Beyond the Archive group exhibition at the Victoria Arts Council gallery

Contours by Bill Porteous

Irma Soltonovich and Michelle Miller at Fortune gallery

The Long Way Home exhibit at Gage Gallery

Selina Jorgensen and Natalie Shumka at Xchanges gallery

2nd chance from the sublime to the ridiculous at Gage Gallery

Kudluajuk Ashoona at Madrona Gallery

John G. Boehme at Open Space

Steve Coffey and Raymond Theriault at Fortune gallery

Lance Austin Olsen. "patternings for future humans_3" by Debora Alanna

Lance Austin Olsen. "patternings for future humans_3"
July 7, 2019. acrylic, tea, ink and collage on rag paper. size 30" X 44".

Lance Austin Olsen paints the liminal, the space between what seen and heard, what humans feel but rarely can express within their secreted human existence. He paints with prescience, traverses the recognised to make paintings as haptic realisations. With a discreet palate, Olsen’s visual output consistently reflects his sound production.

Olsen’s oeuvre includes a large body of collaborative sound works as performances and recordings, often utilising his paintings and drawings as visual scores (Olsen, et al.). A recent release, Looking At The Mouth That Is Looking At You (Olsen, et al. 2019) was produced by Infrequency Editions using a visual score of drawings Olsen made in response to a friend’s stroke experience. John Luna’s impromptu poetics, my improvisational keyboard and Erin Cunes’ voice interpretations became a collective response to Olsen’s score. Elsewhere Music’s February release, Works on Paper is another intermedia collaboration with artist Gil Sansón. (Sansón and Olsen 2019).

I first wrote about Olsen’s work shown in Victoria’s Polychrome Gallery, Road to Esperance (Alanna, Lance Austin Olsen "The Road to Esperance" 2011). At that time, I described his paintings as a “dream time symbologic mapping”, comparing him to Jasper Johns (Scarlato 2010) , as psychogeographer (Alanna, Lance Austin Olsen "The Road to Esperance" 2011). Katherine Harmon (Katherine Harmon 2009) described this term as “inner space” (Scarlato 2010). A consummate, contemporary flâneur [i],[ii] (Sannicandro 2008) a profound yet demure artist that traverses the contemporary paths of existence in undisclosed spheres, Olsen reads and interprets humanity’s transience. He manifests his findings through his sound production and visual outputs, combinations of both with collaborations (Sansón and Olsen 2019). In Baudelairian terms, Olsen can encapsulate the “moral and aesthetic feeling of their time” and meanwhile, “creates (…) a personal originality” (Baudelaire 1998).

Olsen’s current visual tour de force continues to expound psychogeographic expertise with symbologic mapping through commanding connotative geometry. Shapes, saturation, brush strokes are transformative through his signature iconography. These treatments are markers, lead us through a dense psychologic geography that features the distribution, constituent elements of our humanity. Olsen translates and disseminates metaphysic comprehension, champions human existence through works which engage timelessness that only the present moment can endure. Olsen’s paintings capture what refuses to be marked by a specific location or time. His works grasp and delineate points of our internal journeys.

"patternings for future humans_3" (7 July 2019) encompasses Olsen’s distinctive tea and ink washes, discharges his gusto as a survey of the senses with these sumptuous exploratory marks. With an absence of linear perspective, this work can be historicised, related to Impressionist techniques, environments [iii] Olsen He enlarges our perspectives, draws us inward through this grand work on rag paper, 30 x 44”. An imposing force of black and finally, assertive abstract painted and collaged shapes over the washes, like a sinister Monet sunrise (Monet 1872), where the sun as object and its environment interpenetrate[iv] (Healey, et al. 2016) he declares the patterning or stimulus for understanding how to negotiate our futures through a trio of geometry.

Far left, overhanding the distant wash, akin to a murky Monet sky suspension (Monet 1872), awash with the delicacy of ephemeral light, a protruding folded and cut mid-grey paper, collaged, unpacks, sources simpler shapes to its right. A sliced rectilinear in cloudy white, sharply cut with a precise curve removing the bottom right corner of the rectangle is central. A wavering but basic square dances in an earthy yellow ochre, on the farthest right of the viewer. All shapes touch each other charily, like Impressionist paint strokes that are enlarged [v] [vi]  (Healey, et al. 2016, 38) and appear sentient, aware of each other. This conscious seems responsive because the shapes maintain a semblance of a connection to their perceived origins.

Proclamations of how we attempt to organise thoughts are placed at an eye-level across bulges of black in various degrees of saturation. Their placement alludes to our vision. Wider than the exactitude of yellow, white and grey, the background wash layers with the despotic blacks are contrasting resonances of those precise overlaid shapes. The background washes hum; the blacks foster the impression of hefty aftershocks, memories.

Olsen calculates perplexity, articulates suggestive strategies to negotiate our futures as solid arrangements of angles, lines as objects as companionable wiles. He projects how we relate within our enigmatic systems as geometric ruses.[vii] Like his collaborative sound works, initiating then orchestrating and finally editing multiple responses to what becomes a supranatural poignancy as a compilation, “patternings for future humans” gathers immense ideas into the minimal sublime. Olsen shows us that we are the problem and have the solutions through our bonds of variable readings of sweeping opaque veils and dark imminence depicted in the background. He presents objects of distinct variations of thinking that enunciates abstract thought patterning which embodies presence, edifies our indeterminacy. Sound advice.

#LanceAustinOlsen #GilSansón #JohnLuna #ErinCunes #DeboraAlanna #ElsewhereMusic #InfrequencyEditions

Debora Alanna

Montreal Quebec, July 2019

Bibliography

Alanna, Debora. 2013. "Images from Sound: Garden of Cellular Indicision." By Christine Clark, Phillip Willey Debora Alanna. Victoria BC: Polychrome Gallery.

—. 2011. Lance Austin Olsen "The Road to Esperance" . Edited by Efren Quiroz. April 13. Accessed July 12, 2019. http://exhibit-v.blogspot.com/2011/04/lance-austin-olsen-road-to-esperance-by.html.

Alanna, Debora. 2013. "Whisper of the Future." In Images from Sound: Garden of Cellular Indicision, by Christine Clark, Phillip Willey Debora Alanna. Victoria BC: Polychrome Gallery.

Baudelaire, Charles. 1998. "The Painter of Modern Life." In Art in Theory, 1900 - 2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas, by Paul Wood, Jason Gaiger Charles Harrison, edited by Paul Wood, Jason Gaiger Charles Harrison, 494. Oxford, England: Blackwell.

Healey, C. G, P Kozik, L Tateosian, and J Enns. 2016. Combining Perception and Impressionist Techniques for Nonphotorealistic Visualization of Multidimensional Data. Edited by Christopher G. Healey. Prod. Vision Science Society 16th Annual Meeting, St. Pete Beach, FL) 16, 12, (2016), 188. Journal of Vision (Abstract Issue. Raleigh, North Carolin: North Carolina State University. Accessed July 13, 2019. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/fa54/983a0cd28c3ad79f6c1dcbd98cc06a215230.pdf.

Katherine Harmon, Gayle Clemens. 2009. The Map as Art: Contemporary Artists Explore Cartography. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton Architectural Press.

Monet, Claude. 1872. Impression Sunrise / Impression, Soleil Levant. Musée Marmottan Monet , Paris . Accessed July 13, 2019. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Monet_-_Impression,_Sunrise.jpg.

Olsen, Lance Austin, John Luna, Debora Alanna, and Erin Cunes. 2019. Infrequency Editions. Edited by Lance Austin Olsen. John Luna, Debora Alanna, Erin Cunes Lance Austin Olsen. May. Accessed July 12, 2019. http://infrequency.org/?p=1055.

Sannicandro, Joseph. 2008. The Legacy of Situationist Psychogeography: Its Relational Quality and Influence on Contemporary Art. Noise Economy. Accessed July 2013, 2019. https://soundpropositions.com/2013/02/04/the-legacy-of-situationist-psychogeographyits-relational-quality-and-in%ef%ac%82uence-on-contemporary-art/#comments.

Sansón, Gil, and Lance Austin Olsen. 2019. Elsewhere Music Bandcamp. Edited by Lance Austin Olsen Gil Sansón. Yuko Zama. February. Accessed July 12, 2019. https://elsewheremusic.bandcamp.com/album/works-on-paper?fbclid=IwAR1dThG1qFDNGNC9i9DpZuZANLSVSfUycHt2rhqHQgEuXivNWr1qUoLaSII.

Scarlato, Jonathan F. Lewis and William. 2010. Review of "The Map as Art: Contemporary Artists Explore Cartography". Edited by Katherine Harmon with Gayle Clements. AGS Library. Accessed July 12, 2019. https://cartographicperspectives.org/index.php/journal/article/view/66/124.

Venturi, Lionello. 1941. " "The Aesthetic Idea of Impressionism." ." The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 1, no. 1 34-45. Accessed July 13, 2019. doi:10.2307/426742.

Hazel Harris at Gage Gallery Arts Collective

Matt Trahan talks about Empty gallery and Emily Geen exhibition

Mitchell Villa - Prologue - Fortune Gallery

June Haynes and Mike Lathrop at Gage Gallery Arts Collective

Penny McCann at Flux Media Gallery