After two years as a street-side artistic attraction on upper St-Laurent Blvd., Galerie PUSH has moved to the Belgo Building, the hub of Montreal art at 372 Ste. Catherine West. Downtown maybe, but definitely edgy: the inaugural show is Still River Still Leaving, a haunting solo from Nadia Moss.
In addition to playing piano in several local indie bands, the multi-talented Ms. Moss has gained a following as an illustrator and painter, showing work at small press fairs, having her drawings published in the Walrus and Maisonneuve magazines and producing memorable album covers.
Still River Still Leaving offers ink drawings and mixed media paintings. The drawings are executed with minimal means. Drops and washes of ink form figures that float across the white expanse of paper, seeming to emerge out of nothingness. Their hands, feet and faces are black as if dipped in ink that slowly seeps and gives form to bodies. In Spaghetti Night (2009), three such figures emerge from a tangled mass of roots – either a life-giving force or insidious constraint.
Moss works quickly and instinctively, describing her method of creating 20 or so of these drawings in one session until she arrives at a satisfying few. in contrast, the paintings on view are painstakingly executed. She covers wood panels with a layer of plaster and gesso, applies acrylic and watercolour on top, and then scratches away portions of the paint to reveal the white underneath.
Similar characters and visual elements reoccur in many of the works. In the Beach series of three paintings, bald clown-like figures play on the shore, their polka-dot jumpsuits and conical hats belying possibly dubious actions.
Then there are the shifty-eyed bird folk. Their bodies are entirely covered in feathers or leaves, a hand or foot visible here, and sometimes woven through with roots. In the large-scale The Little Kid Called it Little Prisons (2010), several of these figures stand at the water’s edge. The scratched ink technique used to render the leaves adds relief and a decorative texture, standing in stark contrast to the flat expanse of the red sky. Matte black mounds emerge from the water with pools of blue on top, small mountains in a watery landscape. At the foot of one, a naked figure stands alone before a pile of leaves. Has he shed his skin to escape? Or is he about to cover himself and join the others?
The leaves, like the tangled roots in the ink drawings, waver between positive and negative. Indeed, much of Moss’ work points at ambiguity. The ties that hold us together are also those that bind. The sense of security drawn from commonality may also be a relinquishing of independence in the name of fitting in.
Speaking of some of the themes in the work, Moss described dealing with the loss of someone close. The “still” of the title, she says, is both a sense of quiet and of stasis, and paradoxically, of being “stuck in a leaving action … The landscapes are solid; energetic but almost like dioramas, where nothing will happen.” The same story is replayed ad infinitum: those departed are stuck perpetually in the act of leaving the earth for good. Those who mourn their loss hope to move beyond and to never forget.
The Nadia Moss solo has been in the works for more than a year. “It’s great to open the new space with a show of drawings, small scale works – almost the humbler arts,” says gallery director Megan Bradley. “We tend to get caught up in large installations and [ideas of] monumentality,” adding that she wants PUSH to function as a gallery that does both scales.
The exhibition continues until April 25 at Galerie PUSH in the Belgo Building, 372 Ste-Catherine O., suite 425. The gallery is open Wednesday to Friday from 11 am to 6 pm and Saturday from 12 to 5 pm.
Watch for Nadia Moss’s work at the ROVER Salon d’ART FAIR, April 16, 17 and 18 at 52452 blvd St. Laurent.
Alexandra McIntosh is the editor of CCA Online at the Canadian Centre for Architecture.
