SUITE... Site de l'installation Foundwealth
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By ALISON HUGHES
LUMINOUS lighting emanates from seven
surfaces in the dim room. It radiates through yellow plastic beads,
shines on carved glass and illuminates messages set into plain white
walls.
in Sackville The exhibit's overall effect is deceptively simple, but behind the constructions making up Daniel Dugas. latest art installation is a complex thought process. Drawing on influences from medieval alchemy to modern economics, FOUNDWEALTH uses audio tapes, found art objects and sculpture to examine conflicting ideas about what it means to be wealthy. A self-described "pluridisciplinary artist," Dugas has been pushing the artistic envelope since completing a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the Université de Moncton, in 1986. His resumé includes 12 solo exhibitions, 24 two-person and group shows, as well as dozens of audio, video, radio and performance credits. Dugas has received numerous Canada Council and provincial Creation grants for his projects, along with funding from several art institutes. These have led to travel opportunities throughout North America, Europe and Asia, including a role as a Canadian representative at the 1997 Jeux de la Francophonie, in Madagascar. While working for a year at the Banff Centre for the Arts, Dugas met and began collaborating with his partner Valerie LeBlanc. Together, they headed off to the Art Institute of Chicago. With LeBlanc originally from Halifax and Dugas raised primarily in Moncton, the two eventually moved to New Brunswick. Here, they gained notoriety in 1996 by travelling to small towns with an exhibit known as |
the Trunk Gallery. People paid a dollar to look inside the hatchback of a Citation to see the couple's custom-designed audio visual installation. After Peter Gzowski interviewed them about this unique way of taking art to the people, they received calls from all across the country. "A lot of people would go to a Legion, but never to a gallery," Dugas says. "There's also a need for more populist art. I think it. s important for an artist to have reactions from many people in order to grow. " In FOUNDWEALTH, Dugas questions whether wealth is anything more than a marketing illusion in today's society. The show's first installation is a wall-mounted piece of bevelled glass with the exhibit title etched elegantly into the surface. In front of this hangs a bare bulb with a symbolic and functional string attached. As a motor on the floor turns noisily around, it moves the string and causes a shadow title on the wall to shrink and grow with rhythmic regularity. This hypnotic motion draws in the viewer, suggesting wealth's seductive power. Simultaneously, it reveals the crude machinery working behind the scenes to create expensive polished products. Dugas cleverly combines public perceptions with personal research in offering his insights into the origins of wealth. Central to this installation, both physically and conceptually, is a circular light table. A pole rising from the centre represents the medieval greased pole where foodstuffs used to be hung during celebrations, for those hungry, agile and determined enough to reach them. On the table itself, seven carefully chosen found objects are displayed like jewels. Each of the items, from a broken doll to a pinecone, has a word |
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written on the surface, forming the sentence "I always thought there were seven seas. " "The roots of wealth were originally the seven seas," Dugas explains. "But when I got out a globe, I counted 33 seas. It's like the growth of wealth parallels the number of seas. That's the terrible beauty of the free market, that it always finds a way to grow," he says. "It's both creativity and cancer, and the role of society is to decide the boundaries." A voluminous and eclectic reader, Dugas explored economic limits in the exhibit through three seemingly unrelated men: 18th-century Scottish founder of capitalism Adam Smith, late-19th-century Pope Leo the 13th and mid- 19th-century California lumber baron John Sutter. A white plaster hand mounted in an opening in the gallery wall symbolises the "invisible hand" Smith described as regulating the free-market economy. Sutter serves as a warning that even hard work and capability aren't enough to ensure wealth if the timing is wrong. The millionaire sawmill owner was ruined by the discovery of |
gold on his property and the subsequent gold rush fever. In the exhibit, a carefully crafted walnut light table holds a pile of yellow plastic beads that look like gold, but have no inherent value. Having lived the hand-to-mouth existence of an artist for many years, Dugas has given considerable thought to the role of money in so society. Like a magpie, he picked up shiny fragments about wealth from novels, financial pages and personal observations during the year it took to assemble the show. While this installation hasn't been purchased by a collecting institution, as others have been in the past, Dugas considers it a success. As he begins to dismantle these pieces, though, his mind is on the multitude of their projects awaiting attention. He has just published his fourth poetry chapbook and together with Ms. LeBlanc is preparing more manuscripts for a launch later this spring. Then, there is another word-based project involving parking lots and an audio production under way. Dugas is also a musician. "Projects are like kids. The one |
that squeaks the
most gets finished, " he laughs. "Valerie is a very productive
artist too. Often we say 'gee, wouldn't it be nice to just look out
the window and be bored?' "
As well as pursuing their own art projects, the couple runs a high-end glass-carving business, producing presentation items and architectural details. Both enjoy the freedom of working together at home in Shemogue, not far from Shédiac. Dugas still feels the urgency to communicate ideas through painting, sculpture and other media. Whether the projects are about nature and civilisation, media manipulation, or found wealth, he plans to continue making art that stimulates thought about challenging subjects. "With the crossing of the two millenniums, we're a bit like in a corridor of weightlessness; the entry and the exit signs, the welcome and the goodbye signs, we don't seem to have a specific place," he muses. "I think it's very important to have a feeling of hope and of the importance of what you're doing - that it's of value." Telegraph Journal [ RETOUR ] |