House Hold
Mar 18 – Apr 17
Dean Baldwin, James Prior

Wonder Bread®
Essay: Cynthia Foo

Dean Baldwin Things From the Fridge
James Prior James Pierre and Pom Pom: Two Hearts Beat As One

Woke up. I’m late again. Shower get dressed feed the cat make some tea eat some toast drink the tea leave the apartment.

Wait. What day is it?

When Dean Baldwin obsessively photographs the same situations in his recent body of work loosely titled Things From the Fridge (2003), his work comments on the paradoxical nature of the routine in both its ability to mark emptiness and provide comfort. According to trusted sources, the top-selling bread in the world is Wonder Bread®1; if its manufacturer is to be believed, Americans consume more than 500 million Twinkies® each year 2, while JELL-O® has been adopted as the "Official State Snack of Utah." 3 These products and many others, icons of banality, form the backdrop of our lives. However, the sheer volume of products consumed belies their normative functions. Their uniform presentation and ingredients, never deviating from more than a few grams that fall within set standard deviations, are metaphors for rituals in life in general: the consumption of these products is done routinely and unthinkingly, just as the rituals depicted here are unreflexively performed, filling temporal, physical and emotional voids. In House Hold, both Prior and Baldwin present singular masculine engagements with routine, but with very different results.

In James Prior’s photographs titled James Pierre and Pom Pom: Two Hearts Beat As One (2003), the "normal" here is that of a pathetic figure: an adult male still living in his deceased mother’s house, with only his cat for company. This sad and funny image of failed masculinity conjures up its opposite: the strapping, hearty lumberjack, answering and answerable to no one, an impenetrable and unbridgeable island. Where is the "man" in this picture? How has he come to be in this state?

No answer is evident. Instead, the viewer is asked to consider the role of the masculine, and the detritus surrounding Pierre’s life, the symbols of his existence. Without the requisite birthday ritual in the requisite modular suburban house, Pierre’s life would cease to have meaning, his days and nights blending into each other. Here in this safety zone, Pierre painstakingly performs his yearly birthday ritual with measured enjoyment, marking the significance of the moment with his uncomplaining furry companion. This space is itself regulated and contained within strict architectural codes, communal rules and set property lines that confine, and yet, oddly, comfort at the same time in their endless repetition and presentation of a familiar, uniform, standard presence. And yet, Pierre is smiling, seemingly happy in this cocoon of domesticity. While these images may call to mind the absent stereotype of the macho male, Pierre’s persona is itself an anti-heroic construction. Pierre continues Prior’s examination of the acceptance, performance and perpetuation of specific masculine tropes to expose their very constructedness.

In Prior’s previous work titled James Johnstone Presents: The New 1001 Push-Up Man (2002), he presents an elaborate narrative of James Johnstone, a failed athlete and Johnstone’s adolescent protégé. The work tracks Johnstone’s efforts to claim glory by performing 1001 push-ups in one day, amongst other athletic feats. Here, Prior presents another failed stereotype of masculinity in the shape of a man who equates athletic prowess to that of an ideal masculine identity. Ironically, when Johnstone attempts to perform his male identity through sports, he appears to be the opposite of the heroic athlete, appearing instead as desperate for reassurance and acclamation even as he puts on a brave, jubilant face for the camera. In both works, Prior exposes the boundaries around notions of masculinity by depicting failed male stereotypes. The personae Prior depicts in both James Pierre and James Johnstone create a space of camaraderie and belonging for themselves and in so doing highlight their possible exclusion from larger societal structures.

Dean Baldwin, on the other hand, uses the banal and familiar to suggest a lone masculine space. Baldwin’s previous and continuing topographical work includes a series of photographs titled Discarded Mattresses (2003), Lunchbox One (1998 - 2000) and Tied Up Dogs (2003). All of these works suggest a self-containment and self-sufficiency, an acute sense of a singular, detached existence. This masculine ideal is the antithesis of James Pierre and his striped tabby: where Pierre celebrates the rigid markers of his life with his feline friend, Baldwin marks the singularity of his. However, Baldwin neither valorizes nor performs the role of a macho male: instead, he documents a singular existence, and in so doing, hints at lone masculinity’s own failures.

The photographs Baldwin presents here obsessively, neurotically document the everyday habits of a male. Food I’ve Left in the Fridge Too Long (2003) points to a life of leftovers and solitary meals, groceries purchased and placed in the fridge, only to deteriorate and be forgotten. The Alarm Clock Portraits (Snoozebutton) (2002-ongoing) mechanically, systematically mark the first moment of soporific consciousness, a flash in the face each time the snooze button on the alarm clock is pressed. In the background, no one is present, but the scene changes: the curtains and bed linen are different, the portraitist grows a beard. The passage of time is marked by a series of morning flashpoints. Here is not an instant of illumination, but rather, a snapshot, a capturing of a moment triggered by a mechanical device, a kind of photographic punch clock. "I’m awake, I’m starting my day."

Where Henri Cartier-Bresson urged photography’s capturing of a "decisive moment," characterized as a selected instant of inspiration, 4 here Baldwin instead makes photographs of routine. Baldwin’s Going Pee (2003), Kitchen Sink Arrangements (2003) and The Entire Contents of My Desk on January 17th, 2004 are repeated glances, photographs which, like the Snoozebutton Portraits, take no longer than one to three seconds to set up and photograph according to the artist, and which are driven by routine, rather than guided by inspiration. 5 Once placed next to each other, the photographs form a typology of Baldwin’s morning, bathroom or eating activities. The sheer mass of images suggests a completeness to an apparently autobiographical archive: the viewer is presented with an exhaustive view of the variations present in each mundane encounter.

And yet, like Arnaud Maggs’ Hotel (1991), Travail des Enfants (1994) or his Notification (1996) series, what stands out is the incompleteness of this archive. How many more images were discarded? What happens in the moments between snoozebutton depression and the kitchen sink, cluttered with used dishes? And why those moments? Why not all of the moments in between? Why not an endless film documenting the artist’s every waking move? And where is the autobiographical text to accompany these images, one might demand, to let me know everything about this artist?

Like Prior’s James Pierre work, which suggests a completeness, a wholeness in seclusion with his cat, but which instead points to his character’s life lived without human interaction, Baldwin, despite his exhaustive, obsessive documentation of particular moments likewise presents an incompleteness to the banal rituals in his protagonist’s life. While the uniformity, the standardization, and systematization of the everyday comforts, it also confines, delineating an isolated experience. The performances in the social spheres presented by both of these artists are gendered "masculine," but the masculinity in itself is a constructed identity, one that may or may not be, in fact, autobiographical. The performances of masculinity itself are a form of ritual, a way of conforming to specific social codes that have their own comforts, constraints and confining reiterations.

Baldwin remarked that the attempt to suggest a wholeness or completeness in his work highlights the anxieties brought about by living in "a world of constant mutation." 6 "Comfort food," of the variety bad for one’s waistline and unsophisticated in palette, is often criticized for its uniform, highly-processed qualities. Yet it is nevertheless also knowingly indulged and prized. Its constant companionship, ready availability, and breezy, "can do" personality provide succour in troubled times, reminding one of happier days gone by and providing nostalgic opportunities for sanctuary, even if they are fleeting. The urge to commemorate the everyday feeds the need for a sense of purpose and connection while simultaneously confining one’s existence. Just as Wonder Bread® is so widely recognized and loved for its constant cheeriness, it is just as widely criticized for its very uniformity. Therein lies the paradox, then, of the function of banality and of the strict codes that regulate social roles.

Notes

1. From the Wisconsin Public Radio program "To the Best of Our Knowledge," broadcast in the week of November 10,2002.

2. Hostess Twinkies website: http://www.twinkies.com/index.asp

3. Kraft Foods website: http://www.kraftfoods.com/jello/main.aspx?s=&m=history_pages/2000

4. See H. Cartier-Bresson, Images a la sauvette, Paris: Verve, 1952, p.2, which articulated Bresson's desire "to take spontaneous photographs as if catching someone in the act."

5. Unpublished artist review, 23 January 2004.

6. Ibid.

Biographies

Dean Baldwin is from Orangeville, Ontario. He has a BFA from York University and an MFA from Concordia University, Montreal. Baldwin has exhibited in both Montreal and Toronto, in addition to Kyoto, Japan and Odzaci in the former Yugoslavia. Recent projects include The Facemaker curated by Sophie Hackett at Katherine Mulherin Contemporary Art Projects and The Toronto Collections at the Centre des Arts Actuels SKOL, Montreal. His work is also touring in the Gallery TPW exhibition, The Found & the Familiar: Snapshots in Contemporary Canadian Art, curated by Sophie Hackett and Jennifer Long, scheduled for exhibition in Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Quebec in 2003–2004. He currently works and lives alone in Toronto.

James Prior is a Montreal-based artist. He received a photography and painting certificate from the Ottawa School of Art in 1995, and a BA from Concordia University in 2001. In 2003 he received a creation grant from the Canada Council for the Arts. Prior has exhibited in group shows at Artcite (Windsor), Observatoire 4 (Montreal), the Floating Gallery (Winnipeg), and solo shows at Access Artist Run Centre (Vancouver), Eastern Edge Gallery (St. Johns), and V.A.V. Gallery, Concordia University (Montreal).

Cynthia Foo is completing her Master of Arts in Art History at York University and holds a BA from the University of British Columbia. Her area of research is in the performance and representation of identity in contemporary photography and art. She has worked for the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of York University, and for the National Archives of Canada. She currently resides in Toronto.