Exploring space and time

One glance at a recent Pierre Dorion painting easily prompts a label of “abstract” or “modern.” And while many works in the mid-career survey of the Ottawa-born, Montreal-based artist’s work at the Dalhousie Art Gallery remain loyal to abstraction’s emphasis on shape, colour and the canvas surface, many also play with the viewer’s perception of space.

This time we’ve asked Jérôme Blais, professor in the Department of Music, and Catherine Venart, assistant professor in the School of Architecture and Planning, to take a tour and view the show — currently in its final week — through the lens of their respective disciplines.

Considering composition

Though Dr. Blais confesses he isn’t interested in basing his musical compositions on visual images, he says, “It’s always quite fascinating to try to draw parallels between disciplines.”

In Gate (The Piers), seven canvases comprised of vertical stripes of blue-grey, muted tangerine, and other colours, he sees “some pretty obvious connections to the American minimalists – Philip Glass and Steve Reich and so on.”

Beyond any cadence conjured by the stripes of complimentary colours, Dr. Blais likes Gate because it “uses the physical, actual space – there’s a gap between the [canvases], and that gap is identical to the painting itself,” he says, meaning the shadow created in the space between the canvases visually becomes another stripe. From a distance, “you’re not so sure where the line is between them. I find that very interesting.”

Dr. Blais, a composer who uses elements of improvisation, thinks “about the overall structure” as he creates a piece of music. “I write some things, but then I leave room for the performers to be spontaneous within that overall framework,” he explains.

In contrast, many of Dorion’s paintings seem very carefully orchestrated, so to speak. There’s nary a trace of a brushstroke, and each piece seems planned down to the last millimeter. (The gallery’s director reveals that many lines have straight edges thanks to masking tape.)

Dr. Blais admits he didn’t think of the paintings as being at all improvisational. “They seem so static. Well, not necessarily static, but not like Automatist painting, like Jackson Pollock or [Jean-Paul] Riopelle, who would gesturally throw [the paint on the canvas], where you can sense the improvisation.”

Berggruen, 2008. Photo courtesy of Dalhousie Art Gallery. © Pierre Dorion.

As an example, he points to Berggruen (2008), a large canvas with areas of muted goldenrod and rose interrupted by black bars: “Look at those straight lines,” he says. “My feeling is not to see any improvisation there. I could be wrong, because how can we know [what the artist’s process was]?” He adds that “improvisation might be part of seemingly static works but within the creative process rather than the final product.”

“[Music and painting] are very different,” Dr. Blais muses. But after a moment, he says, “The way we think about time in music isn’t so far from the way space is organized in a painting. In other words, proportions – the golden mean, in architecture, which is used by many composers to structure a piece.”

“One way or another, you find that type of proportion,” he says. “That this segment here [in Berggruen] occupies that much space, and this segment occupies [a proportion of] that.”

Space considerations

Catherine Venart, though an architect, doesn’t bring up the golden mean. But she too considers many of Dorion’s paintings with a similar regard to perception of space. This makes sense, given her professional interests, including “how we perceive, understand and interact” with our surroundings: “Architecture is an interface between the body and the larger environment acting to frame our understanding … and how the things in our environment enter into our personal realm.”

As with Dr. Blais, Gates (The Pier) “really resonates with me,” Prof. Venart says, adding that she created a work based on similar ideas, “a study for a facade that started with documenting and then analyzing the relationship between a person’s movement – either this way,” she says, facing the painting, “or this way,” she says, walking alongside it from a distance – "and distance and peripheral views, and how those views are structured, i.e., [through] vertical frame, blur and focus…”

Gate (The Piers), 2012. Photo courtesy of Dalhousie Art Gallery. © Pierre Dorion.

Later, she observes that much of Dorion’s work relates to architecture because of that play, as it references “the continual back and forth between the two-dimensionality of representational space in the plan and section drawings that stand in for 3-D space,” she says. “It's this flipping back and forth between the two that is so integral to the discipline of architecture.” She adds that it is also this play – the pushing and pulling of space or our experience of it – that is a mark of many of the great architects.

And this seems integral to many of Dorion’s paintings. Even closer to the canvas, she notes the “oscillations of colours and lines” that create a sense of depth due to the juxtapositions of pure colours.

Gates (or each segment of it) also reminds her of an exercise in her digital video class that she calls “an eye-level section”: “You take [something] out of its context and isolate it.” At the same time, Prof. Venart acknowledges that the process personalizes “what is being looked at, creating an internal oscillation between what you see and what you know.”

Berggruen also makes an impression on Prof. Venart. “It feels like it should feel spacious,” she says, as though there should be “space to stand on the other side of the railing. But it looks completely flat. The only way we get a sense of volume is from the [curved] rail and the light. He's really playing with the viewer, and our perceptions.”

Looking over at Gate again, she says, “The more I look at it, the more I appreciate it. It’s not just some [abstract], hyper-modernist thing. It’s really meant to be walked beside… it changes so much.”

Don’t miss your chance to see the work for yourself – the show runs till May 12 at the Dalhousie Art Gallery, Dal Arts Centre. Gallery hours are 11 till 5, closed Mondays.