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Monday, January 05, 2004

Kick-Ass Art!

Howdy!

Although the rest of the world has gone back to work, the Montr�al Art World (scene?) is still slumbering. I went for a walk along Rachel this afternoon, and sure as shooting, the Centre des Arts Contemporain de Montr�al was closed (but I still got to see the Armand Vaillancourt show, more on that later) Galerie Graff was closed Artus was closed, hell even Caf� Rico was closed!

Encadrement de Stijl was open, but the three paintings they had in their window display were really bad. But there was hope... A.R. Lussier was open. Woo! Hoo! Who you ask? AR Lussier, ferblanterie (huh? Yeah, I'm confused, too.) Or more to the point, if I flip over the business card it reads, "Tolerie artistique, fabrication exclusive sur pieces en galvanize." (sorry about the lack of accents, but I haven't quite figured out how to get them to work on this web site). I guess that they are some of the folk who will benefit the new initiative from Fran�oise Gauthier.

Basically they make badass stuff out of metal. Wicked Cool, Kick-Ass, Wonderful things. But the thing that was really awesome was their window display.

In a nutshell, take some quarter inch metal bars about five feet in length, stick 'em in dirt, make them sorta curvy (you know like they are swaying to a samba beat, or a nice spring breeze). Weld some old guns on top and then mess around with the guns so that they, too have interesting attachments either in front of the barrel or in the bullet chamber. Then lastly, repeat this about a dozen times, making sure to vary the guns, the curves, and the attachments, while placing the two curvy guns with attachments at either end of the display in front of mirrors so that you can site down the barrel and pretend to pull the trigger.

Cool, eh?

Now, if I were writing for Parachute, I'd stick in some words like horticulture, environment, mortality, and aggression. But I'm not! So I'll use words like flowers, the earth, kill and anger (saving eight syllables in the process, that's it, we gotta save the syllables, they are in limited supply). Watch.

The artist (I asked for their name, but nobody in the shop knew) in one way (my way) of looking at the piece, wanted to say something about the current, violent state of the world, and at the same time cause you to step back and think about the massacre at the Universite de Montr�al.

"About a dozen." Although I didn't count 'em specifically, I'd sure as shooting bet you that there were fourteen of them, one each in memory of Genevi�ve Bergeron, H�l�ne Colgan, Nathalie Croteau, Barbara Daigneault, Anne-Marie Edward, Maud Haviernick, Barbara Klucznik Widajewicz, Maryse Lagani�re, Maryse Leclair, Anne-Marie Lemay, Sonia Pelletier, Mich�le Richard, Annie St-Arneault, and Annie Turcotte.

Planting the guns like flowers (one word done with) in the earth (two!) is a reference to how common guns are in our society, adding the attachments to the guns is a way of focusing the flower reference (they all are attached in a vaguely petal-like manner). Handguns are not used for much more than killing things (three!) and if you're angry (four! Badda-bing! Badda-boom!) and own a handgun it is fairly likely that you're going to at least think about killing the thing (or person) who is making you angry. Flowers on the other hand are fragile and pretty things, almost the exact opposite of Smith & Wesson. This combination is going to make you think.

OK, enough with the monosyllabic art analysis, if you want to talk about it with me, get yer butt down to A.R. Lussier, and gaze fondly in the window (which is what I did this afternoon, took me a full ten-minutes before I realized that the guy in the shop was staring at me staring at the art!). Then email me, or swing by the gallery and we can talk (or type).

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