2021, VANCOUVER, BC
high anxiety
MONICA REYES GALLERY
CURATED BY MINA TOTINO
High anxiety. Our default setting for the last 18 months. So many uncertainties around health, livelihood, and social codes. As a friend observed, she has felt it all so keenly that words fail her. The exhibition’s title is an expression of our collective state of mind. How better for artists to express themselves (and to a degree the mindset of their viewers) in this uncertain period, and in life, than through their work? Mina Totino, this exhibition’s curator has assembled six artists who have explored this state of anxiety, either recently or pre-Covid, in a way, pulling a thread in a garment of clothing until it unravels or picking at a scab until the fresh skin below becomes visible.
Totino has had a long-standing relationship with all but one of the artists here. She and Jan Wade were employees at a coffee bar together in the 1980s. She has been friends with Myfanwy MacLeod for many decades: recently, MacLeod has used Totino’s studio to continue her ceramic work, a new direction in her practice. Totino has long shared her ceramic studio and kiln with Nicole Ondre, exhibiting with her in The Eyes Have Walls, an exhibition at the West Vancouver Art Museum in 2020. She has known Philippe Raphanel for many years, an admirer of his highly precise paintings. She knows the production of her partner, Stan Douglas, intimately, observing the development of his projects since they met in art school. In other words, her ties to each of these artists have been strengthened by age and life. Russna Kaur is the one artist with whom she has become recently acquainted, woven into this mix because of her sympathetic approach to Totino's own attitudes towards painting.
Wade creates intricate textile works, comprised of multi-coloured embroidery, which resemble an unsolvable labyrinth. Her sculpture shown here, part of her Memory Pot series, is covered in buttons, with text that relates to her painting, which reads "I got soul and I'm super bad". The hand at the top shows the peace sign, a souvenir from a local shop. These works were made as part of her exploration of the African diaspora and spirituality. Totino admires the way in which her works come together to create narratives.
This is the first time that MacLeod’s ceramic work has been exhibited. Known particularly for her large-scale public art, these small pots are a new avenue. Originally, MacLeod had come to Totino’s studio with the intention to start painting, but was quickly diverted to the soothing act of hand building her pots. Her pots and their glazes belie a delicacy similarly evident in her drawings.
EMBRACING A FRIEND
Ondre’s current work moves between ceramics and painting. Featured here are a recent group of thorn and shard-like ceramic slabs in dark clay and glaze which punctuate the exhibition space. In a further push to challenge the very walls of the Gallery, Ondre has stitched into them, suggesting metaphorically and literally that their structure is supported by her action. In another work, a large overhand bow rendered in purple plasticized paper, bunches and slumps lazily on an oversize nail.
The two drawings and painting by Raphanel exhibited here reveal a compulsion for precision. His painting is done in his studio, created over a long period of time. In contrast, the two pen and ink drawings were made during the lockdown, an activity that he did in the evenings, unwinding while watching television or listening to music. Their creation is much more automatic and free-flowing, starting with a shape or a stroke of the pen.
Douglas’ two works here are from his DCT series and the result of reverse engineering technology. He created the two images from lines of code, using the discrete cosine transforms, sequenced at the moment an image is digitized. These works riff on the psychedelic, (his first job at age 14 was producing light shows at clubs in Vancouver) and tug at the viewers’ anxiety.
Kaur’s large-scale paintings, typically created on smaller panels that can be interchanged by the artist at the point of assembly, are truly multimedia. It is not uncommon for her paintings to mix not only acrylic and oil paint, but also strips of canvas, sawdust, latex paint, oil stick, and spray paint. Through her work, Kaur challenges the strictures of painting.
This exhibition space is relatively small and the way in which Totino has arranged these works allows the art made by one artist to encroach on the space of another. This arrangement is akin to weaving, or to use Totino’s words, allows the different components to “embrace each other”. The works support each other in the same way these friends and colleagues do within their relationships. While each artist’s work can be viewed discreetly, their installation here is intentional and compelling. In the company of good friends our anxiety is alleviated.
Text by Hilary Letwin