Krisjanis Kaktins-Gorsline part 2

I attended a slide presentation by Kaktins-Gorsline at Concordia this week, and I thought I’d share my notes from the talk since it gave me some food for thought.  Topics covered:  transitioning from representation to abstraction, and the limitations of those terms; the fragmented human subject; his relationship to Modernism; the idea of painting as performance; and the role of chance and improvisation in his practice.  Heady stuff!  Let’s dive in, shall we?

His talk began with this painting from 2008:

At this point in time, he was exploring the idea of assemblage, creating an interior filled with objects that could also function metaphorically as a mental map.  The painting itself contains many spaces layered and juxtaposed haphazardly; similar to how our minds are created out of layers of experience and memory.

I love this painting.  It’s formal elegance aside, it represents a new strategy for Kaktins-Gorsline.  The space is very simply defined: a shallow, decomposing stage.  Decay spreads itself across the picture plane, embedding the boy in the patterned wall behind him, camouflaging the dead bird he holds in his hand.  

Here the space is still metaphorical, without being so precisely defined as it was before.  In this sense, the painting is more ‘abstract.’  I had a teacher once say that all painting is abstract.  The very act of taking an image and putting it within a rectangle (or frame of some sort) abstracts it from the world.  So maybe we should say instead that some paintings sit further along the continuum of abstraction.  Which is part of a whole other conversation; material for another blog post…

the Comedian 2009

In this painting, only the shoes with their wide ribbons and pointy toes indicate that the figure was taken from Watteau’s Pierrot.  The shoes stand on a floor; otherwise the picture plane explodes with gestural marks, hinting at space and recognizable objects while remaining resolutely chaotic.  With this painting, Krisjanis distorts the figure with much more energy and dynamism than he did with the boy and his dead bird; the figure is almost entirely obscured.  If the last painting felt like a lament, this one feels like an explosion.

Krisjanis spoke of his critical relationship with Modernist painters, giving de Kooning as an example.  De Kooning’s Women series are celebrated, virtuosic paintings that violently distort the female form.  De Kooning once said that he painted women because he was unable to paint himself in that way.  He used the female body as a space in which to play out his artistic ideas, because the male figure was too close for comfort.  Krisjanis found this remark troubling.  He  felt compelled to use the male figure as the ‘idea space’, making the process more self-reflexive and, in his words, masochistic. 

The chaos in this painting might also have to do with the fact that Kaktins-Gorsline was moving into a more improvised, performative approach to painting.  He mentioned the idea of identity being something that is perpetually constructed through performance.  So is each painting a private performance, enacted in the studio, and the painting itself a record of that series of moments? Are his distorted figures mirrors of his own fragmented identity?  He says each painting can be seen as a provisional response to a situation, and that he’s more interested in a performative view of painting that is materials-based.  In a sense, the paint itself pushes back, and the resulting canvas is a record of that push and pull (which sounds not so far off from abstract expressionism).   

Kaktins-Gorsline’s next move was to introduce stencils into his practice, as a way of distancing his hand from the paintings.  I wonder if that was also a way of distancing himself from the Ab-Exers, while still continuing to explore the idea of painting as improvised performance.

Which brings us to the show at Battat Contemporary, mostly abstract works made with a combination of hand painting and stenciling. 

Roseated Topology / Vong Co Blossoms 2011

18 Obeli 2011

They are loosely symmetrical, inspired by animal and body morphology.  The colors come across much better in person than on the screen.  The stencils seem to be a way for him to create systems out of discrete parts, a more mechanical form of improvisation than the hand-painted fluidity of, for instance, Brice Marden.  Krisjanis seems dedicated to the punishing task of continuously reinventing his practice, sometimes at the expense of strategies for which he has received much acclaim.  If the painting gods are just, he’ll be rewarded for his artistic bravery.