BORN: MONTRÉAL
LIVES AND WORKS: MIAMI
Cerj Lalonde moves smoothly from the canvas to the camera, from computers to installations, producing and showcasing an extraordinarily rich and complex body of work created during the last 20 years. His purpose is to pursue a direct and, in each case, a different communication with the spectator..
Amalia Caputo
Black & white
photography::
Céline Blais
Contemporary Artist
His paintings, installations, photographs and web pages, are intended to
function each in its own way, as an overt revision and critique of the
contemporary art system, as they establish parallel dialogues between
the artist, the public, and the curatorial values.
Cerj Lalonde is an artist, and certainly not an ordinary one. He moves
smoothly from the canvas to the camera, from computers to installations,
producing and showcasing an extraordinarily rich and complex body of
work created during the last 20 years. His purpose is to pursue a
direct, and, in each case, a different communication with the spectator.
It can be said that Lalonde works as a team with himself, not only to
develop his artwork, but also to sharpen his personal ideas about
contemporary culture, trends, criticism and, more importantly, as a
critic to the art system’s meritocracy. Lalonde is putting a lot of
time, energy and thought into his new media and technology productive
structure, where he can directly address his issues, mainly those
regarding the art world.
Fine Art At its Best
Cerj Lalonde works his painting with a conceptual approach, as an
attempt to restate the validity of painting as a practice per-se. His
abstract language ranges from lyric abstractionist pieces to many
personal interpretations on art history masterpieces, as specific
reflections upon geometric abstract paintings like Malevich´s black
square series, or Albers study of color, among others.
Lalonde holds many layers as an artist. His years of experience as a
painter and thirst for art history and critique have helped him develop
into a consciously literate artist fine art at its best. Formally, his
domain of techniques ranges from drawing, printing, and primarily
acrylic painting by means of a wild contrasting palette. But more than
any type of formalism, Lalonde´s work is a strong statement about
painting itself and how he approaches abstraction from a conceptual
viewpoint. His paintings celebrate the power and meaning of color and
texture, the imperative voice of contrast and stridence, and the million
of possible solutions for a white canvas. I also see in his artwork a
psychoanalytical interpretation of art, and a curiously unintentional
approach to oriental philosophy appears throughout his multi sized body
of work.
In many of his canvas, the presence of the square has been integrated as
an element of equilibrium and unity to the soul of the artwork itself.
Lalonde is specifically interested in the qualities of painting as a
media: “What Painting and only Painting can do”. Of all arts, painting
is perhaps the most intimate and personal of art languages. It reaches
the viewer at a last phase, in the gallery, or museum, or exhibition
space.
In the meanwhile, there is a time frame between the moment when the
artist finishes his work and it gets shown. This space of time is
silence. It can be said that the gap between the act of painting and its
way out of the studio has had Lalonde wondering about other strategies
of approaching the viewer, the critic, and to challenge the art world as
a system.
In his body of work related to the Internet, the use of language can be
established as the first notable addition where the silent scream that
comes from his paintings invades the screen and transforms it into
words. We can feel the imperative urge to communicate. Lalonde addresses
everyone and no one, and a certain/uncertain dialogue is established
between him and the anonymous viewer/Web surfer/browser who reads it.
Lalonde has produced multiple web sites My Art Basel Miami
Beach(www.myartbaselmiamibeach.com / www.hirokomusic.com). With this
media, he has taken over a physical/nonphysical space to express his
ideas about the act of seeing, of looking, and getting intoxicated by
the gaze, by the sight, by the cognitive look, and the subjective one.
Another interesting aspect is the inclusion of his images as an artist
in several ways. For example, in SELF PORTRAIT AS A FAMOUS ARTIST he
presents himself in all the archetypical attire of the romanticized
representation of the artist. Lalonde has reverted all his irony and
sarcasm as images that appear as brushstrokes on his Web sites. Another
image that frequently appears is the sweet face of a very young woman,
who looks at the browser with sweetness and nostalgia. As websites are
build through layers, Lalonde has as well, constructed layers of impact,
thought, and reflection, by means of the multiplicity of images that
appear, ranging from his own paintings, installations, portraits, and
text.
He is interested in what defines art, who validates artwork, how
artist’s success has a strong pull to media and critic dependency.
Lalonde points out these issues as loud as a silent scream. Phrases such
as the Dominance of Curatorial Ideology, Global Mono Cultural Art
Discourse or Hegemony of the Global Curatorial Class are samples of
titles that frame parts of his Web visual discourses.
In his installations and performances such as THE NO SHOW, and WORKING
TO BECOME RICH AND FAMOUS SO YOU CAN LOVE ME FOREVER, Lalonde discusses
the notion of the self and identity, the artist as a social figure, and
the severe critique of the contemporary art system, and society at
large. He questions the validity and the ideology of the curatorial
establishment, the marketing methods, and the issues of the self - as he
queries the conventional paradigm of the artist.
On his Web pages, Lalonde metamorphoses from an anonymous painter in his
studio to a more public personae. His gaze looks at the viewer, his open
mouth screams and questions the browser constantly, sometimes as an
outsider and sometimes from the hypothetical voice of the viewer’s
conscience.
In SEEING, a photographic installation that can be considered as a
milestone in his work, he presents a dark room that has many different
sized eyes that are looking at the viewer. An interesting aspect of
Lalonde’s digital work is the presence of a perpetual reflection that
not only shows the act of seeing itself, but in a more profound way it
presents the subconscious mind of the viewer. He inverts his role of an
artist and establishes a dialogue with the unconscious of the spectator,
both through his installations and digital art work. He talks directly
from the anonymity of the Internet to the subconscious of the viewer
with phrases like HI!, WHERE ARE YOU? Or I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW YOU.
Lalonde suggests a dialogue of affection and proximity with the
anonymous viewer. He cries out for attention, asks questions, and asks
for small reflections to be answered silently by the person who is on
the other side of the computer, establishing a metaphor for the notion
of the multiplicity of the self. But above all, the artist states that
communication as art is always subjective.
Last but not least, we should briefly acknowledge Lalonde´s work in
public places, within the streets of Miami’s main art areas, mainly the
Wynwood and Design Districts. Lalonde has taken over the front of
galleries, sidewalks, and walls with the graffiti ://eye_luv-you:)), the
eye installation WHO IS LOOKING AT WHO and the FREE sign.
These street interventions are a courageous attempt of blasting
pedestrians’ consciousness to an impermanent moment of reflection. By
this strategy, he is inserting human condition to human creation,
relating in a logical discourse; human being makes art, human being sees
art, therefore, art sees us, and art is human. Why does he do it? Who is
it addressed to? The probable answer is to all of us and to him. Cerj
Lalonde has decidedly captured a huge space of silence that historically
has isolated the artist from the spectator of the artwork. As silent as
painting itself can be, it is as loud as his digital work and public
space interventions are.
It would not be fair to separate all these different facets as an
artist, as if we were speaking of different persons. Lalonde´s whole
body of work is connected through formal elements that appear in any
media he uses. The square, for example, is an important image, as well
as the silhouetted eye that appears in paintings, installations,
graphics, and throughout his Web pages. Lalonde formally uses certain
elements as creating a personal specific language that conveys
additional meaning to every art piece he develops.
The artist is interested in the notion of the spectator, in conveying
messages to the unconscious in a psychoanalytical way, whether it is in
painting or in the direct phrases he lets go by browsing through his web
pages. Does he expect answers from us? Is he angry? Is he talking to us?
Is he looking at me? Is he really talking to me? Can he see me? These
are questions that rise once we know his work.
As stated before, Lalonde points out the silence, the introspection.
Furthermore his work comprises a wide variety of forms and media and has
articulated a strong and powerful aesthetic research on the many issues
of art itself, its appreciation, circulation, diffusion and agendas as
well as the non-communication that exists nowadays, not only in the art
world but also in general. He wants to make a difference, a statement to
contemporary numbness. Against all odds, he is decidedly willing to be
understood, to be looked at, and to be heard.
Amalia Caputo
About the author.
Amalia Caputo is a contributor to the publications Extracamara Magazine,
Caracas and Arte Al Dia International, Miami. She was born in
Caracas,Venezuela. She holds a Bachelor of Art and Art History from the
Universidad Central de Venezuela, where she graduated with honors in
1988. In 1995 she received a Master of Arts in Photography at New York
University and the International Center of Photography. Her work has
been exhibited in museums and galleries in Caracas, Barcelona, Mexico
City, New York and Miami. She lives and works in Miami, Florida.
"Although a diligent experimenter that also applies a complex assortment of mediums (photography, video, installation, performance, digital work), Cerj Lalonde remains above all an extraordinary painter.
We can also view his splendid multimedia presentations of the nineteen-eighties that persistently summons the primitivism-alchemy of a Beuys as much as the “black hole” of electronic images by Nam June Paik."
*Antonina Zaru is an Italian curator and art critic who has organized several exhibitions and retrospectives (from Miro and Magritte to Richard Serra and Nam June Paik) in Museums around the world (New York, Washington, Tokyo, Basel, Austria, Spain, Korea, Rome, Milan, Venice). She is a regulator contributor on art for several art journals and catalogues.
