A Conversation with Artist Hugh Campbell Bisset

A Dumb Swan installation
July 7 - July 31, 2010
Peak Gallery
 

Can you talk a bit about the paintings you're doing now?

Well, paintings and sculptures...

I got a great piece of advice a while back, from a co-director of one of the galleries here in Toronto. She came in to my studio two years ago and said, "the paintings are good, sculptures are great.  Do you want your paintings to be great?".  She told me that I had to bring the paintings in line with the sculptures, and vice versa, that they had to be cohesive and click.  At first I found that to be extraordinarily difficult because I wanted my paintings to be something completely different from the sculptural work, because I wanted the break.  I wanted different things.  But she could not have been more right.  The paintings have improved my sculptural work and the sculptural work has improved the paintings.  And of course the foundation of everything is my drawings.

A bit of background...

I come from an experimental film background. I started my practice, as a painter, in 1989 and I did my first self financed and self curated exhibit in 1991. I have continued since then, with only one serious break - family reasons. I have slowly developed my drawing and sculpture and have fully incorporated both into my practice over the last five years. Also, I benifited greatly from getting to live in both New York and London for a few years. I spent a lot of time absorbing a lot of great art. Since returning to Toronto, I have been really lucky to meet and get to know a lot of solid artists, like Anna Pantchev and Andrew Morrow. 

Last time we spoke we were talking briefly about artists who create for themselves...

I think it's important to any good gallerist that an artist you create the work, and it is what it is for you, in terms of content, and style. Once your work is done and complete, it has nothing to do with the artist anymore. Nothing. Whatever the work was to the artist, that becomes negated, and of the least importance.  It's like letting go of your ego, in a very real way.

So that the focus is on the art?

But even more importantly the interaction between the person viewing the work, and the art.  That's what the art's there for.  The art is almost immaterial in a sense, it's the viewer that's really the important thing.  I come out of a film background, albeit experimental film, so I'm maybe overly audience or viewer-friendly as an artist but I think that's a strength.  It makes my life easier as well.  It's done, let go of it.  It doesn't mean I don't keep thinking about the work, it doesn't mean I don't continue to have a relationship with the work.  I continue to have a relationship with a piece of work over time myself, but again that's irrelevant, that's just for me.  And then of course you get to the problem of writing an artist statement.  That runs completely contrary and anti-ethical to what I was just saying, yet gallerists and everybody want to see an artist statement.  Yet I don't want to get between the work and the viewer, and that's exactly what an artist statement does.

Your artist statement is pretty ambiguous...

Frankly I just want artist statements to just be a joke.  I think they're funny, so why not make them funny?

The more serious-sounding the are, the funnier they are...

But of course you need it if we're taking about adding monetary value to a work?

That's a consideration, I don't mind admitting that.  It's not cool to talk about this, but I'm pretty mercenary when it comes to trying to sell, when it comes to the politics of various galleries, approaching collectors.  I've put on a lot of my own shows, with money right out of my own pocket, I rented space.  I started my practice in 1989, and then I put on my first show - self produced, self-financed, self-curated.  My sister helped me and some friends helped me with the lighting, but I didn't realize that I could actually approach a gallery.  It did not occur to me that that was possible.  But there were a lot less galleries back then, and there were seemingly a lot less artists.

Can you talk a little about your Plexiglas sculptural work?

These two sculptures here in the studio are on Plexiglas, which is what I work from. Then it's painted with a clear gesso, and then the oil paint is applied very thinly to the surface.  I'm very pleased with them. They were a lot of fun.  When it comes time for the sculptures to be cut in metal, my "laser-jockey" - he's literally a physicist - he tells me what can stay and what has to go.  I have to make the decision of what to let go, or whether to wait until it can be done as a large steel or corian piece.  With corian you can get more detail with the laser.

The sculptural work is especially nature-influenced. 

Especially the sculptural work.  The paintings flit between a certain implication of something man-made versus the implication of something natural, and hopefully a fair bit of grey area.  I think the work is most interesting and best when you have those two different things.  And also when you get into some ambiguity about what's what - where does the man-made start and end, and where does the more natural start and end, which has a lot to do with living in the city.  A lot of artists have these concerns and thoughts, when you live in an urban environment, especially a wonderful city like Toronto, where there is a certain amount of nature.

Who are your influences with the work you're doing now?

I am currently very inspired by both Urs Fischer and Valerie Blass. I admire their particular use of humour, their restlessness and obvious intellect. Urs Fischer does this really adventuresome, open, free and incredibly giving work, and it's often brutally funny to boot too.  And just that rock n' roll spirit of I'm doing this to get myself off, I hope you like it too attitude, that spirit has deeply influenced what I'm doing too. In terms of whom I think of as an influence, I'd say Jean Arp, Sorel Etrog and Roberto Matta. The art produced by ancient and "primitive" cultures means a lot to me as well. It's a very tricky question to answer because influences change by the day and with mood.

No matter what format content is presented in, whether it's film or music, sculpture or a comic book, if the content and visual style catches you, you go with it.  I've actually been thinking about this a lot lately, and I think that format is secondary.  Art is conceptual.  You have certain skill sets and you present your ideas through those skill sets you've acquired.

The format chosen is really just something you grew up with, or your preference...

Something you were exposed to early in life, something you feel comfortable with.  Let's say you're a painter/sculptor and you don't perceive yourself to be particularly musical.  You've produced a lot of solid sculptures and paintings, for 10, 15, or 20 years.  I think an awful lot of those kinds of artists could pull off half-decent music, and vice versa. I think a musician who has written and conceived of some really great music, whether it's rock, chamber music, or jazz - could probably churn out a pretty damn good show of paintings.  It's the mind-set.

When I'm here at the studio more often than not I have music going in my studio. Sometimes I need periods of silence. But I've been listening to a lot of instrumental music.  There's certain things that have lyrics, vocals, that have a certain mood and I want to get somewhere quick.  It's a cheat, in a way, if you want to get somewhere psychologically or emotionally quicker.  I think my work's a little better when it's self-generated, when I really make it myself get there with a limited amount of outside stimulus, when I just pull it out from within myself.

So that you're creating from that intuitive part of you..

Everything, the work becomes purely intuitive, and all technical considerations - colour, form, aerial perspective - those get completely sublimated, they just go to your subconscious.  Funny enough, those intuitive decisions are the best and always better technically.  Almost always.  

The beautiful thing about abstraction is that a piece can be a few different things to me while I'm making it and it can be one thing or many things to you.  I haven't seen a lot of work that does this, but I would love to emulate work that when you see it you think what on Earth is that? And you have to resolve it for yourself.  It's this innate human need to discern pattern.  There's a much deeper psychology to it than just labeling something. We're attuned to finding food, in a natural environment where maybe the food does not want to be found.  We have this deep need to discern pattern and figure out exactly what everything is.  It's deeply tied in with our drive to survive.  So if any artist can tap into that really raw, basic questioning that's genetically ingrained in us - I would really like to have my work get deeper and deeper into that.  To really intrigue, delight people, and even startle them.