Katie Bethune-Leamen
Dazzle Shizzle

[En anglais]

Cold War spies, nineteenth-century Arctic explorers, submarine camouflage and a 1980s experimental synthesizer band come together in unusual and intriguing ways in Katie Bethune-Leamen’s first solo exhibition at MKG127. Titled “Dazzle Shizzle,” the show furthers the artist’s ongoing interest in mining the intersections of language, pop culture and ­visuality in encoding and decoding experience: a preoccupation exemplified most recently in Bethune-Leamen’s 2009 Nuit Blanche performance Ghost Chorus: A Dirge for Dead Slang and earlier curatorial project “The Way I Are,” which put forth verbal slang as a metaphor for conceptual slippages in ­contemporary art. 

Though it takes a great deal of research to fully appreciate the nuances of Bethune-Leamen’s historical references, “Dazzle Shizzle” also rewards the casual viewer with a wealth of visual sensations that invite close inspection and careful consideration. In the gallery’s front window, a giant, iridescent and scored sculpture that seems half-meteor, half-iceberg glimmers in teal, silver and pink shades atop a Plexiglas stand embossed with the title Really, It’s A Lot Bigger, A Lot Heavier, And A Lot Darker (2010). Just what “It” is is unclear, but on an adjacent wall, six paintings based on various permutations of an album cover designed by Peter Saville for the British band OMD (Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark) declare themselves more openly. Reminiscent of Piet Mondrian’s geometric compositions, the covers also bring to mind the use of “dazzle camouflage” on World War I era submarines, meant to confuse enemy ships.