PHENOMENAL BALLING. overlooked familial network of support that is often. vital to artistic production. This exhibition of sculpture,

Transcription

1 PHENOMENAL BALLING PHENOMENAL HOSTS is a playful approach to the overlooked familial network of support that is often vital to artistic production. This exhibition of sculpture, painting and assemblage is created through an intimate investigation within the home of the artist s mother and stepfather in Regina. Lucien Durey worked within self-imposed limitations of a designated space to create this site-specific and performative work. BALLING WAS WRITTEN BY STEFFANIE LING ON THE OCCASION OF PHENOMENAL HOSTS, WORKS BY LUCIEN DUREY AT NEUTRAL GROUND (REGINA) FROM 7 APRIL 19 MAY, 2018 HOSTS

2 BALLING (PREFACE) all these guys high off the disembodiment of modern art need to spend some time in their parent s baseme nts

3 BALLING If you re from a city on the prairies, can you really claim to hail from vast swaths of yellow land? I ve never been enveloped in any sort of picture, don t know anyone who comes from oil money, and I can t drive. My older brother says, you know, Steff, you re not a package that people pick up and drop off. I was visiting, and I wanted to be taken to the mall. Everyone I used to know owns a house. Homeowners are not really a category of people in my immediate life people who can pool their stuff into ranks of use-value and use-reserve. My friends who don t own homes but rent studios practice use-reserve as material potentiality. My friend from the prairies just moved to the city. Recently, as she was getting ready to leave the apartment, her new roommate and a few of their friends were in the living room, making polite conversation while she put her shoes on. Her roommate lovingly described her as a minimalist to the others who were drinking from mismatched cups. My friend didn t seem to mind being considered a minimalist, but she could have mentioned that she simply left all her stuff in her parent s basement. We re all stupid little packages just trying to get from here to there. It sounds better than baggage which is a cumbersome accessory to some sort of putative state of suffering. A package waits for a ride. Beneath all that brown paper and tape is an inventory of habits, a bubbling pile of the long-game routine. At times, this package is a high traffic area but there is always room for alluring foam peanuts that look sweet to taste because they are very resolved in shape, and content with their role as negative space takers, positive space makers. Sparing us the stuff of awkward spatial silence.

4 BALLING The space for rattle. If you don t occupy that space, someone or something will lease it from you. Acquisition is fueled by the pleasure of accessing potentiality without expiration, but I deeply regret my CD collection. Let s say I get dropped off. They open me up. What I shoved in there, between the peanuts: some configurations of low-lighting reserved for attempts at awkward seduction. A banked back-the-fuck-up moment somewhere. I d like to take it out for a spin someday soon. My disdain for the balled tissue inside every new pair of sneakers. The things I say while hearing what I m saying without being able to stop myself from saying it are swirling around with ongoing shame and the possibility of revision. The promise of art, the pinky swear and the broken pinkies of art I saved them all in this package, that wants to get dropped off at the mall. My CD collection was an unspoken contest between my brother and I I d say we both lost, but he won my respect for his dutiful completionism and competitive connoisseurship. If he was a package who wasn t so keen to transport itself, I d at least walk him to the bus stop. I know home is supposed to be where the heart is, but whenever I think about moving to another city, the deliberation inevitably crosses the question, but what about all my stuff? My parents think I m materialistic, but not high maintenance. I know because when I asked my Dad and he said no, but you do have a lot of stuff. Home is where my stuff is might have a more honest resonance with most people. No, but you have a lot of heart would have been nice too, but it doesn t seem to relate to the question of high maintenance. Stuff seems ostensibly connected to happiness. I ve heard that there are places in the city where people just leave their front doors unlocked and if I picked the wrong place in the world to live, I might lose all my shit and I won t know how I feel

5 BALLING about that until it actually happens. We re always trying to get away from, or back to, our stuff. I don t know if I can identify much material potentiality in my regrettable music taste, adolescent acquisitive impulses, and sibling rivalry, aside from being shiny and round, but so is the sun, M&Ms, bald head on a sunny day shoving candies in his mouth. I wish we could eat my CD collection but maybe instead we could ball it up and shove it inside a pair of shoes, new or old, and call that a proposition for meaning. The urge to shove things that don t make sense together is requisite to becoming a phenomenal host. They who orchestrate that remarkable shock when the dust settles in the aftermath of a restless union of seemingly incompatible lovers. I ll say, isn t that amazing? Amazing, the impressed foam peanut. Your reply is, I don t know, I wasn t there but I wasn t so bewildered to forget to find a souvenir from my trip, given to you wrapped in that tissue that came with my new sneakers, the first pair in a long time.

6 PHENOMENAL Born and raised in Regina, LUCIEN DUREY now lives and works in Vancouver, British Columbia. Engaging with found materials, he produces performance, sculpture, painting, photography and assemblage. Recent exhibitions include Paraphernalia, Burrard Arts Foundation, Vancouver (2018); Eternal Return, Richmond Art Gallery (2017); HOT DOG CAR WASH, Campbell River Art Gallery (2017); and Swimming Pool Blue, Achterhaus, Hamburg, (2016). Since STEFFANIE LING is a producer of criticism, pamphlets, stories, essays, exhibitions, reviews, bluntness, anecdotes, shout outs, wrestling storylines, proposals, applications, jokes, readings, minimal poems, poems, dinner, compliments, and diatribes. She lives in Vancouver (unceded territories), frequenting The Cinematheque and other air conditioned spaces. Her books are NASCAR (Blank Cheque, 2016) and CUTS OF THIN MEAT (Spare Room, 2015). February 2017, he has authored the bimonthly review column Vancouver Report published by Canadian Art. He holds a BFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Design and an MFA from Simon Fraser University s School HOSTS