Mark Peckmezian’s Untitled (2010) and Abby McGuane’s Cave (2012)

Gallerists and curators are fond of declaring that someone is “ready” or “not ready” for a solo show. I find this to be a mostly imaginary benchmark, and not a particularly productive idea. It’s a little bit like having a job market with no entry-level positions. It puts emerging artists in a ludicrous straitjacket, and encourages a stagnant, over-cautious gallery scene. If a young artist has the wherewithal to put together a large and cohesive enough body of work to fill a gallery, then they’re ready to exhibit, and let the chips fall where they may.

For their end-of-summer show, O’Born Contemporary has paired its two newest artists — Abby McGuane and Mark Peckmezian — together for an exhibition called Two Day. The gallery statement is strange and vague, and seems to betray a kind of defensiveness, or, at the very least, a desire to head off critical discussion at the pass, by loosely conjuring certain spectres of critical theory on the one hand, and completely denying their application on the other. Of McGuane, we are referred to an “underlying gender philosophy” and are told no more about it; quite frankly, that phrase is so nebulous, I’m not even sure what it’s supposed to even mean. Of Peckmezian, the gallery statement declares that his “worldview is too young to be absorbed by contemporary art theory.” I can’t decide what this means, either; is the gallery trying to fetishize his youth or excuse it? Either way, it doesn’t do anyone any favours. Far from trumpeting its newest conscripts, the gallery’s statement — unintentionally, to be sure — has the unmistakable sound of hedging its bets.

Both McGuane and Peckmezian are very young artists, and their work in Two Day is, generally speaking,  nicely executed. While their “readiness” to show (whatever that might mean) isn’t in question, it is eminently clear that they (like any young artist) are at the beginning of a steep learning curve.

Both are photo-based, McGuane a little less literally than Peckmezian. She is a sculptor of sorts, whose practice (for the moment) revolves around elaborately installed photo-transfers and collage. She is mostly represented here by her photo-transfers: gritty, imposing things printed onto various kinds of fabric sheets, and hung from custom-made supports and frames. These works are warm and tactile, making the most of the grainy aesthetics of the Xerox source-images. They have a distinctly nouvelle-vague feel, a glamour redolent of ‘60s new-wave cinema. Some of them have a winning erotic mystery to them: in Rail, the image sits on the edge of recognition: is it a breast? Is it even a body part at all?

Her best work in the show is a collage, Study for Seated Figure: a dense layering of curved forms in greyscale. It is built from a series of dissonances: the visual slippage between the fold of a cloth and crevices of body parts, the soft slopes of the image versus the hard edges of the cut paper. Even its custom-made frame participates in this game of contrasts: some edges are softly rounded, others are at cold hard angles.

This intricate formal/material relationship makes it the most powerfully charged image of hers in the show, and unfortunately highlights its absence almost everywhere else. Her images might be evocative in a very general sense, but projecting a vague aura of cool isn’t really enough, and while touring the show, I began to get the sense that these images were chosen because of their glamourousness rather than any kind of personal communicative power. Likewise, their supports are extravagant, but contribute little to the work beyond decorative bombast.

Peckmezian is a photographer who works in the vernacular mode. He photographs his friends: days in the park, house parties, the goings-on and sexual shenanigans of the young, skinny and pretty. Most of the photographs are printed small, and he arranges them in variously framed clusters, constellations of images separated by vast fields of matting. The most interesting aspect of his photographic practice is his developing process. The images are printed onto any and every kind of paper: pristine glossy 8 x 10s sit next to old, discarded or torn paper. The use of the latter introduces a premature age to the look of the pictures, and the juxtaposition with the more polished prints introduces an ersatz archival element.

I was struck with a profound sense of deja-vu while looking at Peckmezian’s photographs, and the more I looked at his arrangements, the more they seemed like someone’s Tumblr blog; an anonymous conglomeration of rehashed images. This should not be: Peckmezian is creating autobiography, which should be by definition idiosyncratic. Peckmezian is a perfectly competent photographer, but what is most readily in evidence in his work is that he is both too much in thrall to his influences and not thoroughly enough aware of them. What is apparent is his love of the most current iteration of a photographic tradition as old as the handheld camera — there are shades of Ryan McGinley all over this work, and echoes of a host of other snapshot-aesthetic photographers — but what is missing is Peckmezian himself, and so, in the end, his work seems more pastiche than personal.

This is the essential weakness of the show: both artists are skilled image-makers, and neither has yet to implicate themselves significantly in their own work. This is, of course, the core of artistic growth and the meat of any artistic career. This is their first foray into the commercial gallery scene. And so, ultimately, where they are now is far less important than where they’ll be, and it wouldn’t surprise me if their next shows bear little resemblance to this one.

Two Day continues at O’Born Contemporary through August 25.

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Sholem Krishtalka is the Toronto Standard’s art critic.

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