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Smokescreens by Levin Haegele & Daniel Olson
Truck
Friday, November 16 - Saturday, December 15

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Truck Gallery subtly generates some sparks with its current show Smokescreens. This video installation by London-based artist Levin Haegele and Montreal’s Daniel Olson fuses together elements of a pyromaniac’s paradise to create an alternate reality and perception of time. The exhibit addresses the chimerical essence of time in abstract ways with four video pieces, Fuse Piece and Cigarette Piece by Haegele and Illuminations and Smoky Haze by Olson.

An ethereal and eerie quality permeates the show. Smoky Haze’s audio playback of haunting, melodic sounds resembles the hooting of owls, chanting, moaning, wind and underwater sea creatures, punctuated by the noises of flares burning abruptly from two of the other video installations. The whole exhibit is set in obscurity, with each film predominantly using low lighting and thus maintaining the exhibit’s ghostly atmosphere.

The illusory nature of the passage of time is underscored by works such as Fuse Piece, in which we follow the mysterious journey of a burning wick laid out on abandoned streetscapes, up and down foreboding stairs and other hidden sections of an anonymous city. Fuse Piece seems to be depicting a journey from nowhere to nowhere, adding an anticlimactic aspect to the show in reference to conventional perceptions of time. While events may seem to have some notation of beginning, middle and end in our accustomed ordering of the world, Fuse Piece challenges this habitual notion. We expect the wick to burn out eventually or reach some sort of anticipated conclusion. It does neither and instead defies prejudgments about events and what we consider to be their “natural” flow. Haegele thoughtfully transposes the wick onto nondescript areas of London, increasing the anonymity and universality of this “event.”

In keeping with the theme of anonymity while unveiling the phenomena of time, Smoky Haze features an unknown entity off-screen blowing smoke into the camera frame. The eerie and euphonic soundtrack that accompanies images of turbulent flowing smoke creates a subtle and ominous juxtaposition of mystery and harmony. The complicated patterns of the smoke are filmed in painstaking detail. While the off-screen smoke-blower ominously provides a focus for attention, the viewer is transfixed by the complicated sinuosity of the smoke and siren-like supernatural chanting sounds in the background. It captures an eternal and meditative quality.

Similarly meditative is Cigarette Piece, which runs a loop of burning ash embers against a black background. The intermittent images of flashes of light bursting out and then extinguishing themselves resemble a fireworks display.

Illuminations displays a quasi-magus-like character — artist Olson himself — appearing and disappearing out of nowhere (not unlike the travelling flare in Fuse Piece), illuminated by the lighting of a matchbook, only to be subsumed once again into darkness after blowing it out.

Each of the pieces in the show are effectively integrated with each other, and sounds and visuals from the pieces do not interfere with each other. Perhaps one of the more compelling aspects of the show is the fact that neither Haegele nor Olson specifically collaborated on this show, but instead submitted their pieces separately to Truck. Nonetheless, the juxtaposition of the two artists’ work appropriately and effectively underlies the deeper themes of the show: time and its patterns, and transcending traditional definitions thereof.