John Latour
Kindred Spirits
With age and the passing of time comes a sense of the “narrative arc” of people’s lives. For almost half a century, I have watched the lives of my friends and family members play out like novels in front of me. I have seen my parents age and die, my sisters lead eventful lives and pursue successful careers, and my god-daughters grow up and embark on their adult lives. And with the richness of this experience has come a growing curiosity about the past. I take great pleasure in my memories of childhood and in my ability to recall events that happened before some of my friends and colleagues were born. At the same time, I long for intimate knowledge of the early lives of my parents and grandparents. What was it like to live––to touch, taste, smell, feel, think––a hundred years ago? I yearn to better understand what came before me. I want not to live forever, but to transcend the bounds of my limited existence––to know, to know it all.
According to cultural historian Rosalind Williams, in our twenty-first-century world of rapid change, our need to understand the pattern of history is, in fact, vital to our survival. [1] Having to accept the limitations of our courte durée, we must satisfy our longing to connect with the past by, among other things, drawing upon our imaginative capacities. With the help of the creative and evocative work of historians, novelists and artists, we can situate the accounts of our transitory lives within the broader sweep of history.
Artist John Latour’s subtle and haunting work fuels the fires of our historical imaginations. Kindred Spirits presents thirty-five works, drawn from his output of the past seven years, in a variety of media, including sculpture, text- and photo-based work, all of which use vintage artifacts from the early twentieth century. The poignancy of these found objects is intensified through the artist’s modifications and interventions. An antique clock ticks backwards, the text of a gothic novel is transformed to reveal a secret message, a photographic portrait, depicting its subject as a ghostly spectre, metamorphoses into dots of white light. Transmuted in such a way as to emphasize the disintegration and disappearance of the material, the artist highlights awareness of the unknown.
Latour’s work provides evidence of the existence of those long dead and forgotten. Through the sensitive treatment and display of the traces of their lives, of what remains––necessarily fragmented, partial and incomplete––he effectively draws attention to what is not there. By encouraging viewers to fill in the blanks, he enhances their ability to, in a sense, conjure the dead. Animating these traces of the past, he deepens our relationship with history and the world, thus extending our imaginative grasp of our place in both.
– Writer: Scott McLeod, June 2013
1. Rosalind Williams, “The Rolling Apocalypse of Contemporary History,” in Aftermath: The Cultures of the Economic Crisis, ed. Manuel Castells, João Caraça and Gustavo Cardoso (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012): 36.
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From June 22 to July 27, 2013 Centre Space presents Kindred Spirits by Montreal artist John Latour. This exhibition of recent and ongoing work explores the creative links between contemporary art and a disappearing past mediated through images, texts and objects.
Latour applies flecks of white paint to found photographs taken of individuals as well as intimate groups of family and friends from the early part of the 20th century. The erasure of these anonymous persons points to the gradual fading of all subjects over time. White paint is also used to erase all but a few words taken from the pages of 19th century gothic novels. New stories are created from the words that remain, and the pages are hung in antique frames like ambiguous proverbs from the past.
Kindred Spirits also presents two sculptural productions including the ongoing Apports (2010- ) and Time machine 2 (2009). The former is a series of works that incorporates transformed vintage found objects into sculptures referencing the phenomenon of “apportation” - the appearance of small objects during séances, believed to have been carried over from the other side by spirits. The latter is an antique clock that sits at the entrance of the exhibition. Minute by minute, hour by hour, the hands of this modified clock move in a counter-clockwise direction. As if through some form of wish fulfillment, it invites visitors to travel back in time.
The combination and juxtaposition of vintage images, fragmentary texts and occult objects in Kindred Spirits is an open invitation for viewers to imagine their own links between the seemingly unconnected persons, texts and objects in the exhibition.
The opening of Kindred Spirits takes place on June 22 (from 2:30 pm to 5:30 pm) and will be accompanied by the Toronto launch of Rétrofictions (2012). This experimental and collaborative artist’s book juxtaposes six photographic works by Latour alongside six works of fiction by invited authors Jennifer Allen, Marina Endicott, Cynthia Imogen Hammond, Lea Nakonechny, Eduardo Ralickas and Jean-Éric Riopel. All are welcome.
John Latour is a Montreal-based visual artist whose work has been exhibited across Canada and abroad. Solo exhibitions of his work have been held at the Karsh-Masson Gallery (Ottawa), Glendon Arts Gallery (Toronto), the MacLaren Arts Centre (Barrie) and Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain (Montreal). Latour has a BFA (Studio) from the University of Ottawa, a MLIS (McGill University) and a MA in Art History (Concordia University). His work is included in both private and public collection in Canada and the U.S.
