TRANSFORM THE DAY/IGNITE THE NIGHT!
(Denman Art Centre, June 26-July 8)
Opening Party, 7 PM
I first encountered the elusive Poète Maudit 16 years ago as a result of my authorship of a book entitled, Swift Winds, which first saw the light of day in 2009 in the catalogue of Eberhardt Press, a shoestring anarchist publisher in Portland, Oregon. Sole proprietor and master printer, Charles Overbeck, suggested an artist to do illustrations for the book who was then known as Anais La Rue, and I was floored by the surreal radiance of the black and white scratchboard art that was created to introduce each chapter. Since then, Eberhardt Press has published 2 editions of the book and has gone on to become the most prolific surrealist publisher in North America. Meanwhile, in their nomadic Poète Maudit persona, Anais is now based on Denman Island and has become a vital part of the Inner Island Surrealist Group which has led a subversive underground existence here on the rock for the past 20 years. Though this is their first gallery show on Denman, Poète Maudit is no stranger to the island with their art work magically having appeared here, there and everywhere in recent years, erupting unexpectedly from the unruly margins of subsistence in sudden energetic bursts of color and freshly overflowing creativity blazing a path way beyond the comforting stereotypes of “island art”.
And this year, the Poète is collaborating on putting together a joint show with Denman artist, Mike Malley. As outlaw art accomplices in this Transform the Day/Ignite the Night caper, the illuminatingly disorienting experience that they have conjured up is alchemically designed to crack open a marvelous portal to another reality amidst the usually staid contours of the Denman Island Art Centre.
This upcoming event is inspired by the ongoing radical innovations of the surrealist art movement which just celebrated its 100 th anniversary in 2024. In spite of many premature burials over the years at the behest of clueless art historians who have dismissed surrealism as a mere style (think melting clocks) or as just another passé school of art in the grand historical cavalcade of avant-gardes; surrealism continues to flourish in the rich diversity of its many incarnations as an ungovernable revolution of the mind being most often associated with visual art as a particularly revealing form of expression. In essence, surrealism has always been characterized by a passionate resistance to the impoverished version of reality on offer. Rather than seeking to escape reality, as is the case with fantasy, surrealism seeks to deepen reality by creating a more expansive notion of what is possible. It is a visionary approach that desires to dismantle and eliminate the artificial dichotomy between dream and reality in seeking to manifest a world (or worlds) where people have the freedom to live more poetic lives. In the process of challenging the deceptiveness of the dead-end borders which define the spiritual emptiness of the authoritarian dreamscape of surveillance capitalism that currently envelops us in a toxic technological web of socially-mediated relationships, surrealists defiantly refuse to pull the wool over their own eyes.
Faced with a mainstream political culture that offers only the mind-numbing options of”common sense”, mutual acquiescence or pseudo-rebellion, surrealism prizes uncommon sense, mutual aid, and total revolt. In light of the surrealist quest to re-enchant the world, the insurrectionary art of Poète Maudit undertakes the most delirious voyages into the unceded territory of the imagination and/or courageously engages in disruptive defiance of the constipated notions of normality enforced by the reality police. With the latter including not only the cops in the street but the cops in our heads, along with the institutional gatekeepers of the psychiatric establishment. Whether valiantly plunging into the bleakest darkness with their own skin in the game or irreverently taking direct action toward undoing reality in the name of desire, Poète Maudit champions the insurgent imagination as the key that can unlock the revolving doors of transgression and transformation while avoiding the trap of permanent despair.
Whether in their paintings, drawings, collages, poems, pirate radio broadcasts or the outsider art objects that they often endow with a pungent dose of black humor, Poète Maudit grapples with the primal forces of Life and Death that most people (many artists included) ignore because they are too busy “getting with the program” and/or are too immersed in the shadowy netherworld of their addictive devices of mass distraction to crave walking the tightrope of the surrealist adventure. Yet, like all poets worth their salt, Poète Maudit dares to imagine a life worth living in all its joy, pain and exhilaration, directly confronting the robotic logic of the algorithmic non-solutions to life’s problems that are thrust upon us daily. In affectively delving deep down to the bone of human existence with their art and in their life (which are inseparable), Poète Maudit is one of the bravest people that I know and one of the most provocative artists at large to dauntlessly explore the farthest shores of the inner island of the unconscious head-on with no guard rails in place.
Sadly, due to the inflexible nature of Denman Art Centre scheduling, I will not be able to personally attend the opening party for the show onThursday, June 26 because I will be out of the country on that date, but you can…
Ron Sakolsky