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Paulette Phillips at Diaz Contemporary (Toronto) by Dan Adler Paulette Phillips’s first solo show at Diaz was spare—consisting of a sculpture and a flat-panel monitor both installed on the gallery walls. Made of electronic components and multi-colored wiring, the sculpture, Home Wrecker I (2005), had been meticulously engineered to serve a single absurd purpose: a white chiffon scarf is held in midair just below the device by means of a magnetic field. Hovering at eye level, kerchief delicately drapes down from its center like a child’s notion of a ghost. It often sways when observers move or pass by. The downward cascade of the suspended scarf was echoed by the rushing water of Niagara Falls in the looping video Monster Tree (2006). A Toronto-based artist, Phillips is known for film and video installations that create tension between idyllic landscape settings and sinister or subversive suggestions. In Monster Tree, the camera moves from lush views of waterfalls and moss-covered rocks shrouded in mist to tourists on the bustling thoroughfare that overlooks the water. The focus on the honeymooners in horse-drawn carriages inevitably brings up the theme of nature as commercial spectacle. Beyond that rather familiar observation, a sound track of ominous, heavy breathing plays throughout the video, evoking uneasy and perverse connotations of voyeurism or predation. Eventually the camera pans slowly to the trees in
the foreground that frame the vigorously flowing water in the distance.
The artist closes in on the trunk of an immense tree with a large
burl jutting out. The malformation looks remarkably like a pigs
head; a snout and two dark hollows suggesting eyes. The breathing
noise becomes a louder growl; then, suddenly, moving eyeballs appear
in the hollows of the facelike deformity. A creature it appears,
resides within. This presence strikes a grotesque note that leads
to thoughts about the perverse ways we frame nature in our society.
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