Or Gallery is plea sed to present Raymond Boisjoly\, Jordy Hamilton\, Laura Piasta: Studies in Decay\, a group exhibition curated by Jonah Gray.
T he dark overtones in both the subject matter and colour palette of the artw orks in this exhibition are the effects of a kind of realism that is more c oncerned with conveying the realities of contemporary experience than with naturalistic depiction. However\, the gloomy image of history these works r egister—one of violence and repetition with few prospects for change—never slips into pessimism. Instead\, they draw their force from seeking to split the difference between affirming the possibilities of contemporary experie nce and calling attention to its frequently disastrous outcomes.
Vanc ouver-based artist Raymond Boisjoly’s recent series of ima ges\, collectively titled The Writing Lesson\, uses visual conventions asso ciated with black metal music to create logos for indigenous place names su ch as Chilliwack\, Massett and Nanaimo. Boisjoly lays out these Anglicized words with dripping\, thorny embellishments and what he calls a “forced sym metry.” Like the band wordmarks to which they refer\, Boisjoly’s decrepit t angles of letters often verge on illegibility. This iteration of Boisjoly’s ongoing project will be the largest yet\, printed on a tarp\, and taking i ts shape from the name Spuzzum\, an unincorporated settlement north of Hope \, BC.
Jordy Hamilton\, an Ontario-born Vancouver-ba sed artist\, will exhibit a collection of appropriated images\, including a pair of videos and a series of 4 × 6 inch photographic prints. These docum ents record instances of an event held at the artist’s family home in conju nction with an annual barbecue and trap shooting competition. Each year\, t he assembled picnickers would take aim at a beat up old motorcycle\, proppe d in a field with its motor running\, and shoot it until it burst into flam es. The photographs are vintage prints that sequentially depict a motorcycl e catching fire\; the videos are digital transfers from cassette that revea l the degraded image quality of the originals.
Laura Piasta is a Vancouver-born artist currently based in Umeå\, Sweden. Her sc ulpture\, Crystallized Jean Jacket\, consists of a denim jacket\, hardened from having been soaked in saltwater and hung to dry\, a process that leave s a delicate crystalline patterning all over the fabric. Pinned to the wall \, the jacket’s slumping shape has a pathetic anthropomorphism\, but also e vokes the conspicuous absence of the body or bodies it might formerly have clothed.
Walter Benjamin held that the world continually tends toward s decay. In the spirit of his inquiry into this process\, each of these wor ks offers a meditation on decay\, while simultaneously seeking to uncover t he transformative potential hidden within the patterns of everyday life.
This exhibition was made possible through support from the Killy Founda tion and the Audain Endowment for Curatorial Studies through the Department of Art History\, Visual Art and Theory in collaboration with the Morris an d Helen Belkin Art Gallery at The University of British Columbia.
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