Rewind: Casey McGlynn
Katharine Mulherin Gallery, Toronto
Casey McGlynn began his work you were born you died (2002) by constructing 34 wooden boxes. He found them so aesthetically appealing that he decided, on the spur of the moment, to photograph them. He then proceeded to fill them one by one with cartoon-like figures and bits of text cut from plywood, creating a series of miniature dioramas which told, from cradle to grave, the life story of a man he describes as a generic, middle-class Canadian.
You ruined it, jokingly commented one of the artists former teachers from the Ontario College of Art, who preferred the work in its original state of anticipatory emptiness. McGlynn decided to present both versions in the handsome double-sided invitation that accompanied his exhibition at the Katharine Mulherin Gallery. On one side of the 8 1/2-x-11-inch glossy card, we saw the arrangement of pristine boxes admired by the teacher. On the reverse, we saw how it all turned out.
The coffin-like boxes were indeed evocative, but McGlynn was right to press forward with his project. If nothing else, this witty, tender and absorbing work demonstrated the profound satisfaction of simple storytelling. After a century of aesthetic experimentation in which the narrative form has been subjected to every form of interrogation, amputation and negation, its fun now and then to get the straight goods.
Though McGlynns clever invitation might appear to give him a toehold in the minimalist camp, his stylistic inclinations are anything but. More is more for this prolific 32-year-old, a fixture of the Queen Street West art scene in Toronto and a painter with a buoyant sense of humour, a teeming imagination and a lifelong obsession with comic books. Notable past experiments with narrative form include everyone ive ever met (2000), an exhaustive inventory of 1200 pen-and-pencil-crayon portraits and character descriptions crammed into six large panels, and my past jobs (2001), a chronicle in pen and ink on canvas of every menial job from which McGlynn was fired or quit. He is currently contemplating an autobiographical opus based on his sexual history.
By virtue of its thematic ambition and its address to an imagined Canadian Everyman, you were born you died has a broader significance than the previous works. The stages of man unfold in a series of endearingly awkward tableaux depicting childhood; the passions of youth (fondly depicted in you got into rock and you became aware of your abnormalities); the ups and downs of family life (the panel entitled simply minivan spoke volumes to me); career (note how often he ponders updated versions of MS-DOS); through to old age and death. Through his sure-footed verbal and visual play and quiet compassion, McGlynn achieves dignity for his ordinary hero. Its about reality and acceptance and trying to be happy, he says, simply. Its the ultimate big picturethe human comedywonderfully presented in terms that any child could understand.
Fall 2002
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