François Morelli

François Morelli is clearly an artist who holds nothing back. His exhibition, “Faire à sa tête,” at the Galerie Joyce Yahouda, is dense with information, presenting several bodies of work in a variety of media. It’s rare to encounter an artist like this with such a vast mastery of techniques. His oeuvre includes everything from performance to sculpture to drawing. Morelli is also an experienced art educator, which is important in terms of the performances that took place as a part of this exhibition, but the focal point of the show in the main room of the gallery was a collection of sculptural heads made from the kinds of belts worn around waists.

The Beltheads are some of the most eccentric and distinctive sculptures I’ve seen in a very long time. They are objects of intrigue, making us want to understand, ask questions and discover everything they can potentially be. The materiality and physicality of each head hit us below the belt, so to speak, heads made from the kinds of belts worn around waists. The Beltheads are some of the most eccentric and distinctive sculptures I’ve seen in a very long time. They are objects of intrigue, making us want to understand, ask questions and discover everything they can potentially be. The materiality and physicality of each head hit us below the belt, so to speak, tightening into the flesh. I can hear the squeaking of the material as the artist twists it into place, surfaces rubbing against each other, rivets being snapped closed, and the jingling of the buckles. The ordinary belts used by Morelli introduce a level of material familiarity and intimacy: we all have them, they wrap around us, sit in bureau drawers with other personal possessions; they can also be used to bind us and inflict pain. The heads are like effigies, possessed with spirits. They are fantastic fetish objects that aren’t simply sculptures, but, rather, beings that have lives of their own.

For the duration of the exhibition, Morelli performed on the weekends, when he wore a head on his hand, inserting a drawing instrument into the mouth, and then engaging in a collaboration where he/it made a drawing. He wore a black hood hiding his face, so the Belthead was like a prosthetic substitute for the artist possessed. Letting the Belthead take control, it would draw on a paper rolled out on the floor; at other times, the artist rolled himself up in the paper with the Belthead sticking out, obfuscating the body of the artist. On another occasion, he showed the Belthead pages from a book about drawing, even crumpling up the pages and feeding them to the head through its mouth hole. The educator in Morelli was trying to tame and direct the irrational Belthead, which, in turn, controlled the hand of the artist. It was a tugof- war between the flesh and the spirit, the body and the mind, even between freedom and control. The performances instilled a power in the Beltheads so that as they hung on the wall during the week, they were not inanimate but, rather, dormant, waiting for the next round with the artist. The identity blur between the Beltheads and Morelli placed the viewer on shaky ground where expectations were in question and the results of the actions unpredictable.

The exhibition also had a selection of drawings taken from sketchbooks covering several years. The drawings are small, mixed media, playful, yet dark, depicting twisted figures, beasts, beings-in-formation, often held by devices, as if caged. These imaginative sketches are extremely well drawn, rich with line, texture and form. They are a respite from the easy illustration that is so popular today. A series of small drawings of people holding Beltheads, some on both hands, were intriguing premonitions of the performances. Were they documents of what was or what could be? They make me think of Bruce Nauman’s sketches of his performances and sculptures after the fact. They deposit the idea, constructing a narrative fragment, a piece of a larger story. Like seeds, they have the potential to grow into something beyond the constraints of the frame. In an Artforum essay from the ’70s, Douglas Davis outlined something he called the “size of non-size” in which size is not tied to the physical. Like Robert Smithson’s drawing in the cursive A Heap of Language from 1966, which presents the idea of a mountain made of words about verbiage, phraseology speech tongue lingo, physically impossible yet, once seen, lodged firmly in our minds, Morelli’s modest sketches move beyond the page into the space of the viewer’s imagination, where the figures come to life and begin to move.

This work runs the gamut of experience. The artist gives us a glimpse into the fascinating workings of the creative process. He takes an idea and tumbles it around, looking at it from every vantage point while inviting us along on his explorations. There is no rational starting point or clearly stated intent to his program of research. It’s about being open to where the work will lead him, letting the Beltheads teach the teacher, and moving sideways away from the expected. ■

François Morelli’s “Faire à sa tête” was exhibited at Galerie Joyce Yahouda in Montreal from September 9 to October 14, 2006.

Randall Anderson is an artist and writer living in Montreal. He recently received a commission for a public sculpture at Concordia University’s Fine Arts building.