"Homes Become Hollows. Hollows Become Home.", 46 x 63 inches

Oceans Between Us
Adam Ogilvie
Josee Bienvenu Gallery
20 September - 27 October 2007

The geology of Adam Ogilvie's candy-pop colored landscapes is all marshmallow and lollipop, but a palpable unease pervades his work.  In "Wishes for a Wiser time," grey smoke puffs from a volcanic mountain into the pink sky; are these signs of impending eruption?  A parachute drops behind a broad hill in "Homes become Hollows, Hollows Become Home," the pilot unseen and unaccounted for; what has happened?  In "Fjord," fighter planes sit unattended on quiet plateaus; will they be manned and, if so, to what end?

The inhabitants of this anxiety-ridden world are "MOLEBEARBIRD - burrower, fighter, flyer and hibernator" and a cast of related characters wearing capes, dragging great rocks, and generally going about the business of the absurd. Ogilvie also includes in the exhibit cardboard-and-screw sculptures of these anthropomorphic creatures.  Removed from the context of the paintings, the blank-faced sculptures might read as ambivalent totems to our existential folly, but here these creatures appear hopeful, if pensive; they are determined to make the best of every rolling of the bones.  Like Camus's Sisyphus, "the struggle itself is enough to fill" these creatures' hearts.