PETER COFFIN, WILLY LE MAITRE, AND AGATHE SNOW
The Weird Show
March 16th- April 13, 2014
Here at CANADA the stars are lining up like a
big dipper for the gallery’s latest three person show. Built from varied
influences and distinct geographies these three mid career artists come
together for no better reason than our admiration for their work and a want of
current samples. From the whimsy of Mr. Coffin’s famous curiosity and gold
medal studio gymnastics, to Ms Snow rebelliously lovable, supremely confident
anti-form structures, to a return visit with Willy Le Maitre’s crystal clear 3d
diffusion art and transport phenomena, The Weird Show guarantees safe shelter
from the monotony of it all.
Willy Le Maitre encourages 3-dimensional
thinking with the vivid quality of snapshots as a means to change the
conception of time and space. He investigates the phenomenology of seeing;
looking at how images of the seen are blended with those that the mind
recalls.The images are connected by association. One is taken from a repository
of captured photos and combined with another. The images interact in the
picture’s composition with an instability that resembles a passing moment. They
become something indistinct- a meshing of the seen and the recalled image.
Agathe Snow introduces narratives of
environmental collapse, accumulation and accretion with a playful series of
sculptures that hang on the wall. The two-dimensional wall works manipulate our
perceptions- laden with consumer objects they float in an unexpected and upside
down world. Snow creates her own universe that is governed by its distinct set
of rules. There is a weird sense of time. The past and future are jumbled
together into a non-linear evolution.
Peter Coffin’s large wooden hand suggests a
sphere and is completed by the bubble windshield of a Bell 47 helicopter- the
same helicopter hanging in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It’s inventor
Arthur M Young was a philosopher, physicist, and mystic who created the
institute for the study of Consciousness in the same neighborhood of Berkeley,
where Coffin grew up. Arthur called the helicopter his “Psycopter” because he
believed that experiencing the psycopter’s flight would change the way we
relate to time and space. Coffin employs the realm of time in his volcano
piece, a model of a volcano that makes a smoke circle each minute. Volcanos are
known to make perfect smoke circles just as dolphins make perfect air bubbles.
Bubble rings and smoke rings are both examples of vortex rings. The syncopated
rhythm of the smoke becomes a physical measure of time.
All three of these artists have the skill to
lift us out of the spot of our existence. These works stop the flow of our
collective expectations while redefining our perceptions on the place we think
we once knew best. It is through these shifting sands of the weird that we are
made better.
Peter Coffin, Willy Le Maitre, Agathe Snow, CANADA, New York