March 2011
KUTTERS: The World of Collage
International Group Exhibit
March 4 – 27, 2011
Vernissage Friday March 4 / 7 – 10pm
Beats by Big Mac Daddy
Sponsored by CKCU 93.1 FM & MERCURY
FEATURING:
ASHKAN HONARVAR, Shiraz, Iran
PHILIPPE JUSFORGUES, Paris, France
MALDO NOLLIMERG, Poitiers, France
CALEB SPELLER, Victoria, Canada
The verb “to cut” has, by definition, a number of meanings and several words come to mind. When cutting involves people I think about snipping, removing, circumcising, severing, detaching, altering, and wounding. When cutting involves paper, I think about snipping, removing, forming, altering, interrupting, shaping, and reducing.
The works by these four artists bring to mind the word uncanny, in that they unveil both the familiar and unfamiliar and explore the paradoxical nature of drawing the viewer into the beauty of the work while simultaneously giving the viewer a jolt once they examine the work more clearly. The artists have built up the images from drawings and photographs mainly with collage and ink. They have cut, manipulated, and altered the images to reveal certain inconsistencies of history and of pop culture.
Each artist uses his own style to address certain public discourses. Philippe Jusforgues bases his work on photographs and drawings of very proper, formal settings in bedrooms, living rooms, and offices. But something quite discomforting is going on. In one series, only women are presented and they are often naked and smaller in relation to the setting they are in. Their eyes have been covered or their backs are to us, which allow us to see them, but they can’t see us. What is their role and what are they doing in these rooms?
Jusforgues has also created rather freakish portraits whose basis is the early 20th century calling card. Jusforgues’ collages include images of meat or parts of animal or human bodies to the sitters’ heads of each with forms. They are uncanny in the true sense of the word, that is, both attractive and repulsive.
Nollimerg’s work addresses pop culture and includes tattoos, the faces of celebrities, the Roman Catholic Church, Nazis, and other luminaries, roiling and tumultuous, with unusual placements and juxtapositions. Nollimerg is perhaps illustrating one of Chairman Mao’s lessons in contradiction by placing what appear to be the reproductive organs of a woman on the face of the Chairman, and a series of busty, naked women along the side of the work which give a glimpse of what might be actually going on in the Chairman’s mind as he smiles at his comrades.
Honarvar’s images in his Meat series examine the porn industry and its place as a commodity in popular culture. The images of seductive women and luscious hunks of meat are interspersed throughout the collages in appealing and pleasurable ways. Colourful and alluring, they are reminiscent of Jana Sterbak’s, Vanitas: Flesh Dress for an Albino Anorectic, and the meat dress Lady Gaga wore at the Video Music Awards.
Speller’s work explores themes such as Canadian nationality, photographic performance, fabricated family history, and visual narration. Caleb sees his artwork as a visual biography made from inspiration in his personal life and the relationship humanity has with eternity.
– written by Julie Hodgson & Stephanie Goulet, 2011
Thank you,
Guy Berube, director