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.

James Lindsay - Lance Austin Olsen at Deluge Contemporary Art

James Lindsay

I reviewed a show of James Lindsay and Lance Olsen at Deluge Contemporary Art
in 2016 and managed to upset a few people by mentioning death. There was more than
a whiff of big D in that show to my mind but talking about it was seen for some
reason as negative. In an age when skulls are everywhere, as tattoos, T-shirts,bumper
stickers etc. and we seem to live with constant reminders of the end of times, it's
surprising that it would cause such alarm. Monty Python even made jokes about it.

But we must remind positive and this is Victoria where we need to read gently which
makes art reviewing especially difficult. It's ok for Jonathan Jones in London and
Jerry Saltz in New York to say pretty much whatever comes into their mindsbut 77
years old unpaid provincial dilettantes like myself must choose our words carefully.
You are on safe ground with comments like "Great Show", "Strong work", and "Great use
of colour". But beyond that it's a minefield some thoughts are best kept to ourselves.

Sorry about that. My mind wanders. Fortunately Lindsay and Olsen have done it again
with separate shows at Deluge Contemporary Art so I get a chance to redeem myself.
This time the overall feeling is upbeat without any overt hints of mortality. 'The state
of things (in two parts)" is billed as continuation and evolution of the previous
pairing, 'hide in plain sight' but the shows may just as well be a testament of the
rejuvenating power of art.

Apart for both being UK transplants in their later years with strong personalities
Lindsay and Olsen don't seem to have a lot in common. Perhaps there are faint echoes
of per-conceptualist British art schools in their respective styles but time and distance
have made them difficult to discern.

Lindsay presents a suite of 19 new paintings that "document our contentment with the
unpalatable parts per million in our nature". This paintings are a harmonious fusion of
abstraction and landscape suggesting any conflict between nature and intellect may have
been at least partially resolved. His environmental concerns are obvious and the
paintings clearly represent the increasingly critical relationship between humanity and
the planet we live on. Mountains and forests struggle with the pipelines and oil spills
but the paintings themselves are bright, lively and colourful as if the artist has
succeeded in finding some hope in the precarious state of things.

Olsen's work comes across at first sight as pure abstraction. There are no obvious
figurative reference points, viewers are free to provide their own, and almost seems to
defy any kind of analysis of definition. But, just my opinion of course, there is no escaping
the language of expressionism. It's the compulsion with which Olsen works that tells the
story. The paintings he has chosen to show are mostly monochromatic but highly
emotive and loaded with a finely balanced tension. His output is enormous and what
may seem repetitive is actually in constant state of flux. Each painting is a mark of
passage. The paintings and prints are complemented by "Plato's cave" a sound work
composed of guitar, fields recordings, stones and assorted objects scored from dry-point
plates.

Certainly is continuation here but to what extend has the work evolved ? When in doubt
ask the artist.

James Lindsay: "It all evolved over the last 18 months. Oil spills and pipelines have been
much on my mind.I guess you could say it started with a small leak and spread outwards".

Lance Olsen: "Evolution ? How the **** would I know? I just keep working.There's so
much work to do. I had to sort through 500 paintings to pick out 12. It's always evolving".

We live in interesting times. Missiles are flying over Syria and World War 3 can start at
any minute.Ordinary folk have not a lot of say in the matter. Will Lindsay's warnings
go unheeded or will Kinder Morgan get their new pipeline?
Olsen distrusts words and reduces them to sound and symbols. A lot of physical and mental
energy has gone into these shows."Lindsay and Olsen are both at an age that death is no
longer an abstraction" (their words) and they both agree that careerism is an anathema
to life. Neither artist shows any sign of slowing down however and it will be interesting
to see where they go from here.

Philip Willey

The State of Things (in two parts)
Deluge Contemporary Art
March 17 to May 5, 2018

Lance Olsen

James Lindsay and Lance Austin Olsen: Observations I Feel Underqualified To Make, But Am Making Nevertheless. By Christine Clark

James Lindsay

 The first thing James says after the introductions, is that he feels claustrophobic in the gallery with all the art.  Then he takes me over to the bureau he’s brought into the gallery as a part of his contribution.  It is an antique with two drawers and two doors in the front.  They are empty. The top though is covered in a collection of glass vessels, ivory beads, a wooden tea cup, a buddha, pencils and other things.  It is the dust mottled on the glass that he is most urgent in pointing out.  He did not think of the analogy present in dust (ashes to ashes, dust to dust) before bringing the collection to the gallery, but he was very careful not to disturb that dust.  He wanted it intact.

He marvels too at seeing this home collection reconstructed so perfectly in the gallery.  It’s shocking to see a portion of his home, his life, his long life of collecting so completely out of it’s familiar context. Uncanny is the word he uses. It’s difficult at first to understand exactly why this installation needs to be included in this two-man show of paintings and drawings, other than to suggest, that these objects are an integral part of his home life and studio, and objects can be powerfully symbolic of times, places and people, of a life pieced together through long years of experience. Memories, maybe, but also being objects they don’t really change much, other than to collect dust.

His paintings are all in one long line interrupted only by the bureau and a seascape painting hanging on the wall directly above it.  The colours and the lines initially provoking a fun-house response, they remind me of Sandra Meig’s paintings.  Lots of pastel-like colouring, strange quirky painted lines in white, lots of arbitrary divisions in space. But then with him standing beside me, his fragile influence, I see that in spite of the flatness of the paint, the imagery is somehow moving quietly to the back, far away from the surface to a place untouchable, perhaps unknowable. They make me feel sad and also protective.

At the beginning of the line, before the bureau and the landscape, are two paintings.  These are the first two in the series, and the work as it is displayed is largely chronological and moving from left to right.  The first two were found paintings, both signed by some unknown person named Kim.  Spray-bomb paintings and not great either, but apparently a powerful source of inspiration for James because in re-working these two paintings with little touches here and there, never eradicating the original, but adding structure and colour, he was able to begin painting again after a long hiatus. He calls this creative opportunism.

Lance Austin Olsen

Lance is another ball of wax. He bounces, the energy high, decisive. He starts off explaining about famous painters in history and about how as a painter you have to go straight through those guys, he mentions Picasso for instance. You have to go straight through them while at the same time maintaining your own self.  He says you do your work and you die, no one can control that. He says that seeing old work hanging in the gallery, and old work for him was made six months ago, he wonders what he was doing back then.  He says painting is not thinking, it’s closer to dancing or to walking.  You don’t think about where to put your feet, you just walk.

He’s also amazed at seeing his work out of context as it were.  To see just a few selected paintings or drawings representing an enormous output is perhaps somewhat confusing. He seems uncertain whether this is good or bad. If he had the space to show all of his work at once, would they look too much alike?

In all of Lance’s work at the gallery, six paintings and several large drawings on mylar, there are large black shapes dominating what can only be described as the supporting marks. The supporting marks are the layers of softer shapes and colours, smaller brush strokes and pencil marks. On top of all this are these solid black shapes bulging out and away from the gallery walls in way that is vivid, full frontal and bold. 

In an earlier review by Philip Willey it was mentioned that, “Both Lindsay and Olsen are approaching the end of their respective journeys of discovery. There’s nothing morbid or gloomy about this show but there is an invisible presence. Both artists must think about death occasionally”. Consequently it is the topic of death that we start and stop on several times. James refers to the bold black shapes in Lance’s paintings as omens or growths, as death, and it’s hard to disagree, but Lance just laughs, loudly, and says that Bill Porteous gave him a gallon of black gesso and he’s trying to use it all up.

Because his studio is small, Lance has only room to work three large sheets of paper at a time.  He paints with acrylic on paper always because paper is easy to store. Whatever three paintings he has in progress may evolve to form a single painting, other times they are related but separate. The papers are always the same size.  They come packaged and pre-cut. He says that whatever he has he likes. He does not fight his materials and he does not fight constraints.

His drawings on mylar are intense, loaded with frenetic black marks. The mylar comes off a roll and he cuts it quickly and haphazardly so that the edges are blurred and wavy. Two-handed drawings, he demonstrates, holding both fists up in the air and moving them very quickly in stabbing-like patterns.  He says that the drawings were made during a period when his wife was busy home-schooling their grandkids.  So, each lesson took one hour and during that hour, Lance went to his studio and scribbled like fury until the end of the lesson.  End of lesson, end of drawing.  End of lessons, end of series. There were 25 lessons, 25 drawings.

James’ paintings were all made in 2014, the last in the series finished after he suffered a stroke in August of that year. They begin with the re-worked found paintings, the first of which features a cameo style portrait of a lady, the second he refers to as space junk, and from there he begins the move from representational to very abstract. These abstract paintings are his alone. After a couple of intermediary pieces, the first a Baconesque image of a foreshortened nude and a lightbulb and the next featuring bubble-like shapes and tulips, the paintings seem to settle into a repetitive motif of colour, shape and line. Repetitive, maybe meditative. Definitely narrative. A story of change told not in words, but in oil paint.

Each of these paintings starts with two or three painted vertical lines, which lines produce the shapes that he calls pillars. This is the beginning. The pillars are filled with many flat areas of colour, there are a lot greens, some purples and blues, orange and brown. Sometimes these coloured areas are covered in lines, suggestive of architecture or an industrial landscape but there is that pulsing quality that speaks to biology as well.  Something alive perhaps but somehow most truly suggestive of motion, of something large moving very slowly, inexorably, turning inwards.  There is no overpainting.  These paintings are very raw and this is honest storytelling. 

hide in plain sight 

James Lindsay - Lance Austin Olsen

Deluge Contemporary Art

January 29 to February 27, 2016 

Polychrome Fine Art and Deluge Contemporary Art - Two Duos - by Philip Willey - January 2016

There have been a lot of prominent deaths lately. Lemmy, Bowie, Glenn Frey, Paul Kantner, cultural icons some of us older folks have grown up with. There will certainly be more. Who’s next? Keith Richards seems to have some kind of exemption. Dylan maybe? Most people in their seventies are bound to wonder when and where old Grim will appear. It’s the elephant in the room.

Which may seem like a downbeat way of introducing two  enjoyable shows, Ty Danylchuk and Jason Balaam at Polychrome and another, ‘hide in plain sight’ at Deluge Contemporary Art. Apart from being duos the shows have no obvious connections to each other. 

Ty Danylchuk works with found objects and collage. This puts him in line of descent from artists like Schwitters and Rauschenberg but with his own original twist. He doesn’t like statements. The collage series are Fifties imagery against a graffiti-like background. There are tobacco pipes with smoke-like bushy tails. Duchamp comes to mind. Shawn Shepherd saw them in Ty’s studio and encouraged him to show them.

Ty Danylchuk

Jason Balaam is more forthcoming. Paintings on his website are full of colour and movement. He talks about intoxication, delirium. He even has the words tattooed on his head. But he has gone through a major transformation recently. His hair has grown back and the work at Polychrome Fine Art is more restrained, monochrome…. it appears minimal from a distance but it contains complex textural variations.

Jason Balaam

In his statement he talks about youthful psychedelic experiences and his feelings about exuberance and colour….

‘Years of handling all that chaotic colour through pattern has given me the eyes to see colours within the white and the ability to imbue these serene white surfaces with some of that old magic chaos.’

It’s a lively and inventive show. Danylchuk and Balaam have years of experimentation ahead of them. Neither of them appears to be running out of time.

 

Over at Deluge Contemporary Art where James Lindsay and Lance Austin Olsen, two of Victoria’s senior artists, are having a show the mood is more contemplative. The title, hide in plain sight, is apt. The work is introspective and personal but public at the same time.

James Lindsay

Lance Austin Olsen

In this show Lindsay uses discarded canvas found locally to make a series of abstract paintings….Olsen has chosen to show two energetic triptychs and some of his distinctive graphite drawings. Olsen’s work appears monumental… almost defiant where Lindsay’s is colourful, witty and surprisingly unpolitical. There is also a tableau of objects from Lindsay’s studio representing treasured memories and moments, the tangible things he has collected over a lifetime. They include Buddhas, a severed hand (plastic), joss sticks, the ubiquitous skull and various containers installed below an early seascape by Myfanwy Spencer Pavelic.

Lindsay is from Scotland, Olsen from England, but curiously, there are no references to shared history, no bagpipes, no coronation mugs, not even a hint of Stonehenge.

Perhaps after living so many years on the West Coast they have detached themselves from their antecedents and been absorbed into the prevailing ethos, but it’s still possible to make out residual traces. James Lindsay has maintained an uncompromising revolutionary position from his Chinatown loft. Lance Austin Olsen likewise is fiercely skeptical of those in power whilst striving for inner stillness in James Bay. There is a dialectic element in much of Lindsay’s work and a distrust of language in Olsen’s which makes for interesting juxtaposition and commonalities.

“The exhibition is the result of the independent investigations of each while operating as a kind of interrogatory of each other.” Deluge Contemporary Art.

This show is both timely and moving. As we age the material world becomes less and less important. Only spirit matters. Both Lindsay and Olsen are approaching the end of their respective journeys of discovery. There’s nothing morbid or gloomy about this show but there is an invisible presence. Both artists must think about death occasionally. Is it an end or a new beginning? Should we rage or go gently into the good night? These are questions  all of us have to come to terms with sooner or later.

The Polychrome Fine Art show runs until Feb. 4th..    " hide in plain sight " is at Deluge Contemporary Art until Feb. 27th.