Camp Fire
GALLERY @ 82
82 Roslyn Avenue, Sea Cliff, New York
September 8 - October 8, 2005
What comes to mind when you look up at the night sky? What about when you see a photo of yourself as a child twenty years ago? How do you depict what you see and feel? These visions are what Jason Paradis presents in his new series, “Camp Fire,” a gathering of artworks using watercolor, graphite, ink, acrylic, collage and mixed media, being shown at Gallery @ 82. In this current collection, Paradis fluidly combines the tangible aspects of space, time and dimensions with the more abstract and ephemeral questions that arise when pondering these forces.
In the series of seven drawings that borrow their name from the title of the exhibition, the blaze of the roaring camp fire not only demands viewers to be present here and now, but it also connects us to an earlier time when we were sitting around with our family and friends looking up at the stars, curious about our future. Paradis paints onto a collaged star chart, which creates a spatial tether between the past, the present, and the “somewhere out there” that we all question.
The star chart, or sky map, appears again in his “Family Portraits” series. Instead of depicting a realistic, individual painting of each member of this family, Paradis reinterprets Kevin’s portrait as his birth, or star sign. In Capricorn (for Kevin), we see an artistic expanse of sky dotted with various stars all forming the Capricorn constellation, a more dimensional way of representing Kevin. In another work, Untitled (Summer Sky, Pines), Paradis depicts his youthful recollections of Boy Scouts and camping when he visually links the sky and constellations to the earth and piney forests of his native Ontario, Canada, in a crystalline drawing connecting the heavens to earth, time and memory.
The concrete and ephemeral appear again in the beautifully reminiscent painting Canopy.
The title can refer to both a tangible and terrestrial shelter provided by tents during Paradis’ youth, and the apparitions of tents in the sky creating a spiritual or ethereal blanket as they hover like constellations above us. Here, we feel a connection between the innocence of summers spent out of doors, with friends in tents, and the more serious, scientific or religious, abstract world that we now occupy.
Paradis’ most complex and multi-dimensional work in the exhibition is entitled, The Traveler (Distance, Time, and History). Using various media including a fire-pit, recorded voices, wood, wire, and painting, this work plays to our physical senses as well as to the more abstract qualities of time, memories, travel, and space. Projected onto a wall is a star chart into which Paradis has inserted screws at the various stars. (He’s highlighted his own sign—Libra—with a painting on the background wall.) The attached wire around the screws then connects the constellations and creates a 3-dimensional, faceted skyscape. Away from the wall, we see the camp fire, a symbol of both birth/renewal and death/destruction. Emanating from the fire pit is a mechanical, monotone voice; in all the other works, the earthly element of the camp fire is the visual link to other dimensions, whereas in this work, it is the addition of sound, eliciting outer space or space travel, which provides the bond.
In the end, these works are meant to inspire us to look, think, or physically go beyond our comfort zone of three dimensions, exploring the fourth dimension of time (past, current, and future). Are those scientific, calculated voices meant to soothe, reassuring us that our terrestrial lives are worthy and not to be lived in vain? Or are they meant to entice us, drawing us out to uncharted areas? Paradis places value in both questions and he demands the same from viewers, tempting us with both reminiscences and celestial sightings.
Reviewed by Sarah Alexander
Oakland, CA