Mar. 10, 2011 - Issue #803 : A city by the people

The world at play

Latitude 53 offers two playful considerations of everyday life

This month's offerings at Latitude 53 are playful considerations of the defining factors of everyday life—and some surreal flights of fancy in the opposite direction.

In the Projex Room are Lisa Rezansoff's New Prints, a series of small copper etchings of childlike, sketchy images. This is not to say they are sloppy or amateur. Skill is clearly present in her ability to bring focus and compositional structure to these busy and wild prints. In "Human Island," (2011), the repeating motif of scale-like half circles become waves outside the pair of boneless arms that wrap around the base of the mountainous island. These large, simple limbs delineate space, making a discernable distinction between the half circle-covered land and sea. The upper arms are absorbed into the island's rocky top, as a third appendage shoots straight up; its fingers form tree branches. Rezansoff's prints always contain at least a hint of human presence in an otherwise bizarre natural environment. Although there is no clear narrative in these prints, this is a notably conceptual relationship, this subtle connection between human forms and nature—figures and appendages being absorbed, transformed or dissolved into the landscape. Enjoy this show for Rezansoff's distinct markmaking style, which seems so immediate in this medium. Copper etchings are the perfect mode for translating this bizarre unnatural vision of nature from the artist's hand to paper.

Mathieu Valade's vision of our world forms an equally surreal environment through the works featured in his Cubic Units exhibition. Valade questions our relationships with brands and their effect on our thinking in his video, "Logotomy," (2011). Logos of sports teams, corporations, health food brands and religious and chemical warning symbols appear on the screen one at a time, morphing seamlessly into each other. Making an argument for their interchangeability and their oppressive ubiquity, these symbols can either be accompanied by Gregorian chants or cheesy Kenny G-like jazz via two sets of headphones. Although this is not a particularly provocative work —there is no complex critical discourse here—there is something to be said for finding a way into observing patterns across institutional symbology through playfulness.

Startling art installation mischief, which is complementary to "Logotomy," can be found in the show's namesake piece. Innocuous-looking mirrored cubes cover one-third of the exhibition space, appearing to be quietly at home sitting on the grey floor and projecting reflected light onto grey walls and ceiling. Without warning, the diamond-shaped reflections abruptly disappear as the cubes reveal hockey puck-sized internal lights. The whole floor seems to vibrate and the cubes sound like a garburator chorus as they slowly migrate in no particular direction. Sometimes this occurrence goes on for a fraction of a second, sometimes much longer, but each time it ends as suddenly as it started, like nothing ever happened. This work, too, adds a bit of disorder to the sanctity of the exhibition space and to the tidy and clean cubic forms. Like his video work, Valade terrorizes the easily understood and mischievously jars his viewing audience out of their comfort zone. The artist is clearly adept at being disruptive, and I look forward to seeing what kinds of mischief Valade can get into with more complex and nuanced conceptual content. V

Until Sat, Apr 2
Cubic Units
Works by Mathieu Valade
New Prints
Works by Lisa Rezansoff
Lisa Rezansoff artist talk:
Thu, Mar 24 (7 PM)
Latitude 53 Contemporary Visual Culture (10248 - 106 ST) vueweekly.com comments: powered by Disqus