Robin Arseneault

Dance moves and shadow play.

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Try and tickle something inside you, your ‘weird humor.’ You belong in the most secret part of you. Don’t worry about cool, make your own uncool. 

– Sol LeWitt to Eva Hesse, 1965

If the late American artist Sol LeWitt had written to Calgary-based Robin Arseneault, her current exhibition at the Esker Foundation, Falling Off The Log, might have been her spirited response. The opening reception was the most buoyant art gathering in Calgary in a long time. Guests clumped around the show’s star attraction, Dancing Men (Troupe), a dozen bewildering red cedar constructions set on a low platform. The work’s truncated anatomy, baffling black growths and animated poses trigger visceral reactions connected straight to the sensory brain. Sensuality and emotion tinged with the tragicomic essence of clowning come first; backstories and dialogue can follow.

This ambitious exhibition, on view until Dec. 18, reflects the range, pluckiness and depth of Arseneault’s practice. When curator Naomi Potter invited Arseneault to create new work, she took it as an opportunity to stretch into large, compelling sculptures and photo-based constructions with a sensitivity to scale and material that addresses the architecture of the gallery’s space while bringing viewers into bodily relationship. 

The exhibition, which features five related works created over two-and-a-half years, is imbued with the creative energy and tension of a project on the go. Individual pieces were born from explorations with “found” materials, whether palm-sized bits of wood or a 1967 book on the history of dance. Through careful consideration and small acts, Arseneault transformed these humble hand-me-downs in fresh and wonderful ways. The five pieces interconnect through the use of magnification, a sub-theme of dance and reproduction processes ranging from photography to three-dimensional scans.  

The show includes La Danse, a syncopated grid of 12 brilliantly photo-collaged panels with touches of erasure, and Walk-in Drawings, ink and collage works reproduced on seven cotton panels to create a theatrical foyer as a lead into the rest of the exhibition.

Then there is Plus, four immaculate photographic reproductions of cut-away drawings arranged in the shape of a cross and housed in a gorgeous gilt frame with staccato black corners, and Lantern, which transforms the Esker’s look-out nook into an introspective space. Large black vinyl shapes surround clear “etched” vinyl in each of the 30 windows. Arseneault’s dancing men reappear in silhouette as figures of light. For visitors, the flickering of soft light and dark shadows creates the physical sense that they are standing inside a lantern – one that is lit from outside. 

Add one more element, a remarkable limited-edition artist book. The graphic compendium references works in the exhibition and includes Potter’s thoughtful and informative curatorial essay. 

Falling Off The Log is rich with references to theatre, dance, film and photography. But Dancing Men (Troupe) had its genesis in happenstance: Arseneault’s Instagram connection to a New York City artist. When she saw the artist’s family was selling things from his studio because he was terminally ill, she bought a small box of wooden sticks and driftwood. Later, in her own studio, she arranged and rearranged them, joining different bits with wads of black clay until the odd little figures seemed to bumble through a vaudeville tap dance move, falling off the log, an offbeat sequence of kicks and twists used for slapstick exits. She knew they needed a bigger presence.

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Robin Arseneault, “Walk-in Drawings,” 2022

Robin Arseneault, “Walk-in Drawings,” 2022

installation view at Esker Foundation, Calgary (photo by John Dean)

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Robin Arseneault, “Walk-in Drawings,” 2022

Robin Arseneault, “Walk-in Drawings,” 2022

installation view at Esker Foundation, Calgary (photo by John Dean)

Enlarging the figures was a complex and lengthy process that involved detective work, digital technology and elbow grease. A friend, Chuck Christensen, sourced, collected and delivered 26 cedar off-cuts from British Columbia. Arseneault worked with the exceptional fabricators at Carvel Creative, a Calgary public art and design studio, to shape them to the dimensions she required. She took on sawing and joining the pieces. Friends came to the rescue with hours of sanding. To achieve the trompe l’oeil effect of black squishy material, she rubbed powdered graphite into the newly shaped wood until it looked lustrous, metallic and alien. On stage, the figures seem like goofy sad clowns undaunted by their grotesque appendages, frozen in mid-dance as they kick up a fuss or collapse: a contemporary Danse Macabre.

It’s a mute theatre, but a modern hymn to an old melody, Lord of the Dance, written by British songwriter Sydney Carter in 1963, comes to mind:

Dance, then, wherever you may be,

I am the Lord of the Dance, said he,

And I'll lead you all, wherever you may be,

And I'll lead you all in the Dance, said he.

If Arseneault’s Dancing Men could be considered apostles in a 21st century Dance of Death, akin to the finale of medieval performances when the living and the dead dance together as a reminder to live life in the face of mortality, perhaps the entire exhibition could be cast in a different light. It might encompass the theatre of church, a place of ceremony to confront death and strengthen the muscle of faith, no matter how absurd that might seem. The Walk-In Drawings would then serve as stations of the cross in a processional that leads to the golden cross, Plus, with a chapel of shadow play rather than stained glass in Lantern, and a venerable icon, La Danse. A beautifully illuminated hymnal, the artist book, is available for private contemplation.

This exhibition is a testimony to what the Esker does well. The gallery’s curatorial and installation team supported Arseneault in development, production and presentation. She enlisted some of Calgary’s best creators for help fabricating the large-scale works, including Pamela Norrish with the textiles, Costas Costoulas with the photographic work, Jarvis Hall with the framing, and Nadine Kallen with the book’s construction concept. The result is a triumph. ■

Robin Arseneault: Falling Off The Log at the Esker Foundation in Calgary from July 23 to Dec. 18, 2022.

Correction Aug. 25, 2022, 1:52 p.m. An earlier version of this article provided incorrect details about the source of logs for a  work in the exhibition. The post has been updated to reflect this.

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