aceartinc.

SEPTEMBER 14 - OCTOBER 19, 2012 DO

UG

SMIT

H

CATHARSIS

All Photos: Karen Asher Arena III (detail), graphite, acrylic, pencil on paper, 100 x 130", 2012.

ANY COLOUR AS LONG AS IT’S BLACK

A RESPONSE BY

Ben Clarkson

CRITICAL DISTANCE VOL 18:1

There’s a concept in physics called the arrow of time. The fact that we chug forward in time, as though on rails, is sort of a mystery. Nothing in our science and our equations says it has to happen.

The math works the same whether the clock runs forwards or back-wards. My Mom’s favourite crystal salad bowl follows the same rules as it smashes against the kitchen linoleum as it does assembling into a solid mass, slivers of glass leap up from the warm vibration of the floor, coming together and bouncing into my slippery hands.

It sounds like a question a child would ask, why does time move forward? The best answer our science has provided is a concept called entropy. Entropy comes from a set of laws called thermodynamics that describe the nature of energy. According to entropy, all energy goes from usable to unusable. Entropy is the tendency of systems to move from order to disorder. Without it our perception of time would not make sense. The

2Installation Views

arrow of time makes sense because there is a permanence to disorder. The salad bowl stays broken. Eventually everything breaks down, every-thing dies. The universe is going to cool off and everything is going to die, the big chill. We’re all going to die.

One interesting thing that seems to fly in the face of entropy is life.

Life functions in our world by the process of selection. Genes, complex chains of organic chemistry, make up mechanical instructions, like com-puter software. Bits of information, yes or no, are stored chemically in your cells. It was assembled miraculously one day, out of the chaos of the early earth. One well directed bit of lightning and, poof, life. Over the past three billion years it has become incredibly complex, taking our highest science and fastest computers decades just to survey our own genome.

Genetic code would look like static if you drew it all out on a big piece of paper. These bits tell all our cellular, constituent parts what to do. Be afraid of that lion, covet your neighbour’s sports car, make an enzyme that gives uncle Bob cancer, all that stuff. If a gene improves the chance that that gene will be passed on then it becomes common. If it’s a bad idea, like the cancer, natural selection gets rid of it. My condolences to uncle Bob.

Doug Smith’s exhibition of drawings, Catharsis, at aceartInc is a binary, blinking code. They are stark, graphic drawings of mass produced ob-jects and figures, made from stencils, that flow into swarms, large com-plex organisms made from countless moving parts. A flock of migratory birds forms a helicopter. Jets lay down an all encompassing grid. Smaller individual units and ideas, rendered in black and white, form large bod-ies in motion. His stencilled masses of objects come in any colour, as long as it is black.

Installation Views 3

Arena III makes our genetic code transcendent. It makes our DNA into our everlasting soul. We’ve made ourselves immortal again. Arena III is like in an assumption painting, the world is on the bottom and the spirit world is on top. Passing on our holy code has become our salvation. We are tied to the heavens now. We are no longer separate from the cos-mos, held off by Aristotle’s crystal spheres. Mary, the pure Virgin, hovers above us transformed into a double helix, lifted up by the Everlasting, just waiting for some sperm. Too bad uncle Bob couldn’t be here, their kids would be lovely.

If you get close enough to Doug Smith’s big pieces of paper you see static.

Smith’s drawing Arena III swallows us in its size, as they all do. Rendered in graphite on paper, it depicts ranks and files of partially ordered, stenciled human figures in formation. All black as though in silhouette. It’s like a scene from Triumph of the Will minus the racial imperialism. Amongst the formations are boxes with x’s in them, as though they are placeholders for platoons that have yet to arrive. Above these figures is a space made up of arrows and vectors with celestial stenciled figures flying into a realm of a double helix and y chromosomes.

Pantheon, graphite, pencil on paper, 84 x 100", 2008. 4Arena III, graphite, acrylic, pencil on paper, 100 x 130", 2012.

5Catharsis III, graphite, pencil on paper, 84 x 200", 2010.

Catharsis II, graphite, pencil on paper, 84 x 200", 2010.

Catharsis is an exhibition about our spiritual lives. About how western humans see this reality, or want to see it. We like to think our lives have meaning. I really like thinking that. I proceed through my quaint little life as though it is true. But the magi of science and technology in our modern age have reduced us to machines. We are self replicating au-tomatons. The only thing that matters is that we continue to pass on information through time, through our genetic code or what we make.

The drawing Catharsis II is my favourite of the exhibition. It depicts a scene with three stenciled swimmers, floating down a black arrow into a

whirlpool of smaller arrows. Chaos, twists and turns, the churning of space and time, flank them on all sides. This is all there is. The arrow of time with madness and noise on either side. Humans flow through time trying to avoid decay and disorder. We love order, we love putting things into little boxes. We are trying to stay on the straight and narrow where our atoms aren’t ripped apart into a cold mush. The real kicker of this drawing is that the target, the centre of the maelstrom, is not a destination but a churning eddy. We aren’t going anywhere. We’re literally going nowhere, we’re go-ing to die. I hope you like being mush. What matters is what we do while we flow down that river, what matters is the message that survives us.

6

Smith’s work is a new type of religious art, but one for a “secular” world. It is a flat space with symbolic objects changing size relative to their importance. The god’s eye view is a common element between medieval painting and Smith’s monumental drawings. They give us purpose and they tell us our place in the world. No longer are there big cardinals and bigger churches but reclining women and astronauts. Gone is the central savior sitting on a throne, or Redemption; instead Smith gives us mass production, breeding, and the persistence of the code. We didn’t lose our spiritual lives when god packed up and stopped calling, we invented a new one.

The gene has been called the immortal replicator. No longer is it fash-ionable (or feasible) to believe that we, post-Christian Northerners/Westerners live after our deaths in a heaven, with a crown of diamonds earned via our good deeds. No, if we are righteous we will pass on our very essence into the future. Long live the code. We’ve done it again, we have beat death with our intellect. We have done it by transforming into machines. We’ve transformed the world from one containing immaterial souls into the material, molecular robots assembled by the machinations of nature. We are things now. Mass produced.

Eventually though, entropy will win. There’s a certain comfort gained from knowing that the end of everything is inevitable. A cosmic bus driving at us full speed. The knowledge that the universe eventually burns out into nothingness makes me feel like I haven’t missed too much of the party by going to sleep early.

Pangaea (detail) 7Pangaea, graphite, pencil on paper, 84 x 100", 2008.

aceartinc.2nd floor, 290 McDermot Ave. Winnipeg MB R3B 0T2

204.944.9763 gallery@aceart.org www.aceart.orgTuesday-Saturday 12 - 5pm

Critical Distance is a writing program of aceartinc.

that encourages critical writing and dialogue about

contemporary art. The program is an avenue for

exploration by emerging and established artists

and writers. Written for each exhibition mounted at

aceartinc. these texts form the basis of our annual

journal Paper Wait.

aceartinc. gratefully acknowledges the generous

support of associate members and donors, our

volunteers, the Manitoba Arts Council, The Cana-

da Council for the Arts, Media Arts and Visual Arts

Sections, The City of Winnipeg Arts Council,

WH and SE Loewen Foundation, the Winnipeg

Foundation, The Family of Wendy Wersch, and the

Sign Source.

aceartinc. is an Artist-Run Centre dedicated

to the development, exhibition and dissemina-

tion of contemporary art by cultural producers.

aceartinc. maintains a commitment to emerg-

ing artists and recognizes its role in placing

contemporary artists in a larger cultural con-

text. aceartinc. is dedicated to cultural di-

versity in its programs and to this end encour-

ages applications from contemporary artists

and curators identifying as members of GLBT

(gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender), Aboriginal

(status, non-status, Inuit, Métis) and all other

cultural communities.

Ben Clarkson is an artist and illustrator who lives

and works in Winnipeg. His work has been shown

internationally.

Arena I, graphite, pencil on paper, 120 x 50", 2011.