SKID
Jo-Anne Balcaen (Montreal)
Marlaina Buch (Victoria)
David Poolman (Toronto)
Opening: November 14, 8pm
Artist Talk: November 15, 2pm
Closing: Saturday December 13 1-5pm featuring a collaborative ouija board making party with Marlaina Buch.
Collaborative ouija board making party: Join Marlaina Buch for an innocent afternoon spent working on a tool of the devil, listening to metal and discussing the cultural cache and impact of one of history's most maligned toys. Let's get metaphysical. December 13 1-5pm.
Open Space presents SKID, an exhibition that locates the playful festishization of signfiers that bear witness to group
identification within Heavy Metal culture and its subgenre's Speed Metal, Death Metal, and Thrash. The work of
Jo-Anne Balcaen , Marlaina Buch and David Poolman riff off Heavy Metal’s fascination with death as a sign as it runs paralell to the subculture’s emphatic celebration of such life-affirming rituals as attending concerts collecting records, growing hair and submitting to various forms of body beautication art.
Jo-Anne Balcaen uses parody as a strategy to engage with popular culture as a site of distorted
expectations, an anxiety and dissatisfaction that comes about through the exchange of signs and a fundamental
disappointment or banality that lies within. Among her ironic metal font prints, an authorized Rob Trujillo [Metallica]
guitar pick also makes a guest appearance in her work, giving rise to the relationship [fetish] objects intersect with
mythologies in popular music.
Marlaina Buch’s work casts a critical eye on systems of control and their relationship to the consumption of
music experience. Buch’s paintings and drawings attempt to move past a nostalgia for metal culture and popular
music iconography to arrive at places where memory and analysis intersect. Buch’s suite of new drawings focus on
religion, music, history, gender and personal narrative as it relates to her understanding and personal engagement
with Metal culture. Buch’s work will be presented in poster bins and record store racks to further complicate issues
around consumption and desire.
David Poolman engages explicitly with Death Metal, opening a discourse surrounding teenage rebellion
and violence while focusing on issues of isolation and dissent. SKID features from the womb to the tomb, a series of
large scale site-specific tattoo murals drawn and painted directly on to the gallery walls. Poolman additionally
features The Burning of Nauvoo Temple, a 2008 video installation that references Carl Christensen’s 1879 devotional
painting to recall Norwegian rocker Varg Vikernes’ infamous Church arson/protest spree of 1992.
SKID is curated by Open Space staff member Alan Kollins
http://www.terminus1525.ca/blog/5727
Chris Long Article "poking the iron bear":
http://themetropolitan.ca/story_chrislong_pokingtheironbear.php?menu=Content