Sex and sexuality

Show exploring masculinity fails to pack a meaningful punch

Artist Jacqueline Collomb poses in front of a woodcut titled “Gas Mask.”
Image by: Joshua Chan
Artist Jacqueline Collomb poses in front of a woodcut titled “Gas Mask.”

As a generation largely preoccupied with both the understanding and fluidity of gender there’s no lack of commentary to be found on the status and crisis of masculinity in today’s fractured world.

In the midst of these cultural offerings, it becomes hard to locate the truly unique perspectives among those simply reinforcing a distinct gender binary.

Shooting Blanks, on exhibit at the Union Gallery, chooses to wrestle with the complexities of defining a masculine identity in both military and everyday life. Artists Jacqueline Collomb and Jon Stamp, both BFA ’08, joined creative forces last year because they saw a common thread in the focus of their work.

“We feel like we had a common link with asking questions about the ideas of masculinity,” Stamp said. “Jacqueline tends to focus on the more global aspects of masculinity in relation to war, while I look at the personal and physical responses.”

Collomb said the title of the exhibit came from Stamp and was appropriate to highlight both a feeling of emasculation and the futility of everyday people in the face of the war in Afghanistan.

“It corresponded to our work, and for me applied to militarism in how shooting a blank has no real effect physically. No harm will come.” she said. “It questions what our role is, and is it worth it to be involved.”

Collomb and Stamp believe in a certain futility in both war and culture.

“There are grey lines of culture and identity. I really have no answers about these things,” Stamp said.

Stamp’s affinity for video art led him to create several pieces in which he performs commonplace rituals such as sleeping, or eating a cheeseburger and then weighing himself.

In one piece entitled “Crying,” a video screen showing Stamp sitting at home screwing up his face in a painfully unconvincing emotional cry is set atop a workout bench surrounded with weights. Stamp hopes the piece will generate alternative ways of envisioning masculinity.

“It juxtaposes the gym atmosphere with crying and looks at the set of rules in a gym that men undergo like no eye contact and very little talking,” he said.

“Maybe both of these things are masculine. Why can’t they be?”

Though the intent of the piece is applaudable, it loses its potency when Stamp can’t shed more than a single tear in the video.

His further confession that it took almost 25 minutes of recalling sad moments and listening to Beethoven to conjure up one paltry drop of emotion leads one to question whether the traditional facade of masculinity really can be broken down, or if such an artistic exploration is futile when the artist is only marginally associated with the sentiment he wishes to assert.

Despite this setback, Stamp’s art does raise important issues with how men internalize their masculinity.

In “Dreaming” he films himself sleeping and layers the soundtrack with noises from a porn film to provocatively question the shape and sound of male desire, while taking issue with what authenticates these expressions.

“I’ve never had a sexually explicit dream. Porn itself isn’t real, but it’s shown as male fantasy,” he said.

Collomb’s work, on the other hand, uses military culture to examine the uniformity created by masculinity. Her piece “O Afghanistan We Stand on Guard For Thee” consists of 75 silhouette prints of Canadian soldiers with dates stamped below their heads to indicate the day they died in combat.

“After hearing the statistics of how many Canadians had died I was left with the idea of the military as a faceless collective because we don’t share a personal connection with these individuals,” Collomb said.

“I wanted to contrast this uniformity with the uniqueness of paper making, which is something I tried for this piece.”

Interestingly, amongst the iconic images of the Canadian soldiers there’s only one woman, offering up a strong visual display of the kind of overt masculinity associated with military life and death.

“Gas Mask,” a large woodcut of two looming, four by four foot gas masks, adds to the iconic nature and thematic presence of masculine identity being subsumed by representations of militaristic violence. Yet, the aesthetic intensity of the piece tends to overwhelm its connections to masculine identity and largely obscures its standpoint.

Collomb’s work is visually stunning, but it fails to move far beyond an aesthetic facade to be deeply disruptive or significantly break down Western conceptions of militarized masculinity.

Though Shooting Blanks attempts to present an alternative to traditional gender roles, it lacks the sincerity to place these possibilities outside of a traditional masculine viewpoint. Shooting Blanks could have the power to pack a large punch, but ultimately leaves you feeling empty and lost in the futile nature of defining gender identity.

Shooting Blanks is on display at the Union Gallery until Feb. 5. A reception will be held at the gallery at 6 p.m. on Saturday.

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