MAINSPACE EXHIBITION /
Pretty Boys, You Owe Me
Roselina Hung and Stacy Lundeen
October 17 to November 15, 2014
Pretty Boys, You Owe Me unites two artists who both work with text, self-deprecation, and lust.
| Beauty and Repetition by Karly Mortimer | |
| The Greek myth of Narcissus and Echo is of a forest nymph known for her voice and a young man admired for his beauty. When the goddess Hera became jealous of Echo, Hera cursed Echo so she is only able to repeat the words said to her, never being able to say anything on her own. Echo fell in love with the handsome hunter Narcissus as he wandered through the woods. Echo repeated Narcissus’s words back to him, speaking in a way that his words become her own. She appropriated his language and in repeating she responded. But Narcissus quickly tires of her and Echo subsumes to the grief of his rejection. She pines for him until all that is left is her voice. | public and personal histories reflections on past wrongs perpetrated on me by others; often close friends or relatives, for which I feel I am owed formulaic repetitionan aesthetic ideal of beauty with soft-featured young men serving as musetext messages sent and received during my romantic relationships public declaration of that debt to me interested in whether my drawing capability and the quality of the work would suffer because of the intense repetitiondeleterious effect of obsessive desire |
| While drinking from a pond Narcissus caught a glimpse of his reflection and falls hopelessly in love with what he saw. Upon the realization that it was himself that he was in love with and that he could never obtain the object of his desire, he wastes away. | subtle distinction between desire and obsessional reflection on my past experiences a labour of regret |
| Hands and eyes are the sites of recognition. These are also the parts of ourselves that we see the least easily. It is difficult to hold an image of our own act of looking or our own hands as they are moving. It is the Other who knows what our looking and our hands look like. Derrida argues that there is narcissism and non-narcissism, and that non-narcissism is just a more welcoming form of narcissism. This welcoming non-narcissism is more open to the experience of Other as Other. The attempt at narcissistic reappropriation allows us to have a relationship with the Other. Relation to the Other, even asymmetrical, and open without reciprocation must trace a movement of re-appropriation in the image of oneself for love to be possible. Love is narcissistic. | I injured my right hand and was unable to draw for several months an earnest lookI know its obsessive to make this kind of work. It feels like being in junior high and going over what I should have said to my grade 7 Social Studies teacher when he made me feel like an asshole (by the way Fuck you Mr. Frederic) Love becomes in pursuit I haven’t forgotten it, oh no, you still owe me. Not you personally, but that other person who I know you know. |
| Works citedCavendish, Richard, ed. Mythology: an Illustrated Encyclopedia. London: Orbis Publishing Limited, 1980. Print.Derrida. Dir. Kirby Dick. Zeitgeist Films, 2003. Film. Hung, Roselina. pretty boys kill me, Exhibition Proposal, 2013. Lundeen, Stacy. U Owe Me, Exhibition Proposal, 2013. Schmidt, Joël, Larousse Greek and Roman Mythology. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1980. Print. |
Biographies
Roselina Hung (b. 1980, Vancouver, BC) lives and works in Vancouver. She received her MFA from Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, London, UK and her BFA from the University of British Columbia. She also spent a year abroad at L’Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts, in Paris, France. She has been an artist-in-residence at SIM, Reykjavik (2012); The Banff Centre, Banff (2011); and Ox-Bow School of Art, Saugatuck (2011). Solo exhibitions include Of Myth and Men, Initial Gallery (2014) and pretty boys kill me (2013), Gallery FUKAI. Recent group exhibitions include Small is Beautiful, Flowers Gallery, London, UK (2013), Scenes of Selves, Occasions for Ruses, Surrey Art Gallery, Surrey (2012); FLOE: New Work, SIM, Reykjavik (2012); The Kingston Prize, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto (2011). Upcoming exhibitions include a group show, Now and Then, Pendulum Gallery, Vancouver (2015) and a public art piece at Banff Town Hall (2015).
Stacy Lundeen is a Vancouver-based visual artist born in Lethbridge, AB (1979). He studied Photography at Concordia University and spent the last ten years living and working in Montréal until his very recent move to BC. His work has been widely exhibited across Canada, including a recent solo exhibition at the Kyber Centre for the Arts in Halifax. Lundeen’s work encompasses a wide variety of mediums but he is probably best known for his humorous large-scale photographs that explore themes such as failed ideology, awkward social interactions and provocative double entendre.
We produced a 27-page catalogue in conjunction with this exhibition. Available in our online store or as a free PDF.
