Things at last
Tricia Middleton
written on the occasion of Mathieu Dumont's exhibition, Haute Voltige at SKOL
spring 2004Mass produced objects have feelings too. Whether these objects are in possession of their own emotions, or are simply conduits for the expressions and emotions of others remains to be seen. Questions such as the feelings of forms, and our own ability to feel when presented with these forms seems to be of principle concern for Matthieu Dumont's ironically titled Haute Voltige , recently presented in the main gallery space at Skol.
At first glance, Haute Voltige seems to function as an art wasteland, or final resting home for dead art objects and studio refuse. The planned decrepitude of Dumont's work calls to mind questions surrounding the futility of the pursuit of a tangibly heartfelt-art in our contemporary situation, increasingly prone to advertisement ready photographic slickness and the disposability of its own production as it is. A sense of the 'wasted' is further reinforced by what can only be called a dejected display technique: broken art / broken heart. Dumont has littered the gallery with many small and large pink paintings, photographs and a videotape both showing the artist at work, alongside cracked, empty glass vitrines, and derelict plinths which display only their own ruin - an homage to the art gallery or museum as abandoned shack.
Here only the worst of materials would do: the driest of pink latex paints applied mechanistically with rollers, low-grade spray paints, splintered wood, dirty particle board, and tape that seems to have lost its stick. It is perhaps through the abundance of misery felt by the objects themselves that ultimately a bittersweet woe may arise in the heart of the viewer. Enter the alternately crying and laughing little cartoon octopi that populate Dumont's paintings. As evidenced by one of the large-scale, inkjet photos in the exhibition, when faced with these little art-octopi, themselves highly emotional and intelligent creatures, Dumont himself is moved to tears. Is it these innocent octopi that inject, as though by their own little inkjets, the heartfelt into the art?
Dumont's little octopi exist through the run-off produced by prolonged sprays of spray paint; the principle concentration of paint forming the head, and the lingering and lengthy drips the tentacles. Through these drips, or paint tears, produced using both spray can and over saturated roller alike, these precious octopi come to silently take over the exhibition, emotionally articulated by Dumont's ballpoint pen alone. One may only experience this subtle overwhelmence the closer they move to the art, where one may be ensorcelled by these little creatures to their heart's content, perhaps unable to leave this uniquely touched, watery heaven... In Haute Voltige everyone cries, the artist, the octopi, the paintings. Drawing the faces of these emotionful creatures directly on top of the emotions of the paintings themselves (their own paint tears as it were) is perhaps the key to Haute Voltige - head transformed to heart/art. Here, feelings layered upon feelings dramatically raise the stakes, seemingly in response to the impossibly dead reality of contemporary life.
In contrast to this 'emotionalism,' the audience is presented with a slapstick performance video of life for Dumont as studio artist. Here the audience is drawn back around full circle, as we seem to be greeted by a performed despondency resulting from the banality that is 'art.' The need for heartfelt response when finally greeted by something that has the capacity to be moving is brought into sharp contrast against the apparent hopelessness of life in the studio and its contents, the art. Here denatured representation, loss of aura, and the ultimate unreality of manufactured materials are best articulated. This is the double relationship to art Haute Voltige ultimately proposes - we can experience emotions and responses to mundane objects, but can these rare instances, shining so brightly amid the dullness of said commonplace, really be trusted?
This disrepair/despair in search of felt response leads one to wonder how do the materials themselves feel about all they are subjected to? Are they saddened to be falling apart and cracking up at every turn? Can the nails on the chalkboard dryness of it all communicate this despair without human intervention at all? Is an artist even necessary to conjoin these things in producing felt response in sentient beings? The way objects and things so quickly loose their sheen and turn to rot suggests objects have a mind of their own, perhaps despite the wishes of their users. Or is this propensity for decline a sign of something much more sinister working its way through our shared material reality?
In Haute Voltige , Matthieu Dumont exploits this condition of flatness imposed on commercial objects as he works with these materials knowing their potential to communicate from beyond the limits of their own being. Freed from the manufacturers' clutches, once in his studio, Dumont releases the latent wilfulness of the now renegade paint, tape, and other miscellanea, provoking the audience to think and feel the full reality of these former commodity captives' true material conditions. With material that is now in possession its own will, thoughts and feelings are not simply produced, all becomes as felt an electrical current on a wet day: art, octopi, artist.
In search of felt emotion at each turn, Haute Voltige nonetheless presents the view that most of nature has been denuded in favour of a synthetic life, a sense intensified by the painfully near death materials used. And so here with the thin being (1) of the material itself, the barely there being of the art, the deadness of it all, art, life, everything, all that lasts is real feeling, which when finally found, makes that feeling all the more precious - but are we so flattened ourselves so as to be insensible to this situation? And so, like the little octopi that infuse the gallery space with their own otherworldly loving and hope, will you cry too?
______________________________________________
(1) This is a deliberate play on Heidegger's "thing being" from his essay, The Origin of the Work of Art . Much of this text is indebted to this essay, bringing much of Heidegger's thinking to its illogical conclusion/confusion.
ISBN:2-922009-12-2