Dalceggiometry of time

>> Montreal artist Carlito Dalceggio's formula: "Never stop"

by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

Western philosophy generally pegs the time of a person's life as a straight line, point A to point B. Eastern philosophies like Buddhism see it as a circle--A loops around to A again. Montreal artist Carlito Dalceggio offers a third option.

Sitting in his Lufthaus loft studio in Mile-End, a space dense with loose art and strange objects, he's drawing me an outward spiral. The real-time line, A to B, remains straight, but it bisects each layer of the spiral. The busier the life, the more layers there are. Rest assured that Dalceggio's spiral is tightly, tightly wound.

Prior to his last show here, in May, Dalceggio and his associates in Circo de Bakuza and Organic Fresh Heroes had made their mark everywhere from after-hours clubs to family comedy fests, from liquor ads to posh art galleries. Furthermore, his trademark fusion of ornate mysticism and lurid pop-art aesthetics had taken a toehold in New York's art scene as well.

Gypsy soul

Dalceggio, however, felt he was in a locked groove. He had to keep the spiral spiralling ever outward. When he went to Europe to work on the CD cover for Maharaja, the gypsy music collective from Rajastani formerly known as Musafir, he found the key.

"The tour they were on," he tells me, "was called Time of the Gypsies--six gypsy bands from six countries--and I'd always had the feeling I was a gypsy too. In my mind, I was a nomad. When I was with them, I was totally convinced. That's why I came up with the name of this new show, The Formula of the Movement Is to Never Stop. My most recent shows were more random, and I felt I had to do a show that had a theme, a direction. I had always wanted to do a show about movement and the philosophy of access to eternity."

The movement Dalceggio speaks of takes a number of forms, and likewise this show has many facets. In some respects, the movement isn't his, it's yours. "I want the spectator to become a participant in the show. Viewing a painting can be very passive. That's why there's lots of mirror fragments in these paintings, so that when you walk past them, they seem to move and flash differently. The viewer becomes part of it."

That's the oversized mandalas he's speaking about, the ones he created in New York. But there are also 52 simple, semi-abstract, vaguely Picasso-esque works more reasonable in scope. "The smaller paintings are a sort of create-your-own-painting thing, a magic connect-the-dots. You can place them how you want, creating your own composition."

One thing that's interesting about these works is the deliberate self-limitation in terms of colour, particularly the pale blue ubiquitous in earlier paintings and sculptures. "The idea is sacrifice, not to limit yourself but to bring you somewhere else. With this new series, I limited myself to black, cream and red. It's easy to evolve into a secure circle--after a thousand paintings, you know the formula for a good painting. So you set limits."

The energy of myth

He's also eschewed the obvious subjects that peopled other works, the religious iconography juxtaposed against mundane commercial imagery. What Dalceggio now digs for is a deeper, perhaps prehistoric mythology of unidentifiable but somehow recognizable figures. "I don't want to explain in literal terms the myths, the archetypes, but rather the energy they project. The painting is the vibration more than the fossil, the trace of the myth. Which is really hard sometimes--I've always been scared of being an abstract painter. In the month of July, that's all I did. I asked myself, 'My god, what am I doing?' At the same time, it's a universal language I'm trying to reach."

That's reflected to a degree in the varied company he keeps in this project. The vernissage will supplement Dalceggio's work with photos by Daniel Robillard, video work by Fred St-Hilaire, wood sculptures by Dalceggio's dad Pierre, aural stimulation by DJ Ram and didgeridoodler Matthew Burton and design work by Dalceggio's longtime collaborator Tomate ("When I do printed work, he always organizes my chaos"). A remix of music by Maharaja will be unveiled, and things like "lenticular twin window vision," "slow speed energy cocktail" and "tropical tongue experimentations" are also promised.

With all the artists involved here, let's hope there's room for the rest of us. "It's really a tribe we're building, people from here and other countries who share a state of mind, the urge to create. That's why this show is really our show."

Vernissage at Lufthaus, 6250 Hutchison, 2nd floor, on Tuesday, Dec. 4, 6pm, info: 278-1548