Stars are born
Isa Tousignant
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Make-up, by Yves Tessier
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The Belgo flirts with the cosmos just in time for the Feb. 20 lunar eclipse
I don't know if the upcoming lunar eclipse has anything to do with it, but the stars are shining over the Belgo these days. If you missed Robyn Moody's gorgeous Constellation at Skol last month, a similarly stellar experience awaits you at Pierre-François Ouellette Art Contemporain in the form of Michael A. Robinson's The Debris Field. The exhibition of new works greets you with a bang as soon as you enter, with a bas-relief work made of collaged paintbrushes. Full of Robinson's signature wit and charm, the large wall work reminded me of the cosmology books I used to devour when I was little, resplendent with otherworldly colour bursts and starry explosions. It's a fitting introduction to the assemblage that awaits in the smaller room, which offers its own constellation of disparate objects - it'll make you feel like either an omnipotent being witnessing the immediate aftermath of the Big Bang or a party host faced with the job of cleaning up! Perhaps not such different feelings after all.
Upstairs at Optica, artificial intelligence and robotics queen Jessica Field plays God too in order to create creatures of her own, notably four robots for the exhibition - a line-drawing robot, a line-reading robot, a light-emitting robot and a light-absorbing robot - whose actions she has tabulated in video. There's a giggle to be had in the naturalist style of her reportages, and after a while, as their individualities come across, the critters will actually grow on
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you. In the gallery's main room rests a real treat in the form of 80-odd paintings ranging from miniature to petite in scale by Yves Tessier. All lined up on the horizontal to create an effect of simultaneous narrative - as if all are happening at the same time, but in different parts of the world - there are scenes of ordinary life, like girls lounging in the nude (a recurring image, because, you know, all us girls would do that all day if we could), couples preparing for bed, women putting on makeup and crowds ambulating this way and that. Tessier paints the works with homemade paints, created with casein and gesso on wood, which gives the works a jewel-like vibrancy. His style of bold, simple line contours filled with colour and devoid of shadows resulted from his realization that, at various times in history, it is an aesthetic that has existed in Etruscan, Minoan, Egyptian, Assyrian, Chinese and Aztec art. Thus Tessier aligns his work with this age-old tradition.
Michael A. Robinson
At Pierre-François Ouellette Art Contemporain (372 Ste-Catherine W., suite 216), to Feb. 23
Jessica Field and Yves Tessier
At Optica (372 Ste-Catherine W., suite 508), to Feb. 23
