Spectator Sports

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Kyle Beal, “VanityMirrorStageFright (A),” 2019

charcoal and pastel on cotton rag, 30” x 44”

At first glance, Spectator Sports, on view at the Art Gallery of St. Albert near Edmonton, is perplexing. It looks like a group exhibition by artists working in genres ranging from minimalist sculpture and light installation to mixed media and charcoal drawings. It’s mind-boggling to realize that only one person, Edmonton-based Kyle Beal, who earned a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Victoria in 2004, is behind this breadth.

But with time, a common thread of witty and fiercely incisive social commentary emerges. Far from being preachy or didactic, Beal helps us laugh at ourselves as we examine the pressures of social media, which offers everyone a stage for stardom. 

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Kyle Beal, “Mirror Stage,” 2020

polished aluminum and metal leaf, 16.5” x 16.5” x 24.5”

I’m drawn to a puzzling object in the middle of the exhibition. This work, inspired by a beer crate with a “Bottoms Up” label that Beal noticed at a friend’s home, invites the viewer to stand or sit on it. It’s tempting, until I realize the polished aluminum surface of this sculpture, Mirrored Stage, would both symbolically – and quite literally – reflect my bottom with alarming precision.

It’s hard to overstate the metaphors and allusions this simple work evokes. A reference to the cheap crates used to elevate impromptu political speakers is but one. For Beal, old-school soapboxes are akin to going online, where “the barrier to entry is just making an account and broadcasting yourself.” But as he adds, “whether you’ll find an audience or not is another question.”

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Kyle Beal, “Feels Good,” 2019

metal leaf on glass, acrylic and enamel paint, 30” x 24”

The pressure to be seen and to market our own image is also evident in a series of mirrors Beal painstakingly created by applying metal leaf to the back of a sheet of glass. Tongue-in-cheek messages such as “feels good to see myself in this” are embedded in their surfaces; some messages quickly dissolve, camouflaged by the viewer’s motion and reflection.

The ego-piercing humour of these mirrors is tempered by the knowledge that anyone who looks will share in this self-deprecating joke. It’s akin to cringing when we see ourselves on Zoom – but finding comfort in knowing nearly everyone else shares this pain.

The sardonic undertones of the show come to an abrupt stop in the VanityMirrorStageFright charcoal drawings.They depict a collapsed stage so massive that its mangled support beams merge with the horizon.

Is this work meant to foreshadow our disillusionment with this type of personal stardom? If we each occupy our own stage, does fame become obsolete? Is the anxiety of our celebrity-seeking doomed to cause a collective nervous breakdown? Such questions swirl and multiply as I look at the drawings. Finding even a single answer is elusive.

Spectator Sports exposes some of the raw nerves in contemporary life. The pressure to perform is no longer the domain of actors or politicians; everyone with an Instagram or Facebook page is subject to being liked, rated and otherwise quantified in what can feel like a daily performance evaluation.

Yet I also wonder how new such social pressures really are. Shakespeare’s Macbeth, written around 1606, also compares life to a stage: “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player / That struts and frets his hour upon the stage / And then is heard no more.” Perhaps the need to be recognized is embedded in our genes and life’s staged performances reach far into the recesses of human history. ■ 

Kyle Beal: Spectator Sports at the Art Gallery of St. Albert in Alberta from Dec. 3, 2020 to Jan 30, 2021.

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