"THE UNVEILING"Monday, Oct. 26, 2009, 10pm (don't be late as we are rarely very tardy)
The Ossington (61 Ossington Street, Toronto)
Free admission
"Unveiling #1"
Hosts Robert Dayton, Junior and William A. Davison dramatically unveil the latest and never-before-seen (until this very eve) creation of artist and musician Drue Langlois!
Then they will be auctioning off this masterpiece with minimum bid starting at just 50 dollars !!! A low price for this amazing work by this important artist...
This will be followed by a soiree/party
ONE-NIGHT-ONLY! So if you want to bid and possibly attain this never-before-seen stunning curiousity, you best attend! Even if you are broke like us, you do not want to miss this opportunity of UNVEILING (and we-as the only eyes besides the artist that have seen this work- guarantee that this work is amazing....)
"The Unveiling" is a new series of one-night-only soirees/exhibitions, held monthly (more or less) in the back room of The Ossington Bar, which playfully reinvent a romantic and antiquated concept - that of a single artist "unveiling" their latest creation for a gathering of colleagues, collectors, critics, and cultural elite. The series is organized and hosted by local artists/curators William A. Davison and Robert Dayton.
The series kicks off on Oct. 26th as "Unveiling #1" presents the latest soft sculpture/doll creation of artist, comics creator, animator, musician and former Royal Art Lodge member Drue Langlois. Please note that the artist will not be present at this unveiling. However, Mr. Langlois has given the organizers explicit instructions on how to present his work, which Messrs. Dayton and Davison will execute in their own inimitable style.
DRUE LANGLOIS ARTIST STATEMENT:
"Compare an early drawing of Goofy (from "Lonesome Ghosts" let’s say) to the dog from "Family Guy". Do you believe that Brian Griffin is a living creature or do you imagine, like I do, a bored person drawing a flat, uninspired drawing on a computer and someone recording dialogue in a sound booth? Since the style is so unconvincing, I wouldn't feel anything if the character was suddenly stabbed by someone. In Lonesome Ghosts, the forms and environments are vividly convincing, so that by the time Goofy sees his rear end and, thinking it is a ghost, shoves a nail into it, you can really feel that he is in a lot of pain.
Pre-70's Disney animation was my first exposure to art at an early age. Goofy's complicated snout (with two chiclet teeth) intrigued me and I worked hard to learn how to draw it. Although not clearly defined in my own mind at the time, I could see that this company's principles on character design (and how important they considered structure to be) were superior to the flat design techniques of other cartoon companies from the 70's onwards.
I have studied the application of form for many years and it makes its’ way into my illustrations and dolls. I am surprised that I do not see it being used by people more often. Flat, decorative character styles in artwork and toy design are stale, like wallpaper. Personally, my eye just passes right over this style, no matter how garish they make the colours.
A love for structural principles is not necessarily a witless nostalgia for a certain time period, they just happened to have been applied more in the past. Realistically sculptured designs and an understanding of perspective appeal to the parts of your mind that want to feel how the parts fit together, or that help you imagine being in the character's environment. These things can be applied to new projects to make people really feel the nail in the ass."
DRUE LANGLOIS BIO:
"I have been making artwork since I was very young, being inspired by pre-70's Disney animation. The cartoons led me to an interest in comic books. Starting off with Disney comics and "Harvey" books like "Spooky, the tuff little ghost", I was eventually drawn more and more toward detail and human characters.
My first art-related job was making cartoons for a local paper when I was 12. Between 1987 and 1995, I started drawing human super-hero stories that were rigid and cluttered at first eventually becoming more graceful. This was soon followed by enrollment in a Fine Arts course at the University of Manitoba (1992-1996). My brother Myles Langlois was experimenting with video during this time period and I started working on those with him.
1995 was the beginning of my musical collaborations with Myles and then, later in the year, with Michael Dumontier. This early lo-fi music, mostly acoustic guitar and singing, was recorded on a dual cassette recorder that could be used to overlap layers of sound.
In early 1996, some University of Manitoba Fine Arts students and I formed a drawing group called the "Royal Art Lodge". We also made a lot of music: Avignon, Albatross, No Pirates, and Eyeball Hurt and the Medicine (later, Double Greeting) were some of the Royal Art Lodge bands that I was involved in.
Eyeball Hurt and the Medicine (my band with Michael Dumontier) started playing shows in 1997 and we wanted to have some attractive band merchandise so we sold our homemade dolls under the band's name. These dolls were based on one that I had made for Michael as a gift in 1994.
The assembly-line style of making Royal Art Lodge drawings helped me to become prolific but the structure of my drawings began to suffer. So, semi-consciously, to ensure that I didn't become too lazy about my principles in form, I started to work on small comic books again in 1999, and independently distributing them under the banner of "Samuel Appleface Comics".
The Samuel Appleface comics, in conjunction with RAL art and music shows in Vancouver, led me to a deep involvement in zine culture for a number of years. Marc Bell, Amy Lockhart, Jason McLean, Broken Pencil Magazine, Robert Dayton, and Dame Darcy were a few of the people I worked with during those years.
Around the same time, I was becoming more successful with my solo art career and was represented by Richard Heller Gallery in Santa Monica, CA. Also, the dolls that Michael and I had been making were selling really well and our band started playing music shows at art gallery openings more often than bars. I switched representation to Katharine Mulherin of Toronto and have had regular shows since then.
In 2003, The Royal Art Lodge had a touring exhibit called "Ask the Dust" that went to New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, Middleburg Netherlands, and Seoul Korea. I became more interested in my solo career and left the group around this time, as did Hollie Dzama and Myles Langlois. Simultaneously, Michael and I decided to stop making the "Eyeball Hurt" dolls.
In 2003-04, I continued to have solo exhibitions in Germany, Italy and Canada and I illustrated the comic book miniseries, "Captain Canuck: Unholy War". I had a show at Zeihersmith gallery in New York where I exhibited solo dolls and since then I have been making small batches of them every few months.
In 2005, I formed a new band (after moving to Montreal) called "Bold Saber" and started playing and practicing music more than ever before. In that same year, Riel Langlois and I formed the "Hot Hail Productions" company publishing a compilation of my Protoprize comics. This was followed in 2007 by "Overachiever" and a concluding chapter to the Captain Canuck miniseries.
In 2008 I holed up in Brandon, MB, working at a greenhouse, and studying animation- illustrating webisodes of the animated space opera, "Superspace" for Hot Hail. I moved to Toronto that fall and put on a few Bold Saber shows, as well as one in Chicago to coincide with a large showing of dolls at the "Home gallery".
As of 2009, Hot Hail presents weekly web comics. My newest one is "Pools of Zara", which is an ongoing story presented in a weekly punchline format.
For further information, feel free to contact The Unveiling's hosts William A. Davison and Robert Dayton.
William - davison@recordism.com
Robert - moustachedpainless@yahoo.com
Many thanks to Jubal Brown/Intervention Mondays and The Ossington!
