SPINNERS

I believe it’s only fair to propose that if you were in my shoes, you would seriously consider calling the month of July a “Spinner” (dated 29th Spinner, 2023). While they come shredded, with their own intrinsic angular momentum, one of this kind refuses to wind down and seemingly spins eternally. I was at TOAF (Toronto Outdoor Art fair) a few weeks ago, Despite being mostly glued to my booth like another essential Higgins Rental Tent accessory, I did manage to pay a fleeting visit to a handful of my friends (and missed most of them) exhibiting this year. Amazed and bewildered, seeing works of Eric Allen Montgomery, K Maclean (Oddmentartist), Emily Zou, Olivia Mae Sinclair, and a dozen (So this doesn’t start to look like a phone book), I decided to write about Alex’s (Alex Thompson) work. I settled for a title “A tunnel or a tower?”, Inspired by Jeff Vandermeer’s AREA X.

Alex Thompson. San Pietro, 1. Overshadowed | 2. Abyss

Anyone who has met Alex will agree that Alex is an incredibly approachable person. I asked my son to visit Alex’s booth and Alex actually walked him back. How cool is that? Alex’s works show such abstracted anomalies. “Am I looking at the “outside” of a structure, from “inside” of that very structure?”, I asked him naively. Oh well, he can’t tell either. I don’t think such work would have been allowed to exist a few decades ago, when they thought Jazz music moves the soul a bit too much, leading to possible spiritual corruption. I believe my website with zero traffic is the right place to admit that this also is one of my perversions, not only to step into other people’s shoes to get their point of view, but also steal them occasionally. On these grounds I lay my case; that in those long gone times, I would have supported the anti jazz movement and also not let Alex get away with something so intangible, that it disturbs the calm spirit and it’s squared perception of the world. I mean, C’mon! We might have done okay with our dogs in the park “figurative expressionist impressions”, your favorite lake landscape, or even 8’x10’ color fields. Who knows? The cat is already out of Schrodinger's box.

TOAF was so lovely, yet so brutal. It was so overwhelming to have people I look up to, pay a visit and cheer for my rushed and inadequate ensemble. Thank you a hundred times. I literally felt like my skin had started to shed as handshakes and hugs started to pour. I talked to lovely people until I stopped making sense. I hid behind my own booth to take a bite of a crispy chicken wrap that my friend Ismayil Atmaca (Fibonacci_ratio on Instagram) brought me. Even then and there, a dog called Winston humped my leg and after a while I felt the wet in my shoes.

Three days of the TOAF thunderstorm and two days of meditating on my worn out couch, the cold through the hole in my wallet started to settle in. Holy cow! I had maxed out my credit cards and didn’t sell worth a two side ferry ticket. I remembered my dad asking me with a smirk, “So, you want to be a full time artist?”. Well… it’s complicated. Yes, if I am choosing everyday. Nope, if I can see ten years ahead., and I am thankful that I can’t see that far. Right now what I can tell you is this. This month is called “Spinner”, and it’s gotten even crazier with Stefan Wegner’s  Solo exhibition “MUCH Too Much” at Propeller Gallery Toronto. This one spun me good.

MUCH Too Much- Propeller Gallery Toronto, 2023

“Your

TRUTH
Our

TRUTH
Or
TRUTH”

... Ismayil and I read the sign board, as we entered; “MUCH Too Much”. I thought I knew what he intended to do with our heads, or that was my first impression. He didn't seem to mind that we had this impression, that we knew what we were walking into. Alright! What’s the catch then, the hidden small prints? There are none actually. No hidden messages. What you see is what you get. In the first five minutes or so, we gave up on trying to hide our disappointment about the fact that there were no finely curated, abstracted  landscapes we could dismantle and lecture the artist about their fine sense of palette and composition. We agreed to let him win the first round. A wall, full of phone numbered “Sign-boards”, with the last few digits substituted for some interesting sales pitch words. What about them? In my first few months in Canada, I have actually helped my first employer to make those even bigger and more inviting. This man has lost his faith in Canadian landscapes for sure. Or is he proposing that this was a Canadian landscape of convenient sized doses of dictated ideology in clear sight? One that we hide underneath the  abstracted compositions and color palettes? We just lost round two. Another guest in the galley pointed out that we were standing beneath a sign, reading “Sell-Your-Soul- SALE”. I ain’t playing no more bruv, I am all in! Ismayil, whom I trust to be anal about “good aesthetics” of anus of a dead rat, had started to loosen up too. Let go love, It’s a spinner.

Stefan Wegner, Much Too Much. Propeller Gallery, Toronto

We spent next half an hour enjoying the dread of reading or touching any of Stefan’s beautifully crafted machines of perversion which seem to extract your consent on something you do not fully understand. What a Foucauldian delight! I don’t see any merit in describing the mechanics of Stefan’s work here(You’ve got to be there. Period). To each his own, go find yours if you will. We talked a little, made awkward gestures, wished Stefan good luck with the exhibition and exchanged awkward goodbyes. No business cards or cell phone numbers.

I started writing this a few hours after I left “Too Much”. Out of a childish excitement, I sent him a message on Instagram. In all this, there came a point when I was distracted and not writing. To better put it- when my "writer’s muscle” wasn't grinding hard enough against my recently attained "high" to spit out a good story. In those moments, I noticed that he had written back to my message. I refused to read it right then, so I can have my solo fun "at it". I kept writing more. Then I took another distraction , and read his message. This one rubs well, I said. Then I wrote an appropriate reply, I believe. I will excuse myself sharing this much though– he's been writing for thirty years. Makes sense, eh? Feel this Trojan Horse in the so-called "Visual Art den"? Crunching all that meets the eyes into a singular very infective idea? You've got a story, bruv! I invite you to allow yourself “go-under” Stefan’s signboards, You might actually find those rubbing against you “about right”. I will conclude this matter with an open and unsettled manner, so we could savor it another good day.

Stefan Wegner, Ismayil Atmaca and Mrityunjay. Much too Much- Propeller Gallery Toronto, 2023

Stefan:
There's a lot to say. And through art, you can say it. Even if there are no words - Just energy and intent can be enough.

My solo Mind-fuckery:

Structural characteristics of language are seductive. This one point of physical contact (language's close proximity to real world objects) grounds the soul. This also brings into the scene an adherence, knowledge, sharing, replication and further development of the structure itself. If Art provides an escape, a deviation or even a better reach compared to the language model, art itself isn't free of a rigid and reductional lingual structure, just different. I am thinking of Lev Manovich's proposal, that in phenomenology, we tend to clump things together which look "similar" to each other. This lure of categorization isn't actually knowledge or understanding of such a thing, but merely an assimilation of so many uniquely mutated objects and events at the expense of singular unique phenomenon . Language describes the experience,  of objects and their interaction with other objects, including the observer. It tends to put the similar looking objects and the phenomena they might cause, together and identify the whole as “one” for convenience. Does art provide a better model, I ask myself? Could it be the case that art with its errors of form , possible multiple interpretations and perspectives, is more successful in regenerating an experience? Where language's reductive accuracy makes the object devoid of a fresh experience, a "know it again" and all newly? I believe I am a bit seduced by abstract art's non-objectiveness and at the same time, It's much relaxed and soft form, so it is set free of a singular meaning or intent. its capacity to generate multiple stories and experiences. A cat's "Meow", that you can assign new words and meaning to. There's a lot, and not necessary to be said. Form in abstract also comes with its own limits. See? everything that can be defined and classified or identified (Abstract art, for example) is rather identified by it’s limit to outreach, than the core or essence (if there's any, thinking of Derrida). There's a point past which, it can be agreed that it is not abstract art. Form in art , sets a limit on its subject, another extended language with its own soft boundaries, boundaries nevertheless. A little more elastic than the language but still a structure. Just Another structure.

…This and that; for another time.