Aleks Bartosik's She was a beautiful apple

by Holly Gordon

“This is the start of La Petite Mort going to Europe,” Christina Anastassopoulos says, sweeping her hand across the room to encompass the just-opened exhibition, The Infidels.

The art consiglieri for the gallery has been working with curator and exhibition mastermind Guy Bérubé for the past year to bring The Infidels to fruition, which exhibits the works of 33 local, national and international artists — from new, to emerging and professional — in La Petite Mort before Bérubé takes some of the pieces to Abnormals Gallery in Berlin, Germany, and Poznan, Poland in early 2011. It’s a show that has taken full control of the gallery space, where new exhibitions are normally only given the right-hand wall. But it’s a big show for Bérubé and the gallery; a big show in all respects.

La Petite Mort, a French reference to “the little death” right after orgasm, seeks to thrill in its subversion. Walking through its front doors is unlike walking through most gallery doors in Ottawa, so the front window-sized painting of a woman pleasuring herself, captured only from her shoulders to just below her hips, is a tame glimpse of what you’ll find inside.

New York artist Slava Mogutin’s photo, Simon Ponyboy, captures a mostly hairless man on his knees, facedown in a barn stall, wearing nothing but a horse’s bridle across his body. It’s one of the more shocking pieces on the walls, and is already sold.

Aleks Bartosik, from Toronto, has a striking acrylic, oil and pencil piece titled She was a beautiful apple.  The bleeding reds and yellows fill the penciled form of a woman, whose eyes are closed and who seems lost in a moment to which the viewer should not be privy.

Montrealer Marc Nerbonne’s piece, Sentinelle, depicts what could be a man composed of exposed, bloody flesh and various animal parts — a raccoon tail is visible. The bloody head is tough to stomach, as may be the parts that are both imagined by the viewer and real to the artist.

But discomfort is necessary. It’s the nature of subversive art, and Bérubé curates a show that gives Ottawans a glimpse of who’s established on the scene, and what newer artists are bringing to the table. The show’s name, The Infidels, points to the exploration of a human body that’s beyond faith. Bérubé’s written explanation of the show says: “The human figure is predominantly featured, presented in ways that serve to obstruct our formulation of an eroticized frame for viewing. Rather, the lush beauty of a brushstroke, the forensic detail of a camera’s surveillance, the evocative trace of the pencil lead to human landscapes which are haunting and disturbing revelations.”

It’s a form of art that makes people uncomfortable, but that’s why it’s made. Just last week, late artist David Wojnarowicz’s piece A Fire in my Belly, which American National Portrait Gallery director Martin Sullivan stated depicts the suffering of an AIDS victim through a crucifix with ants crawling on it, was pulled from the Portrait Gallery’s LGBT-themed exhibition Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture after Catholic groups and conservative politicians asked for its removal and threatened to question the gallery’s funding. No matter what progress the States think they’ve made toward an open and respectful society, the controversy over Wojnarowicz’s work proves it can be an illusion.

Step into La Petite Mort gallery to get a handle on your own illusions, and question what you think you know.