Jacob Korczynski
Doctoral student
There are more than four : Andy Fabo, Robert Flack, Tim Jocelyn, Chrysanne Stathacos
Author
Other contributions
- Andy Fabo
- Robert Flack
- Tim Jocelyn
- Chrysanne Stathacos
Summary, in English
For me, life in this city begins and ends with artist-initiated networks, where energies and programmes are constantly opening and ending, keeping pace with the rate at which artist’s studios are closed and relocated. These networks establish where work is developed, shown, or both, and they affirm what is missing as much as what is made. The affective affinities that enable these associations also produced this exhibition. More specifically, it is anchored upon the long-term friendship and dialogue between Andy Fabo and Chrysanne Stathacos, and expanded to incorporate the work of two artists who are no longer with us due to the ongoing epidemic of AIDS: Andy’s lover Tim Jocelyn (1952-1986) and Chrysanne’s close friend Robert Flack (1957-1993). The result is a kind of doubled portrait, like catching your own gaze on a reflective surface in close proximity to another.
From the earliest stage of his interdisciplinary practice, Andy Fabo has asserted his queer subjectivity in his work. The Wild Ones (1975) performs as a painting, yet acts as an assemblage with acrylic, velvet, leather and metal studs framing the troika collaged at its centre. Made in the aftermath of his partner Tim’s death when Andy was facing an impasse with painting, Sisyphus on the Plains (1988) features the eponymous mythological figure exposed naked upon a landscape, turning upwards to face their burden. Silverado (2001), is a series produced with ink on silver card, and here the medium leads the image. Pooled or bubbled ink comes together to form moments of fluidity, at times contained, and at others nearly sliding off the surface.
In his practice, Tim Jocelyn developed a body of work for which textiles were the primary material. In doing so, his work was not so much medium-specific as it was subject specific: textiles always suggest bodies, either present or absent. He produced tapestries and garments alike and both are represented here through one of the many folding screens he produced in the early 1980s as well as two clothing pieces. The geometrical abstraction present on the three panels of the former foregrounds adored art historical references that Tim pointed to throughout his practice. With his Skyline jacket and Gordon’s shirt, two opposite milieus of artistic production are contrasted: a rising cityscape made manifest in the hot, bright colours of neon lights, and pastoral elements of nature rendered in earth tone hues.
Throughout her practice, Chrysanne has expanded the medium of painting via printing. Take for example her Broken Glass series, in which the cracked remnants of a pane are transferred to the soft surface of canvas or linen, forming a new object. Her experimentation with printing on different surfaces with various objects is further demonstrated by 1-900-Mirror-Mirror (1993). An interactive installation that can be physically entered by the individual viewer, this work invited viewers to ask a question about the future, as a way to look ahead at the height of the AIDS crisis. Through her groundbreaking use of early video communication technology, Chrysanne’s engagement with the future also anticipated the current moment we find ourselves in, when we look towards the reflective surfaces of our screens not only to see one another, but also ourselves.
Where Chrysanne considered the way the bodies of the viewers were reflected onto the surrounding surfaces, in his photographic works presented here Robert Flack took the body itself as a site of projection. All three were produced after he was diagnosed with AIDS and are inextricable from the psychic and physical transition he was undertaking at that time. With his series Love Mind (1992), he photographed multiple subjects as saturated coloured light was cast upon their chakra centres. Produced prior to the advent of digital photography, the two selections from this expansive series requires the viewer to look, and then look again, expanding an image of the body outside of the corporeal. In his earlier work Etheric Double (1990), a male nude is rendered in negative, suggesting a spectre. With both the body and the background pulsing with radiant auras, the inversion of the image suspends the figure between legibility and ephemerality, between the radiance of life and the threat of death. Faced with fragility, Robert and Tim posed a question, one that Andy and Chrysanne continue to ask: where do we locate the body and what lies beyond?
– Jacob Korczynski
Toronto
March 12, 2020
From the earliest stage of his interdisciplinary practice, Andy Fabo has asserted his queer subjectivity in his work. The Wild Ones (1975) performs as a painting, yet acts as an assemblage with acrylic, velvet, leather and metal studs framing the troika collaged at its centre. Made in the aftermath of his partner Tim’s death when Andy was facing an impasse with painting, Sisyphus on the Plains (1988) features the eponymous mythological figure exposed naked upon a landscape, turning upwards to face their burden. Silverado (2001), is a series produced with ink on silver card, and here the medium leads the image. Pooled or bubbled ink comes together to form moments of fluidity, at times contained, and at others nearly sliding off the surface.
In his practice, Tim Jocelyn developed a body of work for which textiles were the primary material. In doing so, his work was not so much medium-specific as it was subject specific: textiles always suggest bodies, either present or absent. He produced tapestries and garments alike and both are represented here through one of the many folding screens he produced in the early 1980s as well as two clothing pieces. The geometrical abstraction present on the three panels of the former foregrounds adored art historical references that Tim pointed to throughout his practice. With his Skyline jacket and Gordon’s shirt, two opposite milieus of artistic production are contrasted: a rising cityscape made manifest in the hot, bright colours of neon lights, and pastoral elements of nature rendered in earth tone hues.
Throughout her practice, Chrysanne has expanded the medium of painting via printing. Take for example her Broken Glass series, in which the cracked remnants of a pane are transferred to the soft surface of canvas or linen, forming a new object. Her experimentation with printing on different surfaces with various objects is further demonstrated by 1-900-Mirror-Mirror (1993). An interactive installation that can be physically entered by the individual viewer, this work invited viewers to ask a question about the future, as a way to look ahead at the height of the AIDS crisis. Through her groundbreaking use of early video communication technology, Chrysanne’s engagement with the future also anticipated the current moment we find ourselves in, when we look towards the reflective surfaces of our screens not only to see one another, but also ourselves.
Where Chrysanne considered the way the bodies of the viewers were reflected onto the surrounding surfaces, in his photographic works presented here Robert Flack took the body itself as a site of projection. All three were produced after he was diagnosed with AIDS and are inextricable from the psychic and physical transition he was undertaking at that time. With his series Love Mind (1992), he photographed multiple subjects as saturated coloured light was cast upon their chakra centres. Produced prior to the advent of digital photography, the two selections from this expansive series requires the viewer to look, and then look again, expanding an image of the body outside of the corporeal. In his earlier work Etheric Double (1990), a male nude is rendered in negative, suggesting a spectre. With both the body and the background pulsing with radiant auras, the inversion of the image suspends the figure between legibility and ephemerality, between the radiance of life and the threat of death. Faced with fragility, Robert and Tim posed a question, one that Andy and Chrysanne continue to ask: where do we locate the body and what lies beyond?
– Jacob Korczynski
Toronto
March 12, 2020
Publishing year
2020-04-11
Language
English
Document type
Exhibition
Publisher
Cooper Cole
Topic
- Visual Arts
Status
Published