Peter von Tiesenhausen
Sylvain Bouthillette
Christian Eckart
Martin Bennett
Jack Burman
Jay Johnson
Seth Scriver
Beauty Supply is a group show whose title hopefully says it all. Each of the artists has supplied works that are, I believe, radiant beauties, each in their own way, each offering a space for contemplation of daily life itself and perhaps an opening into, yes, a higher existence. Anyway imagine a graph with ‘spiritual aspirations’ along the vertical axis (of course) and ‘our rickety life’ running horizontally. From there I thought about how the work of each artist might be placed in relation to another, ie. which work seems concerned with reflecting the transience of our time here with work that seems to propose a more profound connection to a greater being. Naturally it might make the latter seem more important than the former but such is not the case. Everything, as you know, is interconnected. For instance, Jay Johnson, in his Toronto debut, makes fragile kinetic sculpture from scavenged debris. As his works go through their sad and fitful motions they bring to mind the various foibles that fill our days. That such days are numbered invites us to see these maneuvers as something like attempts at grace? At the other end we have Christian Eckart’s polished, luminous ‘support for meditation’ in the form of his immaculately- fabricated painting “Curved Monochrome, Fifth Variation #2006”. As a kind of secular altar the work presents a calm vision of infinite space, unfettered by the daily grind.
