Paul Butler/Kim Ouellette
Kim Ouellette, Approaching Potala, 2004, Thread on blanket, 27.94 x 35.56 cm / Paul Butler, Untitled Flower #1 (from the Readymade series), 2005, Duraflex print, 99 x 73.6 cm Photo Natalie Thornton, Courtesy Wynick/Tuck Gallery
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Kim Ouellette, Approaching Potala, 2004, Thread on blanket, 27.94 x 35.56 cm / Paul Butler, Untitled Flower #1 (from the Readymade series), 2005, Duraflex print, 99 x 73.6 cm Photo Natalie Thornton, Courtesy Wynick/Tuck Gallery |
Paul Butler's show "Getting There is Half the Fun" was mainly comprised of collage-based works from his Readymade series. Butler hosts collage parties (in Canada and internationally) where artists come together to informally create. Butler's Readymade series works, a nod to Duchamp and the idea of finding art in the everyday, are created from the debris of other artists, the leavings when these collage parties have ended. Untitled Flower # 1 (2005) is a Duraflex print, a large colour photograph of a collage made up of pink and white roses and baby's breath. The series is made of vivid and crisp reproductions that as a whole show Butler's strong eye for composition and colour.
The show also included the ongoing Book of Things to Do (1999–), which consists of typed lists with handwritten additions on standard 8 1/2-by-11-inch white paper, bound into three hardcover volumes. Listing bills, debts, supplies and other items ranging from the mundane to the significant, Butler's books provide an ongoing record of the running of a studio and an artist's life lived in the 21st century.
Featuring 23 works that use reclaimed Hudson's Bay blankets, "Blanket Works' was Kim Ouellette's first solo show at Wynick/Tuck. The blankets provide Ouellette with a buff-coloured ground with muted stripes of blue, green and orange on which she "draws' using black thread. The fine thread introduces tension by contrasting with found surfaces that are sometimes pilled and at other times worn down to the bare warp and weft. Experimenting with various formats, including diptychs, she moves between landscape and abstraction.
Approaching Potala (2004) shows a man traversing a mountain range, heading towards a monastic complex—a scene that brings to mind James Hilton's book Lost Horizon. In Untitled Diptych (2004), several hikers are shown at various stages of ascent on a mountain range, observed by a lone horse and rider positioned below. The blanket's muted blue bands, offset at the gutter, provide an additional sense of upward movement in the piece. Ouellette's use of her thread line is spare, but she still conveys a great deal of information, creating a dichotomy between the adventure and danger in the images and the warmth and coziness of the medium.
Butler and Ouellette both work with the reclaimed—Butler recycling images from advertising and the media and Ouellette the iconic Hudson's Bay blanket. They take divergent paths from a common start.
Image captions:
Kim Ouellette, Approaching Potala, 2004, Thread on blanket, 27.94 x 35.56 cm, Photo Natalie Thornton, Courtesy Wynick/Tuck Gallery Paul Butler, Untitled Flower #1 (from the Readymade series), 2005, Duraflex print, 99 x 73.6 cm, Photo Natalie Thornton, Courtesy Wynick/Tuck Gallery
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