"Chimera" showcases a wide variety of media
By Paul Breschuk
Lance Writer
February 11, 2009
 The LeBel Gallery’s latest offering, “Chimera,” is comprised of a wide variety of media and styles much like its mythological, multi-animal namesake. I was lucky enough to catch some of the artists as they were setting up the show.
Initially, it is the large, spray-painted canvases of Jayson Meghie (also known as Salazar), that grabs one’s attention. The majority of his works begin as portraits, with Meghie cutting out stencils from a photograph projected against a papered wall. The stencils are then applied to the canvas with a dose of spray paint, layering each with a different colour. With the addition of each image, the work becomes increasingly complex.
What is most attractive about Meghie’s work are the careful balances of colour, as well as the distinct aesthetic motifs of each piece. He incorporates text, blends skyscrapers with cross-hatch, and shows action through the occasional dripping of paint.
Each work, with their fresh colours and slick design, tells of a unique story. It is this mix of visual forms and narrative content that makes Meghie’s work so appealing.
More traditional, though no less fascinating, is Eugene DiPonio’s paintings (acrylic and oil on paper). He has reproduced the photographs of architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and famous art forger Han van Meegeren only to completely alter the original backgrounds.
These new settings, highly imaginative in their own right, share correlations to the subjects that are as clever and humourous as they are pleasing to the eye. An example of such interesting thematic interplay can be found with the brooding art forger, van Meegeren, dark-faced with cigarette in hand, looking as ominous as the shark tank he’s resting on.
The fins rising from the water of the foreground also mirror Giza’s pyramids in the background (which are being visited by UFOs). Fittingly, questions of authorship arise in both cases: “Were the pyramids actually built by aliens?” and “Was that Vermeer actually painted by van Meegeren?”
Along with its paintings, “Chimera” presents some very interesting sculptures.
Dongkyoon Nam, who also brings conceptual photography to the show, is keen on “destroying our notions of usual space.” To that end, he’s photographed a sleeping model, lying on the floor in a library’s doorway/stairwell. Students walk by in blurs of motion while the model is crisp and centred, curiously incongruent.
For sculpture, he’s arranged two Styrofoam heads with their surfaces covered in keys selected from 50 recycled computer keyboards. On one head, the mouth is defined by the “Shift” key while the eyes are left blank. Instead, attention is drawn to the cluster of “End,” “Esc,” and “Home” keys, situated above and between the eyes (perhaps an allusion to the “third eye” of the Hindu Chakras).
The other head presents an inversion of the theme, with the keys flipped over to expose their usually invisible undersides. During my visit, I couldn’t help but stare at the overturned keys which were now plastic spikes, jutting outward and looking quite unfriendly to fingers. The effect was enjoyably unnerving.
More sculpture is added through the efforts of Joshua Babcock, a textural trickster. Particularly notable are the objects that appear to have been dipped and coated in liquid metal. The process begins in the discovery of found objects that have peaked his interest. He then adds nails and hot glue before covering the finished products with a chrome-like paint. The results are quite striking, turning wood into metal.
“Inch Worm,” however, begins as a metal object (an exhaust manifold), before it is given a softer, more organic shape by the application of glue. In this way, the object undergoes two drastic metamorphoses, from metal to organic, while finishing as a metallic worm after it has finally been painted. Babcock, attuned to the subtleties of texture, does well to inject life into his collection of intriguing shapes.
Other talented artists of the exhibition include printmaker Taylor Sheppard, and Harmony Pillon, whose abstract pieces alone are worth the visit.
“Chimera” runs from Feb. 9 to 14 with the opening reception on Thursday, Feb. 12 from 7 p.m. until midnight at the LeBel Gallery.
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