Monday, March 26, 2012

Grimes (aka Claire Boucher) Dan Rocca, Alexandra Mackenzie, Lux Xzymhr - 'Visuals' AVA Gallery


Work by Claire Boucher, aka Grimes.









Dan Rocca


Alexandra Mackenzie



Lux Xzymhr  (w/ work by Alexandra Mackenzie)

For three days only Audio Visual Arts hosted a show of drawings and paintings curated / including work by Claire Boucher, better known to the world as Grimes. I admit that I went expecting to see a vanity exhibition fueled by the sudden, blinding stardom of Grimes and little more. It was cynical of me, and as soon as I walked in I knew I was wrong. 

'If I make it, we all make it' rhetoric is common when everyone is struggling but seldom manifests once someone actually succeeds.This wasn't a vanity project at all, it was Boucher using her cachet to help shine a (deserved) light on the work of her friends.

Alexandra Mackenzie's drawings are mind-boggling and you could seriously spend hours just checking out all the details and insane imagery. It' so much to take in at once that you'll wish your brain could open a little extra window just to process everything in your field of vision.

Dan Rocca allowed me to flip through his incredible sketchbook and many of the smaller booklets that he'd made. It felt super intimate and personal but also nerve-wracking because I was convinced I would somehow end up soiling the pages with my filthy, awful hands; as if Dorito dust and Cheeto powder would spontaneously ooze from my fingertips.

Boucher's work anchored the show, with a large collection of drawings and paintings that I was really stoked on. Her pieces felt like illustrations for short stories I'd love to read and/or haunting hallucinations from a nightmare trip you wish you could forget. My pictures do them no justice, they were crisp and clean and beautiful.

Everyone lived up to Canadian stereotype by being the nicest people on earth. The work is touring a few cities so there will be other opportunities to check it out, which you should do, obviously, and say hello to these nice people while you do.

Update - Related Post: Grimes at the Bowery Ballroom