If Emotional Feelings was the title of a K-Tel soft rock compilation album, it’s a sure bet that Morris Alpert’s signature song “Feelings” would make the cut. A cringe-inducing, maudlin tune that still generates a certain ironic pleasure, “Feelings” could easily be a theme song for Daniel Barrow. An acclaimed artist from Winnipeg — coincidentally also the home of K-Tel International’s head office — Barrow has been making a name for himself with his melancholic drawings propelled by fantastical plot lines.
Barrow’s solo exhibition at the Art Gallery of York University (in conjunction with Images Festival) is an impressive installation of four “registered projections”, that is, layered tableaux composed of Barrow’s comic-styled drawings on clear transparencies or transformed into animated GIFs.
Image credit: Michael Maranda, Art Gallery of York University; Daniel Barrow, Flaying, 2010, registered projection (viewer manipulated) courtesy of the artist and Jessica Bradley Art + Projects.
Although this show is a slight departure from Barrow’s live performances using overhead projectors – alluding to 18th-century magic lantern shows – in his absence, the artist has carefully positioned more of the same in the gallery alongside several LCD projectors. Additionally, he uses kinetic components to animate the scenes further, such as a motorized wheel passing over the lens of a projector or electric fans blowing on shallow dishes of water to create rippling distortions on the wall. Besides the whir of the fans and a low piano accompaniment, the only other sound in the gallery comes from an animated surrogate—presumably the artist himself—on a small monitor, seen blowing on the pools of water in perpetuity while sobbing pathetically about his plight.
Barrow’s subject matter is hardly schmaltzy stuff. At AGYU, ruffled curtains part to reveal gross misconduct or catastrophe, such as the corpulent Lothario pinning an impassive mermaid on a canopied bed or steady streams of suicide jumpers beyond an open window. Drapery is a recurring visual motif, used here as theatrical framing or to establish an art historical precedent of its decorative use. Echoed in the wads of technicolour Kleenex hurtling from their box or in the flayed pieces of flesh peeling away from a standing figure, the motif also implies concealment of those fears and anxieties that plague us all.
For Barrow, it appears that tragedy is also comedy, but his amusingly grotesque imagery isn’t really an exercise in schadenfreude—or “delighting in the misfortune of others.” It might be instead like belting out a heart-wrenching rendition of “Feelings” alone in your bedroom, substituting a hairbrush for a microphone.
WHERE/WHEN: Emotional Feelings by Daniel Barrow at Art Gallery of York University (Accolade East Building, 4700 Keele Street, 416.736.5169); on until June 6, 2010, Monday to Friday 10 am – 4 pm, Wednesday 10 am – 8 pm, Sunday 12 – 5 pm, Saturday closed.
Jen Hutton is a Toronto-based artist and writer.
Social bookmarks
Scroll to the Form to leave a comment.
Currently there are no comments related to article "Daniel Barrow Mines Emotions at AGYU".