Patrick Berube at Skol

Patrick Berube, a young artist from Montreal, has recently shown his site-specific installations in Canada, Mexico and Argentina. He borrows from the traditions of Conceptual art. When first entering the gallery, the viewer encountered a Michael Asher installation reincarnate: the only object in the empty space appeared to be the reception desk. But in fact, there was more--the rest of Berube's installation was hidden behind a row of five closed doors along the right-hand side of the gallery, each opening into a small room. The title of the exhibition, "Embarras/D6barras" (Embarrassment/Storage Closet), alludes to the experience of the viewer: he or she had to brazenly investigate the gallery in atypical ways in order to uncover the work and was often rewarded with a "joke," usually at his or her expense.

For example, the first room contained a stack of three cardboard boxes. Placed on the top box was a hammer. Behind the boxes, a large photograph of a storeroom was hung on the wall, except that it was missing a nail in the right-hand corner. The viewer was all but invited to finish hanging the picture with the nail that was sitting inside a recessed compartment in the box--but the catch was that the nail was a hologram. The room also contained an electronic keyboard that was "played" by a support beam that pressed down on the keys, creating an eerie hum that could be heard throughout the gallery.

Behind door number two, the viewer encountered a heavily laden shelf and a projected video, triggered by the opening of the door, of falling objects (toys, boxes, unused stretcher bars) that seem to tumble from the ceiling toward the unsuspecting viewer. Behind the third door, stacked on a shelf, were various objects one would expect to find in a gallery storeroom, and leaning against the wall was a photograph of a woman with a giant helium balloon tied to her shirt. The shelf and objects behind door number four seemed identical at first to those in room three. But the difference was soon evident--in this case, it was a man in the photograph.

In the final room, one could see a platform on which sat a mischievously placed stuffed rat. Installed at baseboard level was a miniature closet crammed full of Lilliputian articles identical to those in the other three, human-sized closets. B6rube's theatrical space ended with a set of shelves that held various toys, including a "levitating" yellow Volkswagen Beetle that spun above the shelf, presumably with the assistance of magnets. The often dry and overly intellectualized genre of conceptual art is reinvigorated by Berube, who invites the audience to literally (and often uncomfortably) participate in creating meaning within the work.

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