Reviewed by Matthew TenBruggencate (originally posted Jan. 7, 2014)
The fantastical battlescapes my friends and I scribbled on loose-leaf as early as the fifth grade went beyond killing time in redundant math classes. Even then, there was a vague awareness of attempts to express bewildering arrays of impulses, innate attractions to violence, stumbling sexual appetites, and mutating inner lives.
Jonathan Reid Sévigny’s sprawling Bosch-esque landscapes articulate the gauntlet of adolescence through his own particular experience, growing up gay in 1980/90’s Quebec. But there’s room for anyone who experienced teen trauma (who didn’t? who?) in the nymph-populated scenes, with text by Peter Dubé, that form the backbone of The Sweetsburg Archives.
This is the base collection of an artist who’s already made a name for himself on both coasts (Vancouver and New York), rooted in the intersection of gender identity and mainstream North American culture. It’s far from rough, exploratory work, though. Sévigny’s clean, sharp style reflects his years in animation studies. He’s mentioned a desire to strike out in less formulaic, edited work. The Sweetsburg Archives is a chance to see the starting point.
Drawing on video games, anime, northern Renaissance imagery and more, semi-rural Quebec scenes are filled with lithe young bodies – naked, if not hip or elaborately dressed – hunting, titillating or ignoring each other while mythical beasts, dinosaurs and animals (less parents) look on. Danger is omnipresent. The obvious acts of ultraviolence – decapitation, dismemberment, death by genital-gun – are everywhere, scaled to heights teens would consider barely appropriate to convey the horrors of pubescence, though forgetful adults may object. But there’s as much danger in the groping seductions, conducted in imagined privacy by inexperienced lovers: the danger of being caught by their contemporaries; the danger in the viewer’s gaze troubled by nude, sexually active children.
A few smaller scale scenes, documentation of live installations and individual character portraits (strongly reminiscent of traditional Japanese portraiture) round out the collection, the latter linked by both lurking shadows and unachievable physical perfection. The idealized form of a young, thin, clear skinned teen is a constant throughout Sévigny’s work and the only thing that rings hollow. Is this the artist’s or the media’s image of perfection being upheld? It’s not clear, though my own memories are mostly empty of these stick figures.
It’s a daring, dangerous, subversive collection. The hundred hidden narratives and minute details in the larger landscapes can easily stand up to repeat scrutiny, and nearly all of Sévigny’s work has emotional resonance to bring the viewer back.
And it’s fun, which may add to the horror of the more grisly pieces. But even the wracked battles of the dead and dying are, well, playful. Inventive, energized, defiant – it’s almost enough to make someone want to be young again. Almost. The decapitations are a helpful reminder.
Conundrum| 112 pages | $25.00 | paper | ISBN # 978-1-894994-73-6
‘The Sweetsburg Archives’ by Peter Dubé (author) and Jonathan Reid Sévigny (artist)
Book Reviews
The fantastical battlescapes my friends and I scribbled on loose-leaf as early as the fifth grade went beyond killing time in redundant math classes. Even then, there was a vague awareness of attempts to express bewildering arrays of impulses, innate attractions to violence, stumbling sexual appetites, and mutating inner lives.
Jonathan Reid Sévigny’s sprawling Bosch-esque landscapes articulate the gauntlet of adolescence through his own particular experience, growing up gay in 1980/90’s Quebec. But there’s room for anyone who experienced teen trauma (who didn’t? who?) in the nymph-populated scenes, with text by Peter Dubé, that form the backbone of The Sweetsburg Archives.
This is the base collection of an artist who’s already made a name for himself on both coasts (Vancouver and New York), rooted in the intersection of gender identity and mainstream North American culture. It’s far from rough, exploratory work, though. Sévigny’s clean, sharp style reflects his years in animation studies. He’s mentioned a desire to strike out in less formulaic, edited work. The Sweetsburg Archives is a chance to see the starting point.
Drawing on video games, anime, northern Renaissance imagery and more, semi-rural Quebec scenes are filled with lithe young bodies – naked, if not hip or elaborately dressed – hunting, titillating or ignoring each other while mythical beasts, dinosaurs and animals (less parents) look on. Danger is omnipresent. The obvious acts of ultraviolence – decapitation, dismemberment, death by genital-gun – are everywhere, scaled to heights teens would consider barely appropriate to convey the horrors of pubescence, though forgetful adults may object. But there’s as much danger in the groping seductions, conducted in imagined privacy by inexperienced lovers: the danger of being caught by their contemporaries; the danger in the viewer’s gaze troubled by nude, sexually active children.
A few smaller scale scenes, documentation of live installations and individual character portraits (strongly reminiscent of traditional Japanese portraiture) round out the collection, the latter linked by both lurking shadows and unachievable physical perfection. The idealized form of a young, thin, clear skinned teen is a constant throughout Sévigny’s work and the only thing that rings hollow. Is this the artist’s or the media’s image of perfection being upheld? It’s not clear, though my own memories are mostly empty of these stick figures.
It’s a daring, dangerous, subversive collection. The hundred hidden narratives and minute details in the larger landscapes can easily stand up to repeat scrutiny, and nearly all of Sévigny’s work has emotional resonance to bring the viewer back.
And it’s fun, which may add to the horror of the more grisly pieces. But even the wracked battles of the dead and dying are, well, playful. Inventive, energized, defiant – it’s almost enough to make someone want to be young again. Almost. The decapitations are a helpful reminder.
Conundrum| 112 pages | $25.00 | paper | ISBN # 978-1-894994-73-6