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{"id":163364,"date":"2022-04-27T17:09:00","date_gmt":"2022-04-27T22:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/compte-rendu\/robert-houlered-is-beautiful\/"},"modified":"2025-10-20T08:05:48","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T13:05:48","slug":"robert-houlered-is-beautiful","status":"publish","type":"compte-rendu","link":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/reviews\/robert-houlered-is-beautiful\/","title":{"rendered":"Robert Houle
Red is Beautiful<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For many years, Robert Houle has drawn attention to histories that have acquired new urgency in the wake of Idle No More and the ongoing identification of unmarked graves at former residential school sites across the territory now known as Canada. Robert Houle: Red is Beautiful <\/em>is a powerful testament to this longstanding labour of counter-memorialization, one that demonstrates the artist\u2019s remarkable versatility in broaching challenging themes across diverse media and formats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Robert
Robert Houle<\/strong>
Kanata<\/em>, 1992, exhibition view, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, 2021.
Photo : courtesy of the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The exhibition opens with a tense play of histories in which the politics of land takes centre stage. Houle mobilizes the combined resources of lyrical and hard-edge abstraction and the linguistic strategies of conceptual art to bear witness to the 1990 Kanesatake Resistance in the monumental Oka <\/em>(1991) and Kanehsatake <\/em>(1990\u200a\u2212<\/em>\u200a93). These works are installed in counterpoint to his intervention within the figurative language of European history painting, Kanata <\/em>(1992), which edits Benjamin West\u2019s glorified representation of colonial conquest in The Death of General Wolfe <\/em>(1770) to highlight Indigenous presence and misrepresentation. The multi-panel Muhnedobe uhyahyuk <\/em>(1989) balances these commemorations of territorial conflict with pastoral evocations of more-than-human presence. The recurring dates of Aboriginal Title <\/em>(1989\u200a\u2014\u200a90), Premises for Self Rule <\/em>(1994), and adjacent works on paper unfold a data-based aesthetic recalling earlier examples of information art, a subfield of conceptual practice whose historiography is long overdue for diversification. Like fellow Indigenous abstractionist Alex Janvier, to whom he pays tribute in the elegantly hieratic Parfleche for Alex Janvier <\/em>(1999), Houle redeploys numbers\u200a\u2014\u200ain his case, dates\u200a\u2014\u200aassociated with treaties whose broken promises contemporary viewers are implicitly implored to honour and uphold. The exhibition is punctuated by grace notes including the jewel-like circular canvas Grandmother (drum)<\/em> (2015), a historic parfleche casually inserted among Houle\u2019s publications and pointedly credited to \u201cAp\u00e1salooke (Crow) artists once known,\u201d and an Assiniboia Residential School newspaper with striking cover art by a young Houle. Works commemorating his years at Sandy Bay Residential School serve as a pivot in the curatorial narrative. Otherworldly shamans and eerie shape-shifters stand watch over the first of these, Sandy Bay <\/em>(1998\u200a\u2014\u200a99), as if to exorcise it. The AGO\u2019s architecture ultimately strains to contain this ambitious exhibition. Houle\u2019s earliest canvases, which ingeniously Indigenize the formalist syntax of European forebears, including Josef Albers and Piet Mondrian, feel cramped within the narrow confines of the show\u2019s final rooms. On the other hand, the Mississauga Portraits <\/em>(2012) that occupy its centre point and commemorate a nineteenth-century troupe of Anishinaabe performers that toured Europe and inspired Eug\u00e8ne Delacroix, resourcefully gestures beyond this architectural frame to the related 2010 installation Paris\/Ojibwa<\/em>, on view on the gallery\u2019s first floor. This centrifugal logic is amplified by Mohawk Summer <\/em>(1990), a text-based work above Walker Court that nods to Houle\u2019s permanent installation Seven Grandfathers <\/em>(2014)\u200a\u2014\u200aa critical rejoinder to an earlier textual supplement to the neoclassical court by German conceptual artist Lothar Baumgarten, which it replaced. The architecturally nested argumentation of Red is Beautiful <\/em>underscores that Houle\u2019s institutional critique will endure long after the exhibition ends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\n
\"Robert
Robert Houle
<\/strong>Kanehsatake X<\/em>, 2000.
Photo : courtesy of the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n
\"Christopher
Robert Houle
<\/strong>O-weendumuhwaun We Were Told<\/em>, 2017.
Photo : courtesy of the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"105_CR_Lauder_Robert-Houle_Paris_Ojibwa_2010_lr20220426\"
Robert Houle
<\/strong>Ojibwa<\/em>, 2010.
Photo : courtesy of the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Adam Lauder, Robert Houle<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Art Gallery of Ontario<\/strong>, Toronto<\/br>
December 3, 2021\u200a\u2014\u200aApril 18, 2022<\/br>","protected":false},"author":1303,"featured_media":162482,"template":"","categories":[884],"numeros":[2758],"disciplines":[],"statuts":[],"checklist":[],"auteurs":[832],"artistes":[2652],"thematiques":[],"type_compte-rendu":[],"class_list":["post-163364","compte-rendu","type-compte-rendu","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","numeros-105-new-new-age","auteurs-adam-lauder","artistes-robert-houle-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/compte-rendu\/163364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/compte-rendu"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/compte-rendu"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1303"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163364"},{"taxonomy":"numeros","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/numeros?post=163364"},{"taxonomy":"disciplines","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/disciplines?post=163364"},{"taxonomy":"statuts","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/statuts?post=163364"},{"taxonomy":"checklist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/checklist?post=163364"},{"taxonomy":"auteurs","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/auteurs?post=163364"},{"taxonomy":"artistes","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artistes?post=163364"},{"taxonomy":"thematiques","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/thematiques?post=163364"},{"taxonomy":"type_compte-rendu","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/type_compte-rendu?post=163364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}