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Art
Corby Cuff paintings at Havana are outstanding
By Kevin Potvin
Time spent staring here is well rewarded
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A genuine time-limited treat for the eyes and the mind is offered free of charge in the black-floored white-walled back room of Havana on Commercial Drive. Just walk past the “wait to be seated” sign, the expectant servers dressed in black and the short bar tucked on the side, and dive straight through to the gallery as though you’re headed to the washrooms, which are down a hall coming off another wall in the square room of the gallery.
Until they’re taken down, the 23 paintings by Corby Cuff, in a show he calls Below Surface Patterns, will set your mind racing. Twenty of the paintings are exactly the same size and oriented the same way, about two feet tall and suspiciously close to a phi ratio of that, wide.
Below one (which happens to be one of the them that doesn’t conform to the usual size), are listed on the wall itself nine names of accomplished artists in different fields who died prematurely at the apogee of their careers at the age of 27 or 28, including Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendri, Heath Ledger, Egon Schiele, and Fat Pat—whoever he or she is.
One painting, called Between Us, is a regular pattern a little distorted that appears to be some sort of chain link mesh, but immersed in water—the painting is mostly in shimmering aquamarine, azure and blue tones on a black background. Serotonin Release is another that is thoroughly patternistic and recreates, in red, orange and a discordant blue, a microscopic-like view of neuron webs, here and there out of focus.
But most are not patterns. Commercial Drive Jesus Figure (an inside joke for anyone who knows the street well enough) is pure blue except for what appear to be tears behind which something complicated involving black lines has been constructed. More clear is East Van Castle, a pure red painting again with an apparent tear in it, behind which is a squirrelly mess of every colour, possibly done in crayon, in the centre of which, and a bit overhung with lines like morning glory vine out of control, is a dark square-like doorway, behind which you can’t help imagining someone interesting lives.
The revealing tear-away behind a pure façade seems to be a theme of Cuff’s, most explicitly stated in the one painting that is widely different in size, called Underworld. There, an actual hole in the surface to another level behind the painting reveals an electronic circuit board, the only element in this entire collection that is not painted.
Probably the most haunting painting in this show, and maybe the only one that doesn’t give any pleasure, is a dark green and black composition called Church Without State. It’s abstract, and like others, gives the feeling of being under water. But there is the unmistakable visage of a military hat atop a squiggle of tightly-bound lines in which, stare into it enough, and a cold pupil-less eye and a teeth-clenched mouth emerge. The eye is dispassionate—this general’s only human quality is his apparent tiredness, probably from the routine of killing. There is an emptiness revealed between the brow and the edge of the cap, a hollow circle where the third eye would be. Above the bored general is what could be the only thing not green or black—the white thin outline of most of a Christian cross, possibly upside down and at a skewed angle.
It’s certainly not pleasant, but it’s the one I couldn’t stop staring at. This one makes abundantly clear that even in the two pictures that are imitative of children’s crayon works, this collection has a whole lot more going on in it than a first glance might tell.
It’s a very good show, one in which each piece is carefully selected and placed for its role in the whole. There is no paperwork telling us who Corby Cuff is, what he means, or how long these paintings will be here. And it’s not something the black cocktail dressed servers or the hipster behind the bar are likely to know either.
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The Republic of East Vancouver masthead
The Republic of East Vancouver supports no party, advocates
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