We Build Excitement is a presentation of emerging artists who use the medium of paint to move beyond pictorialization. The five artists presented - Claire Greenshaw, Chad Jagoe, Emily Jones, Rodney Jonestone and Pheilm Martin - are recent graduates of or current students at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and all employ paint as a substance that may be read phenomenologically - for its physical, literal meaning - as well as metaphorically.
These artists were selected primarily for their playful and open-ended investigations of process and materiality, and their uncowed engagement with the anxieties surrounding issues of painterly virtuosity and historical battles over the medium. Bypassing both entrenched models of craft mastery, and the conceptualism that has dominated painting practices in Halifax for decades, these artists instead approach painting as a place of embodied excitement and ongoing transformation.
The emphasis on materiality in the work of some artists schooled at NSCAD can be seen to stem from particular strains of instruction at that institution. Throughout the '70s, under the stewardship of practitioners such as Garry Neill Kennedy, Gerald Ferguson and Eric Cameron, highly programmatic approaches were employed in the practice of painting. Kennedy has been devoted to a type of painting that thematizes the process of painting and its function as a pure sign. Bodies of work such as American History Painting take the names of commercial paint colours as a starting point for a systematic investigation into power and its manifestations. Ferguson rejects the personal mark of the artist in favour of process, structure and reduction. His task-oriented paintings of circles and dots reflect a conceptual framework that deconstructs the conventional strategies of painting by questioning its underlying theoretical premises. Cameron has methodically applied thousands of coats of paint to three-dimensional objects, turning them into enlarged and obfuscated versions of themselves - "To justify the inevitability of its particular forms."1 Despite a resurgence of more representational work in the '80s, a neo-conceptualist verve has been kept alive in the painting departments at NSCAD, evidenced in an often backhanded way in the works of emerging artists - their work suggesting that there is no "inevitability" in paint at all, and that no matter how well articulated the program of production, paint can never be fully controlled or predicted.
A continued neo-conceptualist presence, at play with the technologies of new media - and a more interdisciplinary approach to art-making in general - has led to a lack of dedicated attention to traditional painting materials and techniques among younger generations of artists. These artists have adopted a more physical and performative approach that stands in opposition to historical standards of painting. An exploration of the viscous and messy physicality of liquid pigments has allowed the artists in this exhibition to re-address the material and meaning of paint and to give rise to new forms. In these works a perceived lack of mastery over the materials serves as the starting point of an involvement with the physical and mutable qualities of the stuff called paint.
The work of Pheilm Martin takes this approach to paint as an ultimately unknowable substance quite literally. A combination of traditional and newer paint materials - oils, alkyds and siccatives - are applied to canvas. Combined, they conjure up mysterious effects. Like an alchemist hovering over a bubbling cauldron, Pheilm mixes and experiments, pours and prods. Like Jackson Pollock, the paint is applied to a horizontal ground where it hardens, cracks, puckers and gels. The surfaces of the painting look organic. The manufactured constitution of the material is transcended by the pus-like evisceration of layered underpainting as liquid paint erupts from beneath a dried skin.
In the gallery each rectangular canvas is hung one over another to form a towering column. Like an animated Barnett Newman painting, a stripe runs from canvas to canvas, leaving a physical trace as the paint leaps free. The work continues to ooze, maintaining an independent life and direction of its own.
Claire Greenshaw's paintings also feature the paint playing an active role in building the painting. Her poured paintings hearken back to Pollock and Lynda Benglis - but the paint is poured onto the floor and then exhibited on the wall, sans support. The paint is sealed to itself by virtue of its own molecular makeup. Unlike a cleanly presented work by Pollock, or Benglis's latex pours which remain at the site of their production, Claire's paintings hang limp and torn in places; the traces of footprints, dirt and previous staples provide an additional history. The lack of a permanent support gives the paint-object independence, but also exposes it to ongoing degradation. These works have a limited lifespan. Similar to Pheilm's paintings, they resemble skin, and are effected by gravity; sagging under their own weight the works age, droop and collect scars.
Emily Jones focuses on the pureness of the material itself, fresh and glistening from tube or tub. Her multiple, mostly monochromatic panels are smaller parts of a larger whole, dispersed over an expanse of wall in the Ballroom gallery. The arrangement of the individual panels suggests the work is unlimited; one imagines an ever-growing series of brightly-coloured rectangles ascending/descending the walls. In each one, Emily has scooped and spread the paint, piling it up into rough hides. Within each of the panels smaller gaps and tiny crevasses are tucked within the heavily applied paint; areas full of dollar-store glitter, plastic rubies and other jeweled surprises, like party gifts. The bodily connection to the commercial world becomes indistinct as fleshy gaps, strange growths and moles become places for the covetous display of glittering artificiality.
To further showcase the aesthetic qualities of raw materials Chad Jagoe exhibits his work in custom-built box frames. This is at odds with the goopiness of paint and acts as a barrier as well as container for the trapped specimens inside. His interest in presenting pure, un-manipulated material is emphasized by this manner of display. In one work analogous-coloured circles sit one atop the other in a flattened pool; in another, a clear acrylic gel is displayed to showcase the bubbles. One piece goes so far as to give a material quality to the interplay between light and shadow. A more sculptural approach is taken in works that incorporate raw building materials, simultaenously calling into question the boundaries of painting, and grounding paint in the industrial world. The unpredictable has been contained and displayed, sandwiched between glass, glued and pieced together for safe visual consumption.
At first glance the tri-colour splotchy paintings of Rodney Johnstone seem to be the simple result of paint poured and dripped to form abstract patterns in a formal examination of figure/ground relationships. Like Claire, he works with mistinted commerical house paint. Closer examination reveals that the seemingly random arrangement of pours and drips have been pre-planned. This apparantly accidental application of drips is in fact, part of a broader formula that incorporates patterns derived from heavily mediated images of random crowd scenes. This pattern is used to guide the poured paint‹a direct demonstration of the tension between the planned and unplanned act. The notion of abstract expressionism is turned on its ear, and the work into a paint by numbers.
The works in We Build Excitement foreground their materiality: the process of their making informs their meaning, and in many cases, is their meaning. They do not attempt to re-present a pictorial view of the world, rather, they assert their own place as real objects in the world, moving beyond the traditional physical and conceptual supports required to contain painting. Demanding space in the real world, they inhabit a not-too-comfortable space within contemporary art, hovering somewhere between 'art for art's sake' and an impish approach to authority that breathes fresh air into a sometimes stuffy business. These works thrive on tension; tension between efficiency and playfulness, between assuredness and questioning, and between expectation and surprise. In a gritty and cheeky way, the artists in We Build Excitement make material examinations of the substance, history and evolution of representation. They open new doors to commodification, then slam them shut; or just leave a mess on the gallery floor.