Tyler Hodgins “Sleeping Bag “ review by Debora Alanna

http://aggv.ca/exhibitions/throw-down

The Victoria public may have or will encounter Hodgins’ series of sculptures, “Sleeping Bag”, a blue frozen figure lying on a bench Centennial Square (February 4), Stadacona Park , Begbie St (February 11), and will be (February 18) on Government St., in from of the Bay, (February 18) in Harris Green at Cook St (at Pandora), (February 25) Songhees near Johnson St. Bridge, (March 3), (March 10) Cridge Park, (Blanshard near St Anne’s Academy), (March 17) Galloping Goose near Selkirk Trestle Corner where Blanshard meets Douglas, (March 24) Beacon Hill Park, north border near Southgate and Douglas St., (March 31) Chinatown Fisgard St (homeless handmade bench), (April 7) Beacon Hill Park, north border near Southgate and Douglas St., (April 14) Beacon Hill Park, public washrooms, Government St., (April 21) in front of Empress, and (May 5) Centennial Square, in front of CRD building. The calendar can be viewed here: http://aggv.ca/sites/default/files/Sleeping-Bag-handout.pdf

Within the spirit of Throw Down, Tyler Hodgins benches us. As judges, influencing a bitter social plight, he gives us the power of deliberation. Meeting with Hodgins’ works, the reverberation of homelessness encapsulated, our incredulity is sustained, and drips, puddles unavoidably at our feet. His pigmented works, icy, melting renditions of homeless people asleep disappear as warmer temperatures interact with the frozen substance. Significantly transient, Hodgins’ effectively presents a pensively haunting, difficult existence within our neighbourhoods. Each unique figure in repose, faceless and dissolving our segregation from the seemingly remote suggestion of itinerant vagrants occupying our public space, is painfully rough. The blue indecency of implication discomforts, and entails how our perception of a “Sleeping Bag” is humanly offensive. Hodgins blue melt is the blue of exasperation, the blue of a contusion on our proud landscape. A sky blue, a pretty blue, but sadly cold.


In 2010, BDDP & Fils the logo for the Abbée Pierre Foundation, who draw attention and collect aid for the Paris homeless created a melting ice man with a sign: “L’été les SDF** meurent autant que l’hiver. AGISSONS.” (The homeless die as much in summer as in winter. ACT.) Since 2005, Brazilian artist Nele Azevedo has installed melting figures to alert the public and reflect on global warming. Last September , she created a 1000 miniature people, Melting Men in Berlin’s Gendarmenmarkt square to publicize melting ice caps in Greenland and Antarctica, instructive work posing the possibility that we will all, one day befall homelessness, or at least be unsettled, dispossessed.


Hodgins brings the frozen sculpture, “Sleeping Bag” molded to realize a person, sleeping and housed within a bundle on a bench into our immediate environment, and consideration. If we were camping, and in a forest or by a stream or lake, we would bring our portable sleeping arrangement with us for our comfort, and bundle up nicely in our sleeping bag, to return to our homes, when refreshed. However, when a person sleeps in a sleeping bag on a park bench, the assumption is we are not likely encountering a vacationing individual, or traveler. However advantaged a dissolving individual might be, having a sleeping bag to sleep in, Hodgins instructs us in the prevalence of homelessness in Victoria, how we can disappear progressively, inconspicuously. The collective ‘we’ here is important. The 2010-11 “Report on Housing and Supports” by the Coalition to End Homelessness with UVic researchers found $5,049.33 was the living wage for family of four for one month, $1,313.67 was the minimum wage for one month at $8/hr (BC), $661.67, the monthly basic income assistance for a single person for one month (BC), $665 was the average rent for a bachelor unit; 2,235 households receive the BC Housing rent supplements, 1,143 individuals were seeking temporary accommodation; 1,958 unique individuals used 5 out of 6 emergency shelters in 12 months, 95% shelter occupancy was the rate over the year; 91 people, including 25 children, were turned away from temporary accommodations, and in 2011, 79 families identified in that count, including 112 children.


“Sleeping Bag” thaws the resistance to accepting myths of the visibly homeless that judges compromised people with mental or addictions. People with disabilities, seniors on fixed incomes, single parents, and people transitioning from abuse, the working poor are included in the homeless population. Anybody who lives from paycheck to paycheck is one paycheck away from homelessness.[1] What is striking, inflexible and frightening is Hodgins’ ability to mark his interpretation of a homeless sleeper with the freezing blue tint of despair, and he melts us.

Tyler Hodgins
“Sleeping Bag”
Off site work from the exhibition: THROW DOWN
Curator: Nicole Stanbridge The LAB & Centennial Galleries
Art Gallery of Greater Victoria
January 27, 2012 - May 6, 2012

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[1] http://www.solvehomelessness.ca/news.html?n=44

" Throw Down " at Art Gallery of Greater Victoria

Watch video of opening

“ Watch This Space “ by Tyler Hodgins

A covered walkway, painted entirely in flat black and elevated about a foot above a grassy area, creates a square path to navigate around the “site,” and is accessible from one corner.  The interior of the structure, a four by four by eight foot space, has left the grass intact, or rather, the grass has been preserved within the confines of the structure.  Each side has a viewing hole at an appropriate height for an average size person to look through.  The interior walls are mirrored (using sheets of mirrored acylic), creating an effect suggestive of repeating space or grass in all directions, punctuated only by the peepholes.  Looking through these peepholes, the observer’s self-image or reflection is negated by the opposite peephole, further contributing to the illusion of vastness.

This piece was created in response to the ArtCity Festival of Art, Design, and Architecture call for public artworks that address the theme of "Boom or Bust". It currently resides at the Vancouver Island School of Art. I was struck by the contrast between the interior world of a construction site and the activities of those who take a passing interest on the outside, as well as by the promise of what lies behind the wall versus what actually sits there.  It is becoming more common for a site to sit abandoned for months or even years while the interior terrain takes on a life of its own.  Ponds form, weeds flourish, equipment lies unused.  This remains in contradiction to the sometimes faded promise of modern design and urban living.

The installation can be enjoy at the grounds of the Vancouver Island School of Art 

2549 Quadra Street
Victoria, BC

ABSTRACTION - "Snow Scud" by Philip Willey

Film for Painted Television by Mark Schmiedl

The collection of abstract works at Polychrome appears austere at first sight but an underlying vitality soon becomes apparent. They range from the expressive to the experimental, paintings to sculpture and combinations of the two. There are 13 artists in the show and it’s called Snow Scud…a climate thing said Mary Patterson. It’s a loose theme. Here in Victoria we try to stay ahead of real winters. In the window is ‘Transporter 3 (Flock)’ by Charles Campbell’s. He has incorporated cut and printed birdlike forms into a Buckminster Fuller type of geodesic ball which suggests circular migration. Also in the window are some small pieces by Tyler Hodgins. Magnetic tape embedded in plastic. Tyler’s more accessible work is gaining acceptance in Victoria as public art. He’s also part of ‘Show Down’ at AGGV later this month during which his latest public project, ‘Sleeping Bag’, can be seen at various locations throughout the city. Tar is a viscous tacky substance. Donna Eichel uses it in rhythmic strokes, along with other substances to create rich visceral‘… mindscapes with their own psychological or emotional geography.’ In the two paintings at Polychrome she employs oil paint on plexiglass to much the same effect. Her work has been described as “cave paintings from a distant past or possible future”.  As I’m musing on Caite Dheere’s vaguely Twomblyesque minimalisms glowing through layers of encaustic and thinking how they could easily grow on one over time, I can’t help noticing an old dude wandering around making notes on scraps of paper. Is he a critic? What’s a critic doing in Victoria? What sort of stuff does he write I wonder. Intellectual exegesis for academics? Snotty artspeak for the incrowd?  Short words and bad speling 4 twitter peeps? I have the same problem myself. Never quite sure what style to use. And these group shows are tricky. Don’t want to leave anybody out. It’s good to know that Karl Spreitz is still going strong. The works on display are from 1975, geometric forms that look surprisingly fresh and contemporary. Ingrid Mary Percy’s calligraphic charcoal shapes on paper may be related to the Spirograph forms I remember seeing at Deluge Gallery. Mark Schmiedl’s work is hard to get a handle on. That may well be his intention. There are suggestions of Kandinsky and Motherwell but not in a derivative sense. A statement on his website says his paintings ‘…aspire to be self-interupting.’ An unintentional slip but curiously apt somehow. The wonderfully titled ‘Film for Painted Televisions’ is a large painting where abstract forms almost, but not quite, become recognizable objects. Meanwhile Lance Olsen pauses his walkabout across the Australian outback with its Antipodean earth-tones and dreamtime tracks to show a brooding but strangely celebratory undated acrylic on paper work called ‘Death by Proxy # 3’. The show also features work by Cody Haight, David Gifford and PJ Kelly. Plus there’s another chance to see some of Shawn Shepherd’s sliced up hockey pucks. I’m not going to single anyone out for special attention. Some of the works spoke to me more than others but let’s not get into what John Luna calls the ‘autocritical mist’. I’m no Jerry Saltz and I want to go on living in Victoria. Artists want cheerleaders anyway, not critics. So think of this as a sort of prose poem. My version of Subterranean Homesick Blues with a quip or two tossed into the mix. Something to do on a cold but sunny Sunday. Kudos to Polychrome for putting together an interesting collection of artists. Apologies if I left anybody out. All I have to do now is sit back and wait for the usual barrage of comments. It’s snowing as I write which may be significant. One more thing. I was going to mention the Carmen Tisch school of art criticism. Carmen you may remember is the tattoo artist from Denver who got a little emotional at a Clyfford Still retrospective. She rubbed her bare bum against a canvas apparently causing $10,000 worth of damage (to the painting). I was going to say something about not seeing Carmen at Polychrome. A silly joke that suddenly doesn’t seem very amusing. I can’t say I knew Jamer Duderon well. Saw him around that’s all. But he was too young to die. It’s very sad.

Snow Scud
Jan. 15 to Feb. 2, 2012  
Polychrome Fine Arts 

Tyler Hodgins sculpture unveiling

You are invited to attend the official opening of the Glass Half Full "playful public artwork" at the Harrison Yacht Pond in Holland Point Park. Join us for the unveiling and celebration of this new art piece designed for children to play on and to enhance this public space.  What:               Official Opening of the Glass Half Full "Playful Public Artwork"
When:               Friday, August 19, 2011 from 11:15 a.m. - 11:45 a.m.
Where:              Harrison Yacht Pond, Holland Point Park (off Dallas Road between Menzies and Turner Streets)
Mayor Dean Fortin will be joined by local artist Tyler Hodgins, the City of Victoria Poet Laureate Linda Rogers who will read an original poem dedicated to the artwork, and Jon Tupper, Co-Chair of the City's Art in Public Places Advisory Committee and Director of the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria.
Complimentary refreshments will be served.  RSVP is not required.

Tyler Hodgins – August 2011 – Artist of the Month

Watch This Space 2010 (outside view)

12’ x 12’ x 10’, wood, paint, mirrored acrylic

Watch This Space 2010 (inside view)

I respond strongly to the idea of a “signifier” of place, an object that has clarity of form, yet with associations from memory and experience, which are more elusive and resonant.
I am inclined towards sculpture that can act as a tool for seeing or for framing the environment. My studio practice engages with specific environments, public and private, and reflects the everyday, either in materials or process, or both.
Tyler Hodgins lives with his family in Victoria, BC. He has exhibited widely, and has work in public and private collections in Canada and the United States. Hodgins’ work is primarily sculptural, and includes video, photography, installation and public art. Projects focus on themes of home, language, repetition/reproduction, and chance. Glass Half Full, his most recent public art project, will be unveiled at Holland Point Park on Dallas Road, Victoria, on August 19^th. A temporary installation, Watch This Space (2010), will appear at the Vancouver Island School of Art this September.

www.tylerhodgins.ca

"An afternoon at Deep Cove" by Philip Willey

Mary and Moses….religious connotations? Well maybe. Certainly nothing too dogmatic. Perhaps spiritual is a better, broader, more inclusive word….maybe you would even call it Pantheistic if you were lucky enough to find yourself in Mary’s forest garden this weekend. Mary was Mary Martin, the owner of the property, recently deceased. Moses from the name of the street. Christine Clark, currently resident, turned the place into a sculpture garden.

Eight artists had accepted her invitation to create al fresco. Inspired by the beauty of the location they rose to the challenge and produced some remarkable responses. Debora Alanna’s white assemblages looked perfect in the pond…like an opalescent Monet…the sunlight helped.

Some Amish Kapoor blue objects in the grass by Tyler Hodgins suggested a tent city seen from a plane window. Todd Lambeth’s row of stakes, coloured from black to white provided a sharp counterpoint to the lush abandon of the natural surroundings.

Christine Clark’s giant cabbage surprised everyone.

So did the readymade oil tank. Not sure who should get the credit for that…

We stopped for wine. And a chat. And more wine. Then it was back into the garden. Some of us were stumbling a bit at this point but we pressed on. And there to our amazement was a Luna/Welch installation….

A classroom in the woods. You don’t see that every day. Elyse Portal had attached some clay pipe-like things in the trees. Bizarre at first sight but we took it in our stride.

And there on some steps leading down to the beach Troi Donnelly had juxtaposed some bright plastic objects. Twisted words on closer inspection. Nobody questioned it. We sensed instinctively it was all part of the great cosmic scheme.

I’m told Michael Jess buried a time capsule as part of a performance. We were shown the spot. The earth had clearly been disturbed. And suddenly there we were back at the house. Everybody agreed it had been a most enjoyable tour.
One wonders what timid forest creatures would make of it all. (I know Christine has a rodent problem so I must be careful here) Do they come out at night and stand in awe of human accomplishment? Or do they see these creations as convenient places to nest? Bela may well know the answer but he isn’t telling.

It was all quite magical and I hope I haven’t left anybody out. The Spirit of place was everywhere….that indefinable something that is so much a part of the Pacific Northwest. Definitely a spiritual experience. It wouldn’t have been a big surprise to see a troupe of playful fauns emerging from the bush.

The Mary and Moses Sculpture Garden Show

July 22,23 & 24, 2011

Moses Pt. Rd., North Saanich

Victoria, BC  Canada

Christine Clark,Tyler Hodgins,Wendy Welch,Sarah Stein and more at The Mary and Moses Sculpture Garden Show

The Mary and Moses
Sculpture Garden Show

artists:
Christine Clark
Debora Alanna
Elyse Portal
Emilio Portal
John Luna
Marlene Jess
Michael Jess
Todd Lambeth
Troi Donnelly
Tyler Hodgins
Sarah Stein
Wendy Welch

Friday, July 22, 6-10pm

Saturday and Sunday
July 23 and 24th

1-4:30pm

389 Moses Pt. Rd., North Saanich

contact Christine @ 250-656-7165 for more info or directions.   

Buffet : Exhibition at Slide Room Gallery

Sculpture show about food

Curated by Victoria-based artist Tyler Hodgins.

Featuring:

 Lisa Benschop
Christine Clark
Megan Dickie
Kathryn Ellis
David Gifford
Ian Rorie

Bob Wise 

Opens, May 6 @ 7:30 pm

2549 Quadra Street

John Luna & Tyler Hodgins –The Storage Room and The Corridor by Debora Alanna

View Full Album

Tyler Hodgins and John Luna collaboratively manoeuvre us into The Storage Room & The Corridor.
In the front alcove of the gallery, Hodgins fills the space with fresh, factory new square boxes, compiled into various heights, substantially 8 x 8 feet, building towers of possibility. He structures a convenient, operative corridor surround that allows us to peek into the stacks of his deliberate, interconnected modules.
Presented mostly hanging on a wall we meet as we enter the gallery, some in verso and Corridor, suspended without a wall in the adjacent fore space, Luna’s fervent apertures rede delineation. His paintings consume the picture plane with demonstrative sculptural enquiry. Intensity stored, Luna develops a repository of vigilance and poetry, a passageway to disorienting eruptions of entrenched, rasping colour and paroxysmal form.
Hodgins’ work exudes purity and sanguine optimism. Fresh cardboard smells generate cheerful hope with pervasive buoyancy. The boxes are open and await the containment of apposite venture. Sturdily housing the unknown, Hodgins projects alternative echelons of endeavour, intuitively mounted. A companion drawing with the structure inverted is a reflection of his anticipated vision. Hodgins’ converse stance is a playful Gaudi – like preconstruction edifice that cantilevers above to readdress our perspective – transposes the cloistered storeroom to the spiritual attic where prodigious heights amplify qualified space.
Hodgins system of organization and structure can be envisioned using the Bachelard sensibility in the Poetics of Space: “Bachelard uses the physical characteristics of the house in his phenomenological "topoanalysis" to show the house as metaphor for the self...” ([1]) Reflecting on the storeroom in a house, Hodgins Storeroom as self is a system of harmonious, methodical interactions. References and comparisons to artists with cube discovery, like Sol Lewitt - “The system is the work of art; the visual work of art is the proof of the system. The visual aspect can't be understood without understanding the system. It isn't what it looks like but what it is that is of basic importance.” ([2]) or Rachel Whiteread’s appreciation through the "universal quality of the box" ([3]), we find that Hodgins is in good company. He projects his ‘self’ through a configuration of boxes that are patient, unperturbed, and rhythmic. His unhurried composition generates reassuring repose. The luxury of choice (varying heights of box towers) inspires and relieves. Hodgins’ site-specific work acquaints us with the present, imparting a sense of freedom, existing at least for the duration of this exhibition.
Luna provides means of access to what we struggle to know. Intrepid poetry, each work gnaws and squeezes, crushes and substantiates with colour, paper, canvas, wax, wire. He encloses and reframes, edging toward pugnacious rebellion. Sometimes we see the abstracted picture plane; and unpredictably, the ‘verso’. The face copes, allowing the verso to exist in raw aggression and aversion or painful beauty and mystic ardour (Lakeshore). With subverted grays drawing a reluctant closure or finality (Window) and marked scoring, with the eclipse of overpowering vision (Corridor), Luna penetrates fear. Incisions haemorrhage on the reverse (1000 Hrs Later [The Pulmonary Artery - Verso]), ruminating and rebelling; he aligns with disruptive banality (Sign – Verso). “To hell with reality! I want to die in music, not in reason or in prose. People don't deserve the restraint we show by not going into delirium in front of them. To hell with them!” ([4]) Luna’s forthright, rousing accounts consistently assert intense orchestral passion.
Luna’s deference to Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns leads us to understand a history of material manipulation, a Combine. ([5]) However, there is more intuitive handling by Luna, more reverberation tempered by arch vigour. “...allow that the instances of so many things coming together in so rough a way generates its own patina, one that retroactively, inexplicably, forms its own history, legend of beginning, and underlying yield of truth.” ([6]) This quote from Luna’s essay, Pedestrian Colour strategizes one of his working premises. We are permitted long looks into his rationale; his candour supersedes legend of beginning, as his accession to truth is the result of years of investigation, creating an ominous pathos as patina.
Each composition converges and evolves. Suspended thoughts strain and progress, disconnect and refine, elegantly and unpredictably touch and alight significance. “It is true, sometimes the genius loves the strange shapes, but the thinker can read in its arcane figures, discern and know the emphasis of the verse that creates fantastic lightning from a sublime idea.” ([7]) Luna’s work embodies obdurate, audacious perseverance, tenacious investigative prowess, sometimes taking years to perfect the work. He undertakes the protracted risk we impatiently dread and shows us the results that coursing time allows. Luna supplants with cumulative abandon.
Hodgins amassed congress provides furtive circumnavigation where the surrounding corridor keeps activity around the work undisclosed. Privacy, cornering secrecy prevails. Hodgins storeroom monolith creates a welcome isolation. Trusting in the liberating cache, a consequence of his spatial construct, Hodgins affords participants a contracted, reliable retreat.
Luna’s mindscapes are extroverted sanctuaries where he harbours and dissuades, considers and demarcates consuming provocation and impulsion, proliferates in the privacy of introspection. "While working I have never thought of the theme of solitude. I have absolutely no intention of being an artist of solitude. Moreover, I must add that as a citizen and a thinking being I believe that all life is the opposite of solitude, for life consists of a fabric of relations with others...” ([8]) We can consider Luna in relation to Giacometti’s riposte regarding Existentialist readings of his work. Luna has the propensity to exude his acute discernment of life’s interactions and we benefit from his sincerity.
The Storage Room & The Corridor is a concerted endeavor. Concurrently, two distinct views of space and time cohesively thrive to showcase concord. The unrelenting, askew squares of painted planar distortions echo unruffled cubed boxes. We see the void of unknown prospects residing along vistas of confrontation. Both artists exhibit authenticity, which binds them. Veracity accumulates and disclosures of new conduits of understanding merge. Hodgins and Luna work in paradoxical alliance.
Tyler Hodgins & John Luna
The Storage Room & The Corridor
16 July - 14 August 2010
Deluge Art Gallery - Victoria BC

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[1] Joan Ockman reviews The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard via http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/research/publications/hdm/back/6books_ockman.html [Feb 2005]
[2] http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/exhibitions/archived/2010/kaldor_projects/projects/1977_sol_lewitt
[3] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4326462.stm
[4] Louis Ferdinand Celine (French writer and physician, 1894-1961)
[5] http://www.lightmillennium.org/2006_17th/rrauschenberg_met.html
[6] John Luna. Pedestrian Colour: http://www.slideroomgallery.com/PEDESTRIAN%20COLOUR%20Essay.pdf
[7] Poesie e novelle in versi, by Ferdinando Fontana, 1877: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/9642
[8] P. Selz, New Images of Man, exh. cat., The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1959, p. 11

John Luna & Tyler Hodgins at Deluge Contemporary Art

The Storage Room & The Corridor ,
explores cognition and connectivity—the ways we record, process and store memories. Hodgins’ sculptural installation uses chance, pattern and coding to invoke the perspective of domestic basement storage: a catalogue navigated by habit. Luna’s deconstructed paintings create a sense of passage or channeling; their contingent extension into ambient space an intersection for encounters with the body as much as the eye.

Tyler Hodgins graduated in 1990 from The Victoria College of Art, and was made an Honorary Associate of the college in 1993. He has exhibited widely, and has work in public and private collections in Canada and the United States. Hodgin’s work is primarily sculptural, and includes video, photography, installation and public art. Artist's website.

John Luna works primarily in painting, but is also active in writing and curating. He has exhibited installations of paintings in connection to poetry, collage, stencils, sculpture and historical artifacts in Canada and the United States. Luna’s essays and criticism have been published in national and international publications. He is an instructor at the Vancouver Island School of Art and the University of Victoria. Artist's website.

July 16 to August 14, 2010