The Diptych Inside-Out

For the current call-for-entry exhibition I am conducting at the gallery I curate, I challenged artists with two constraints relative to artwork they could submit for the selection process: the format had to be a diptych and the subject matter had to be the self-portrait, one representing the artist ‘from the inside’ and the other the artist ‘from the outside’. The title for this exhibition? Inside-Out, of course. 

Artists could submit as many diptychs as they wanted, in whatever style they wanted, as long as the two works were the same media and dimensions (whether in two or three dimensions or a combination thereof). To be considered a true diptych, they had work as complete individual works when apart but to read as one work when side-by-side or in relation to each other.

The questions I got from artists considering whether they would participate or not were interesting, even revealing. There seems to be much confusion about what exactly constitutes a diptych. For this exercise, a diptych is created when two separate works fit together to create a combined, more elaborated single work, much like two puzzle pieces that abut and when they are joined reveal a more complex image than the pieces do individually.

For a diptych to work, there must be visible connections between the two equally-sized halves. In some pre-Renaissance diptychs of older couples, for instance, men and women were painted in similar tones and hues. They may have had a repeated pattern on a piece of clothing or be seated in a similar, if not the same, environment. The compositions might have mirrored each other, or complemented each other, or the way the features of each were rendered might have established a commonality say of ethnicity or age or temperament…

Another method to create diptychs is to create compositions that flow together when the two separate elements are joined. A gesture, form, colour mass, etc. that at first appears interrupted by the edge of one work may continue from the edge of the second work for instance, or visual elements that float in one may land in the other… The same or similar abstractions and distortions, exaggerations and textures, lines or shapes appearing in both images, or any aspect of the rendering referred to, mirrored, continued or repeated, can be used as the binding or connective tissue linking the two works to make them belong together. whether obviously or subtly.

Some examples of the other diptychs created in response to this challenge can be seen on the Galerie de la Ville Facebook page at facebook.com/galeriedelaville . Better yet, the works will be on display there, at 12001 de Salaberry in Dollard des Ormeaux, Quebec, Canada, until July 15, 2018.

Selecting Artists

The Gallery

Clay, stains

15” x 9” x 9”

C. Ascher

I am in the final stages of the process, a yearly event, of visiting artists’ studios following their submitting dossiers and exhibition proposals. I am looking for artists to feature in next years’ schedules of solo exhibitions at the gallery for which I am the Director/Curator. It is one of my most pleasant tasks as curator because I get to meet and have meaningful discussions with artists about their work in the spaces where they create it, in their natural habitat as it were.

While the artists are nervous to receive me for studio visits, even the most experienced, they are also energized and encouraged. They tell me that no other curators these days bother to conduct studio visits, something which I know because I am an artist too and which always shocks and amazes me. They receive me at first hesitantly, cautiously, but we are soon deep in conversation about their imagery and style, their history and inspiration, their medium and processes, their techniques and their concepts, and about how they situate themselves in the broader artistic community.

The layout of the studios tells me volumes about the artists’ engagement in and preparedness for planning a solo exhibition. I manage a big space. The exhibitions I mount are not commercial, my aim is education, not sales, giving artists the opportunity to focus on presenting or creating a unified body of work to a theme or concept.  I also schedule exhibitions a year or more ahead, which means the existing work will not necessarily be the work that will be exhibited. For each artist of six or seven that I contract for a solo in any given year, I don’t contract numerous others. Given all this, it’s my responsibility to make sure the artists I invite for solos are able to meet their targets in terms of professionalism, production and costs (I have misjudged only four or five times in the last 30 years).

Some things about the artists’ processes or intents, themes or concepts are clear and obvious in the individual works themselves. However, the full impact of the artists’ aesthetic and philosophy is only revealed when many works can be seen together, at the same time, as they will be in a solo exhibition. Gazing at one piece then another and another and then at them all together surrounded by the tools and materials of their making is what helps me describe for a public the artists’ processes and the evolution of their creative thinking. For me, it’s the only way to really know what deep questions to ask and, as the artists answer them, how to understand those answers around, through and in addition to my own reactions and assumptions.

What interesting, and sometimes challenging, conversations we have during the few hours the artists and I spend together in their studios!  Sometimes it happens in one studio visit, sometimes it takes two or several visits, but when our discussions achieve a real artist/curator harmony, we are on for the exhibition!