Event Info
SKID:
Opening: Friday November 14, 8pm
Artist Talk: Saturday November 15, 2pm
Closes...
8:00pm - 10:30pm
Free
Event Description
Opening: Friday November 14, 8pm
Artist Talk: Saturday November 15, 2pm
Closes: December 13
Open Space presents SKID, an exhibition that locates the playful festishization of signfiers that bear witness to group identification within Heavy Metal culture and its subgenre's Speed Metal, Death Metal, and Thrash. The work ofJo-Anne Balcaen (Montreal), Marlaina Buch (Victoria) and David Poolman (Toronto) riff off Heavy Metal’s fascination with death as a sign as it runs paralell to the subculture’s emphatic celebration of such life-affirming rituals as attending concerts collecting records, growing hair and submitting to various forms of body beautication art.
Montreal based artist Jo-Anne Balcaen uses parody as a strategy to engage with popular culture as a site of distorted expectations, an anxiety and dissatisfaction that comes about through the exchange of signs and a fundamental disappointment or banality that lies within. Among her ironic metal font prints, an authorized Rob Trujillo [Metallica] guitar pick also makes a guest appearance in her work, giving rise to the relationship [fetish] objects intersect with mythologies in popular music.
Marlaina Buch’s (Victoria) work casts a critical eye on systems of control and their relationship to the consumption ofmusic experience. Buch’s paintings and drawings attempt to move past a nostalgia for metal culture and popular music iconography to arrive at places where memory and analysis intersect. Buch’s suite of new drawings focus on religion, music, history, gender and personal narrative as it relates to her understanding and personal engagement with Metal culture. Buch’s work will be presented in poster bins and record store racks to further complicate issues around consumption and desire.
David Poolman (Toronto) engages explicitly with Death Metal, opening a discourse surrounding teenage rebellion and violence while focusing on issues of isolation and dissent. SKID features from the womb to the tomb, a series of large scale site-specific tattoo murals drawn and painted directly on to the gallery walls. Poolman additionally eatures The Burning of Nauvoo Temple, a 2008 video installation that references Carl Christensen’s 1879 devotional painting to recall Norwegian rocker Varg Vikernes’ infamous Church arson/protest spree of 1992.
http://www.davidpoolman.com/
http://www.joannebalcaen.ca/
http://www.terminus1525.ca/blog/5727
Chris Long Article "poking the iron bear":
http://themetropolitan.ca/story_chrislong_pokingtheironbear.php?menu=Content
Venue
510 Fort Street
Multi-Purpose / Hall
Capacity220
since 1972
In-Person Event
Fri. November 14th 2008 + Add to Calendar
Open Space
