PATRICK TRAER: "A Survey," College Art Galleries, Saskatoon, May 23 to August 1, 2014

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Collection of the University of Saskatchewan. Photo: Blair Barbeau.

"Creamy Whites"

Patrick Traer, "Creamy Whites," 2003, two upholstered spheres with 1,000 covered buttons, plywood, cotton, canvas, polyurethane foam batting, zippers and stainless steel hooks, installation view.

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Collection of the University of Saskatchewan. Photo: Karla Griffin.

"Black Stoppers"

Patrick Traer, "Black Stoppers," 2005, two black upholstered spheres made from plywood, cotton, canvas, foam, approximately 400 rubber test-tube stoppers and grommets, vinyl, steel clips, steel buckles and steel hooks, installation view.

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Photo: Karla Griffin.

"Untitled, Veils and Lip-Ruddy Rose"

Patrick Traer, "Untitled, Veils and Lip-Ruddy Rose," installation view.

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Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Karla Griffin.

"Lip-Ruddy Rose"

Patrick Traer, "Lip-Ruddy Rose," 2003, plywood, cotton, canvas, cardboard, Dacron, polyurethane foam batting, vinyl, zippers, covered buttons, stainless steel buckles, hooks and MDF board, installation view.

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Collection of the University of Saskatchewan. Photo: Karla Griffin.

"Untitled"

Patrick Traer, "Untitled," 1991, embroidered drawing on shot taffeta, installation view.

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PATRICK TRAER: A Survey

College Art Galleries, Saskatoon

May 23, 2014 to Aug. 1, 2014

By Bart Gazzola

Patrick Traer, in this retrospective survey, exhibits work that occupies a rare space between sculpture, furniture and fine craft. His often-momentous objects and stitched drawings seem unusual – even absurd – as they push, and often break, boundaries of material and idea. Sometimes seductive, sometimes unsettling, his work often refers to the body while supplanting it: stitching as veins, vinyl and wood as flesh, shot taffeta as skin.

A Survey fills both levels of the exhibition space. The upper level functions as a beautiful arrangement, like a sentence moving across the gallery. Lip-Ruddy Rose, at the far end, is a corporeal punctuation mark (both protruding outwards and having an orifice-like recess, puckered and reddish) to Untitled, veils. That latter piece’s ethereal white sheets, draping off the wall, seem less solid than the shadows cast behind them. They’re like shrouds, suggesting the trappings and rituals of death. Meanwhile, Untitled #1 – 4, from the Embroidered Anatomies, hang black and silent and deep, their solidity contrasting harshly with veils.

The stitching in both is precise and intense, as physical as it is visual. Their corporeal texture encourages viewers to draw near enough to smell them, suggesting the inappropriate touching forbidden in any gallery space. At his talk, Traer said he wanted to invite intense, almost intimate, looking and interaction. That alluring quality – also present in large “ball” works like Black Stoppers or Black Buttoned – plays on our expectations of furniture, with surface lines, forms and knobs that tempt touch as much as the slick taffeta pieces.

There’s a contradiction between the carnality of Traer’s objects and their meticulous industrial manufacture (Mesh, Cone, Hang, for example). Often, especially with the demonstratively “queer” aspects of some pieces, fetish and art become indistinguishable. Traer worked with several technicians, and frequently – such as how his technician for the testicular Stoppers works in automotive upholstery, another space of hyper-masculinity – this adds another layer.

The works in A Survey date from 1991 to 2012. It was engaging to hear Traer speak of ideas that informed him, as a subtext, when he made them: such as AIDS and its effects, both positive and negative, on queer communities, as well as his own role in the larger history of art in Saskatoon, mainly, but not solely, manifested during his years teaching at the University of Saskatchewan. These aren’t obvious, but offer a considered history and nuance to this smart, funny and definitely sexy exhibition.