Rewind: Barbara McGill Balfour
Koffler Gallery, Toronto
Barbara McGill Balfour's recent exhibition "Selfish" could be interpreted as a post-Freudian turn wherein the self is less about reflection and more about replication: a better self constructed through careful attention to the details and idiosyncrasies that convince others of one's identity.
Tenure Track Barbara and Happy in Traction act as counterpoints to each other. They present miniature action-figure versions of the artist; first as her professorial self, spinning endlessly, complete with stylish academic attire; then as a woman in traction dealing with pain and the limitations of her body. Like whimsical clones in suspended animation, their tiny presence commands us to look and then look away, and then look again.
In Barbara as Emma and Barbara as Buffy, Balfour inserts her visage into larger-than-life representations of Emma Peel and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, enacting the speculative, media-projected self-improvements that digital alteration makes possible. In contrast, QWERTY works for me examines analog media and human error. In the work, the name "Barbara" has been typed over and over on the QWERTY keyboard, exposing mutations that send the text awry and lead to waves of instability.
Other works included in the exhibition, such as Persistence (glow-in-the-dark Silly Putty life mask), Self-Criticism (Medea and Marsyas) and The Failure of Fingerprints, point to the self as more than the sum of its parts, more than the effigy of a mask or the trace of a fingerprint. Even so, they remain in the realm of corporeality and replication. However, Balfour circumvents her own tendencies with another work, DANGER. Caution tape printed with the warning "Danger—I think I'm falling in love with you" cuts across the gallery. It is a reminder that there is only so much we can actually control in terms of our reception by and in the world.
Fall 2005
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