PondaBlog

I recently caught Raymond Boisjoly’s installation at Vancouver’s Republic Gallery. Actually, I just caught it, as I wandered into the Richards Street space on the final afternoon of the exhibition’s final day. Cutting it close? Yep – but better late than a no-show.

Boisjoly, a Vancouver-based Aboriginal artist, didn’t disappoint. His exhibition, entitled The Writing Lesson, featured prints of Indigenous names of B.C. towns – Nanaimo, Spuzzum, Masset, Yakima and more – drenched in the ornate, clasutrophobic stylings of Black Metal lettering.

this wasn’t a coincidence. an artist statement notes that much black metal “seeks to recuperate pre-Christian spritual elements in the face of the forceful encroachment of monotheistic faiths.” meld that riffage with issues of naming and colonialism, and you’ve got recuperation re-doubled. not too surprising then that the writing lesson takes its name from a memoir by claude levi-strauss, everyone’s fave cultural anthropologist.

none of this would have meant much had the show fizzled – which it emphatically did not. boisjoly’s prints, bathed in grey and near-black, exuded a quiet, menacing power. without knowing the background info, one likely would never have guessed what the near-indecipherable symbols actually spelled. but in a way, it didn’t matter – while the theory behind the exhibit enhances its understanding, the elemental nature of the prints resonated with an eerie aesthetic all their own.

It’s an aesthetic that’s been adopted by a variety of today’s auteurs. Steven Shearer, another Vancouver-based artist, has long tapped the typically teen themes of alienation, isolation – and metal. his painterly oeuvre has attracted an ever-increasing amount of attention, and he’s shown in spaces ranging from the local Contemporary Art Gallery to London’s Tate Modern. He was also Canada’s rep at this year’s Venice Biennale, where his Poem for Venice – a massive façade at the entrance to the Canada Pavilion – mixed and mashed crude neologisms inspired by the verbal effluvia that characterizes much of extreme metal’s wordplay.

And then there’s Peter Beste, an American photographer who has often used his considerable skills to document extreme underground music scenes – including rap in Houston, grime in London and, yes, black metal in Norway. In 2008, Vice Books released True Norwegian Black Metal, a tome that features Beste’s phantastic photos of, er, true norwegian black metal.   

lastly, show no mercy, the fab metal column written by brandon stosuy, recently returned to pitchfork after a hiatus. and it’s got a spanky new logo to boot, yet another example of blackened art. just in time for all hallow’s eve!