A large print of Jacques-Louis David's Napoleon prefaces Entre le chien et le loup, David R. Harper's current solo exhibition at the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery. David's central rearing horse is covered, as if by thick moss, by pristine embroidery in fluctuating tones of grey and black. Immediately left to this work is a large grid of ceramic animal masks in a gradient of blues. The masks' gargoyle expressions are at first hilarious, then curiously neutralized, as if drained of energy in the process of replication.
David R. Harper, Then we are lost Forever in the Gloaming, 2012
Rounding a corner, two awkward tables half-covered in dark stage carpet sit stiffly together, resembling twin shrines. Ceramic animal heads appearing to wear pelt masks skewer oversized cartoony versions of the typical gift store amethyst; the result resembles hunting trophies crudely anchored by giant roasts, Lord of the Flies style, while the plug-in glow of a fake fireplace log on a lower rung emits the idea of heat. Between the animal heads are awkward collections of tinier ceramic heads held in place by transparent pins. Look closely and the animals' masks are not only crudely stitched, but covered with tiny beads of glue. These and other details start to appear both inept and contrived.
In the central gallery space, ceramic wolves wearing pelt costumes pose atop fake rocks atop bottom-heavy plinths. Details are everything here. The fake rocks are covered in a down of flocking. Grouting is replaced by strips of felt, making everything appear to be fastened by Velcro. One wolf stands in a pile of black ceramic roses with a glistening grey snake (more snake-shape than snake) in its center. Nearby, Geodesic dome meets jungle gym wherein replicated bones covered in kitschy blue and white floral are interlaced with blue fur.
While I cast around for ways to describe the odd sense of humor of this work, didactic text helpfully tells me the exhibition title translates as a phrase meaning a kind of twilight "when the light is so dim one cannot distinguish a dog from a wolf." In turn, the conveniently slippery metaphor of the threshold is a suggested link between works, particularly in the form of the memorial, as a link "between memory and past experience." My internal inventory continues to create associations less vague but equally cliché-inducing, combining seventies B-movie with Andrew Lloyd Weber stage prop.
Several prints of still life paintings contain rabbits now camouflaged in greyish embroidery. Two more prints replace intricate greys with optical day-glow green. What appeared precious in the David print now seems outright mechanical or throwaway collage. These last prints become the backdrop to a large installation of bone and tusk-like ceramic objects in piles. The assemblages seem to push the objects into both lexicon and currency, but, through Harper's careful (or unwitting) material anonymity, avoid both.
The flip-flop, self-neutralizing quality of Harper's works starts to become clear, as signs and codes already several times removed make an eerie loop from stock sign to self-parody to earnest kitsch to tone-deaf comedy back to stock sign. Harper seems interested in this inherently vaporous state of signification both triggered and anchored by gift shop folklore, institutional and domestic display, faux taxidermy, and DIY memorial, even while the self-referencing behavior of his mass-produced materials holds this process in a state of suspension. The result is a collection of works which evoke less of an inscrutability than a curiously anticlimactic, or preemptive, sense of turning inward.
Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery: http://www.kwag.ca/en/exhibitions/EntreleChienetleLoup.asp
David R. Harper: Entre le chien et le loup continues until August 18.
Kim Neudorf is an artist and writer currently living in London, Ontario. Her paintings have shown widely in Alberta, including the Illingworth Kerr Gallery, Stride Gallery, and Skew Gallery in Calgary. She has contributed writing to FFWD, shotgun-review.ca, Prairie Artsters, Hamilton Arts & Letters, Stride Gallery, Truck Gallery, and most recently Susan Hobbs Gallery. She is Akimbo's London correspondent and can be followed @KimNeudorf on Twitter.
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David R. Harper at the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery
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