Weekly Shot of Art - Jude Griebel

"Ways to Dissappear", Jude Griebel's show of new art at the Bau-Xi Gallery is not about missing persons or the Witness Protection Plan, though it may speak to a missing sense of wonder in you.

Griebel's art evokes a childhood longing to explore new boundaries and forms. In every image the subject is facing away from the viewer, as if ready to head off into another part of the painting, another realm, or another existence. "Everything That Exists Beyond the Ceiling" shows clearly the vast Unknown that exists outside of the childhood home (Griebel writes in his artist statement that each of these paintings reflects his memory of a home he lived in as a child), as well as the total uncertainty of it - everything that exists beyond the ceiling is portrayed as a starry sky, as if the walls were portals between worlds.

Other paintings show metamorphoses, a recurring theme in fairytales. A boy turns into a flock of blackbirds or a tree, and physical boundaries are blurred too, as snow falls into living rooms and trees grow up through the floorboards. His paintings are tawny and earthy and calm, with an element of the bizarre and unexpected injected into them, as if they are setting the stage for daydreams. They could easily be integrated into an imaginative children's book. Griebel states: "I am interested in how youths are able to project their imaginations onto domestic and everyday spaces, transforming and doubting the familiar. It is this state of questioning, anxiety and nostalgic wonder that I attempt to translate through my painting."

This perspective allows us, as adults, an element of nostalgia and a chance to excercise our curiosity and imagination. As the subjects go upstairs and around corners we can't help but want to follow them. What is up there/over there/in there? Each image has a story inherent in it and I don't think the viewer can help but wonder what it is. One painting in particular illustrates this art/viewer engagement with "The Boy That Climbed Into A Painting".

Art will be up until February 18th, in the Upper Gallery. Be warned that you will have to wade through Lisa Birke's hideous Canadiana to get there. It looks like the Olympic Commitee got drunk and barfed up every national stereotype they could think of.

Images courtesy of Jude Griebel and Bau-Xi. First is called A boy turns into a flock of blackbirds, second is Everything that exists beyond the ceiling.