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To the people of Montreal / À tous les gens de Montréal

April 30 - June 18, 2011
Opening: April 30, 2011 4:30 PM - 7:00 PM

With works by Allison Katz and Alex Kwartler.

“You see, we’re no longer cross with each other at all, we two. You’re so unbearable, my dear Valentine, and I’m so impossible! I can still see us, exchanging in highly dignified fashion, a courteous and theatrical farewell. You had asked me “what I was doing this summer” and I’d answered: “But… first of all I’m going to act in La Chair* at Marseille.” To which you replied: “Again!”

I: What do you mean, “again”?!

You: That ghastly thing again!

I: It’s not ghastly, it’s a “sensational mime drama.”

You: It’s ghastly, really! It’s in that piece, isn’t it, that they tear your dress off and you appear…

I: Without a dress, precisely.

You: And doesn’t that mean anything to you?

I: In what way?

You: Exposing yourself in public in a get–up, in a costume… well… It’s beyond me! When I think that you stand there in front of everyone… oh! … I’ve never seen unconcern like yours, Colette!

To which I replied with coarseness devoid of wit: “My child, you bore me. You’re neither my mother nor my lover: therefore…”

(Colette, “My Friend Valentine.”)

*La Chair (Flesh), a mime drama in which the young Colette, partnered with the famous mime Georges Wague, scored her first success on the stage.

Battat Contemporary is pleased to announce the exhibition To the people of Montreal by New York–based artists Allison Katz and Alex Kwartler. Kwartler presents work that proposes a provisional attitude towards the wall. This echoes the content of Katz’s paintings: mobility of parts. Framing devices are not limited to the painting’s edge, and illusion is not about the canvas as a windowspace. Both Katz and Kwartler have developed idiosyncratic relationships to the idea of painting’s “flatness” and its associations with material specificity. The use of trompe l’oeil materials and textures (Venetian plaster, chalky ground, sand) reference the various finishes of walls themselves; and these effects are deployed back within the painting to make pictures that lie somewhere between an image and a composition. Paint is used instinctively; in rigorously systematic ways; or not at all, with bare canvas left visible. Various surfaces thus result– from super matte to high gloss– creating a catalogue of difference. Kwartler’s panels are even scaled to the construction standard (8’ x 4’) while Katz’s canvase’s imitate the scale of theatre props or scrims. All difference on display– surface, mark, subjectivity– slows the looking. The title of the exhibition is a clear rehash of Blinky Palermo’s 1977 seminal work (To the people of New York City)- admired by the artists for its rhythm, pacing and associations with a place. Discussing the particular performative nature of Montreal was in fact the impetus that initially began the talks between Katz and Kwartler, who both wanted to work together while refusing to actually paint for each other. As a result, the two bodies of work interact like an actor overshadowed by his shadow onstage, or a series of questions answered with more questions. The dialogue is a mix of consensus and antagonism, prompting a reversal of current collaborative models, as a way to destabilise decorative compatibility in the exhibition context when there is more than one artist. Ultimately, To the People of Montreal embodies the potentially absurd, potentially effective act of mute presentation, display, and symbolic communication– like Colette in a naked mime drama.