An Evolving Installation by Noel Bégin

I feel that my eyes have been cleaned, my soul lightened and my mind illuminated after experiencing Noel Bégin's A Panoptique Diapositive Diorama Making Diaphanous of the Diabolical. A cross-fading event of an installation, this highly orchestrated arrangement of slide projections and photo viewers, which was conceived, built, used, and dismantled in two days, seems comparable in complexity to the construction sites, circuit boards and nature cross-sections represented in the piece, except that it developed much faster, as if a time-lapsed version of the real. Noel's total involvement with this on-the-fly project meant that he hardly had time to inform us all of this replete work, housed at the individually welcoming yet professional alternative space of the Carpet N Toast Gallery which also hosted a performance by Los Greasy Bombers the next night. But those of us who know Noel or his ephemeral and technically immaculate works, can imagine the enthrallment of walking through an entire room exhibiting his Newtonian exploration of light and colour refraction and finely tuned consideration of all aspects of his media- conceptual, literal, imaginative, technical, and relational.

What seemed to strike most visitors initially was the play of light and colour patterns clinging to their bodies like clothing as they walked amongst the floor-mounted vintage projectors, set up so that it took time to determine where the source of the image originated and how it was that your self seemed to become enmeshed with- or dissolved into the air, itself rendered lush and active with photons. A visitor commented that he felt every part of the environment to be dynamic and interactive, although only our bodies were in motion. Such is the magic inherent in the outdated, abandoned medium of the slide projector, which this artist is willing to discover and re-invent.

The projections were manipulated in several ways to create the feeling of the viewer's immediate world becoming that of a virtual world. The projected images did not appear distinct from one another, nor did they hit a surface in typical rectangular form. Instead, the borders of the images were blurred, one image was keyed-out by another, others refracted off a surface or freestanding screen, or were connected visually to the surrounding space and objects through continuous lines and textures. A beautiful example of this was a small cylinder made of white paper sitting in the back of the room, upon which three different slides- a red pylon, a woman walking, and a weather balloon- all bled together in a single cyclical image around the screen.

This de-centered or multi-centered view mobilized the viewer to experience an unfolding and composite reality. A small picture viewer, altered so that its light switch stayed on, was placed on top of each projector, and so a shared or outward facing image was structurally paired with a small, almost secret, personal view of another image. If part of the intention was to open up subjective awareness to our being in and of the world (and to work against the usual feeling of subject/object separation) then the images of nature, patterns, and people adorned in the clothing of far-off, non-Western places, took us further from ourselves, presenting what Claire Bishop calls the dream scene in her categorization of the four distinct bodily experiences offered by installation art. Installations operating as dream spaces provide a context for rethinking the world according to personal affects and associations. As there were many real-world images to piece together in this installation, our being touched by and integrated into the light or material of the images meant that they absolutely were felt in a new and personal way. A further connection to a dream space is made by the fact that the installation took place in a sealed off room in the basement, accessed by a narrow staircase, as if one had to descend into a subconscious realm, where nothing was illuminated by natural light, but by an inner source, akin to dreams.

Noel was present to guide visitors through the space, to shed light on some technological mysteries, and to tell stories relating to his experiences with obsolete or obscure machines and processes. With numerous bulbs lit and fans buzzing in the room, it was as if we sat around an electrical campfire, impelled to reflect on the nature of technology and our world. One story Noel related was based on a found slide of a man in Vietnam who had built a resourceful shade structure out of bamboo and mud under which to work. The artist's enthusiasm about efficient uses of energy and a relationship with nature, about graceful design and creative engineering, is exemplified in his anecdote and courses through his own work.

Much of the imagery in Noel's recent work has examined either man-made structures and technologies such as geological surveying, or the technology of nature found in the microcosms of insect worlds. In A Panoptique Diapositive, slides of construction sites, houses, roadways, machines, fences, and other inventions symbolize an infiltrated world of productivity and the transformation of natural resources into infrastructure. The photographic process of turning the solid matter of buildings into the weightless material of light, echoes many contemporary artists' concerns to work more immaterially, therefore not adding matter to the already cluttered world. A Panoptique Diapositive Diorama offers an immersive and saturated, yet immaterial and non-commodifiable experience, in which to feel space more fluidly, subtly proposing that through an immersion of self in world, we may rethink our relationships to nature, making diaphanous of the diabolical.

Carpet N Toast Gallery

Taking Care of Business

We are those people with the office-supply fetishes, but we're pretty sure we're in good company. Perhaps you are also among the ranks of people who could easily spend an afternoon at Staples fondling the pens and weighing the respective merits of different styles of wall calendars? The authors will readily admit to a certain fascination with office accoutrements, and as any good stationary fetishist knows, the Post-It note is in a category unto itself.

Thankfully our breed includes Montreal artist and Post-It note wizard Immoney Men. On a warm summer evening we headed down to 809, the Kensington garage-cum- indie-arts-space to check out his exhibition Taking Care of Business, an installation that taps into the Post-It Note's expressive potential. Gallery co-coordinator Tyler Los-Jones' willingness to serve up beer, loaded veggie dogs, and corn-on-the-cob while touring us around the small space signaled a welcome return to old-style artist-run hospitality. Make no mistake: this is the stuff that community is built on.

As the unassuming sticky note continues to spring up in increasingly unusual and comedic situations (cranky notes to messy roommates, elaborate pranks devised by bored office workers, art exhibitions, and home décor) - it continues to acquire value not only as a handy tool, but also as an object imbued with a growing collection of pop cultural references.

Taking Care of Business uses the Post-It and all these peculiar associations to delve into the world of office culture and to prompt a reconsideration of the "work" that goes on there. The installation uses custom printed stickies to create a mosaic that covers the walls of the garage with images of offices themselves. The offices depicted in the mosaics could be any office - filled with generic furniture and an implied aura of boredom, stale air, and wasted cubicle hours. Men worked at installing the piece over the course of a month-long stay in Calgary. The work of printing, arranging, and sticking up the notes became his job.

A methodical and arduous task, this grid of hundreds of carefully pixilated yellow stickies also points to the kinds of things we occupy ourselves with when the pressures of office life drive us to fabricate crazy coping techniques. These diversions might mimic the appearance of work, yet our moments of advanced procrastination can also start to seem pretty artful. Think Gary Burn's waydowntown, a film where the antics of a group of cooped-up office workers becomes highly performative. In the film, shot entirely in downtown Calgary, they attempt a competitive durational 'performance' of living in their office building until their other colleagues crap out in favour of fresh air.

Men's daily task of repetitive and mundane work completed while in residence at 809 bears a certain similarity to the way we might be tempted to imagine a cubicle-based office job. However, the reality of a solitary studio practice is not entirely unfamiliar to most artists, and the precise and repetitive action of applying the notes does hint at the fact that tedious work can sometimes be pleasurable. As anyone knows who has lost themselves in a seemingly boring task like stuffing envelopes or even knitting, there inevitably comes a moment where the body takes over and the mind is free to wander in an almost meditative state. Which leads us to wonder whether perhaps art-making and office-sitting are not as far apart as we think?

809

Thick and Thin

A Photo-essay

Spawned from the sprawling Sled Island music and arts festival that celebrated its second year in Calgary this summer, Thick and Thin is a gathering of contemporary local painters curated by Wil Murray. The show is housed in the 4th floor gallery at the Glenbow Museum , and runs until September 28, 2008.

A Well Crafted Throwaway Line, by Kyle Beale, greets visitors at the entrance to the gallery space.

Chris Millar's detailed collages are flanked by large magnifying glasses hanging on the wall in order to dive into the smaller images pasted on the canvas. Above is a detail from Ma Mabel's Eyes.

Patrick Lundeen's You Want To See My Bacon Torpedo hangs phallically on the gallery wall, accompanied by an audio recording.

Kim Neudorf's haunting images look out on visitors walking into the gallery. From left to right is Fele VI, Fele II and Fele V.

A detail from Ryan Sluggett's sculptural installation, Reclining Landscapes.

Thick folds of acrylic paint ooze down Miriam Bankey's Extra Brilliant Aluminum.

Dave and Jenn's double-sided multimedia piece We Are Waiting To Leave, with another of their paintings - Ask Me Again If That Bear Is A Rock - in the background.

Glenbow Museum