Ron Giii

In “Ron Giii: Hegel’s Salt Man,” a survey exhibition of works from 1975–2007, the varying personae of Ron Giii, Ron Gillespie, Uncle Ron, Jimmy Algebra, Johnny Pizza, The General, et al, are once again invited into the public domain, represented in the rich permutations of an oeuvre bound by painting, drawing, remnants of writing and traces of performance.

The exhibition installation plays with the works’ chronology, meandering from performance documentation to an ongoing focus on drawing. For instance, on one of the gallery’s back walls, a selection of Giii’s early writings and photographic ephemera are either pinned to the wall or safely exhibited behind the glass of two presentation cabinets. Whether understood as caustic manifestos or provocations, the texts insistently proclaim states of flux, articulating the necessity for immediate change. However, it is unclear what the original context was for these fragments. Were they intended for a particular audience? Were they to be read aloud as integral parts to Giii’s performances, and if so, how? In the cabinets, sense and nonsense are closely related, if stored away. Written descriptions and isolated photographs emphasize a psychological confrontation, a testing of physical limits for both the artist and audience, the paper artifacts acting as a series of captured fetishes.

Not so with Giii’s drawings. Beginning in 1973, continuing to 2007, eight extensive groupings of paper works are casually pinned to the walls of two rooms, in ordered permutations. Sometimes large, other times intimate in scale, the narratives are varied, ranging from comic to tragic. Consistent in all the work is a light and direct touch, belying a world—to borrow from Giii—that “becomes both real and unreal in a split second.” Materials run the spectrum of pencil (graphite and coloured), oil and chalk pastels, pen and ink, oil stick, linseed oil and coloured markers.

Giii’s “dancing in drawing” advances his understanding of performance into a related zone of creative practice. Mark making is a fleeting activity, like the presentation of a performance, but in the gallery these visual signs persist in their direct contact with the walls holding them. There is no intermediary framing device between the paper sheet and wall’s underlying surface, allowing for an immediate and intimate viewing experience.

In groups six and seven, a single spare figure, while repeated on multiple sheets, remains impossible to identify because of the myriad possibilities of his characterization. The Salt Man appears as a monochrome-toned, two-dimensional, flattened being. Placed in the centre of the sheet of paper, he faces us surrounded by an empty, white expanse. Giii’s titles, neatly written on the front of each drawing, serve as an entry into the episodic, topical narratives, a contrast to the aesthetic, seductively fragile qualities of their mark making. For example, in A Foot on a Bomb: Baghdad, 2007, the Salt Man’s body is drawn in a delicate calligraphy of pencilled lines, while a black square immediately adjoins one of his feet. The opacity of the geometric form breaks the whiteness of the page, making for the illusion of a hole scaled to visually anticipate the as-if, sucking downward motion of the figure into the very pores of the paper.

In the brightly coloured “Geometric Series,” 1973, the figure is close to absent. Instead, an inventory of potential settings or scenes is explored. Tenuous structures are drawn, often including fractured, fragmenting light sources. Exploration of props, such as a theatre’s proscenium, underline Giii’s search for an invented stage.

Gradually, figure and object begin to meet. In Iran, Iraq, Israel, 2007, despite the innocent-seeming features of the primary figure, there is a separate, shadow-like figure at his feet. Standing with legs apart, the Salt Man reaches a hand with its thumb attached to a crisp line, extending to his left leg. As in many of the images, the small line’s significance can be an abstract mark, a string attached to the small, rounded form of a yoyo, or a rock ready to be fired from its diminutive slingshot.

The Atomic Theatre is the final “spectacle” in the exhibition’s installation. Larger in scale than the majority of drawings, 18 sheets of coloured pastel paper are installed in a long, horizontal line, thematically, but as with the other groupings, not sequentially linked. The colour palette is more pronounced, the mark making broader, cruder. The figure, as in Visione Leonardo, has become a massive, volumetric fragment. The spatial relationships of chair, disembodied arm and figure are also more dynamic and elliptical. If, as Giii wrote in 1986, this is a silent opera about power and rulers having their own control over history despite the forces of nature, it is a vital and timely performance of shifting meanings. ■

“Ron Giii: Hegel’s Salt Man,” curated by Rosemary Heather, was exhibited at the Carleton University Art Gallery from May 5 to August 24, 2008.

Deborah Margo is a visual artist living in Ottawa.