FFWD Weekly
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| Visual Arts by Mark Walton Exhibit review The concept of preservation has always been deeply rooted in the visual arts, especially painting. Prehistoric artists, for instance, daubed graphic animal shapes on the walls of subterranean caves in an effort to magically replenish the herds of wild cattle that had begun to disappear. And things aren’t that much different in our culture today, as we place pictures on our walls as a means of magically preserving a special mood or state of mind. Of course, the notion of people spending a lot of time attempting to contain life’s fleeting moments is one of the great ironies of art. Some of the best examples of this are the historic memento mori paintings which feature exquisitely rendered flowers, fruit and meat, human skulls and so on. To some extent, local artist Tim Nikiforuk is following the memento mori tradition with his first exhibit of paintings, currently on view at Devonian Gardens. However, unlike the original memento mori which depicted transitory life on Earth in order to promote eternal life in heaven, the 24-year-old artist’s paintings are more of an informal reminder, urging us to make the most of life while we can. Preservation is the culmination of an artistic investigation Nikiforuk started after he landed in hospital with a mysterious intestinal ailment a couple of years ago. That incident prompted the U of C student to think about his own mortality and how most people don’t really understand the inner processes of their bodies. At first Nikiforuk took a straightforward approach to portraying body parts, but he eventually switched to using photocopies because they’re more lifelike. He calls these assemblages his "resin paintings" and a few of them can be seen on the gallery’s lower level. Basically they consist of laser copies of anatomical illustrations encased in small transparent blocks of acrylic resin. It’s an interesting technique visually – you can actually look at the brightly coloured paintings from the side – and conceptually, since these fragile images of internal organs could be preserved for hundreds if not thousands of years. Also on display are the artist’s heavily textured abstract paintings that he creates by building up layers of resin, acrylic-silicone caulking, and oil paint glazes on large square canvasses. Nikiforuk is particularly pleased with this technique because the pliable material resembles the fatty tissue situated just beneath the surface of our skin. He refers to these works as his "fat and body fluid paintings" – especially the ones on the gallery’s lower level which are tinted a bilious yellow-green colour. But as disgusting as all this sounds, Nikiforuk’s paintings aren’t overly macabre or risqué. Instead of offering up ripe, moist images of palpitating internal organs, his neatly mounted medical diagrams are at best euphemistic. As well, in the end we are going to assess his abstract works in terms of colour, form, composition, brush stroke, etc. It’s really only the variegated brown-ochre paintings in the gallery’s upper level that automatically project a feeling of fleshy corporeality. Nevertheless, as Nikiforuk points out, his abstract pieces aren’t supposed to be a literal rendition of our internal anatomy, instead they’re an impressionistic response to a personal experience. When I asked the young artist what he expects to do with these paintings – after all, once people discover what they are, will they still want to hang one in their living room? – he replies that his friends thought he could corner the market by selling them to lipo-suction surgeons. On a more serious note, though, cosmetic surgery or our society’s obsession with self-preservation were very much on Nikiforuk’s mind as he produced his paintings. Certainly his experience in hospital compelled him to take his own artmaking more seriously. In fact, after graduating this year he’ll continue his art studies at the University of Connecticut. He says he’s happy to have his first exhibit and get a little bit of press, and that it’s all part and parcel of fleshing out his career – so to speak. |
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