Recovering Agnostic

Daniel Barrow
Aleesa Cohene
Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay
Emily Vey Duke and Cooper Battersby
Jim Verburg

Guest Curator:  Mark Clintberg

Recovering Agnostic is an exhibition of recent video by young Canadian artists. The works in this show address the problematics of confessional, persuasive, or emotive displays in art.

Emotions are performed daily in order to articulate desires and needs to others through a carefully selected series of gestures, words, and social codes.  Artists also perform emotions in order to convey ideas to audiences, but often with the hope of subverting conventional strategies of address.  The differentiation between the author and the narrator becomes blurred in these videos, calling into question whether the supposedly authentic voice of the artist is presenting a quasi-biography or political stance, or if the emotions revealed in the works are simply representations of wholly fictitious sentiments.  Attempts at interpretation, then, may be confused by this puzzling ambivalence.

The title of this exhibition describes the ambivalence of this situation.  Agnosis is the unknowable, that which cannot be understood by the human mind.  Those who are agnostic have concluded that the metaphysical realm, by its nature, cannot be comprehended.

The term agnostic is not used here to suggest a spiritual credo, but instead describes the condition of an audience challenged to determine the sincerity of an artist’s performance.  Should the analysis of artworks adopt a similar proviso of “unknowability” when approaching the emotional content of an artist’s oeuvre? Are our emotional natures fundamentally unknowable to others?  This tension is at the core of the works in this exhibition: they attempt to persuade by generating a feeling of belief, hope, and fear in the audience through scenarios that are, essentially, simulations.  As Emily Vey Duke and Cooper Battersby’s video implies, the fine arts exploit artifice. The dilemma that emerges is how to convey genuine sentiment through an art form that offers such limitations - and possibilities.

Daniel Barrow’s Artist Statement [2007] is a startlingly honest confessional of the artist’s trepidations, insecurities, and anxieties.  He shares with the audience his lack of inspiration and fear of failure, admissions that skate the edge between the heartfelt and the cynically disinterested.  Artist Statement questions the possibility for art to act as a fulfilling enterprise for both viewer and artist. For Barrow’s narrative, the artifice of art has become a trap.

Aleesa Cohene’s Ready to Cope [2006] is a reflection on the emotional state of a people living in fear.  Illustrating a daily existence couched in perpetual negotiations for protection from enemies, Cohene’s piece conveys the alacrity with which forces of governance use sentiments of instability to serve their own agenda.  Using rousing images and a charging soundtrack, Cohene similarly manipulates feelings of anxiety in the viewer.  It also represents another kind of agnosis: the acceptance that continual risk—the unknown—surrounds us.

Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay’s Je  Changerais d’Avis [2000] is a heartfelt re-performance of a popular French romantic anthem.  The artist is shown in search of an elusive objective: the affections of his distant beloved, invisible to the viewer. The character that Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay performs is willing to sacrifice and even enter into oblivion for the sake of one chance to be with his love.  It remains uncertain throughout the piece however whether the artist’s demonstrations are founded in genuine emotions, or simply are a compelling performance.

Emily Vey Duke and Cooper Battersby’s The Fine Arts [2001] is a scenario of uncertainty, the pivot upon which this exhibition turns.  It is an absurdist document whose subject continually alters her position on the nature of art making.  This subtitled video features Vey Duke, unclothed, speaking in broken French.  In a weary drawl, she says, “I hate and am disgusted by the fine arts, because, um, the fine arts are always made with artifice.  I don't really...really I don't think that.  Really I think that artifice is very good, and also all the things that make, uh, identification are very good, and all the things that make emotional connection are very good.”  A tone of disinterest and ennui characterizes her monologue. Which position does she advocate?  To the last moment, the viewer can’t be sure.

Jim Verburg’s For a Relationship [2006] is a diaristic and subjective portrayal of ties with family, friends, and lovers. The piece focuses on Verburg’s own life, summarized in quickly flashing photographic stills of vacations taken, sexual exploits, tender exchanges, and encounters with landscape.  What emerges is a life lived according to a system of values that the artist is eager to share.  Verburg’s monologue is directed at an unknown subject – perhaps a family member or friend.  His hopeful attempts at communication with this individual are riddled with expectations and continually foiled.  Verburg’s video might generate feelings of either sympathy or dispute in the viewer, but since the piece is formulated for public presentation, its status as a “genuine” emotional performance is compellingly suspect.
– text by Mark Clintberg