Iodame
Robin Arseneault and Maura Doyle breathe life into inanimate forms.
Robin Arseneault, “Spectral Maneuver 10” (detail), 2022
Canon Mi-Teintes Touch paper, graphite and printed fabric, 28.5" x 21" (photo by NK Photo)
Aristotelian and Hippocratic philosophies use a Greek word, pneuma, to describe the “vital heat” that travels by breath – a life-providing force. For the Stoics, pneuma is the “breath of life” that created the universe through contraction and expansion. In these philosophies, pneuma’s fiery breath is animating, and, as it cools, it solidifies into things, imbuing inanimate matter with a force.
Iodame, an exhibition of recent work by Calgary artist Robin Arseneault and Ottawa-based Maura Doyle at Pale Fire in Vancouver, takes its name from a mythological princess who was turned to stone. On view until June 3, it is a true collaboration with curator Amy Kazymerchyk that meditates on pneuma by incorporating the material elements of cooled heat.
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Robin Arseneault and Maura Doyle, “Iodame,” 2023
installation view at Pale Fire, Vancouver (photo by NK Photo)
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Robin Arseneault and Maura Doyle, “Iodame,” 2023
installation view, Pale Fire, Vancouver (photo by NK Photo)
Locals will attest to Pale Fire’s special qualities. Iodame is only the third show at the gallery, which opened in September. Its interior is scented with cedar and smoke, perhaps lingering from Graham Landin’s inaugural exhibition. The odour contributes to the space’s earthen qualities, suggesting Kazymerchyk’s curatorial lean towards the elemental.
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Maura Doyle, “Foot Care Pot,” 2022, “Teardrop Pot,” 2014
and Robin Arseneault, “Expulsion,” 2018, installation view in “Iodame,” at Pale Fire, Vancouver, 2023 (photo by NK Photo)
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Robin Arseneault, “Divide,” 2018, and Maura Doyle, “Three Tier Pot,” 2014
installation view in Iodame at Pale Fire, Vancouver, 2023 (photo by NK Photo)
Doyle’s ceramics and Arseneault’s drawings and photo-based works are connected through their focused use of materials. Just as clay hardens when fired, the graphite that composes Arseneault’s Spectral Maneuver series was superheated under pressurized conditions. In each case, heat has transformed and distilled the medium’s essential properties.
In Arseneault’s series, her soft hand gives the hard pencil an unfastened, almost gaseous effect. Photo transfers of disembodied body parts, taken from a 1966 volume, The World of Dance, play among the vaporous drawings, capturing oppositions between the corporeal and the intangible.
Maura Doyle, “Foot Care Pot,” 2022
smoke-fired stoneware, 10" x 3.5" x 10" (courtesy Joe Friday, photo by NK Photo)
The body shows up in Doyle’s vessels too. Foot Care Pot is a fat and sturdy foot at the base of a lower leg that has no ankle. Divorced from its leg, the foot is funny, sensuous and heavy, like a cave drawing in its three-dimensional beauty.
During my visit, Kazymerchyk flipped over the ceramics to help me see the pockets of space secreted inside. There’s hidden space inside the foot, a concealed burrow inside Double Vase, and an unseen bum in Small Cleft Bottle. While Doyle’s works are voluptuously curvy, they are not the ceramics of feminist cliché. You won’t see any boob pots here.
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Maura Doyle, “Small Cleft Bottle,” 2020
smoke-fired stoneware, 7.5" x 4" x 3.5" (photo by NK Photo)
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Maura Doyle, “Double Vase,” 2021
smoke-fired stoneware, 10.5" x 5" x 3.5" (photo by NK Photo)
The ceramics are raku-fired, made solid through contact with burning hardwood, sawdust and grass, as well as highly salted and mineral-rich foods. The vessels appear natural, as if pulled directly from the ground. In white and burnished black, they possess a purity of form and colour.
Although Arseneault and Doyle have never met, their works have a surprising kinship, so unified by colour and form they almost seem made by the same person. Through their focused processes and material meditations, action is ossified, pneuma cooled. ■
Robin Arseneault and Maura Doyle, Iodame, at Pale Fire in Vancouver from April 7 to June 3, 2023.
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Pale Fire Gallery
866 East Broadway, Vancouver, British Columbia V5T 1Y1
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