What’s first striking about the work of local artist and A Separate Peace, and other bouquets curator Kegan McFadden is how ordinary the images selected for the sprawling title piece of the show are. A Separate Peace is a collection of 500 images of men facing away from the camera, caught in moments very different from the tragedy that popular media often associates with queer representation in art.
These snapshots could have come from any given day over the course of a relationship—which, of course, they did. McFadden screen-grabbed each one over the course of a year from Instagram; during that time, McFadden and his longtime lover decided to end their relationship.
“In the last year or so, I realized that that piece is actually a monument to my relationship that had ended after 20 years,” says McFadden, “and what I did over the last few years is write a long essay about what it was to leave each other after 20 years and how I was at the same time collecting images of what we no longer were, essentially.”
This testament to the impossibility of describing the breadth of a love that lasted decades surrounds gallery-goers: it’s 13 by 20 feet. The moments preserved in the images range from the banal to the bawdy, with family, friendships, and erotic love represented.
“What I wanted to do and what I always do as an artist is… just hold up a mirror to something that’s already taking place and kind of point to some activity there,” says McFadden. “What I love is every time I show this piece, there’s people that gravitate towards different parts of it.”
The show is intimate, although that intimacy is not limited to that shared between two lovers. McFadden explores the complexity of intimacy through the lens of seven meaningful relationships he has had with men over the course of his life, using his work to memorialize love past.
“Each piece is sort of an homage to a different man in my life,” says McFadden. “So, for example, there’s a quilt that I handstitched together of all these old T-shirts… It was a memorial for an uncle of mine that passed away in 2015.”
For McFadden, the relationships that give rise to his work don’t necessarily have to be long-lived. For example, one piece in the exhibit is a mirrored sculpture adorned with a bell, inspired by those acquaintances whose conversation intoxicates you into forgetting the world around you. McFadden describes these hypnotizing conversations as feeling like “masturbating in public”—which he has cheekily named the piece.
“The idea is that if you have self-pleasured that day, you’re welcome to ring the bell,” laughs McFadden.
In addition to his own work, McFadden has commissioned three writers to elaborate on the themes within the pieces; the latest addition is by renowned Canadian cultural critic Jeanne Randolph. These will be published in and other bouquets, and available from the show opening. To close out the show, McFadden has partnered with local publisher flask to present A Separate Peace in book form, along with his accompanying essay. A Separate Peace has also been made into a video, available on the Deluge website, with McFadden reading his essay as a “disembodied voice.”
This is the third and final time this set of work has been shown—it was up first in Edmonton, and later in Alma, Quebec. McFadden has elaborated on it each time, planting a garden of pansies for his mentor outside the gallery in Alberta and asking the children who attended the wintery Quebec show to draw flowers for him, which have now been made into a zine for this last presentation.
“It doesn’t always have to be fixed, which I think is also sort of a queer approach to artmaking in a way, where there can be room to go at it sideways, or upside down, or whatever,” he says. “As long as the idea is still being worked with—that’s the important thing.”
A Separate Peace, and other bouquets
Until Saturday, February 20
Free, Deluge Art Gallery
deluge.ca