Last Step Before Flicker Fusion Threshold: Robin Dupuis "Commutative" at Oboro

“One of the aspects of form that I have been very interested in is stasis - the concept of form which is not so directional in time, not so much climactic form, but rather form which allows time, to stand still.”

La Monte Young



Robin Dupuis is a guy I studied with, and who's been interested since years
in micro-tensions, wrether they occur in the visual domain, the sound domain (audio syntheticism), or am I supposing, the electric domain.


His new installation at Oboro is spatially ambitious yet it is almost deceptively too
simple, sort of a minimal encounter between Bruce Nauman and Granular Synthesis.

He uses the unique segmentation of the tiniest (in lenght, aka shortest) videoclip imaginable of a hand, and have it repeated incessantly, what provokes a slight
almost imperceptible shaking in the image. This image is then projected
in negative and opposing another version on both sides of a thin plexiglass panel (I linksteal from Oboro because I guess it is less illegal than taking pictures myself and publishing them, given two options). It is made very clear in another projection at the end of a tiny corridor (created specifically for the occasion) that these hands are meant to touch each others, yet I am not sure if in the smaller video piece the hands were filmed together or resulted from the use of reflect-montage (what I think it is judging from the artist's past interest in the phenomenon of feedback). But nonetheless,
all these images are accompanied by a series of speakers casted into the walls
(the ones in the corridor are in fact installed in a zig-zag pattern across each others emulating thus the physical process of sound waves) that seems to amplificate the sound incoming from the recorded images (they are drones made of very rapid loops), but they could as well be unrelated expression of pure white or pink noises, or more incidentally, static noises.


And this is where I get the most confused in that, this work is supposed to reflect a "physiology of aesthetic perception", yet I do not receive enough technological details to fulfill such a clear interpretation.


Because on one hand, I got this notion that the technology recreates vibrations
at a level that is the least perceptible for a human being (tiny loops creating drones or a montage sequences), which offer a visual enunciation of the timely fluctuations between the conscious and the cognitive, but on the other hand (scuse the pun of using the hand motif), I'm proposed all sorts of deeper (I find) meanings about static fields, unified fields (of quantum-mantric proportion), and the fact that energy traverse into everything and make everything stick together, and...
you know where I'm going there, don't you? There's a buddhist temple at Oboro !! That's where I'm going.


So as aesthetically crisp as Dupuis wishes to be with "Commutative" (see how the title itself can create a confusion), his proposition seems to dwell on the vague side, especially since the press release refuse to move much further a superficial description (read it here).


But before you move on to meditate, please follow me as I'm describing a MUCH BETTER
piece by Dupuis which in itself was worth the whole visit (have you looked here carefully? There is a QTVR shot of that second work...hmm...QTVR...sweet...how retro, how so 95).


"Conciliabule" (made in joined hands (decidedly...) with Myriam Bessette) really much suffers from being placed in the almost hidden second room at Oboro. A lot of visitors will miss out on a piece that I find considerably more appealing.

It is, again, quite a simple piece, made with tiny speakers descending from the ceilings (they have long wires, in case you can't see the picture) in perfect rows. This piece is actually the encounter between a piece by Montreal's Artifice (who used a similar room installation, but using lamp bulbs (that was at Montreal's Mac)) and a sculpture by Stephen Vitiello (a great sound artist who installed a few hanging speakers who were bumping at the pression of imperceptible frequencies (this I saw at Sculpture Centre in Queens, NYC)).


But the event itself deemed to be choregraphied the way Dupuis did it:
the work is simply the demonstration of a low crescendo between low frequencies yet only visually perceptible (through the increase of the vibrations on the speakers skins), until they become acoustically perceptible, and proceed like this through a humming drone until the speakers pop out a few minutes later (before it all restarts again).


What I like about this work is that, even though there are certainly nice
explanations and trivia details about the process and the exact frequencies used,
the piece still funtions visually for anyone not knowing any of them (including me).
It is a sound sculpture and..it is a sound sculpture. Period. That's IT.
Sound. Shown. Visually. Half a dopler effect.


But before I start tackling myself about my recent dislike of conceptual art,
I must remind that this work is first and foremost fully experiential, entirely immersive, and much more emotionally and physically engaging than a mere didactic demonstration (on the proprieties of sound, for example). This is perhaps the lunatic effect of drone, but being that I was recently attracted to transcendentalism myself, I am not the one that you will hear attempting
to devalue, diminush or demystify the affects of the most simplistic perceptusl phenomenons. Nor intellectualize them, not when I value emotions and experiences above the far and few temporal sights of complete comprehension.



Cheerlididdoo,


Cedric Caspesyan
centiment@hotmail.com



Robin Dupuis: "Commutative"
4 mach - april 1, 2006
Oboro
4001, rue Berri, local 301
Montréal
Tue-Sat 12h-5h pm



(Ooopsy....err...it's ending today I'm afraid.
You better read me REAL fast)


PS: Apparently Robin Dupuis will have a site soon, hopefully
presenting all the nice texts that were in the exhibit portfolio
but didnt have time to read. it will be at
www.robin-dupuis.com



PS2: Speaking of fast shaking images, I have stuff (of a totally different
vein) that uses a similar montage aesthetic that I want to put up here at some point. They were made for a kino 4 or 5 years ago. It's totally goofy.

This Way Please: Laura St.Pierre "This End Up" and Shelley Miller "Scopophilia" at Galerie Articule

Frankly it has been (mostly) an excellent programmation at Articule
since September 2005 throughout their cluster of exhibits on the theme
of immersion.


You have one week left to see these 2 excellent works now playing
by Laura St Pierre and Shelley Miller.


Both juggle with ideas of high and low consumption,
evoking ideals of desire with material leftovers.


It's not as if we're trying these days to dig any new topic:
everything have been tried. But they are specifities in the works
of both these artists that make their efforts worth their propositions.

Shelley Miller, an artist whose been playing with ice sugar since
a good while (I remember those wonderful pastries decorations that she had spread
as graffities across this city's walls a few years back), presents cakes
made to replicate purses and other accessories from Louis Vuitton.

There are a couple cakes half-eaten on a tiny podium (I suppose visitors
are able to eat some of it but I didn't dare), one full presentation window
with 3 other ice sugar Vuitton purses in mint condition (she even faked the
bricked walls of bourgeois shops architecture), and a couple photographs
imitating the publicity ads made by this french company (well, maybe ads made 20 years ago). (Well...ok...maybe not that old)

You don't need a whole essay about dutch Vanitas to get the idea
of where this art is going, but what the press release won't tell you
is that this art is especially critical and pinpointing at an aftereffect of the artworld, when Vuitton and Prada are probably the only fashion companies to have ads among gallery ads in big international art magazines (her ads I find look even more like Prada ads), very certainly because both companies, while still using much of conventions in how they attempt to appeal to their clients, also draw a lot
of sponsoring toward the new artists and architects "du moment".

Not even mentioning that Murakami had reversed pop art on its head by
doing canvas of Vuitton logos at the companys (and probably, their
clients') demand, Vuitton is often lending their vitrine arrangements
to half-careered artists such as Ugo Undigone.


The interesting strategy that Miller used for her work
is providing an ouroboros: it is in how she displays a cycle between
an object of desire disappearing while it is being consumed
and its wanton image making certain that once it is gone,
the viewer will be wanting more. This is especially prevalent
considering the amount of abid Vuitton collectors, who
will go through a lot of effort to find every models
of the company's purses though they are designed with the same
egocentric logo since more than a century.

This works is in desperate need to be sent to New York.


In the next room, Laura St Pierre presents yet another exhibit
engulfing the recent trend (or revival) of "sprawling art".

It's excellent. Not nearly as great as the landmark "A L'Abri
Des Arbres" (2001) de BGL, but I find it honoring to compare the approach.

Because, contrarely to other popular artists like Phoebe Washburn
who use the sprawling aesthetic to convey everyday residues
into formal assemblages of abstract functions, Ms St.Pierre is
also interested (like Shelley Miller) by the blunt critique.

But unlike with Miller the press release couldn't be more blunt either:
this is exactly described as what it is, a decorative installation made with
residues of domestic commodities, that is, the usual styrofoams
stuff that you will find in boxes when you buy all sorts of home equipments
(be them technologic or not), and the leftovers of general home decoration
(wallpapers, paint, various thrash).

They are arranged to form sort of a marecage, almost as if this world had slowly started to evolve from its own. Maybe the homeland
of parasites in a microbiologic world, but things are not that simple:
this work is not meant to revulse the viewer. Once a play with lightspots
is triggered, the room change in color temperature, and at some points
when it comes totally dark (this use of lightning change made me really think of BGL), you discover that red-lava light is coming from underneat the pules of styrofoams. From the mundane of domestic you are transported into the exoticism of inner or outer worlds.

So where in the world am I coming from with "critique" when I've been travelling this far?

Well, hoping you won't find this interpretation too weak, I do
feel like this work funtions as the evanescence of post-human ecologia,
prophetizing the doom of a natural world being shaped by our
everyday consumer lopsidednesses, never fully able to apprehend the darkness
inherent in every faces of beauty.



Go see that show,


Cedric Caspesyan
centiment@hotmail.com




Laura St.Pierre: "This End Up"
Shelly Miller: "Scopophilia"
4 march – 9 april 2006
Suite # 105 of 4001 rue Berri
Montreal, Canada
Wed-Sun 12h-5h pm