Patel brown Gallery | 21 Wade Ave
Kim Dorland | Way Lost
October 3 - November 14 2020
Patel Brown is please to present Way Lost, Kim Dorland’s first solo exhibition in Toronto since 2016. Steeped in psychedelia and anxious energy, Dorland's most recent body of work continues to explore the transformative power of nature while evoking the vulnerability of our environment and, consequently, our own well-being.
Accompanying Dorland’s expansive paintings, the gallery presents a suite of original drawings pulled from a recently released artist book. As a self-proclaimed superfan of graphic novels, this two-year undertaking acts as Dorland’s homage to the genre, and its unique storytelling capacities. The book, of the same title Way Lost, features two distinct personalities, which the artist refers to as the “couple.”
Toronto poet, Andy McGuire, has written The Couple’s Credo as a companion text to the exhibition and publication.
The Couple’s Credo
By Andy McGuire
We find ourselves lost
midway through the journey to the centre of our journey.
Something is going on.
Something not long for this glorious haze.
We want to tell you everything but can only tell you anything.
Who we used to be stopped calling.
We can’t tell you the sad part,
but good news—nothing is under control.
It’s not a leash until you reach the end.
We get up without waking the dream
and recite the upside of wildfires.
Nature is better at everything,
especially the ice cold beer of indifference.
Same old sunrise, same old new leaf, same old next normal.
We give sunrise the lowdown on high hopes.
Our past is just getting started.
Out here the air is so unclear
we can’t see ourselves to the door,
our only food source the preposterous present.
The local wildlife shows us everything we need to know.
We live in our hands,
all day we dream about sleep.
It’s only a dream until you reach the end.
We can’t see the wildfire for the flames,
and the midday sun can’t think of anything new to say about infernos.
We pick the rainbows out of our damnation,
catch bikini snowflakes on our tongues
and forgive the beauty of the meltdown.
The aftermath never adds up.
A mouth is a haunted house.
You need to be haunted to live here.
The wildlife cuts eye holes in our sheets.
You have to scare the ghost away.
We dress for prom and expedite the end of all we now know.
When in doubt we recite our symptoms.
We are large, we contain emotional police states.
We have the right to remain a mystery.
And so we get to know the not knowing.
Lies are too lovely—we deserve the truth.
Our secrets have secrets of their own.
We buy another spade to bury the last,
crack a window to the soul and let the end begin.
It starts with goodbye.
We sing our burning questions to a tangerine sky.
How deep is down?
Are there still towns where the cops yell freeze?
Does this happiness look infected?
Why do you keep saying we’re almost at the easy part?
How long before falling becomes flying?
The house lights dim at dusk.
A roadie brings out water bottles for the end of the world,
turns a cathedral of Marshalls on standby.
Our makeshift monument wobbles,
we alphabetize our fears.
We find the door we left open,
when we turn the key it turns to us.
Just being alive is embarrassing.
We picture the thousand words we want to say
to make the end stay. We get the wrong way right
since the truth forgets the way it came.
If we were ours to lose,
we wouldn’t have to worry about which death was whose.
We could wander until the day our dreams call it a night,
until the things to die for start to expire
or we finally figure out who’s haunting who.
Every year our birthday cakes get a little brighter.
We celebrate the days we didn’t wake up dead,
and all of the days we did.
The outdoors laugh our plans back inside.
We want to say something memorable,
so we lead with the music, shaking what the wilderness gave us
as the change in our pocket burns a hole in our hearts.
The vibrations form a super pac.
The woods we enter are not the woods we leave,
and you can’t fight fire by punching the flames.
We are stewards of the unknown, saviours of the unforeseen.
This is not the sunset we ordered.
We prepare for the worst to dawn on us,
a conspiracy in search of some truth.
We are by nature doomed.
The painting we start is not the painting we finish.
We make like sunflowers in the wee hours.
What comes after hell, we wonder
and exit the thought by way of whatever art opens.
Our going concern is going awfully well.
Something is so wrong it’s right.
We hang like smoke on a windless night,
within the kind of silence that makes you feel
as though it could pull a knife.
Home is where the heart is beating itself
back to black. We surrender ourselves at the door.
Don’t worry—hopelessness is hopeless.
It’s just that the truth smiles one tooth at a time.
We hope this finds you at the bottom of a well.
Enjoy the missing pixels of our vista.