By Matthew Ryan Smith

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When speaking with Joseph Sanchez it is French mental health facility treating clear that he thinks deeply about how his patients with “shell shock,” among other paintings play with light. But, as it conditions). While this is a broad happens, he often finds himself painting in definition of the kind of “waking state”ii the dark. In traces of ambient light, he is that Breton sought to delegitimize, it able to distance himself from the world of correctly applies to the way that Sanchez’s corporeal objects and embrace the drift of paintings attempt to reconcile time. All this to activate the unconscious spontaneous gesture with his singular inklings of his hand and its sudden worldview. As such, they rigorously map movements. The results last only a few his connectivity to time and place and minutes, rarely over an hour, but people, his unanimity with the land of the sometimes no more than fifteen. Upon Americas, and his sanguine competition, these painted archives of communication with the spiritual world. “I spontaneous gesture are then revisited use the word ‘spiritual,’” he writes, “to the following day in his studio, namely as describe those things that aren't tangible an opportunity to reflect upon what to us but we know that are there […] My happened and make sense of it, both paintings are windows to other aesthetically and spiritually. If adjustments .”iii They also show, in an are needed, they are usually done so using uncompromising way, that the subliminal chiaroscuro, the old European technique minutiae of everyday life is worth of manipulating light to create the communicating. perception of depth. We know from Seventh Generation Baby (2019) and science that light is comprised of photons its sister painting, Ancestors Talking that behave like a wave. The undulation of (2019), are produced around the same these waves is merely an expression of during his 2019 studio residency at energy and they vibrate across the surface Portage College in Lac La Biche, Alberta. of Sanchez’s paintings. The similarities between them are In his manifesto on Surrealism, somewhat conspicuous and inscribed André Breton cautions that “experience across their lurid surfaces. Peering in, itself has found itself increasingly looking closely, Sanchez’s brushwork circumscribed.”i His words insinuate that imitates the howl of wind. We stumble the phenomenology of daily experience, of across silhouettes, objects, and spirits being in the world and finding oneself oscillating amongst sweeping black lines among it, is measured by logic and and twisting forms. The works apply a rationality. (Breton’s proposal appears less tripartite colour palette of softened reds, than a decade after the start of the First blues, and yellows, the groundwork of all World War, during which he worked in a colour theory, in fact, and which harken back to the Modernist tradition of

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Seventh Generation Baby (2019)

Alexander Rodchenko, Piet Mondrian, and world as a permutation of energies and others. Looking closer still, fleeting images experiences. During the creation of of faces, bodies, and flora reveal Seventh Generation Baby (2019), in themselves in Sanchez’s phantasmagoria particular, he remembers that a number then quickly disappear as the eye moves of students gathered in his studio most from one side of the painting to the other. days and looked on in curiosity from over Sanchez’s body of work can be his shoulder. In the course of their approached a number of ways, but it is conversations, laughs, and in their gaps of tricky to separate the formal qualities of silence, each student contributed to his paintings from the autobiographical actualizing the painting in some way. elements that motivate them. Considering Accordingly, the act of painting moves that he gifted himself with the moniker beyond its media and material to “Surrealist” at the age of thirteen, the strengthen the bonds of community, nuances of his mind’s viscerous workings, fulfilling Sanchez’s own promise to listen its cryptic dreams and uncanny thoughts, and share his teachings with younger have been embedded in his practice for generations. decades. To this end, his near-total His swift, curvilinear lines cut over fragmentation of the picture plane can be and under themselves in a poetic deluge interpreted as a metaphor for seeing the of free association. The title of the

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painting itself, Seventh Generation Baby, is The paintings from the Lac La Biche in reference to the seven generations period are products of time spent inside philosophy of sustainability. In effect, the the Boreal forest as well as a reflection on philosophy calls on the human beings alive the forest’s recent past. In his words, they today to consider how their actions veritably reflect “feeling the land” and are towards the natural world, each other, “filled with all the energy of the northern and themselves impact ensuing forest.”vi They are, he says, a visual generations. A stanza from his recent manifestation of energies and experiences poem offers evidence that Sanchez offered by the land. Only a few struggles with the potential of ‘future’ generations ago, the Boreal forest thrived itself, especially in light of our current under the care of its original stewards, geologic period, what scientists call the Indigenous tribes including the Dene, Anthropocene. Though consensus varies, Cree, Anishinaabay, and Mi’kmaq. Yet it can be defined as a gauge that shows today, and as a caustic symptom of the extent to which human beings have colonialism, it is scared by gravel roads, impacted Earth’s ecosystems enough to clear-cutting, and oil exploration. In this cause grave and perhaps irreparable view, Sanchez’s incarnations of line and damage:iv movement take on new and unexpected inferences. If the work is about the forest We must leave something then it must also “speak to the destruction For the generations coming of our planet, our Mother Earth.”vii or Before he travelled North to partake Have we crossed a threshold that in the Lac La Biche residency program, There is no repair for our violations?v Sanchez produced a painting to commemorate the birthday of his close Here Sanchez observes how the beginning friend, the artist Alex Janvier. Feb. 28th, of the end of the world is at stake in our Alex’s Birthday Commemoration was generation. From this perspective, produced in Sanchez’s Sante Fe studio on paintings such as Seventh Generation Baby the date of Janvier’s birthday. It is as much cull from different historical and ancestral a homage using pigment and paper as it is knowledge to generate a grim apparition reflective of their transcendent of our present condition and, connection spanning many decades. He simultaneously, hopeful visions of the and Sanchez remain the only living future. It is both a painting of beauty and members of the Professional Native Indian tragedy, a dire admonition that we may Artists Inc. (PNIAI). Joined by Daphne have crossed a threshold to no return. Odjig, Norval Morrisseau, Carl Ray, Eddy Cobiness, and Jackson Beardy, the PNIAI

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officially formed in 1973 to challenge attitudes that art produced by Indigenous artists was ‘handicraft’ and therefore isolated from the matrix of contemporary art. Soon after arriving in the North, when Sanchez was not working in the residency studio, he ventured roughly 150km east to visit with Janvier in Cold Lake. They shared meals together, sat and talked, and participated in sweat ceremonies. Feb. 28th, Alex’s Birthday Commemoration functions as a critical exploration of his unconscious mind’s associations with Janvier. This may be the reason why, unlike other works from this period, it takes the shape of a circle, while the waves reference the signature liquidity of Janvier’s later paintings. Above all, however, it is a painting about love. Spirit of Mother Earth (2020) is expansive, glazed numerous times with transparent colour to forge a gentle patina. Similar to his dedicatory work for Janvier, this painting was also created as a poetic homage to Sanchez’s “favourite earth Mother” and fellow PNIAI member Daphne Odjig, who passed on in 2016.viii We encounter an abstracted representation of Odjig, laden with potential meanings. During introspections on his beloved friend and mentor, he appears to have symbolized her transition from life to Above: Feb. 28th, Alex’s Birthday Commemoration (2019) death to the spiritual plane. Is this why her is surrounded by both an Below: Spirit of Mother Earth (2020) anthropomorphic face and a human skull? The theory is emphasized by the muted

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glaze employed throughout the like the Earth distort space and time, composition, which is representative of unexpectedly received the our flesh and blood, but appears to slowly book as a gift. It is a coincidence that he wash away as the forces of entropy take did so while working on what is over. considered the proto-Cubist painting (and Undoubtedly, she is not alone since a forebearer to Modernist abstraction), various skewed and crooked faces swirl Les Demoiselles D’Avignon (1907).xi frenziedly like the embers of a fire. Their Sanchez’s paintings share a deep affinity meaning is enigmatic yet unsettling in with the Cubist approach and other tone. Despite this, Odjig’s silhouette cultural movements in the early 20th stands defiant and tall in the centre of the century, Surrealism included, in that they painting, confronting Sanchez (and the are preoccupied with representing reality viewer) straight on without pause. and lived experience on flat surfaces. Following its competition, Sanchez reflects What we see in his work is the on the painting and ponders if “her spirit simultaneous gesture of energy, [was] sending me some guidance, experience, and even spiritual direction warnings, messages?”ix Ultimately, recorded and reworked beyond though, it attests to the verve of Odjig’s convention. His paintings are invitational, memory in his mind and in the minds of not confrontational. They unfold space- others, as well as the body of work she left time in front of our eyes, all at once, to us, brimming with life. reveal that which we fail to see, what he Finally, Sanchez’s paintings represent calls the stuff of “other dimensions.” different conceptions of time and space, as well as energies and experiences, that curtail and collide on two-dimensional surfaces. In 1902, French mathematician Jules-Henri Poincaré published a study on the mechanisms of scientific inquiry where he posited the belief that, “There is no absolute space […] There is no absolute time.”x In a handful of words, Poincaré was able to change our understanding of the universe, while questioning how all matter, how all things, is perceived. Before the work went on to influence Albert Einstein’s theory of special relativity in 1915, which proposed how large objects Spirit (2020)

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Notes i Andre Breton, “Andre Breton (1896—1966) 2016), http://science.sciencemag.org/content/ from the First Manifesto of Surrealism,” Art in 351/6269/aad2622 (accessed 14 May, 2020). Theory 1900-2000: An Anthology of Changing v Joseph Sanchez, “Press Release,” Urban Ideas, new edition, eds. Charles Harrison & Shaman: Contemporary Aboriginal Art (date Paul Wood (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, unknown). 2003), 447. vi Joseph Sanchez, “Re: Writing and Trade ii André Breton, Manifestos of Surrealism, Information,” e-mail message to Matthew trans. Richard Seaver and Helen R. Lane (Ann Ryan Smith (4 May, 2020). Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1972), vii Joseph Sanchez, “Press Release,” Urban 15. Shaman: Contemporary Aboriginal Art (date iii Joseph Sanchez quoted in Kyle Muzyka, unknown). “Permanent Art Display for Indian Group of viii Joseph Sanchez, “Re: Writing and Trade Seven to open in Alberta College,” CBC News Information,” e-mail message to Matthew (4 April, 2018), Ryan Smith (4 May, 2020). https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/i ix Joseph Sanchez, “Re: Writing and Trade ndian-group-seven-joseph-sanchez-1.4603977 Information,” e-mail message to Matthew (accessed 13 May, 2020). Ryan Smith (4 May, 2020). iv For more information on the Anthropocene, x Jules-Henri Poincaré, La Science et see: Colin N. Waters, Jan Zalasiewicz, Colin L’Hypothése, translated in 1913 (Paris, FR: Summerhayes, Anthony D. Barnosky, Clement Flammarion, 1986), 111. Poirier, Agnieszka Galuszka, Alejandro xi Maurice Princet worked in insurance and Cearreta, Matt Edgeworth, Elre C. Ellis, held an interest in math and science, which he Michael Ellis, Catherine Jeandel, Reinhold later discussed with his avant-garde artist Leinfleder, J.R. McNeill, Daniel deB. Richter, friends such as Picasso, Georges Braques, and WillSteffen, James Syvitski, Davor Vidas, . See: William R. Everdell, Michale Wagreich, Mark Williams, An “Space-Time , New York Times (6 May, Zhisheng, Jacques Greinvald, Eric 2001), Odada,Naomi Oreskes, Alexander P. Wolfe, https://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/06/books/s “The Anthropocene is functionally and pace-time-cubism.html (accessed 12 May, stratigraphically distinct from the Holocene,” 2020). Science 351.6269 (8 January

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