Peter Doig at the Belkin reviewed by Johannes Halbertsma Even though it's been almost two weeks since, already | need more time with this show. | think the problem is that | find the 70's-80's uncomfortable, embarass- ing. It bites me that Homer Simpson and | are nearly contemporaries (if his cartoon high school reunion was anything to judge by). Peter Doig's grinning face as a ski instructor from this era, presented in the adjunct materials often displayed at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at UBC, is guileless and should be judged as such, as should the large, thinly coloured stretchers mounted in the gallery for the opening January 18 (show continues to March 11). But there is something of the creeping cynicism of more recent years that whispers into this - its antithesis. In short terms, the show consists of about a dozen and half large stretcher paintings with lots of white space around them, consisting largely of outdoor scenes, and daubed indistinctly in milky colour bleeds. They taste Canadian, if | can say that, and the scenes have a fractal quality, offering as closeups and full-on viewing; lots of people were standing on the boards meant to keep us at a safe distance. Luckily, no laser beams. In the wing off to the right upon entering was a science fair of Doig's notebook pages, snaps, cutouts and sketches, a visual kitchen treasure drawer turned on its head, and the coloured contents arranged neatly like irridescent beetles in a nearby Entomology showcase. Many of my fellow viewers at the opening spoke it out loud: “Photoshoppy." And the stepped-on satu- ration, solarization, tone shifts and edge enhancement offered digitally in that program are indeed parallel to "effects" found in the Doig paintings. To say “Photoshop” seems a bit of an insult to Doig's work, in that | believe the most intrusive technology actually employed in its production was projection/enlarge- ment. And yet the spirit of exuberant amplification, a visual underlining, is a theme that runs through these works, and perhaps they were made large (a couple- three meters on a side) with the same strategy. Big is Good. (It was somehow just perfect that reps for the Pocket Gallery were pulling painted-bottle-cap oeu- vres out of their double-breast-pocketed t-shirt “gal- leries" and calling for submissions while milling with the crowd.) There was something awkward in joins between Peter Doig, Echo Lake, 1998, oil on canvas, 230.5 x 360.5 x 5.0 cm, copyright Tate, London 2000 é 5 Peter Doig, invitation card image, Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery, January 2001 two-panel pieces running down the centre or there- abouts, without apparent intention. It was like a per- son sawn in half by a magician and the magician waving a hand between the two boxes. Except here, “why?” Oddest to me was the lone long-haired paddler in the canoe, drawn from an original image of the era (something to do with “Can You Spare a Dime?” and an album cover, | vaguely recall). But there was something ethereally chthonic in this pad- dler's gaze, all his matey-mates in the original dead- head-voyageur canoe image clipped off bodily at the gunwhales and summarily “disappeared” before massive enlargement for Doig’s painting. An enlarged disappearance, hmm. The result had the flavour of the ersatz iconoclast, no more different from the crowd than anyone's long hair was at the time. Most everyone around me intoned that the paddler was beautiful, and | felt it was too, but the cut-and-paste asceticism had me worried. The colour was good. Large areas of drippy stains, obviously hung upside-down to dry, and a chessboard of funkadelic linoleum sketched in under some stairs. And to see Doig'’s notebooks and source materials was great, for me - there was something forlorn and hon- est and reaffirming in it - that maybe I'm not too far from home myself. Francis Bacon was terrified of his sketches being seen (his daughter had the last laugh on that, posthumously); Lucien Freud had no proble- mo with his preliminaries seen as part of process, and Doig goes further in conferring on us a gift of his own wellspring photos and sketchbooks. To have a past is okay. Something flower-child earnest too: the image of a rainbow painted on the hillside over a large cul- vert, drawn from a Toronto snap but, | was told by my neighbour, common as barbed wire in the boonies, this rainbow was featured a number of times, to the apparent delight of the viewers. This crowd was a university sort of crowd, lots of the right people. There were no didactic panels, no writ- ten titles that | found, and that was exactly fitting. There were two handouts. The overscreened ski- school image backing the invite (shown here) drew me in, a sort of fuzzy grey Xerox of a Roy Lichtenstein Christmas. | imagined little text bubbles over the heads, ingenuous as the pastel lakes on the Belkin walls. The larger handout, five photocopies folded in half, was an intro and twenty-questions with Doig's buddies. It fell flat for me: “here bleak nighttime scenes are juxtaposed with melancholic figures deep in the thought." What? Was this the same show? The show did stick with me. There is something poignant in it, earnest as locking eyes. There was ‘suf- ficient ambiguity’ and a paint-by-number water-lilies brightness that lightened it up. | made a big mistake by not finding the artist, having made too much of a habit out of the idea: “the works should speak for themselves.” Well, what's wrong with a bit of kibbitz- ing; maybe that would have made it all fall into place. So, don't worry about laser beams, and bring some- one to kibbitz with. Peter Doig at the Belkin reviewed by Johannes Halbertsma Even though it's been almost two weeks since, already I need more time with this show. | think the problem is that | find the 70's-80's uncomfortable, embarass- ing. It bites me that Homer Simpson and | are nearly contemporaries (if his cartoon high school reunion was anything to judge by). Peter Doig's grinning face as a ski instructor from this era, presented in the adjunct materials often displayed at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at UBC, is guileless and should be judged as such, as should the large, thinly coloured stretchers mounted in the gallery for the opening. January 18 (show continues to March 11). But there is something of the creeping cynicism of more recent years that whispers into this - its antithesis In short terms, the show consists of about a dozen and half large stretcher paintings with lots of white space around them, consisting largely of outdoor scenes, and daubed indistinctly in milky colour bleeds. They taste Canadian, if | can say that, and the scenes have a fractal quality, offering as closeups and full-on viewing; lots of people were standing on the boards meant to keep us at a safe distance. Luckily, no laser beams. In the wing off to the right upon entering ‘was a science fair of Doig’s notebook pages, snaps, cutouts and sketches, a visual kitchen treasure drawer tured on its head, and the coloured contents arranged neatly like irridescent beetles in a nearby Entomology showcase. ‘Many of my fellow viewers at the opening spoke it out loud: “Photoshoppy.” And the stepped-on satu- ration, solarization, tone shifts and edge enhancement offered digitally in that program are indeed parallel to “effects” found in the Doig paintings. To say “Photoshop” seems a bit of an insult to Doig’s work, in that | believe the most intrusive technology actually employed in its production was projection/enlarge- ment. And yet the spirit of exuberant amplification, a visual underlining, is a theme that runs through these works, and perhaps they were made large (a couple- three meters on a side) with the same strategy. Big is Good. (It was somehow just perfect that reps for the Pocket Gallery were pulling painted-bottle-cap oeu- vres out of their double-breast-pocketed t-shirt “gal- leries” and calling for submissions while milling with the crowd.) There was something awkward in joins between Peter Doig, Echo Lake, 1998, oll on canvas, 230.5 x 360.5 x 5:0 cm, copyright Tate, London 2000 Ls. Peter Doig, invitation card image, Moris and Helen Belkin Galery, January 2001 two-panel pieces running down the centre or there- abouts, without apparent intention. It was lke a per- son sawn in half by a magician and the magician waving a hand between the two boxes. Except here, “why?” Oddest to me was the lone long-haired paddler in the canoe, drawn from an original image Of the era (something to do with “Can You Spare a Dime?” and an album cover, | vaguely recall). But there was something ethereally chthonic in this pad- dler's gaze, all his matey-mates in the original dead- head-voyageur canoe image clipped off bodily at the gunwhales and summarily “disappeared” before massive enlargement for Doig's painting. An enlarged disappearance, hmm. The result had the flavour of the ersatz iconoclast, no more different from the crowd than anyone's long hair was at the time. Most everyone around me intoned that the paddler was beautiful, and | felt it was too, but the cut-and-paste asceticism had me worried. The colour was good. Large areas of drippy stains, obviously hung upside-down to dry, and a chessboard of funkadelic linoleum sketched in under some stairs. ‘And to see Doig’s notebooks and source materials was great, for me - there was something forlorn and hon- est and reaffirming in it - that maybe I'm not too far from home myself. Francis Bacon was terrified of his sketches being seen (his daughter had the last laugh on that, posthumously); Lucien Freud had no proble- mo with his preliminaries seen as part of process, and Doig goes further in conferring on us a gift of his own wellspring photos and sketchbooks, To have a past is okay. Something flower-child earnest too: the image of a rainbow painted on the hillside over a large cul- vert, drawn from a Toronto snap but, | was told by my neighbour, common as barbed wire in the boonies, this rainbow was featured a number of times, to the apparent delight of the viewers. This crowd was a university sort of crowd, lots of the right people. There were no didactic panels, no writ- ten titles that | found, and that was exactly fitting, There were two handouts. The overscreened ski- school image backing the invite (shown here) drew me in, a sort of fuzzy grey Xerox of a Roy Lichtenstein Christmas. | imagined little text bubbles over the heads, ingenuous as the pastel lakes on the Belkin walls, The larger handout, five photocopies folded in half, was an intro and twenty-questions with Doig's buddies. It fell flat for me: “here bleak nighttime scenes are juxtaposed with melancholic figures deep in the thought.” What? Was this the same show? The show did stick with me. There is something poignant in it, earnest as locking eyes. There was ‘suf- ficient ambiguity’ and a paint-by-number water-ilies brightness that lightened it up. I made a big mistake by not finding the artist, having made too much of a habit out of the idea: “the works should speak for themselves.” Well, what's wrong with a bit of kibbitz~ ing; maybe that would have made it al fall into place. So, don’t worry about laser beams, and bring some- cone to kibbitz with 15_@}