Jayce Salloum and Bernadette Phan | bending water/fuzzy logic
October 3 - 24, 2020
Image credit: Michael Love
Making art takes time, not just in its production but in terms of the experiences and relationships acquired by an artist that shape their work over time. This all-encompassing idea of time's effects animates the sculptures and paintings in bending water/fuzzy logic, a collaboration between Vancouver-based Jayce Salloum and Bernadette Phan.
Both Salloum and Phan have been making art for almost 40 years and are long-time acquaintances. “Jayce and I have talked often about our work over the years,” says Phan, who works in painting, drawing and weaving. “When he invited me to show with him, I knew it would be an adventure, figuring out what the relationships could be. Some connections are obvious while others are less-so, but that makes the exhibition more interesting.”
Salloum – recognized internationally for his politically and socially engaged photo- and video-based work – sees collaboration as a way for artists to try things they wouldn't normally do. “I sensed that sculptures I'd been developing over the last five years, but hadn't widely shown, had connections with Bernadette's work,” he says. “It seemed like a good time to do something together.”
Ideas around accumulation and repetition are apparent throughout the show. Salloum's suspended sculptures are comprised of hundreds of photographs and publications that had piled up in his studio. “Photography is a daily activity, it's a form of note-taking,” he explains. “The sculptures arose from the residue of that.” The earliest sculpture, nest, consists of hand-torn photographs (some 25 years old) stacked and secured to form a simple yet elegant form. As he refined the process – by tearing the photographs more precisely using a metal edge and employing fabricators – Salloum produced increasingly complex shapes, which he sees as sine waves or strands of DNA, but also suggest architectural or natural forms like minarets or stalactites.
By Bill Clarke
Both Salloum and Phan have been making art for almost 40 years and are long-time acquaintances. “Jayce and I have talked often about our work over the years,” says Phan, who works in painting, drawing and weaving. “When he invited me to show with him, I knew it would be an adventure, figuring out what the relationships could be. Some connections are obvious while others are less-so, but that makes the exhibition more interesting.”
Salloum – recognized internationally for his politically and socially engaged photo- and video-based work – sees collaboration as a way for artists to try things they wouldn't normally do. “I sensed that sculptures I'd been developing over the last five years, but hadn't widely shown, had connections with Bernadette's work,” he says. “It seemed like a good time to do something together.”
Ideas around accumulation and repetition are apparent throughout the show. Salloum's suspended sculptures are comprised of hundreds of photographs and publications that had piled up in his studio. “Photography is a daily activity, it's a form of note-taking,” he explains. “The sculptures arose from the residue of that.” The earliest sculpture, nest, consists of hand-torn photographs (some 25 years old) stacked and secured to form a simple yet elegant form. As he refined the process – by tearing the photographs more precisely using a metal edge and employing fabricators – Salloum produced increasingly complex shapes, which he sees as sine waves or strands of DNA, but also suggest architectural or natural forms like minarets or stalactites.
By Bill Clarke
Jayce Salloum, especialitica , 2019, 86"ht x 7"w, resized digital photographs (fabricator: ZenyaseHunsberger) | Image credit: Michael Love
Each photograph in Salloum's sculptures finds an equivalent in the brushstrokes of Phan's Stipple series. In these works, Phan paints like a sculptor, deftly lifting the pigment from the surface to build what she calls “dimensional lines”. The precise and methodical approach of these paintings contrasts with the washy applications of paint in Trippy Ethers, a second series on view. Phan says she had Impressionist painters in mind while making these works and, indeed, Hovering Blues, a large square of watery blues and greens, suggests a dive into a Monet lily pond. When seen together, the two series take viewers on a journey from the intellectually crisp to the meditatively gestural, and share with Salloum's sculptures an appealing tactile quality.
Bernadette Phan, Hoovering Blues, 52" x 52" | Image credit: Michael Love
Changes wrought by time's passage have been keenly felt by many this year. Two works displayed adjacently reflect such feelings. A large photograph by Salloum depicts the interior of a now-shuttered Downtown Eastside store; its elderly Chinese owner was known for her traditional folded-paper animal mobiles. Two hanging in the gallery remind viewers that economic and cultural diversity is eroded as cities like Vancouver become increasingly expensive. (The storefront is now a hip bicycle shop.) Phan's B-Bow looks like a straightforward woven wall work, but concealed within is one of her paintings owned by her late partner, the Kwakwaka’wakw artist Wallas Gwy Um (Beau Dick). “Beau taught me how to weave and I haven't stopped since,” she says. “It was important to me that he be present in the show.” Enveloped in a blanket of minimalist design, the painting is safe and protected, its state of reassuring security desperately needed during these uneasy times. – Bill Clarke.
Bill Clarke is a Toronto-based writer, editor and collector (of art and many other things) whose professional background is in communications and project management. Since 2005, his writing has appeared frequently in national and international publications, including Canadian Art, C Magazine, Border Crossings, ARTnews, Modern Painters and ArtReview. From 2009 until 2017, he was the editor-in-chief of Magenta Magazine Online, and in 2016 was a co-founder of the Edition Art Book Fair. He also plays French horn with the Toronto Concert Band.
Bill Clarke is a Toronto-based writer, editor and collector (of art and many other things) whose professional background is in communications and project management. Since 2005, his writing has appeared frequently in national and international publications, including Canadian Art, C Magazine, Border Crossings, ARTnews, Modern Painters and ArtReview. From 2009 until 2017, he was the editor-in-chief of Magenta Magazine Online, and in 2016 was a co-founder of the Edition Art Book Fair. He also plays French horn with the Toronto Concert Band.
About the Making of the Exhibition
There is a story or two here. The lore that follows one around. It varies in pace. Has a tactility that suggests the sensorial. The auditory, the tidal amplitude of life rippling in the demarcation of one’s dna. The past is evident but the present more so. What process is so practical as to produce an encounter or an event. This, laborious and ephemeral. Celestial and rooted, ground in dust, the detritus of the everyday rhythm, nonsymmetrical, but synchronous with the unknown, inviting you to stand still, be at ease. These stories collide. A collaboration of particles with divergent speeds and intentions coming to rest for an impromptu moment. Soft eyes. A stretch of time, spill frames into the canyon scaling the gathered. Scattered yet drawn in for visits of the everyday, with the sound of water folding onto itself.
Jayce Salloum:
"When I’m sketching out the templates for these sculptures I aim to make them referential to the moment in time that we are in. So, both from a microspective and macrospective view, referencing DNA, audio waveforms (amplitudinal), living organs/entities, mosaics/tiling, times broken down and strung together through space and the amalgamation of the spacial and temporal. The reworking, repurposing and condensing of the material carries inherent references to a previous life and the one that it is heading towards." (Jayce Salloum)
As if an itinerant geographer of conflicted territories (most everywhere), Salloum observes the world and creates/collects a subjective archive of images to make meaning from. Since arriving here - by no means of his own volition - he tries to go only where he is invited or where there is an intrinsic affinity, his projects being rooted in an intimate engagement with place. A grandson of Syrian or Lebanese immigrants he was born and raised on others’ land, the Sylix (Okanagan) territory. After 22 years living and working elsewheres he planted himself on the unceded Xʷməθkʷey̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh + Səíl̓wətaʔł territories. Salloum has lectured and published pervasively and exhibited somewhat peripatetically at the widest range of local and international venues possible (and most improbable), from the smallest unnamed storefronts in his downtown eastside Vancouver neighbourhood to institutions such as the Musée du Louvre, Museum of Modern Art, Guggenheim Museum, Centre Georges Pompidou, National Gallery of Canada, Bienal De La Havana, Sharjah Biennial, Biennale of Sydney and the Rotterdam International Film Festival.
Sculpture fabricators: Zenyase Hunsberger, Chelsea Yuill, Shayla Giroux, Corie Waugh
Bernadette Phan:
"I work in series that evolve over time, some of them decades. The series involve repetition, formal restrictions, dialogues between painting and sculpture, memory and illusion. In each series I undertake particular subjects: language and translation, still life as imaginary springboards, perspectives as set ups. My interest and curiosity are nurtured by making percepts that connect sense perceptions and start with the obvious, visual touch as a means to investigate haptic and proximate spaces generated through the painting medium and weaving as of late. The economy of my decisions as part of the process addresses the potency of the work instead of its potentiality. In this “Stipple series”, the texture captures light and creates its own coloured shadow. The cadence and repetition amplifies the dimensional lines as an expression of warmth and intimacy within the cosmic dance of the everyday unknown." (Bernadette Phan)
Thanh Marie Bernadette Phan was born in Phnom Penh, Cambodia and moved to Canada with her family at an early age, via France. She received a BFA from Concordia University, Montréal, and graduated from the MFA program at Tyler University, Philadelphia, in 1997. She moved back to Vancouver that same year and has continued her studio practice in painting, drawing and weaving as of late. She has shown, locally, nationally and in Europe for the past 25 years. When not working, she likes to travel to Cambodia and Alert Bay.
Jayce Salloum:
"When I’m sketching out the templates for these sculptures I aim to make them referential to the moment in time that we are in. So, both from a microspective and macrospective view, referencing DNA, audio waveforms (amplitudinal), living organs/entities, mosaics/tiling, times broken down and strung together through space and the amalgamation of the spacial and temporal. The reworking, repurposing and condensing of the material carries inherent references to a previous life and the one that it is heading towards." (Jayce Salloum)
As if an itinerant geographer of conflicted territories (most everywhere), Salloum observes the world and creates/collects a subjective archive of images to make meaning from. Since arriving here - by no means of his own volition - he tries to go only where he is invited or where there is an intrinsic affinity, his projects being rooted in an intimate engagement with place. A grandson of Syrian or Lebanese immigrants he was born and raised on others’ land, the Sylix (Okanagan) territory. After 22 years living and working elsewheres he planted himself on the unceded Xʷməθkʷey̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh + Səíl̓wətaʔł territories. Salloum has lectured and published pervasively and exhibited somewhat peripatetically at the widest range of local and international venues possible (and most improbable), from the smallest unnamed storefronts in his downtown eastside Vancouver neighbourhood to institutions such as the Musée du Louvre, Museum of Modern Art, Guggenheim Museum, Centre Georges Pompidou, National Gallery of Canada, Bienal De La Havana, Sharjah Biennial, Biennale of Sydney and the Rotterdam International Film Festival.
Sculpture fabricators: Zenyase Hunsberger, Chelsea Yuill, Shayla Giroux, Corie Waugh
Bernadette Phan:
"I work in series that evolve over time, some of them decades. The series involve repetition, formal restrictions, dialogues between painting and sculpture, memory and illusion. In each series I undertake particular subjects: language and translation, still life as imaginary springboards, perspectives as set ups. My interest and curiosity are nurtured by making percepts that connect sense perceptions and start with the obvious, visual touch as a means to investigate haptic and proximate spaces generated through the painting medium and weaving as of late. The economy of my decisions as part of the process addresses the potency of the work instead of its potentiality. In this “Stipple series”, the texture captures light and creates its own coloured shadow. The cadence and repetition amplifies the dimensional lines as an expression of warmth and intimacy within the cosmic dance of the everyday unknown." (Bernadette Phan)
Thanh Marie Bernadette Phan was born in Phnom Penh, Cambodia and moved to Canada with her family at an early age, via France. She received a BFA from Concordia University, Montréal, and graduated from the MFA program at Tyler University, Philadelphia, in 1997. She moved back to Vancouver that same year and has continued her studio practice in painting, drawing and weaving as of late. She has shown, locally, nationally and in Europe for the past 25 years. When not working, she likes to travel to Cambodia and Alert Bay.
