“UNTIL THE LAKE FROZE SOLID” BY TARA COOPER RUNS TO SEP 28. THU-SUN NOON-5PM. LENNOX CONTEMPORARY, 12 OSSINGTON. 416-924-7964.
WWW.LENNOXCONTEMPORARY.COM.
Has the idea of the North in Canadian art ever reached its logical end point: i.e., becoming not only a space for existential contemplation (of loneliness, of longing, of desperation) but also one of foreboding — something only the gutsiest of creators dare take on? Not quite, implies multimedia artist Tara Cooper in her new exhibit. For Cooper, the North is remarkably easy to infiltrate. A February drive to Lake Scugog near Port Perry brings her to an environment that, visually and elementally, recalls the Arctic, and that is ripe for recording. This, it seems, is a key attribute of our geographical mythology: the cold land is open, indifferent, a space to which we might flee, but never really want to.
Thus in Cooper’s titular, three-channel video piece it appears as if she is on a bare stage. This setting, inevitably, leads to actions that resemble, both intentionally and unintentionally, hijinks. In the piece’s comic climax, she shovels clear a circle of snow on the ice and skates within it, like she’s Chaplin or something. Cooper is exploiting her artistic flakiness and, yes, her girliness here: this is a man’s-man world (at one point she holds a bag of sperm-like minnows), but she can still perform in it, still record it. The irony is not subversive, however; her joking is as dry and elusive as the environment that becomes its butt.