There are more than four at COOPER COLE

Artists: Andy Fabo, Robert Flack, Tim Jocelyn, Chrysanne Stathacos

Exhibition title: There are more than four

Curated by: Jacob Korczynski

Venue: COOPER COLE, Toronto, Canada

Date: April 11 – May 30, 2020

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and COOPER COLE, Toronto

COOPER COLE is pleased to present There are more than four, a group exhibition curated by Jacob Korczynski featuring the works of Andy Fabo, Robert Flack, Tim Jocelyn, and Chrysanne Stathacos.

For me, life in this city begins and ends with artist-initiated networks, where energies and programmes are constantly opening and ending, keeping pace with the rate at which artist’s studios are closed and relocated. These networks establish where work is developed, shown, or both, and they affirm what is missing as much as what is made. The affective affinities that enable these associations also produced this exhibition. More specifically, it is anchored upon the long-term friendship and dialogue between Andy Fabo and Chrysanne Stathacos, and expanded to incorporate the work of their friends and lovers who are no longer with us due to the ongoing epidemic of AIDS: Tim Jocelyn (1952-1986) and Robert Flack (1957-1993). The result is a kind of doubled portrait, like catching your own gaze on a reflective surface in close proximity to another.

From the earliest stage of his interdisciplinary practice, Andy Fabo has asserted his queer subjectivity in his work. The Wild Ones (1975) performs as a painting, yet acts as an assemblage with acrylic, velvet, leather and metal studs framing the troika collaged at its centre. Made in the aftermath of his partner Tim’s death when Andy was facing an impasse with painting, Sisyphus on the Plains (1988) features the eponymous mythological figure exposed naked upon a landscape, turning upwards to face their burden. Silverado (2001), is a series produced with ink on silver card, and here the medium leads the image. Pooled or bubbled ink comes together to form moments of fluidity, at times contained, and at others nearly sliding off the surface.

In his practice, Tim Jocelyn developed a body of work for which textiles were the primary material. In doing so, his work was not so much medium-specific as it was subject specific: textiles always suggest bodies, either present or absent. He produced tapestries and garments alike and both are represented here through one of the many folding screens he produced in the early 1980s as well as two clothing pieces. The geometrical abstraction present on the three panels of the former foregrounds adored art historical references that Tim pointed to throughout his practice. With his Skyline jacket and Gordon’s shirt, two opposite milieus of artistic production are contrasted: a rising cityscape made manifest in the hot, bright colours of neon lights, and pastoral elements of nature rendered in earth tone hues.

Throughout her practice, Chrysanne has expanded the medium of painting via printing. Take for example her Broken Glass series, in which the cracked remnants of a pane are transferred to the soft surface of canvas or linen, forming a new object. Her experimentation with printing on different surfaces with various objects is further demonstrated by 1-900 Mirror Mirror (1993). An interactive installation that can be physically entered by the individual viewer, this work invited viewers to ask a question about the future, as a way to look ahead at the height of the AIDS crisis. The loss of so many at that historical moment connects to her aura photographs, a series which began in the late 1990s and traces the self outside of the corporeal.

In dialogue with these works, Robert Flack’s Etheric Double (1990) contoured colours along a body, outlining an aura. In doing so, these works account for multiple energies rather than acknowledging a singular identity. A nude figure rendered in negative, in this photo work the body is recognized and yet we are required to invert it in our minds to see who may stand before us. The need to look, and then look again, is also intrinsic to the composite images of Love Mind (1992). Here, light projections cast upon portions of bodies are rephotographed, effectively capturing a double image. The two works from Love Mind included here replace the single model in favour of staging multiple bodies as a composite figure. Deep red light coils around a face in one. In another a spectrum of warm colours radiates outwards from the centre of the chest. Faced with fragility, Robert and Tim posed a question, one that Andy and Chrysanne continue to ask: where do we locate the body and what lies beyond?

– Jacob Korczynski

Toronto
March 12, 2020

There are more than four, 2020, exhibition view, COOPER COLE, Toronto

Andy Fabo, Sisyphus on the Plains, 1988, Oil on canvas, 72.5″ X 60″, 184.15cm X 152.4cm

Tim Jocelyn, The Gordon’s screen, 1980 – 1981, Silk, leather and wood, 3 panels – 47 x 15 in (119.4 x 38.1 cm) each

Robert Flack, Etheric Double, 1990, C print, Edition 1 of 1, 20″ X 16″, 50.8cm X 40.64cm

There are more than four, 2020, exhibition view, COOPER COLE, Toronto

Andy Fabo, Silverado, 2001, Ink on silver card, 26 drawings – 11.5 x 8.75 in (29.2 x 22.2 cm) each

There are more than four, 2020, exhibition view, COOPER COLE, Toronto

Chrysanne Stathacos, 1-900 Mirror Mirror, 1993 – 2020, Mirror, plexiglass, wood, videophone, steel table, hand printed hair, ivy, roses on mirror, Dimensions variable, each panel is 96 x 48 in (243.8 x 121.9 cm), Design Consultant – Ken Saylor