gallery / MODERNFUEL
where / KINGSTON, Canada
when / January 13 - February 24
artists / Lumir Hladik / Dagmara Genda / Anna Eyler / Nicholas Lapointe
curator / Matthew Kyba
According to theorist Jane Bennett, our culture is widely understood to be devoid of a sense of enchantment, which is the experience of being “struck and shaken by the extraordinary that lives amid the familiar and the everyday.” Using different strategies to symbolize modern-day rituals, artists Lumir Hladik, Dagmara Genda, Anna J. Eyler, and Nicolas Lapointe aim to uncover these extraordinary instances in daily life, through objects that disrupt and question common human routines and habits. A ritual is a rigid, sequenced behaviour, a habitual “pattern”, as human brains cherish and seeks repetition. It is a method of surviving information overload. Rituals range from solemn sacred ceremonies to trivial tasks. They all have one common trait: irrationality, for they are performed, in most cases, with little connection to their original meaning.
Everyday rituals combine into amalgamated meshes of time nondescript, blended into a puree of unconscious action. How do we experience the passing of time, when so much leaks unnoticed? Instead of pointing out the comatose-esque monotony that so many of our daily tasks are carried out, each artist instead asks us to consider what our rituals mean, why they are the bedrock for our daily lives, and finally through what means are they performed? Especially in prescribed art institutional settings, the rituals of an “opening”, “artist talk”, and even “networking” takes on realized and practiced actions – pre-determined modes of interaction separate from critical thinking in order to better facilitate an ease of completion.
Many artists blur the line between the everyday ritual and art. Moving focuses away from the object, artists such as Tino Segal have used ritual experiences as the medium for disruption. “Time” is an integral part to practices as such as they are performed as “happenings” over a very specific duration. We can roll in “relational aesthetics,” a movement that questions the very definition of what art can be, and how art performance can include common rituals such as serving soup within a gallery. What separates Ritualia from these aforementioned artistic groups has to do with using the art object as a vehicle for a richer understanding and questioning of daily comings and goings. Instead of depending on the action, the instance, or the performance of said ritual, each artist works alongside the knowledge of repeated tasks to both inform and critique various human functions and assumptions. Appropriating both natural and non-natural elements, Lumir Hladik’s work in Ritualia incorporates ready-mades, intervention, installation, and real-life environmental components. Concerned with Humanity’s lack of respect for death, and all the grandstanding of humankind’s “authority” over everything else, Hladik’s practice attempts to re-introduce conversations about our position within a universal expanse. Outside on the gallery’s parking lot fence, Hladik’s action/installation involves gauzed tubes that penetrate through the chain link fence, a rope connects them as an ouroboros circuit. Speaking to the farcicality of man-made borders, Hladik disrupts notions of divide.
Standing alone in the centre of the gallery is a remnant from rituals past – gauze-clad and fully naked, needleless, and lifeless pine Xmas trees. The ironic classification of the evergreen laying curled up, browned from time passing, is not lost on Hladik. His works often act as interventions into daily happenings, such as how we view and understand time. The idea of “eternity/mortality”, a noble concept created to relay a sense of permanence, relates back to how time is measured and understood but never fully grasped. The murder of trees for three days of pleasure, a permanent snuffing out of life, an irreversible forever, is the arrogance of the anthropomorphic view that our universe is at humankind’s disposal. Looming over the deceased trees is a softly rounded cross, wrapped in gleaming silver spandex with door holders attached to the limbs. With using nearly identical aesthetics to gym equipment, he makes a connection to the masochistic tendency of both religion and exercise. Interested in our fascination with daily rituals such as these, Hladik’s neo-modern interpretation of the cross examines the efficaciousness of faith and the ritual of worship to everyday tasks.
Matthew Kyba
Toronto,
January 10, 2018
