Stanley Wany: Inwards by Galleries, Townsville City Council

I N W A R D

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Perc Tucker Regional Gallery Townsville City Council PO Box 1268 Townsville, Queensland 4810

Stanley Wany Jonathan McBurnie

Stanley Wany, Untitled (Back) [detail] 2019 Pen and ink on Strathmore paper, 30.5 x 213.4 cm

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Perc Tucker Regional Gallery

ptrg@townsville.qld.gov.au

The Hunting House

This publication ©Galleries, Townsville City Council, and the respective artists and authors

Cnr. Denham and Flinders St Townsville QLD 4810

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(07) 4727 9011 ptrg@townsville.qld.gov.au whatson.townsville.qld.gov.au

ISBN: 978-0-949461-36-0

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Mon – Fri: 10am – 5pm Sat – Sun: 10am – 2pm

S TA N L E Y WA N Y I N WA R D S Perc Tucker Regional Gallery 14 February – 29 March, 2020

Contents

Foreword Stanley Wany Stanley Wany: Inwards Jonathan McBurnie

5 11

Ice Cream Truck 2019 Markers and ink on Strathmore paper 76.2 x 51.2 cm

FOREWORD

5 The most influential factor in my work is my battle with insomnia. After being awake for so long, the line between reality and imagination starts to fade. Eventually, the unconscious mind takes over reality and consciousness slips into the background. For me, it is an experience similar to what Terence McKenna describes in his work as a psychedelic traveller. Although I am perfectly lucid, wide awake and will remember everything, another world comes forward. A world deep into the unconscious, beyond the Anima and Animus, where the Jungian self resides. A world with its own emotions, physics and morals, like a waking dream. Through the whole thing, I am helpless, ever the observer in my own experience. The majority of my work is produced in this state. Most of them created between two and four am after long days or weeks of insomnia. My aim is not to be the storyteller, but merely the one who assembles the elements for people to tell their own stories, if they choose to do so. As it is said in the Talmud: the dream is its own interpretation. Stanley Wany

Remember, This Never Happened [detail] 2013 Pen and ink on Bristol 35.6 x 129.5 cm

All of The Yesterdays and Tomorrows 2019 Ink and markers on Strathmore paper 40.6 x 50.8 cm

This barrier is slowly being broken down thanks to the digital world’s complete devaluation of cultural capital, and its omnivorous appetite for all things visual, simultaneously promoting comic book imagery as one of the preeminent visual languages of the new century, while destabilising the industry and artistic discipline from whence it came. Ironically, this same force of change is destabilising the commercial gallery system. At the same time in many venerable fine art institutions, the masters of

STANLEY WANY BELONGS.

CONTEXT THAT CANADA’S

AMORPHOUS, FAST-CHANGING

BE CATCHING ON. IT IS IN THIS

AND THE VISUAL ARTS SEEK TO

EFFUSIVE GRAPHIC POWER,

THEIR MOST THRILLING AND

COMICS HAVE ALWAYS FOUND

MEDIA AND DISCIPLINE WHERE

IT IS IN THIS SLIPPAGE BETWEEN

comics are getting their due; recent years have seen major exhibitions of key cartoonists, including Jack Kirby, Robert Crumb, and Daniel Clowes. Some artists, such as Kent Williams, Raymond Pettibon, and Josh Bayer manage to keep their hand in both worlds, but there is usually a sense that such an artist may belong to one context rather than the other. Yet in recent years, more artists are appearing in both scenes who appear unconcerned with either definition; Gary Panter and Lale Westvind both regularly exhibit and make comics, seemingly without prioritising one over the other. Many more artists, such as Chris Ware, are happy to push the comics form itself into territory usually considered more squarely located on the visual arts side of the fence.

S TA N L E Y WA N Y I N WA R D S Despite the relatively recent dubbing of comics’ legitimacy, which has been building in urgency and momentum almost since the form’s inception, there remain relatively few successful crossover artists of both the gallery and comics worlds. Despite the success of many cartoonists in other fields (especially film and animation, where the sequential cognition of the cartoonist is invaluable, as demonstrated with the non-comics work of Geof Darrow, Jean Giraud, Frank Miller, Guy Davis and many others), few have managed to cross over into the world of fine arts. This is in part due to the rigorous, exclusive, and monied gatekeeping of the fine art world, and its aversion to comics’ more working-class origins. Historically, comicsderived imagery has been much more palatable in the fine arts when recontextualized through a distancing lens of theory, ala Dada and Pop Art.

The Dream Cave [detail] 2016 Ink and graphite on paper 35.5 x 43.2 cm, set of 10 drawings

Trained in Canada’s Université du Québec en Outaouais, Wany’s practice is equally sure-footed within the context of the page and the wall, the product of a visual appetite just as indebted to the Franco-Belgian bande dessinée school of cartooning as any gallery artist. Many of Wany’s comics rely solely on the artist’s talent for narrative and thundering drawing ability, willing to subvert conventions of comics as much as the gallery. In Wany’s often wordless comics, readers are guided visually. While comics are often classified as a hybrid of word and image, this is not completely accurate; there is a wellestablished tradition of wordless comics. Part of comics’ joy as an art form, and difficulty in being deconstructed on the same terms as, say, literature, film, or visual art, is that it has more than a passing relationship to all three. While comics are indeed a hybrid form, the lack of one element, such as the written word, does not change its designation. Many theorists have wrestled with what

makes a comic, but the form resists such definition perhaps not because of its hybridity (for hybridity is becoming more and more common in the digital world, and as such, less dangerous), but for its fluidity; it is a form which has existed between established definitions for so long, yet it is distinctive. Westvind’s masterpiece, Grip 2 (2019), is completely wordless, and yet manages to convey spiritual, feminist, social and spiritual messages with ease, and Frank Miller’s Silent Night (1995) remains one of the visual highlights of his Sin City series (1991-2000). But ‘silent’ comics are by no means new; one of comics’ giants, Windsor McCay, regularly used significant passages within his masterpiece, Little Nemo in Slumberland, without words, masterful demonstrations of the dictum ‘show, don’t tell’. Wany’s practice recalls the metaphysical and symbolist approaches very much out of step with contemporary art. Wany attributes Sergio Toppi, Gustav Klimt, and Gustave

Doré as having the greatest influence upon his work. This makes sense on several levels; all three are known for their symbolist approaches, with recurring images and ciphers, interest in psychology, eroticism and the unconscious, and for their moody, black and white draftsmanship. Toppi, as a cartoonist, is particularly fascinating in his unhurried and uncluttered use of panels.

WANY, WITH HIS IMAGES SLOWLY UNCOILING ACROSS THE PAGES LIKE SMOKE, OFTEN OVERLAYS IMAGES, MORPHING AND SHIFTING INTO THE NEXT FORM. This almost psychedelic imbrication of references sometimes recalls the work of Mati Klarwein, Arthur Ranson, and Moebius at his trippiest.

Inwards includes a multitude of recent drawings, many of which were a part of his astounding graphic novels Sequences (2017) and Agalma (2015). These sit incredibly neatly with Wany’s epic, multi-panel drawings such as Remember, This Never Happened (2013), Nomo (2014) and Untitled (Front and Back) (2019), some of which reach seven feet, made up of dense, intricately rendered skeins of ink. Such a comfortable proximity between comics and drawing in the gallery context seems obvious, but it is actually quite radical, even today. While comics are becoming more and more common in a gallery setting (whether you agree with it or not), rarely are they included together, and certainly not so easily as Wany’s exhibition. The reason for this is that, on a fundamental level, his comics and his art both follow the same narrative and visual philosophies; improvisation and exploration are central to their creation, while close planning, tight compositions, and even detailed sketches, are avoided. One element is drawn, a visual problem for the next element to solve, which is itself a visual problem, and on and on until a sense of unity is achieved. Agalma and Sequences work on the same logic, with the prepetition of panel configurations thrown into the mix, directing the reader/viewer more explicitly, yet still open to the same slow shifts in form. Inwards refers in part to Wany’s method of working, which leans into the subconscious as both a source of ideas and a method of structuring the work. It must be noted that to make assumptions in this regard would not do the work justice. While yes, there is a level of surrealist improvisation involved in the work, it is created within a framework specifically designed around the artist’s habits and, much like Wany’s comics, one part has a direct influence on the next. Something drawn will have a direct impact on the next aspect, and the next, a continuum of visual problems and solutions. This is atypical of many comics, a form often expected to make a certain narrative sense, as well the challenge of balance throughout page and panels alike. Wany’s comics are a wonderful disruption of such formulae, balancing the languid numbness of the storytelling with a shimmering graphic aesthetic.

MUCH OF WANY’S APPROACH TO HIS RECENT WORK CAN BE ATTRIBUTED TO A DRAMATIC CHANGE IN HIS LIFE: THE ARRIVAL OF HIS FIRST CHILD, AND WITH THIS, THE INEVITABLE SLEEPLESS NIGHTS, AND THE STRANGE, NOCTURNAL SEMI-CONSCIOUSNESS THAT A PARENT CAN GROW ACCUSTOMED TO IN THE EARLY YEARS OF PARENTHOOD. Out of a difficulty in getting regular sleep, coupled with a desire to keep productive, grew the artist’s methodology, taking advantage of these restless hours and seizing moments to work on pieces over long stretches of wee hours. Thus, a looselystructured practice becomes key in enabling a consistent practice, even if this consistency is no more than a studio through-line, a considered approach through which the artist can make sense of the rapidly changing variables that are a part of the life of a new parent. This open-endedness offers tantalising narrative possibilities and are made all the more alluring through Wany’s graphic sensibility. Inwards marks Wany’s first exhibition in Australia, and Perc Tucker Regional Gallery are honoured to host his exquisite work. Townsville, as an artistic community, is home to a rich legacy of drawing, and I am sure that audiences will respond strongly to the artist’s beguiling linework and interwinding narratives. Jonathan McBurnie Creative Director, Townsville City Galleries

Mary May be Number 9 2019 Ink and markers on Strathmore paper 40.6 x 50.8 cm

Pages 16–19 Untitled (Back) [detail] 2019 Pen and ink on Strathmore paper 30.5 x 213.4 cm

Why Must You Even Try 2019 Ink and markers on Strathmore paper 40.6 x 50.8 cm

Sweet Cause in Vain 2019 Ink and markers on Strathmore paper 40.6 x 50.8 cm

Pages 22–25 Pages from Sequences 2017 Ink on paper 142.24 x 129.54 cm, set of 9 pages

26 Agalma 2015 China ink on Bristol velum 35.56 x 172.72 cm

Sequences II [detail] 2017 Pen and ink on Bristol 35.6 x 215.9 cm

Nomo 2014 Pen and ink on Bristol 35.6 x 129.5 cm

Nomo [detail] 2014 Pen and ink on Bristol 35.56 x 43.2 cm Opposite page Nomo [detail] 2019 Pen and ink on Bristol 35.56 x 64.77cm

Pages 36–39 Untitled (Front) [detail] 2019 Pen and ink on Strathmore paper 30.5 x 213.4 cm

Maybe Tomorrow 2019 Ink and markers on Strathmore paper 40.6 x 50.8 cm Opposite page Little Miss Strange 2019 Ink and markers on Strathmore paper 40.6 x 50.8 cm

NinaTrek 2019 Ink and graphite on paper 29.72 x 41.91 cm Opposite page left Ancestry 2019 China ink, acrylic medium and Liquitex flexible modeling paste on Strathmore mixed media 500 series paper 106.7 x 149.9 cm Opposite page right Towards abstraction 2019 China ink, acrylic medium and Liquitex flexible modeling paste on Strathmore mixed media 500 series paper 106.7 x 149.9 cm

Pages 44–47 Pages from Sequences 2017 Ink on paper 142.24 x 129.54 cm, set of 9 pages

Untitled (The Refugee) 2019 Ink and markers on Strathmore paper 40.6 x 50.8 cm Opposite page left Sing For Sunshine 2019 China ink, acrylic medium and Liquitex flexible modeling paste on Strathmore mixed media 500 series paper 106.7 x 149.9 cm Opposite page right Somewhere in The Dreams 2019 China ink, acrylic medium and Liquitex flexible modeling paste on Strathmore mixed media 500 series paper 106.7 x 149.9 cm

Perc Tucker Regional Gallery

Jonathan McBurnie

Creative Director

Tegan Jackson

Arts Administration Officer

Erwin Cruz Senior

Collections and Exhibition Officer

Rachel Cunningham

Gallery Assistant

Sarah Reddington

Senior Education and Programs Officer

Wendy Bainbridge

Gallery Assistant

Lucy Belle Tesoriero

Curatorial Assistant

Michael Favot

Gallery Assistant

Jo Lankester

Collections Management Officer

Chloe Lindo

Gallery Assistant

Emily Donaldson

Exhibitions Officer

Samuel Smith

Gallery Assistant

Leonardo Valero

Exhibitions Officer

Veerle Janssens

Gallery Assistant

Tanya Tanner

Public Art Officer

Amy Licciardello

Business Support Officer

Jake Pullyn

Exhibitions Officer