Perception, Pattern, and Artistic Praxis · Gary Pearson

PERCEPTION, PATTERN, AND ARTISTIC PRAXIS

by Gary Pearson

Perception is a pattern seeking process reliant on repetition and analogous shapes, sounds, or other external stimuli or sensations. It’s an organizational process whereby elements in a visual field for example, will be collated towards some kind of organizing principle, so the information or environment may be more readily interpreted and understood. Interestingly, when we are confronted with an overabundance of pattern type repetition we are inclined to seek breaks in the pattern formation, thus interrupting or forestalling a perceptual overload. This correlation of interdependence between pattern formation and formation breaks, in the perceptual process, also underlies compositional development in the fine arts.

In visual arts, music, dance, theatre, we’re often made aware of the deployment of theme and variation in compositional structure, and usually combined with a counter-theme or counter-subject to promote the role of harmony and discord in the pursuit of compositional complexity. In this latter case artistic license also allows individual personalities, subjectivity, and aesthetics, to affect the role sensory information plays, and the desired outcomes, in influencing the construction of work designed around pattern formation and thematic compositional structures.

The exhibition Ramble On is curated by Dr. Stacey Koosel, curator of the UBC Okanagan Campus Gallery, from art work holdings in the University Public Art Collection. Dr. Koosel has stated that her selection, drawn from over 750 art works in the collection, was guided by the concept of finding meaning through patterns, repetitions, and grids. The collection, originally founded by Okanagan College in 1963, is an eclectic body of art work of various disciplines, media, and styles, many acquired by donation, others, and this has perhaps been the most consistent mechanism of acquisition policy, by annual internal purchase awards determined by a faculty jury, for outstanding work from graduating students; diploma graduates during Okanagan College’s mandate, followed by BFA graduates from Okanagan University College, and later UBC Okanagan Campus BFA and MFA graduates.

There is a lot of exceptional work in the university collection, including that by prominent artists such as Alan Wood, Jack Shadbolt, David Blackwood, Carl Beam and, to my surprise; there are three William Hogarth (1897 – 1764) prints, two prints by the renowned Swedish artist Anders Zorn (1860 – 1920), prints by Inuit artists, and an astonishing number of Alistair Bell prints, mostly woodcuts and engravings depicting birds, animals, boat and marina scenes, all generously gifted to the university by the artist’s son Alan Bell. Within such a diverse, wide-ranging collection Dr. Koosel identified a thematic paradigm to anchor a conceptually cohesive curatorial thesis and presentation. Even within the parameters of patterns, repetitions, and grids, the audience of Ramble On, hosted by the Vernon Public Art Gallery, will find distinctly different yet equally inventive approaches to the artistic application of repetition and pattern formation among the artists presented.

The Public Art Collection, as previously mentioned, has grown in large part through purchase awards of work by visual arts graduates. Included in this exhibition is recent UBC Okanagan graduate Moozhan Ahmadzadegan (BFA 2019), a second generation Canadian of Iranian/Persian ancestry. His Untitled Portrait #1, 2018, mixed media, employs a visually textured pattern of folds, creases, and lines orchestrated to depict a fully enshrouded, chromatic silhouetted figure superimposed on an abstract, achromatic, low-relief, sculpturally rendered two-dimensional pictorial ground. It’s a haunting image of anonymity, isolation, and concealment. The draped figure, by all outward appearances a garmented cross between The Mummy (original 1932 film), Rene Magritte’s The Lovers, and The Lovers II, (both 1928), and an Afghan burka, is intentionally swathed in a theatrically exaggerated anti-fashion statement for metaphorical and narrativizing ends. On a formal level Ahmadzadegan has created a visual typological network of repetitive graphic elements that form a group based on a common characteristic or identity. This has been essential to the artists compositional development and the introduction of harmony (graphic typology), and contrast through the juxtaposition of chromatic and achromatic areas. The graphic typological approach was essential to creating the expressive center, not only in the graphic and pictorial sense, but also to anchor the narrative, for symbolic import, and for ontological expression and meaning.

Okanagan artists are well represented in Ramble On. Three paintings by David Wilson Sookinakin are included, the most recent from 2016. His is a symbolic narrative painting frequently drawing upon Okanagan Nation/ Interior Salish cosmology for the subject matter. Sookinakin deploys undulating linear graphic elements, flat color planes, radial designs, pictographic inspired images, and repetitive dot or pointillist patterns. Pattern and repetition in the abstraction of the natural world is clearly an important stylistic trait of this artist, as it may be found in the stylization of tree branches and foliage, plants, cloud formations, the contours of hillsides, currents of water, birds wings, costume regalia, or used as a purely abstract pictorial field, as seen in the many central circle compositions from 2007 (not in the exhibition). The circle is a shape that is central to native cosmology, so that may also help explain the artists attachment to the spiral, radial symmetry, and organic pattern formations. David Wilson Sookinakin is a storytelling artist, whose narrative paintings are grounded in his own First Nations ethnicity and artistic ancestry, his lively imagination, and the knowledge that pattern and repetition, if handled skillfully and inventively in art, can breathe new life into ancient traditions, spirituality, mythologies and, contemporary cultural experience. While pattern and repetition are only a part of this artists repertoire they are used as a formal system of theme and variations to create a complex compositional structure that advantages the interdependence of harmony and contrast.

The exhibition also features a digital print by Tania Willard, of the Secwépemc Nation. Willard is nationally recognized artist, writer, curator, and activist. She received an MFA in 2018 from UBC Okanagan Campus, where she is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Creative and Critical Studies. The photographic

print, titled Gut Instincts, 2018, is a scaled down version of the digital mural on textile component of a site-specific outdoor installation she produced at the Kelowna Art Gallery, for the group exhibition Woven Together, guest curated by Jaimie Isaac in 2018. The pattern design decorating the baskets is derived from a design on a cedar-root basket collected as part of the North Pacific Jesup Expedition (1897 – 1902) from Stl’atl’imx territories. In this work the artist endeavors to resurrect or reinstate Indigenous authorship of a culturally specific design hitherto assigned to author anonymity as prescribed by the colonial practice of the anthropological framing of Indigenous art. 1 The design is unique to the Stl’atl’imx First Nations and, as Tania Willard, in expressing her interpretation writes, ‘I see, in this design, a deep reciprocity with Indigenous lands and sacred acts of interrelationship with animal and other non-human worlds.’2

Sheldon Louis, an Okanagan/Sylix Nation artist is represented by a painting titled caxalqs (red dress), from 2021. This very recent acquisition was made possible by a commission sponsored by the Okanagan School of Education, at UBC Okanagan. The artist states that, ‘The red dress is a symbol for the missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and Two-Spirit (MMIWG2S) movement.’3 The dominant motif in this 48” x 48” canvas is the central circle internal to which is the mask wearing Indigenous woman raising her left arm with a clenched fist extending beyond the circular framing device. Sheldon Louis has a history of backdropping his portrait paintings with an all-over pattern formation and this painting is no exception. Here he uses an ornately abstracted flower design in an Indian Red color on a saturated red ground.

Another surprising and impressive holding of the Public Art Collection are prints from the Japanese artist Shōichi Ida. Quite famous for his paper works and prints Ida’s work is in major public museums worldwide, including the MoMA in New York. Five prints dated 1982 are included in this exhibition, each from a portfolio of five etching, aquatint, and drypoints with chine collé, which incidentally, are also held in the MoMA permanent collection. Decidedly minimalist in principal they are anything but when viewed in close examination. Reliant on an exacting system of parallel line repetitions on a richly colored monochrome ground, they also possess an absorbing amount of information on the printing process itself; laying bare such material incidences as color bleeds beyond the principle image, and registration marks for positioning the printing plate. These prints are aesthetically and intellectually rewarding on so many levels, and not the least of which is demonstrating that a reductive, minimalist conceptual model does not preclude the use of a discordant, even messy production methodology.

Another treat for the exhibition audience is the inclusion of Takesada Matsutani, an internationally exhibited artist who was a member of the Gutai Art Association, or “Gutai Group”, centered in Japan in the 60’s and 70’s. They were key players in the international avant-garde of this era, and Matsutani was among the more experimental of the collective. Born in 1937 and still artistically active, UBC Okanagan is fortunate to own these definitive early works by this artist, most likely produced in Paris, in the late-60’s and early 70’s. The Ramble On audience can enjoy studying the imaginative “machine aesthetic” engravings, and the extraordinarily enigmatic Object – D, from 1972. This particular piece, and Unknown, 1973, were probably influenced by the artists study of blood samples under a microscope during the 60’s, and his subsequent experiments with the viscosity and malleability of vinyl glue.

It is with some regret that I bring this short essay to a close without having addressed every artist, but realistically the essay is only intended to scratch the surface of the importance and meaning of some of the work presented. In doing so, to encourage the audience to give the art work just that extra bit of time, and beyond that to perhaps undertake research on their own: of individual works, of a certain artist, and/or to further investigate the role of perception, pattern, and artistic praxis in the formation of meaning.

Author Bio

Gary Pearson is an artist and Associate Professor Emeritus in Fine Arts in the Department of Creative and Critical Studies at UBC Okanagan, in Kelowna, BC. He is also a freelance exhibition curator, art writer, and author of the book The Creative Voice: Life and Art in the Okanagan, published by Caitlin Press, in 1998. His exhibition reviews and essays have been published in Canadian Art, Border Crossings, and Sculpture magazine, among other publications. He has also written numerous exhibition catalogue essays and art and research conference papers. Gary Pearson’s personal exhibition history includes solo and group exhibitions in Canada, the US, Australia, and Europe. He is represented by Gallery Jones, in Vancouver.

For more on the historical background and usage of this design, including a statement by Tania Willard, see: 1 https://kelownaartgallery.com/tania-willard-gut-instincts/ and https://shimmeringhorizons. orgalleryprojects.org/tania-willard/ 2 https://kelownaartgallery.com/tania-willard-gut-instincts/ 3 https://thediscourse.ca/okanagan/syilx-artist-sheldon-louis-creates-painting-for-ubc-okanagan

Ida Shōichi: Descended Blue N. 5 (detail), 1982, etching, aquatint, dry needle and Chine collé, photo: Yuri Akuney - Digital Perfections