Ask the Dust was featured the vast and varied oeuvre of Canadian artists` collective The Royal Art Lodge. Set up in collaboration with The Drawing Center (New York), Plug In ICA (Winnipeg) and The PowerPlant (Toronto), Ask the Dust was De Vleeshal`s first international joint production.
Photo(s): Leo van Kampen
The Royal Art Lodge consists of six young artists, who all live and work in Winnipeg, Canada: Michael Dumontier (1974), Hollie Dzama (1984), Marcel Dzama (1974), Neil Farber (1975), Drue Langlois (1972) and Myles Langlois (1976). Along with former members Adrian Williams and Jonathan Pylypchuk, The Royal Art Lodge has produced a remarkably large body of work including drawings, sculptures, videos, puppets, music, costumes and dolls. Their low tech aesthetic and crude-yet-precise draughtsmanship, combined with a perversely idiosyncratic sense of humour, have resulted in an outpouring of unforgettable hybrid creatures, absurd commentaries on the human condition, and an art of dynamic energy, whimsical charm, and expressive beauty.
Inspired by the perils and paradoxes of real life and popular culture (film noir, television, science fiction, horror movies, and comic books) the drawings of The Royal Art Lodge constitute the core of their modus operandi. Since 1996, their weekly drawing sessions have informed and inspired each artist’s individual endeavours as well as spawning an interest in producing works in other media.
Ask the Dust featured collaborative and individual works on paper as well as new and sometimes three-dimensional manifestations of the creatures and characters originating in the drawings.
Ask the Dust was curated by Joseph R. Wolin, independent curator based in New York, and Wayne Baerwaldt, director of The PowerPlant in Toronto.
The international press on The Royal Art Lodge – Ask the Dust: – Blame Canada for what may be New York’s best group show this season. (Melissa Dunn & Charles Gute, Flash Art). – Lately there’s been much ballyhoo about youthquakes and craft. The quirky, homespun work in this wonderful show, by turns hilarious and sad, reveals what the fuss is about. (Steven Stern, The New Yorker.) – The Royal Art Lodge has a style, it combines the stream of copiousness of Borofsky, the ease of Sher, the darkness of Pettitbon, the cartoonishness of Crumb, and the humour of Wegman. (Jerry Saltz, The Village Voice.) – That’s another thing The Royal Art Lodge is: a micro-academy for the imaginative. (Alexander Mar, Time Out.)
