28 - Wednesday, February 27, 1991 — North Shore News

A Review: Brute Primitive, a
group show at Gallery Alpha. 207 -
1331 Marine Dr., West Van-
couver. Feb. 14-March 16.
Tuesday-Saturday: 12-5 p.m.

RENCH ARTIST Jean

Dubuffet championed

the art of children and
so-called madmen because
he was attracted to its un-
sophisticated, impulsive and
unruly qualities.

He tried to embody these
qualities in his own art by defying
the established modes of repre-
sentation, and sought to
regenerate art in general by means
of quasi-naive and neo-primitive
imagery.

This gave birth to what he called
Vart brut, “raw art.”

Although it is billed as a kind of
“post-nuclear’’ development of
“raw art,” the current show at
Gallery Alpha, happily for us, does
not mount a slavish representation
of any coherent movement or a
single historically restrictive
theme.

As gallery owner and exhibition
curator, Ron Falcioni admits the
pieces here ‘‘take many different
directions.’ In fact, we are treated
to a plurality of styles and a variety
of historical points of departure.

Laura Grant, for instance, is
stimulated by native Canadian and
African tribal genres, and presents
us with some playful masks and
evocative totems.

The masks are pieced together
from urban junk while the unglaz-
ed ceramic totems look like some
oddball subterranean creatures
which wormed their way to the
surface of the earth and froze in
tipsy postures.

Jim Muir, on the other hand,
develops new applications for the
expressionistic style cf Henri
Matisse with its ernphasis on in-
tense colors, the bold application
of paint, and a sure compositional
sense.

While Matisse was largely inter-
ested in domestic motifs and the
subtle complexities of expression,
Muir has a romantic fascination
with the ghoulish image of the ur-
ban street-warrior, and exults in
giving vent to extreme and fever-
ish psychical states.

In the oil paintings of Jan Wade,
silhouetted houses, chairs, tadders,
fruit, knives, hands, flowers, etc.
float through space or fill up the

Grouse hosts
Juno promo

GROUSE MOUNTAIN will be
the centre of attention this Friday
when Molson Canadian’s Rock
and Ski hits the slopes.

Billed as a celebrity ski event,
the evening will see Canadian
musicians competing in sporting
events, and indoor performances
by Long John Baldry and The
Nervous Fellas.

The event is @ promotion for
the Juno Awards, the premier
musical event held Sunday in
Vancouver for the first time in 20
years.

The public is welcome to join in
on the action, says coordinator
Lionel Wilson. Participating
bands include The Scorpions, Paul
Janz, Lee Aaron, Sass Jordan,
54-40 and Alan Frew of Glass
Tiger.

Ceiebrities and members of the
local media will compete in an
Olympic-style discus throwing
competition, javelin throwing
competition and team relays,
beg..ning at 8 p.m.

Audience-goers only require a
valid Skyride Pass for admission.
Baldry and The Nervous Fellas
will perform at the Grouse Chalet.
Seating is available on a first-
come, first-served basis.

ARCHIE
GRAHAM

arts critic

dark hali-human hali-snake figures
engaged in sombre dance.

Like unearthed fragments of an
ancient hieroglyphic tablet, these
pictures speak of a long and
troubled journey through space
and time.

Leo Labelle’s acrylics, in con-
trast, are brim-full of cheer and
radiant energy. Biological forms
like the fetus, sperm cells, and
nerve ganglia, rendered in a host
of festive colors, change into an
aerial photograph of a distant
planet, or become the comical
portrait of a bizarre court jester.

It is, perhaps, only fitting that
organisms associated with the
generation of life should give rise
to visual metaphors for transfor-
mation and metamorphosis.

The moods in this show range
from the impish images of Louise
Eckhart to the barbed satire of
Mandad’s silicon pop-culture
icons, from the unsettling in-
tergalactic dog-man portraits of
Chris Blades to the brooding in-
tensity of Jan Wade’s lexigraphic
paintings.

We come away with the feeling
that we have been on an emo-
tional roller coaster. But the price
is right and the sights exciting. So
it is well worth the ride.

DUNDARAVE N

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WITH ALL TRE

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2427 MARINE D2WE
weer vancouver

Robert Mari examines a work from Leo Labelle's ‘Alien Species’ series. The acryli
Gallery's Brute Primitive exhibit which runs u

intil March 16.

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NEWS photo Nell Lucente
ic is part of Alpha