DAILY SERVING » Vanessa Maltese

No Dull Affairs at Onsite OCAD

Caitlin Sutherland — Thu, 29 Aug 2013 07:00:35 +0000

Ontario College of Art & Design’s professional gallery space, Onsite [at] OCAD U, is raw and industrial. Its warehouse-like ambiance is enhanced by the cinder block walls, industrial piping crisscrossing the ceiling, and bank of floor-to-ceiling windows facing the street. These features present a number of restrictions when mounting an exhibition, a challenge for artists and curators in this unconventional gallery setting. In No Dull Affairs, the current exhibition there curated by Lisa Deanne Smith, each artist experiments with the concept of site specificity in a way that complements their individual aesthetics and bodies of work. While Jillian McDonald’s video Valley of the Deer (2012) responds heavily to the landscape and cultural mythology of Dufftown, Scotland, the site of her 2012 Glenfiddich International Artist’s residency, Karen Lofgren and Vanessa Maltese respond directly to the gallery’s architectural elements.

Jillian McDonald, Valley of the Deer, 2012. High-definition video still courtesy of Onsite [at] OCAD U

McDonald’s video installation Valley of the Deer (2012) is a lush, dense narrative. The saturated colors and digital effects give the vast Scottish landscapes something of a tilt-shift effect due to variations in focus and depth of field. As a result, some of the scenery resembles model landscapes, an effect heightened by the appearance of surreal figures (locals from Dufftown and workers from the Glenfiddich whiskey distillery, who sway back and forth while wearing various animal masks, taxidermied heads, and skulls). McDonald created the costumes and masks on site in response to the landscape and incorporated local folklore into the piece, primarily relating to the mythological stag featured in Glenfiddich’s iconic logo. The title of the piece also relates to Glenfiddich and the rural Scottish location; the translation of Glenfiddich from Gaelic to English is “valley of the deer.”

Jillian McDonald, Valley of the Deer, 2012. High-definition video still courtesy of Onsite [at] OCAD U

Much of McDonald’s recent video work, including Valley of the Deer, plays off classic horror movie tropes. There is an underlying uneasiness in the video installation, heightened by the droning vocal backdrop composed by Dave Roberts and sung by Ealeen Strathdee. While macabre in tone, the video serves as a romantic testament to the Scottish landscape. The combination of sights and sounds leaves the viewer consistently on edge despite the piece’s languid progression and the fact that nothing particularly horrific happens. By creating an affective experience that speaks to the camp qualities found in many horror films, McDonald highlights the type of visceral yet predictable experiences that continually draw audiences back.

Karen Lofgren, Pole Extrusions #1, #2, #3, #8, #11 (family portrait), 2012. Installation view courtesy of Onsite [at] OCAD U

Minimalist and conceptual, Lofgren’s Pole Extrusions (2012) and Stabilizers (2012, 2013), placed throughout the gallery space, stand in stark contrast to McDonald’s work. Pole Extrusions consists of playful and texturally rich cylindrical silicone forms that extrude from industrial pipes made of copper and aluminum, mirroring the piping that runs along the gallery’s ceiling. These marbled silicone constructions appear to be forcing their way out of their confining structures, visually evoking the core samples that geologists extract from the earth in order to measure its solidity and composition.

Karen Lofgren, Stabilizer #3, 2012. Installation view courtesy of Onsite [at] OCAD U

Lofgren’s Stabilizers are particularly successful in expressing their intended site specificity. Some have been constructed prior to the exhibition, while others were constructed specifically for the gallery, adhering themselves to the space almost parasitically. If you don’t look carefully, you’ll entirely miss Stabilizer #3 (2013), nestled by the ceiling in a recessed corner, camouflaged against the monochromatic gray concrete blocks and silver-gray electrical conduits surrounding it. Similar to Lofgren’s successful Gold Flood (2009), the Stabilizers play a trick on the eye—they appear to look like a cast molten metal—but are in fact meticulously constructed out of expandable foam and coated in automotive paint. These pieces open up a dialogue with both the formalist aspects of sculpture, particularly weight and texture, and the spatial construct of the white cube gallery.

Vanessa Maltese, Primary Track, 2013. Installation view courtesy of Onsite [at] OCAD U

Like Lofgren, Maltese works within the minimalist tradition, though her pieces are strikingly intricate and methodical. Maltese, 2012 winner of the prestigious RBC Canadian Painting Competition, has gained recognition for her complex paintings that play with the formalist aspects of the medium with a particular focus on the concept of framing. The installations in this show continue the natural trajectory of her work over the last couple of years: a transition from paintings with sculptural elements to paintings based on sculptural constructions to hybrid sculpture-paintings. Although the work in this exhibition could be classified as sculpture, this sort of strict label doesn’t do justice to the precarious, delicate balance between painting and sculpture found in Maltese’s work.

Vanessa Maltese, Installation view of Variation of a Baseboard-Pipe Track, 2013. Image courtesy of the artist. Photo: Jimmy Limit

The majority of Maltese’s pieces featured in No Dull Affairs respond directly to the gallery itself and display her signature ability to isolate patterns and shadows. Maltese was given her own set of keys and visited the site often in order to develop the work on display. The most evident nod to site specificity is found in Variation of a Baseboard-Pipe Track (2013), a vinyl “track” circling the gallery that mimics an overhead pipe. Within the context of an art gallery, this reference to an often overlooked architectural detail provokes questions about the ways we view objects within the gallery space and serves as a cheeky critique of the white cube. Her other assemblages are delicately framed and modestly placed within the confines of this vinyl border, further probing the constructs of the representational frame of the gallery.

While each of the works in the show is site responsive in some way, the connection is subtle, particularly in the instance of Maltese’s installation. In order to fully appreciate the exhibition, visitors should move through the space at an unhurried pace, allowing the nuanced complexities within these highly resolved pieces to reveal themselves.

No Dull Affairs, curated by Lisa Deanne Smith is on view at Onsite [at] OCAD U, in Toronto, through October 12, 2013.

Art Spin at the new 99

Sara Knelman — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 07:00:09 +0000

A walk along Toronto’s west Queen West these days is a journey through a neighbourhood still in the throes of gentrification. With a thriving gallery scene now fully entrenched, the condos are going up, taking shape amidst the soaring cranes and massive construction pits. A little jaunt south of the main drag, a newly-renovated 99 Sudbury now holds a fitness club and event spaces, as well as a commercial gallery—a newly-minted 6,000 square-foot white cube. The inaugural exhibition, which opened on August 25^th, is a whimsical group show curated by Art Spin, their second annual show, and something of a coda to their regular contemporary art bicycle tours.

James Gauvreau, Really Long Lake (installation view), wood and video, courtesy 99 Gallery, photo: Jesse Milne

Though the show consciously avoids a thematic framework, the individual works (by a dozen Ontarians), gain a certain coherence here—not only in relation to each other, but to the relatively majestic space they occupy—it would be possible, you feel, wandering through the gallery, to make a bicycle tour of the exhibition itself, and the breathing room is crucial to the larger energy fields many of the pieces project.

Gareth Lichty, Enclosure, construction fencing, courtesy 99 Gallery, Photo: Jesse Milne

But it’s the relationship to the neighbourhood that’s most compelling, to me at least, as raw, industrial materials, some of which seem like they could have been scavenged from nearby construction zones, are here creatively re-purposed inside the gallery.

The room is anchored by James Gauvreau’s Really Long Lake, which narrows to the top of the 17-foot ceiling and incorporates a projection and a mirrored floor—a kind of meditative, rustic, fun-house.

James Gauvreau, Really Long Lake (interior), wood and video, courtesy 99 Gallery

It’s flanked by new work by Gareth Lichty, who turns vibrant orange construction fencing into minimalist vessels, and by Hamilton collective TH&B’s Transmission, an industrial radio tower topped by quietly sonic satellite dishes overgrown, seemingly organically, by a hive of burrs—a worthy follow-up to 2008’s Swarm, which generates a similar sense of electric energy and an underlying, pervasive anxiety.

TH&B, Transmission, burrs, radio tower, cable, satellite dishes, found objects, courtesy 99 Gallery, Photo: Jesse Milne

Surrounding wall-mounted works reinforce the sense of intensive craftsmanship and renewed interest in the art object’s meticulous construction. On the far wall, Markus Heckmann’s Reg Ex flashes neon lines that evoke the light works of Dan Flavin, but are here formed by whitewashed 2x4s mounted in vertical lines and generative animation, displacing the source of light as an external projection.

Vanessa Maltese, Wall Grid No. 2 (Studio Sculptures), wood and acrylic paint, courtesy 99 Gallery, Photo: Jesse Milne

On the other side of the room, the tiny, perfectly formed pieces of sculpted wood that make up Vanessa Maltese’s Wall Grid No.2 (Studio Sculptures) are a geometric counterbalance, revisiting modernist forms in the gem-like, obsessive shape of miniatures. With a similarly pared down aesthetic, Sarah Elizabeth McCaw’s suite of works pair texts like “I am not 100 percent sure we can do this” and “Everything is going to be all right” with wooden models reminiscent of broken wall clocks, with simple moving parts: completely mesmerizing exercises in futility.

Sarah Elizabeth McCaw, I Am Not 100 Percent Sure We Can Do This, wood, acrylic and motor, courtesy 99 Gallery, Photo: Jesse Milne

The first and last piece you see in the space is a panoramic painting by Toronto-based Gillian Iles, Eden is Tempting but Not to be Trusted, a vibrant canvas that foretells and reflects the restless imagination and sense of absurdity in the room.

It’s worth a spin.

Gillian Iles, Eden is Tempting but Not to be Trusted, oil, acrylic and pastel on canvas, courtesy 99 Gallery, Photo: Jesse Milne

With additional work by Wrik Mead, Keith Bently, Tom Ngo and Scott Eunson. Art Spin’s Second Annual Exhibition at 99 Gallery is on view Tuesday to Saturday, noon to five, until September 24^th.