21 WADE AVE #2 | TORONTO

Michael Dumontier & Neil Farber | vulnerability in transition | 17 Nov - 23 Dec 2023

In his 2008 memoir Born Standing Up, wild and crazy comedian Steve Martin recalls of his early stand-up: “I was linking the unlinkable, blending economy and extravagance, non-sequiturs with the conventional.” Surveying the range of works in Michael Dumontier and Neil Farber’s exhibition Vulnerability in transition, it’s apparent how the absurdity that underlies Martin’s comedy has influenced these artistic partners since their formative days in the late 1990s as co-founding members of Winnipeg’s ground-breaking Royal Art Lodge.

Although the collaborative art group disbanded in 2008, Dumontier and Farber, who were nominated for the Sobey Art Award in 2014, have continued the ritual of meeting Wednesday nights to share their works in progress. Technology has shifted the process slightly: now Dumontier might paint separately and text images to Farber, who then considers the accompanying writing, perhaps referring back to the ever-growing list of words he is constantly jotting down that have yet to find a home. But there is always the weekly meeting at Farber’s home, and there is always collaborative problem solving and consensus. It would be easy to relegate the two into prescribed roles: Dumontier creating visual containers with Farber responding as the words guy, but these days the roles are occasionally reversed.

Take the Flower series. Perhaps there is something expressed in a blossom’s physical form, in how its stem gracefully arches like a dancer’s back, or in how two flowers are seemingly interacting with each other in a quiet tête-à-tête that suggested a specific textual response. Or alternatively, the line “I’m an opening book” could have inspired the fullness of that flower’s tangerine-hued petals. As a viewer, the magic in Dumontier and Farber’s work exists in the moment of engagement—there’s no need to dissect how individual pieces came together.

After a hiatus, Vulnerability in transition features new works from one of Dumontier and Farber’s most popular series, Animals with Sharpies. The acrylic paintings on birch panel feature expressionless creatures holding Sharpies in their mouths, writing messages (in marker, of course) that range from puns like “Baby, Come Bark to Me” to longer stream-of-consciousness threads that fill the panel but drop off without concluding. This series often plays with anthropomorphic stereotypes ascribed to certain animals—a tortoise laments how “All my friends that are the same age as me are old”—but the humour also lands when a bug-eyed lizard gives the off-handed compliment “I wouldn’t bother loving anyone but you” to an unseen suitor.

Dumontier and Farber are astonishingly prolific in their output. Many of Farber’s textual inputs that don’t work as visual responses for a specific flower or animal end up in their long-running Library series—Dumontier estimates that to date they have produced more than 20,000 painted tiles of book covers on coloured backgrounds, a seemingly unending collection of books showcasing deadpan punchlines. Vulnerability in transition includes sculptural versions of this library, with precariously stacked books with the title text painted along their spines. It’s an eclectic mix without any author names or jacket art take away from showcasing the word play in the titles, but one could imagine “I’m Not Mysterious, I’m Mr. Serious” as a terrible politician’s memoir or “Here, Let Me Rub Your Shoulders” as a self-help guide from a dubiously qualified therapist.

While Dumontier and Farber’s works follow similar processes in their creation, the duo has created an expansive universe that provides room for the quick visuals in One Hundred Notes, which serve as amusing wordplay studies, alongside the more complex Rising Snow and the titular Vulnerability in transition. Both these paintings feature composite landscapes laid across a grid of 35 nine-inch squares, with each tile serving as a standalone work. Both are grounded in cozy, soothing shades of blue as animals of all species wander peacefully through the landscapes, often lost in their own thoughts, as if Noah’s ark accidentally disembarked in Canadian cottage country.

There is evidence of human presence in the boats and in the cabins and stone ruins, and in the piano that stands on a grassy hill that’s caught the attention of a musically inclined rooster—but do we exist here? Perhaps it doesn’t matter. These animals’ musings, which range from melancholic to cheeky playful fun, from heartwarming to tragic—especially in the face of the global climate crisis—provide us with an opportunity to reflect on a small sliver of humanity while sharing a few much-needed laughs.

- Sue Carter

Michael Dumontier and Neil Farber are founding members of The Royal Art Lodge, and have continued a collaborative practice since the collective disbanded in 2008. Their work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. They were shortlisted for the Sobey Art Award in 2014. Dumontier and Farber’s work is included in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Canada, Vancouver Art Gallery and Winnipeg Art Gallery as well as Takashi Murakami, Tokyo, Japan; La Maison Rouge, Paris, France; Centro De Arte Caja de Burgos, Burgos, Spain.

Sue Carter is the deputy editor of Inuit Art Quarterly, and a freelance contributor for the Toronto Star.