'close your eyes' a fine arts show

'Close Your Eyes' an exhibition of works by Sophie Jodoin. Showing at the Richmond Art Gallery until August 26, 2012.


   A bird lies dead on the ground.
   Three possibly amputated arms stand side by side.
    A young girl with no head or arms swirls a hoola hoop, while two heads whirl around  her.
    These are three of the many images in Sophie Jordan's lateset show at the Richmond Art Gallery on Minoru Gate. "She's a connoiseur of pain," says art critic James D. Campbell of Jodoin, "and we are unwilling voyeurs."
     Jodoin was born in Montreal in 1965. She studied at Concordia University  in Montreal. And her works are  found in many private and public art collections.
     At the Richmond Art Gallery her display falls into five parts. First off, over 70 small drawings are hung vertically in rows of three.The second part shows five burned houses. Then comes five big pictures of people from the back. These life-sized drawings show us only the top half of the people. Then four black tables form a rectangle and on each table, behing glass tops are four or five small images picked up from the street.
     Last, a video in a small side room gives us Jodoin, a thin green eyed forty seven year old, talking about her work.
    The small drawings of over 70 pictures stand at the heart of this display so I'll focus on them.
      "My images are taken from the Internet, magazines" and other places, says Jodoin. But Jodoin cuts up these images up and transforms them into something else. Then she draws these new figues in mostly charcoal on mylar.
    The drawings are tiny. Jodoin draws in black and white with no backgrounds to distract the viewer and no color either which can also distract spectators.
    Many of these tiny images are masked or wrapped in cloth. But the figures are also wrapped in pain. A dog with a head in bandages stands in a tiny frame. A masked child sits on something, but he or she has lost part of  his or her right leg. A kitten dangles from a hand held rope, with a hook in its neck.
    "You can't cloe your eyes to the pain," Jodoin says in the video. In Jodoin's show, you certainly can't close your eyes to it. But in the world outside, thankfully you can.
     I stumbled out of the gallery into blazing warm sunshine. Children at a nearby summer camp scampered around, played tricks on their instructors and chattered away, oblivious to old men and young female counsellors.This scene was a long way from the world of Jodoin.
    Sophie Jodoin is a powerful artist. But like Goya's 'Diasters of War' or Don McCullin's great war photos, her show only gives us one part of the world's truths. Yet you cab't deny her talent . Her tiny drawings do show her talent.