Howard Ursuliak

Howard Ursuliak’s Rhopographic Tableaux

Howard Ursuliak prefers to work in the everyday world. His discovered still lifes utilize the model of the photograph as indexical document. It is possible to view his photographs as a kind of anthropology concerned with a marginal economy and lifestyle. Pictures such as “Untitled (Moon Pies)” (1991), part of a series which examines corner grocery stores, would seem to reinforce such a reading. Yet his allusions to the history of proto-photographic painting, manifest through studied composition and attention to light and colour, inform us that he intends his pictures as art rather than journalism or social science.

Untitled (Lunch Counter with Stool)
1994/95
épreuve couleur
19 1/2" x 26 3/4"

Ursuliak presents a realist vision focused on a melancholic apprehension of the economy. He searchs for his pictures in the sort of small family-run shops that line East Hastings street and Kingsway in Vancouver. This sector of the economy is usually associated with recent immigrants and includes laundromats, corner-stores, pawnshops, and strange little businesses that seem not to do any business, often for generations. The particular nature of these kinds of spaces is well known to most city dwellers but is rarely recognized or considered. In “Untitled (Blue Shirt)” (1994) it appears that the least amount of energy or expense has been invested in the decor, while decades of human activity has left its traces, wearing smooth all the available corners. These places feel exhausted, like old, underpaid workers - they are the opposite of the hysterical cheer and optimism that one finds in the new 'superstores' and the suburban malls. Often decades-old commodities can be found on dusty shelves as in Ursuliak's “Untitled (Three Suitcase)” (1994) or pathetically few products will be displayed, conjuring images of scarcity in the Eastern Bloc or other “backward” economies. These pictures evidence the desperation of the need to identify, to participate in the economy, if only in the most half-hearted manner.

Sometimes these stores feel more like museum displays or film sets than part of the reality of the present. Certainly this is what draws Ursuliak to this subject. However, these is too much poverty of spirit here for these pictures to to be merely nostalgic or sentimental. The ascetic quality of both the space depicted and especially the vision of the artist, ward off false emotions. In their depictions of the forlorn commodity, these pictures reveal the empty promise of the new commodity, and so ultimately perform a critical function. By redeeming the discarded, Ursuliak's photos threaten to upset the hierarchy.

Untitled (Shoes)
1994/95
C print
19 1/2" x 26 7/8"

Before Modernism, subjects were as important, or more important than the vision of the artist, this prejudice has certainly not vanished altogether. Indeed, our museums are filled with works by modern artists which deal with rejected or devalued things and realities. It is as though a war is being waged by art against a hierarchical ideology. Norman Bryson traces this artistic concern for the lowest reality and it's concurrent critical devaluation back to the Greeks. He cites Pliny' s critique of the painter Piraeicus:

“In mastery of his art but few take rank above him, yet by his choice of a path he perhaps marred his own success for he followed a humble line, winning however the highest glory that it had to bring. He painted barber's shops, cobbler's stalls, asses, eatables (obsonia) and similar subjects earning for himself the name of rhyparographos” (1)

Bryson explains that “rhyparographer” means painter of rhyparos, literally of waste or filth: the association is with things that are physically or morally “unclean” (2), so the tag is ultimately an insult. Clearly, Pliny's distaste reflects an ideology that is still with us. Enough so to continue to prompt artists to take on the role of rhyparographer as anti-hero i.e.: Mike Kelley's self-portrayal as janitor (3). Ursuliak does not quite fit the definition of rhyparographer, he is much closer to the rhopographic proper. Rhopography is the depiction of that which is passed over by greatness. Where the megalographic is concerned with the heroic deeds of gods and heroes, the rhopographic is concerned with the insignificant and everyday. Ursuliak's tableaux force a questioning of values, perhaps in a less reactionary way than most contemporary rhyparography.

Our world is constantly defined for us by people and institutions with agendas which are not necessarily in our interest. For modernity this has most often meant a value system based on production. To step outside of this is to enter a realm that is characterized by its loneliness, it's distance from the agora. This loneliness is Ursuliak's subject, not the objects or spaces depicted, which are the necessary agents of its representation.

Roy Arden

(1) Bryson, Norman, “Looking at the Overlook, Four Essays on Still Life Painting” Harvard University Press, London 1990.
(2) Bryson.
(3) Mike Kelley posed literally as a janitor for the cover photograph of his 1993 Whitney Museum retrospective catalogue Catholic Tastes.

This text was excerped and adapted from “Photography, Genre and Continuity”in the catalogue for the exhibition “bonus”, Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver, 1997. and this édition has been printed for the exhibition “A sadness without the object”, Quartier Éphémère, september 1997.

Howard Ursuliak est né en 1960 à Edmonton, Alberta. Il vit actuellement à Vancouver, B.C.

Formation
1993		M.F.A. en arts visuels à l’Université de Colombie Britannique, Vancouver, B.C.
1984		diplomé de l’école d’art et de design Emily Carr, Vancouver, B.C.
Expositions récentes
1998		Centre de la Photographie de l’Université de Salamanque, Espagne Galerie Monte Clark, Vancouver, B.C.
1997		Quartier Éphémère, Montréal, Q.C. Musée canadien de la photographie contemporaine, Ottawa, ONT. Contempory Art Gallery, Vancouver, B.C.