“ In search of the absurd “ by Philip Willey

Steve Chmilar, Horst Loewel, Brad Pasutti and Haren Vakil make up a group show at the AGGV Massey Gallery called Art of the Delightfully Absurd. None of these artists are easily labeled but bringing them all together in one place makes for an interesting little group show. In fact it’s hard to isolate a common factor shared by these four artists beyond a taste for the surreal.

I thought Chmilar’s work could best be described as social satire. He employs a meticulous technique that must be incredibly time consuming. The paintings have a 16 ^th Century Flemish/Dutch texture. Breughel and Bosch come to mind. The settings are dreamlike, the characters are from a parallel world and time. If there is an underlying message here it’s the inequality of wealth. Rich people dangle carrots, poor people do the donkey work.

Horst Loewel deals with specifics much as Dali does by placing familiar objects in an unfamiliar context. The viewer is drawn into the paintings by a mandala-like symmetry and taken on a journey. Lush welcoming landscapes, clouds, waterfalls create a heightened reality verging on the psychedelic. Loewel describes his work as fantastic surrealism. There is something didactic about the work that obliges the viewer to reflect on his or her own consciousness.

Brad Pasutti’s work looked a little out of place I thought. Certainly it leans to the surreal but Pasutti seems more concerned with time, space and the realization of ethereal ideas. It makes him difficult to pin down but in his statement he cites artists like Matta and de Chirico as prominent influences. Finely focused objects and vaguely defined areas create a tension between foreground and background. Perhaps because of this multi-dimensional approach it’s easier to see Pasutti as a classicist rather than a surrealist. One painting in particular…a large work called Echoing The Architecture of Thought seems to embody all his major concerns.    

The artist that best fits the description of absurd is Vakil. His figures are human but with various anthropomorphic features. In his statement he talks about the juxtaposition of unrelated elements and describes himself as an obsessive doodler….one thing follows another. His paintings are playful with no immediately apparent meaning. He creates puzzles which the viewer is invited to solve.
The delightfully absurd title may not suit them all but as a group show it works fairly well. Mica Marsh the curator has responded to the elements the four artists have in common….a desire to communicate their feelings through an alternative reality.    - watch video -

There is some interesting work by Sarah Houghton at Exchanges. Sarah was exhibit-v artist of the month back in February this year. In a comprehensive statement about her work she talks about the disconnect between her public and her private lives. The actual physical process would seem to involve emphasizing marks and imperfections in the field, adding touches of colour, scraping, then introducing minute areas of writing. These writings are her uncensored thoughts. From a distance these written areas look like grey paint and the writing is so small as to be almost indecipherable. Perhaps it’s meant to be. Emotions are incorporated into the work. An ongoing personal record is created. Houghton’s intensity is palpable.
- watch video -

It’s been a good year for the Xchanges balcony. Back in May Helen Rogak, Betty Meyers, and Cheryl McBride transformed it with tar paper and paint. Later Christine Clarke’s vultures flew down from Deep Cove. It’s a conceptually challenging space and now it’s Deborah Alanna’s turn to tackle it. She has hung out some laundry. Clothes dipped in plaster of Paris to be precise. It’s about being frank, letting it all hang out, exposure. And by some curious piece of synchronicity she has been watching a film about the Franklin Expedition and the poor souls who died of exposure in the Arctic.  - watch video -

So there we stood in the parking lot behind the Dairy Queen looking up at a balcony. LED lights in the frigid laundry stared back at us like a row of eyes. A very strange experience. Debora Alanna never disappoints.

October 2011