Propellor Centre for the Visual Arts, Toronto

Nov 21 – Dec 2, 2012

Safe-Injection/Mystic Pill

John Hoyt

At first sight, you feel as if you have walked into a strange dream set within an illuminated manuscript. The works resemble meticulously detailed religious icons, complete with highly stylized internal frames, gold leaf halos, gothic script, Madonnas and Christ-children, crucifixions, other biblical imagery and religious Renaissance paintings. However, within these beautiful illuminations you find highly realistic computer generated avatars, too much like marble statues and too perfectly rendered to be truly human. Other, even more troubling, computer rendered objects draw the eye: syringes LSD tabs and pills, scattered or wielded or ingested by the figures. Upon further inspection repeated motifs especially in the patterns of fabrics, reveal themes drawn from Alice and Wonderland. The works themselves are made from two different processes, either separately or in tandem; some are made directly from the computer as a giclee print and others as strictly oil paint or oil on transfers. This is John Hoyt’s Safe-Injection/Mystic Pill, which through the tension created by this not so subtle juxtaposition of archaic image-making with modern image making, religion and drugs demands an internal investigation on the part of the viewer of the relationship between the real and the mystical.

The juxtaposition of and blurring between opposing imagery, dimensional forms and creates an oscillation in perception that can evoke in the viewer a groundless feeling of being in both reality and a dream-state (perhaps a trip) or somewhere in between. Concepts and ideologies simultaneously oppose and blend: the three dimensional computer imaging technology with the two dimensional renaissance icon, the blatant religious imagery with the drugs (generally considered immoral by most Christian faiths) and even the traditional oil glazing technique with photographic transfer. By presenting this imagery in conjunction with this evocation of groundlessness in the viewer, Hoyt brings into question issues of human experience of the mystical, of reaching beyond reality to see that which composes the universe. How do we experience spirituality? Through meditation, prayer, drugs? Have we lost connection with spirituality in the face of an increasingly secular, rational and technological world? How do we reconnect with spirituality? Do we cling to age old traditional religion or embrace new age beliefs? Why do we, for those of us who do, feel the need to embrace the spiritual, to find answers beyond those offered by science? Each of us has different paths to find the answer to these questions, each highly personal to ourselves.

Although any use of religious imagery in the service of art –as opposed to the use of art in the service of religion – is generally received as a critique of religion (and doomed to invite hostility from the religious), I would argue Hoyt’s work goes beyond that. It would be easy to simply say that the work likens religious to drug induced escapism from reality, or that it suggests that spiritual encounters of or with God, the Holy Spirit, saints or the devil are simply results of chemical experimentation. However, if the viewer goes beyond their initial knee-jerk resistance to religion or drugs or both, they might see the work as a means to investigate humanity’s relationship with the mystical.

QUID PRO QUO and THE FOUR SEASONS

Artist: Garry Neill Kennedy

Diaz Contemporary, Toronto

13 October to 10 November 2012

Exhibition review by Sam Hanrath

                In the history of the human race, colour has always played a critical role in divining meaning from the natural world and communicating meaning in the representational world. Humans imbue colours with specific and powerful meanings, through cultural associations and personal associations. In QUID PRO QUO and THE FOUR SEASONS, Garry Neill Kennedy presents a group of works which invite the viewer into a dialogue between their personal associations with colour and the associations of others with colour.

                Entering the main gallery, the viewer is immediately surrounded by a large wall work which stretches floor to ceiling and wall-to-wall. In chisel typeface, these walls read QUID PRO QUO in red, blue, black, yellow and orange. On such a large scale, in a space whose walls are marred by varying nooks, doorways and other structural elements, the text is difficult to make out. On one of the walls coloured installation plans from other similar wall works have been hung accompanied by texts gathered on a table which reveal to the viewer a narrative behind each work and what each of the colours in each work represents.

                When the viewer first encounters the work, they may have difficulty reading the text let alone finding a narrative within it. The phrase QUID PRO QUO refers to a favor granted in return for something, but this supplies no further narrative to the viewer who is then forced to draw the narrative out of the only other information supplied: the colour. For me, and perhaps many others, these colours call to mind the colours of wounds and bruises, particularly when grouped together. Thus, a darker though still ambiguous narrative comes through; some sort of shady exchange of power has taken place. Something has been exchanged quid pro quo for something else - though perhaps not willingly, but under threat of violence. Text accompanying this work and the others outlines the exact narrative for the viewer, and suddenly newer or deeper associations with these colours are built in the viewer’s mind so that these colours will, from now on, recall these narratives when seen elsewhere in the world.

Part of the text of QUID PRO QUO projects through a doorway onto a wall in a secondary space in which THE FOUR SEASONS has been installed. Four different colour schemes repeat through the three series of works within the space; the scheme is shown in one as paint on four panels of chipboard, a second as paint scribbles on four panels of canvas and a third as colour sample collections in four frames. Each work in each series is accompanied by a list of the trademark names of colours used in the piece, all of which are associated with whichever of the four seasons the panel represents: “Apple Blossom, April in Paris, Green Bud, Easter Egg, Spring Field, Spring Yellow...etc.” This work investigates a lighter side to colour associations in human culture than the more political QUID PRO QUO. Similarly though, abstraction here denies readings into the forms of the work and forces an analysis of the colours. Before even noticing the list of colour names the viewer tries to decipher each season by colour. Then looking at the list, the viewer is shown the complex dialogue of colour associations within culture, where colours taken from nature have been trademarked to always represent the things from which they were taken. It raises the questions of whether these are associations we would have made on our own from our own experience with colour or whether our interpretations of colour are informed by culture and media (likely a combination of both).

The exact narratives of Garry Neill Kennedy’s work can be difficult to penetrate or appreciate due to the abstract quality of the work, but once drawn in, the viewer is immersed in a revealing dialogue about personal and public narratives internalised through colour associations. After leaving the exhibition, I cannot be sure if my own personal associations with colours have left with me, intact.