|
In 1992 Abrams created a series of
twenty paintings called Wild Life and Supermodels in which
"how beauty is exploited for profit" was the grand
theme. This landmark show, which was exhibited at Garnet
Press Gallery in September 1993, was the logical evolution
of two previous series of paintings, also exhibited at
Garnet Press Late Nature (1989) and Rethinking History
(1992), which were, to some extent, also about the
relationship between industry and nature. It was in Wild
life and Supermodels that Abrams solidified his signature
moody black and blue palette beneath which peeks a bloody
underpainting of virulent red; a battered-looking palette to
reflect a damaged truth. The subjects of the paintings have
a soft, furry effect, like a slightly out-of-focus lens.
This was a complete departure from Abrams works of realism
from the eighties, in which were bizarre still-lifes painted
in crisp, clear hues. This new palette was almost like an
allergic reaction to the full-time job Abrams had working in
a printing shop which at the time was creating glossy ads
for a large number of trade magazines from the design and
construction industries.
He was quoted in NOW magazine (September
30, 1993) as saying "In these ads, colour and clarity
are used so much as sales gimmicks that as a direct result,
my own imagery has gotten less and less colourful, less an
less clearly defined." It was apparent that Abrams, at
the time, decided to question the authority of that
aesthetic which could be called "predatory."
In Wild Life and Supermodels, images of
Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell, Claudia Schiffer and Kate
Moss were juxtaposed with National Geographic type images of
polar bears, wolf and deer. These images made a disturbing,
symbolic alliance between beautiful women and wild
creatures; the point was made that both are preyed on as
visual aids by the marketing industry. Stripped of their
gloss and their colour, these images become further
fetishized; it is as if they have been sent to a kind of
aesthetic purgatory where there beauty becomes ambiguous.
The faces of the Unknown Perfume models, for instance, loom
in out of a dark background like lost, moaning souls in
space. The face of Cindy Crawford becomes like a dead marble
bust; Naomi Campbell a fuzzy imprint in paint as if the
canvas itself was functioning as her shroud.
Divorced from their cheery context as
purveyors of perfumes and jeans, the effect is also at times
quite lewd; Abrams portrait of a Guess Girl becomes a like a
black and white graphic in the back pages of a girlie
magazine. Stripped of their gloss and colour, as the artist
says "their gimmicks," these images lose their
authority as symbols youth, beauty and freedom and instead
become icons about sex, death and oppression. They are
images of women who have lost their innocence. With these
images, Abrams found a form that fits these images' real
function; the brutality of the truth concealed behind the
mask of power.
The images of endangered species in Wild
life and Supermodels are portraits of real innocence. As
Carla Garnet, Abrams spouse and former dealer points out, it
is "the romanticization of nature in the animal
paintings that already suggests it's loss." The animals
in this show, the polar bear, the deer and wolves, also loom
out of a deep, monochromatic background. In some paintings,
such as the Polar bear, the animal glows a supernatural
white, like a ghostly apparition and in others, such as
Buck, you see the deer as a shadow; as an eclipse of itself.
The comment here is how nature itself is seen as the shadow
side of our collective psyche; in the war between man versus
nature it is obvious that man is winning.
In Wild Life and Supermodels there was
one renegade work, that foreshadowed the genesis of the
themes that would dominate Abrams' next exhibition,
Criminals and Deities. This image, called "Dr.
Brute," was a painterly re-translating of a photograph
taken by Rodney Werden as part of an installation by the
arts collective General Idea. The image features performance
artist Eric Metcalfe in his performance personae as Dr.
Brute: a serial killer lying naked on leopard skin pillows
with a gun in his hand. Fascinated by the way this image
represented both false authority (the serial killer as the
king of his little fantasy world) and rebellion against
authority (freedom is just another word for nothing left to
lose) simultaneously, Abrams decided to iconize it by
redoing it in a bull-maddening red on the side of the now
defunct Garnet Press Gallery on Richmond Street in Toronto.
This controversial, famous mural existed as a landmark on
Queen Street West until the closing of the gallery and
became a metaphor for the amorality that took place in that
area as all the artists and galleries were figuratively
"killed off" by developers and greed.
In his ensuing series Criminals and
Deities, Abrams looked to the dispassionate eye of the media
and the equally dispassionate eye of the immortals for
inspiration. Criminals and Deities is a true investigation
into the nature of amorality; an installation of paintings
that juxtaposed portraits and mug-shots of criminals
appropriated from the pages of the Toronto Sun with
portraits of ancient Indian Goddesses. The criminals were
painted in Abrams' signature black and blue palette, but the
Goddesses were realized in a vibrant circus of vivid pinks,
blues, reds and yellows. When I saw this exhibition at
Garnet Press at 1994 it looked like there was a battle
between good and evil happening on the walls; a war of
aesthetic opposites with the moody portraits of the
offenders acting as a criminal yin to the spiritual yang
emanating from the glowing, exuberant portraits of the
goddesses. Like the models who populated Wild Life and
SuperModels, whom Abrams thematically compared to predatory
animals, the criminals represented in these paintings
represented a loss of innocence.
Abrams was triggered to paint this work
by a shooting that took place in the back yard bordering his
house. The local police gunned down a black youth, shooting
him three times in the chest before figuring out the reason
that he ran was that he was in the country illegally. This
incident jived with Abrams increased awareness of the
media's obsession with criminal activity and its perceived
relationship to immigrant policy. Like the wildlife in his
previous show, these individuals were just trying to
survive. The criminal portraits in this show -- of Dexter
Brown, who let a woman die of a cocaine overdose, Paul
Semple, a murderer, Brady Bernard, arrested for stockpiling
weapons and Qun Hou, an extortionist -- are romanticized in
a painterly way, much the same way his wolves and wild
animals were in the previous show. They are painted in soft
focus, with huge shining, velvet, wet eyes in an attempt to
re-humanize that which has been dehumanized by the media.
Facing off against this gallery of
rogues were portraits of traditional Indian Goddesses,
Raharani, the goddess of benevolence; Laxmi, the goddess of
prosperity; Kali, the goddess of meandering; Durga,
challenger of demons; and Ganesh, the magical elephant. It
became obvious from looking at these paintings that these
deities give us no spiritual answers, only Mona Lisa smiles.
Each portrait functions as mirror back to the individual, to
find the answers to these problems from a true authority;
that which is within.
In 1997, Abrams elaborated on both
Criminals and Deities and Wildlife and Supermodels by
creating an exhibition of smaller works arranged in
tableaux. In this show, which featured shelves upon which
six smaller works were arranged, Abrams created narratives
that more overtly criticized the authority of the law. Once
again, Abrams compared the amoral nature of humans to wild
beasts by juxtaposing both on the wall. In this show, Abrams
also included a large painting called Figure Painting (1997)
which features a long-haired, bare-chested criminal being
led out of a car by a police officer. The criminal has his
arms up in the posture of Christ being led to crucifixion.
There is an overt political message in this painting: we are
leading innocent lambs to slaughter. It is not a crime to
survive.
Currently, Abrams is continuing his
investigation into the personas of power by painting
portraits of rogues of a different sort -- politicians. This
series began with a portrait of Pierre Vallieres, a member
of the FLQ and author of White Niggers of America; a man who
many felt was unfairly incarcerated after the FLQ blew up a
number of factories in Quebec. Abrams is capturing
sensational moments from history. In his studio are
portraits of Trudeau and John Lennon; Trudeau and Levesque
in 1978 during the famous "Night of The Knives";
Trudeau and Liona Boyd; and Trudeau and the Queen. Part of
this series existed as a mural on the front facade of The
Cameron Public House on Queen Street in Toronto; a portrait
of Trudeau and Barbara Streisand during their
much-publicized romance.
These paintings of political creatures
are the logical evolution of Abrams' examination into the
personas of power, for what other creature, aside from a
politician, must be or at least pretend to be a moral
authority? These new works question the credibility of
authority and the credibility of history, as it as been
relayed to us by the media and history books.
Abrams is not a revisionist, and he
gives no answers to these questions. In his next exhibition,
as in his previous ones, he will merely provoke us to think
for ourselves.
|
Annette Sheppard
