach
form itself as a language.
Bonus:
As a bonus I'm offering the debased artTwit translation of the
TEXT written by Udo Karl De Sauriac and Eduardo Ralickas (2004), which accompanies the little catalogue of "Honeymoons" (which can be bought directly from gallery Pierre-François Ouelette).
Note that I'm respecting the original outline.
"I sense that love is illusive and that in reality we just live for ourselves"
(cheap translation of Jacques Lacan)
Conceptual Love.
(ok..here we go..)
Fuck
Barthes and all other theorists attempting to create an intellectual discourse about love when actually they only end up falling in love with their own rationales rather than reaching anything about "love' itself. I'm taking these "Honeymoons" pictures for what they are: material representations of love that only but flirts with the conceptual.
In "Honeymoons", love becomes the ideal subject for all sorts of formal and symbolic experiments, but it's not treated stupidly or without
critique.
It's important to know that these two artists, here interestingly contrasting two different artistic approaches, form a couple in real life. These photos are the staging of an union that like all unions always seem to slip away. Narratively they function through a process of "repetition and development" that is very effective (Cedric's note: like in a
good old classical film).
These photos basically show the failed attempts at a couple of reaching one another as they are desparately attempting to "fit" their love with the empty spaces that are unwelcoming or indifferent to them. A good example is
"Honeymoon SF8 (Vertigo)", by the way a rare photo showing the two artists together, which seems to re-stage two paintings by Caspar David Friedrich on the theme of solipsism (lonelyness) and loss:
"Wanderer Above The Sea Of Fog" (1818) and
"The Sea Of Ice" (1823-25). The "Honeymoons" photos seem to stage the constant renewal of such themes, as to substantiate for the impossibility of an absolute unsubjective conjugal union.
Isn't it remarkable all those mating scenes in wild natural landscapes?
Schopenhauer, great defender of wilderness sex, would have loved. The artists here look like mammals beasts trying to make one with another with nature. But when they seem to succeed, it is always only on surface, like in this photo (
"Honeymoon AP2 (Beast)") where the hand of one and the head of another seem to form one creature through the help of a rock that hides the truth. There is no real union but on the surface, therefore photography is used to convey that desire can only be superficially gratified and that the gap with otherness will always remain. The two artists, like primitive men, are here attempting to develop a language and communicate with each others by referencing or singling out motifs from each other's artistic background, what result in the exploration of symbolic fantasies.
These
"signs" are what they are: by constituting the main elements of representation, they both help to render visible a dialogue about love (that we can decipher through interpretation) as they resist communicating anything really tangible. (Cedric's note: they are both passage ways and blockades).
Forget
Plato and his fable on the origins of love: there is no plenitude in subjectivity. This work is all about limitation, and the best about it is that it shows how these limits function, by ways of demonstrating two artists personificating their attempt at joining their artistic identities together, and how it translates visually.
My comment on this text:
These artists took a path of joining their pratices to comment on an ideal of love. The results, judging from this point of view, seem to not stand afar from irony and cynicism. I am not sure if it was all meant to be this dark. I perceived much more of a balance between a celebration of this ideal and a warrant of its downsize, covering all aspects of one condition of "love" but yet re-affirming a life choice (they agreed to endeavour this love) that is all but voluntary: these artists don't simply comment on the subject of love but expose their own intimity in the process. This said, to follow the link of thoughts engendered by this text, maybe this "ideal of love" is better reached into an abandonment to the other? Maybe the trick in love is to leave each others be the "material" and subject portray of one work by the "other". Maybe love is really about Michel portraying Eve and Eve portraying Michel but not about any interaction that happens in between. I raise myself a question: is it a better proof of love to let yourself abused, erasing yourself into the work of another, instead of delimitating your territory? Is total surrender the supreme resolution in love? Ain't love, just like art, a form of madness that we control the best we can?
Cedric Caspesyan
centiment@hotmail.com
