attunement
Bronson Smillie and Ron Siu
There’s something, somewhere, or someone in the air of Ron Siu’s monochromatic paintings. With hazy and lyric impulse, the painted gesture gives way to a flowering atmosphere that cloaks youthful bard-like figures, their instruments, and the music they’re playing. Obfuscation waxes and wanes with flourishing if you stare long enough. I hope you find yourself becoming undone and done again as time passes; vision and psyche in use but at ease, all with hope abundant.
Bronson Smillie’s trio of interactive plinth sculptures underscores an ongoing interest in the life cycle of novel objects; charting a journey all the way from coveted to disposable then right back again. Ruminating upon use value through material transformation, vintage electric pencil sharpeners are placed upon spectral plinths where its colorful shavings gradually accumulate below. Sharpen a pencil and watch the coloured lead dust splatter and splash along its sides. A pencil reduced to near nothing can remain as sharp as ever; It’s rinds alchemized from waste to remnant.
And so attunement emerges as the guiding principle of this branch of Soul Jubilee; a fitting term also used as a title for a collaboration occurring between Siu and Smillie in our Project Space. A word beckoning something into harmony, Bronson and Ron attune a gaze, brushstroke or tool into affective focus. A brushstroke to add, a pencil to subtract from; gizmos used to draw out from within. Here, reaching past the literal, tuning an instrument heeds way for attuning one’s soul, and it underscores the personal search for reprieve and serenity that permeates throughout this entire show.
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Bronson Smillie and Ron Siu
There’s something, somewhere, or someone in the air of Ron Siu’s monochromatic paintings. With hazy and lyric impulse, the painted gesture gives way to a flowering atmosphere that cloaks youthful bard-like figures, their instruments, and the music they’re playing. Obfuscation waxes and wanes with flourishing if you stare long enough. I hope you find yourself becoming undone and done again as time passes; vision and psyche in use but at ease, all with hope abundant.
Bronson Smillie’s trio of interactive plinth sculptures underscores an ongoing interest in the life cycle of novel objects; charting a journey all the way from coveted to disposable then right back again. Ruminating upon use value through material transformation, vintage electric pencil sharpeners are placed upon spectral plinths where its colorful shavings gradually accumulate below. Sharpen a pencil and watch the coloured lead dust splatter and splash along its sides. A pencil reduced to near nothing can remain as sharp as ever; It’s rinds alchemized from waste to remnant.
And so attunement emerges as the guiding principle of this branch of Soul Jubilee; a fitting term also used as a title for a collaboration occurring between Siu and Smillie in our Project Space. A word beckoning something into harmony, Bronson and Ron attune a gaze, brushstroke or tool into affective focus. A brushstroke to add, a pencil to subtract from; gizmos used to draw out from within. Here, reaching past the literal, tuning an instrument heeds way for attuning one’s soul, and it underscores the personal search for reprieve and serenity that permeates throughout this entire show.
