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Art therapy >> Exploring obsession with Compulsion
by KEITH MARCHAND
This summer, the gallery of the Saidye Bronfman Centre for the Arts takes a look at this creative drive. Compulsion showcases 10 artists from Montreal, Toronto and New York. Occupying the gallery in a rather pleasant clutter, the works of Carlo Cesta, Patrick Coutu, Kevin Ei-Ichi deForest, Ron Giii, Susan Kealey, David Kramer, Valerie Lamontagne, Jennifer McMackon, Marie Claude Pratte and Kevin Rodgers address compulsive behaviour in differing ways. Entering the gallery, the visitor comes face to face with Pratte's Portraits of Society. Done in a somewhat slap-dash manner, with more emphasis on humour than detail, her cartoonish characters verge on the naïf. Numbering well over 100, Pratte's squat little acrylics cluster together, chronicling the myriad individuals that make up a society. Pimps, baby boomers, dealers and businessmen all jostle for space. Kramer weighs in with two light-fixture works. High Life is a pile of liquor bottles and fluorescent lights strewn across the gallery floor. The illuminated tubing spells the words "Hi Life," while the bottles seem to emanate light themselves. In (Eddie's Last) Chance, industrial lettering spills across the floor, spelling "chance," as if by (you guessed it) chance. Lamontagne makes compulsive behaviour a thing of beauty with innumerable paper butterflies and caterpillars that have been carefully pinned to the walls. Her bug collection forms a vortex that speaks of the hypnotic lure of repetition. The exhibition has compiled many sound ideas and artworks into one solid show. Try to make it your business to be irrationally compelled to go see it.
Compulsion, to August 29, at the Liane and Danny Taran Gallery of the Saidye Bronfman Centre |
For most of us, the word compulsion conjures up images of obsessive, pointless mania. The wild-eyed freak who has scratched scenes from the life of Christ into his torso with a blunt finishing nail, or the crazy uncle who has made all of his home furnishings out of used popsicle sticks. But compulsion is not necessarily reserved only for those in need of heavy medication; it's the itchiness in your brain-pan that forces you to create, the need to make things that do not necessarily have any tangible use. And as an artist, it's an asset to understand and heed this curious call to arms.