The other day, I visited artist Paulette Phillips at her home in Toronto, to be interviewed for her upcoming artwork. Called The Directed Lie, it involved being put to the test – the lie detector test.

Me with Paulette Phillips, undergoing the polygraph. All images: Scott Barker/VoCA

Phillips has trained as a professional polygraph technician in the United States, and owns a polygraph machine, which is cleverly disguised as a suitcase, but it’s the real deal. I don’t know why, but I surprised that it was such an authentic experience, complete with blood pressure and respiration monitors, and carefully considered questions.

The work, which has been shown in Paris (from Parisian interviews) at Galerie Chomette this past fall, included a video installation, prints and sculpture. A larger version will be shown in Toronto this February at Diaz Contemporary.

“For the exhibition at Diaz I will be showing all the interviews I have done in all 8 cities to date,” says Phillips. “The video installation includes books of each city…(it’s) like a legend. From the book you choose an interview you wish to watch by choosing a number that corresponds with a photograph in the book. You key the number into a keypad and a two channel video is projected onto the wall. The show includes sculpture and prints and the archive of charts that are drawn by the polygraph.”

Phillips sees this work as portraiture. It’s a portrait of a person’s subconscious reactions and the discrepancy between that reaction and the person’s face. It’s a portrait of the face as a mask.

It’s interesting to consider the concept of ‘truth’, in light of this work. It makes you consider how important it is to respect other ideas of truth whenever possible. One’s truth is so personal to oneself – it’s entirely subjective – and is informed by so many things: personal history and experience, morality, how we want to be perceived, etc.

Though I found the concept really quite fascinating, I did wonder if the questions could have gone further. Some questions, like “Have you ever been involved with someone who was in a relationship?” would be more challenging for some than they were for me. Had she asked even more challenging questions, “Have you ever bullied anyone?” or “Have you ever masturbated?” – I think it would have had the effect of bringing the participant face to face with his or her real self.

That’s the true power of art, and it’s profound.

But thinking about it, perhaps one reason why the questions didn’t go farther was because of Phillips’ own involvement and friendship with many of the participants. She seemed quite aware of the implications of such a test and perhaps was reluctant to find out too many things that she didn’t really want to know about people. But still.

A quick note to say that I feel sort of vindicated. Back in March 2010, I wrote THIS post predicting the rise of International Klein Blue – that fabulous deep blue invented and patented by the late, great artist Yves Klein.

Yves Klein, Petite Vénus Bleue, 1956 Image: canalblog.com

And so it went…that bright blue was suddenly everywhere from J.Crew catalogues to Uma Thurman at the Oscars. It even showed up in a stunning piece at the AGO retrospective of General Idea.

General Idea, XXX (bleu) (installation view) 1984 3 acrylic on canvases, 3 poodles. Image: theglobeandmail.com

And now, Newsweek/Daily Beast art critic Blake Gopnik has singled it out at the recent Art Basel Miami Beach:

“The booth had a classic all-blue Yves Klein, from 1960, that I could not live without. It had been inscribed as a gift from Klein to Antonio Saura, the Spanish painter, and was signed and dated and had had few owners. Klein is undergoing a massive reevaluation these days: Instead of being seen as a consummate colorist, his role as godfather of conceptualism is at last being noticed. The picture was a steal at $1.4 million.”

Uma Thurman,looking stunning at the Oscars. Image: stylenik.com

Did you know that you can buy the paint – Yves Klein patented the colour – in Switzerland? It’s not cheap. But it’s beyond any other colour you will paint with – in fact the only colours that can possibly accompany it are white, or gold leaf. As he knew very well, IKB and gold is a heavenly combination.

I’d love to meet the guy who ordered the IKB bespoke suit.

Read Gopnik’s full article on ABMB, HERE.

I visited artist Josh Malcolm in his studio this afternoon. His large oils on canvas were everywhere, and I found them very intriguing. They are very high energy – Malcolm says he’s inspired by European and American expressionist painting. But they’re quite different, and quite challenging. At first glance, they looked, to me very modern…but sort of unfinished.

In the studio. All images: VoCA

Cartoon limbs stuck out everywhere in an homage to Phillip Guston, and there are raw, stripey brushstrokes at funny angles across many canvases. I was struck by one piece in particular. It was a black painting, with several arms tangled up and a large swipe of paint crudely smeared across the bottom of the canvas and what looks to be a palette knife a the far side. It make me think of a fist fight.  More precisely, it seemed as if the artist was fighting with himself.

More paintings.

A work that looks – to me – like a fistfight.

Art is a language that doesn’t always come easily. For many artists throughout history making a successful painting was (and is still is) like an internal fight.

Once I looked at the work that way, I immediately liked it. I began to appreciate was he was doing, and I began to see much more in the work, like the background figures that started to emerge from negative space, set at oddly quirky angles and humorous details like stripey socks or a razor sharp manicure.

Josh Malcolm in his studio.

I couldn’t help but be inspired by how modern these works seemed. It’s amazing how an artist can decide to just run a stripe of paint across a canvas, for no apparent reason, and know that it needs to be there.

An unfinished work.

A quote that Josh Malcolm has on his Facebook page explains a lot about what he’s going for:

“After all what are most painters interested in? In Life.

All artists are lovers, they’re lovers of life, they want to see

how they can set the trap so that life will come over more

vividly and more violently. And how do they do that?

Let us reason, why would one paint for oneself? Not to say

how clever  I am, but how can I trap this transient thing.”

-Francis Bacon

Three finished works.

A close up of one work, showing a figure from above,  looking down.

Another unfinished work.

The palette table.

The artist with an older work.

Read a bit more about Josh Malcolm HERE.