Daniel Barrow, "At First I Thought It Was a Mannequin" (extrait vidéo), 2018

Daniel Barrow, "At First I Thought It Was a Mannequin" (extrait vidéo), 2018

Room 1

Daniel Barrow

At first i thought it was a mannequin

EXHIBITION /
MARCH 1ST TO APRIL 7, 2018

OPENING /
THURSDAY MARCH 1ST, 8PM

ARTIST TALK /
SATURDAY, MARCH 3, 3PM

Daniel Barrow’s multidisciplinary work, which includes installation, sculpture, animation and works on paper, is rooted in an almost compulsive drawing practice that is both prolific and excessive. Through anachronistic references that range from vintage video game esthetics to comic books to the dark theatricality of the Victorian era, Barrow’s works form narrative constructions in which language, whether real or imagined, occupies a predominant role. Within Barrow’s well-known performances, where his live narration accompanies manipulated, projected drawings, an honest yet ironic tragicomic voice has been firmly established, and is present throughout these works. The exhibition’s title sets the tone: we must distinguish the true nature of things; a rather complex undertaking given the artist’s penchant for fabricated worlds where dualities comfortably coexist.

The technical mastery and ornamentation that characterise Barrow’s work seem to echo the innocence and beauty found in children’s fables, nursery rhymes and poems. For example, in Bouquet of Mirrors, the motif of the mirror as a porthole into an alternate world is reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland, while the act of gazing into one (and seeing something else) is a recurring theme in many fairy tales, namely in Snow White. But as these tales—at least in their original versions—have an underlying violence that reflects their function as instruments of moral education, Barrow’s work has a subversive side: here, the toilet acts as a kind of vanitasthat brings us back to the body’s primary functions and their abject representation. As a recurring theme in this body of work, the toilet and its by-products appear in scenes that are both intimate and grotesque, as with the sculpture depicting an elderly figure tumbling down a staircase strewn with toilet paper, which the viewer can pull like a rolling carpet under her feet. The paper is inscribed with a poem that tips the tone of the work into gravitas tinged with pathos. In the title work, a bathroom becomes a crime scene, minus the expected element of horror; speaking through an unwinding roll of toilet paper, the artist-narrator points out that at first, we too thought he was a mannequin.

In The Staircase, language is transformed into intertextuality. A staircase-like sculpture plays on the literary and cinematic trope of the small, mysterious door beneath the stairs as a foreboding presence in an otherwise safe, domestic space. The passage between radically different worlds, already at play in Bouquet of Mirrors, evokes a kind of latent desire for emancipation and transgression that is also present in the artist’s drawings. Oscillating between restraint and an overabundance of signs and emotions, Barrow's work provokes a sense of anxiety filled with impulse and dread, like rat poison placed discretely between the walls.
 

- Marie-Pier Bocquet (translated by Jo-Anne Balcaen)

 

Montreal-based artist Daniel Barrow works in video, film, print-making and drawing, but is best known for his use of antiquated technologies, his “registered projection” installations, and his narrative overhead projection performances. Barrow describes his performance method as a process of, “creating and adapting comic narratives to manual forms of animation by projecting, layering and manipulating drawings on overhead projectors”.

Barrow has exhibited widely in Canada and abroad. He has performed at The Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), PS1 Contemporary Art Center (New York), The Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles), Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, The Portland Institute for Contemporary Art’s TBA festival, and the British Film Institute’s London Film Festival. Barrow is the winner of the 2010 Sobey Art Award as well as the recipient of the 2013 Glenfiddich Artist in Residence Prize.

The artist would like to thank the Canada Council for the Arts.