Remember the Spirograph? Robbin Deyo Traces a Future for Abstract Painting Starbursts et autres vibrations on view at La Maison de la Culture de Côtes-des-Nieges, Montréal, October 17 to November 30, 2014. Review by: Michelle Gewurtz
Installation View Starbursts and Other Vibrations Maison de la Culture Côtes-des-Nieges, Montréal, QC l to r : Swirl Still 00:14:19, Swirl Still 02:51:15, Swirl Still 00:16:05 Photo Credit: Guy L’Heureux
Parametric equations, hypocycloid and epicycloid curves are not what we typically associate with contemporary abstract painting. Yet, these are what form the basis of the body of new works by Montréal-based artist Robbin Deyo. Starbursts and Other Vibrations currently on view at La Maison de la culture Côte-des-Neiges features watercolour drawings and large-scale oil paintings, each produced using the children’s toy Super Spirograph, the device invented for drawing accurate hypocycloid curves. Once again adapting an everyday object —in this case the drawing toy popularized in the 1960s— into a tool used for the purposes of making abstract art, the artist continues to explore pattern and repetition. The results are fascinating and varied shapes that are at times evocative of spirals, florals, kaleidoscopes and mandalas. The regularly spiralling shapes signal difference and repetition, which is at the heart of the work. Also evident is an interest in labour-intensive and time consuming processes. These concerns have been a preoccupation of Deyo’s for well over a decade and predate the artist’s explorations of the possibilities of geometric patterns created by rotating a plastic wheel inside another plastic wheel while tracing the wheel’s path with a pen.
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Deyo’s work with the Super Spirograph began as an exhaustive exercise where, for over a period of six months, the artist spent the majority of each day seated drawing all the possible variations of forms that can be produced from the 20 round gears of the Super Spirograph. This amounted to 7905 drawings in total. The forms created are the basis for the watercolours and oils on view. The selection of watercolours drawn from an ongoing series entitled Kaleidoscopic Spirograph Stills (begun 2012) developed from Deyo’s ongoing investigation of the possibilities created by working the Super Spirograph toy in a myriad of combinations. These watercolours on view are the results of repetitively overlapping a single Spirograph form in an organized manner creating smaller shapes that are then filled with colour. The drawn pattern is first transposed onto watercolour paper using an embossing tool. In these ‘drawings’ the medium of watercolour is exploited as colours are layered in washes. The application of watercolour in near-transparent washes parallels the artist’s work layering colours with Photoshop and Final Cut Pro while developing video animations of the drawings. Although this interplay with technology is not hinted at in the current exhibition as it does not feature any new media work, the sense of movement of the animations is retained even as one quietly contemplates the delicate watercolours and certainly in the bolder oil paintings.
Robbin Deyo, Swirl Still 00:00:08, 2014 Oil on Canvas. Photo Credit: Guy L’Heureux
While perhaps better served in a space where the delicate and contemplative watercolours do not have to compete for attention with the bolder large canvases, the progression of Deyo’s formal investigations can be appreciated in the open, upper-level gallery at Maison de la culture de Côte-des-Neiges in Montréal. Line, colour, texture and the possibilities these elements present when played with in combination are unabashedly on view here. Perhaps the juxtaposition of the colourful oils and the subtler watercolours does indeed signal the theme of the exhibition: energy and quietude. As one moves from the quieter forms created in the watercolours to the large oils that are drawn from stills of video -2-
animations that highlight the bursting nature of energy, and back again, the viewer appreciates the rhythms created that mimic our own cycles of contemplation, movement, and repose. What one also appreciates is the discipline involved in creating these varied forms and paintings. Close-up it appears both the watercolours and oils display patience as well as dexterity but step back and we're surprised by a far-more graceful, floral feel than expected. This is especially true of the watercolours, because this is an unusual choice of medium for abstract painting.
Starbursts and Other Vibrations, exhibition view Maison de la Culture de Côte-des-Neiges Photo Credit: Guy L’Heureux
The question of abstract painting’s future has been raised many times in the past. In fact, the question is as old as abstraction itself, for the birth of abstract art in the second decade of the twentieth century immediately prompted doubts about its artistic viability. Given that Deyo’s work in oils has just begun and the exhaustive possibilities offered by Spirograph have not been explored fully, it appears that the future of abstract painting is on a bright, energetic and colourful trajectory in the hands of this painter.
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