If you live in Montreal, you really ought to check out the current exhibition at the Galerie de l’UQAM. Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller’s piece The Paradise Institute is on (which many of you may have seen already – it has toured extensively), but also on view is À Ras Le Paysage, an exhibition of performance documentation/paintings by Nicolas Fleming. I really enjoy his work and wish I could pop over to Montreal and check out this show (which is on until the 17th of June, FYI).
I recently had the pleasure of writing about Nicolas’ work for an upcoming exhibition of his at Eastern Edge Gallery. It feels very meta- something to do this, but to better explain what I think of Fleming’s work, I thought I would link here to a previous blog entry I wrote on this work, and also quote from the text I wrote for Nicolas’ show at Eastern Edge: “Fleming’s unconventional process reflects a desire to attain a deeper intimacy with his subject matter through focused concentration and sheer physical effort. He imposes performative restraints that subvert the ease of the gaze and replaces it with the difficult task of relying on tactile and aural memory. Fleming’s methods address questions about one man’s relationship to the land, as well as one man’s relationship with his own sensory input, and how both sets of relationships may be developed. As the final paintings reveal, the interactions of these internal and external relationships render a highly personal portrayal not just of place, but also of perception.”
Ahhh that feels better. Now I can be un-meta and write normally, not in hyperlinks and quotes of writing that I did for another purpose.