The Globe and Mail , Canada
Oct 21 2004
Confessions of a form freak
By GARY MICHAEL DAULT
Although he is known only by his first name, Rupen has two names just
like everyone else: Rupen Kunugus. Born 44 years ago in Istanbul,
he’s Armenian, grew up speaking both Armenian and Turkish, and came
to Canada when he was 9.
Rupen is an artist and director of a gallery space (one of the
smallest in the city) consisting of the two storefront windows of his
house at 506 Adelaide St. W. This mini-conservatory, in which Rupen
installs new exhibitions every month, is efficiently and accurately
called Natural Light Window.
Each of the two window spaces is about three feet deep, giving him,
according to his dependably precise calculations, 72 cubic feet of
exhibition space.
Exact calculation comes naturally to Rupen, whose professional
background is in carpentry and cabinetmaking. He began making art, he
says, because “carpentry didn’t feel like enough. You were always
doing what you were told to do.”
Not with art. But because of his former life, the personal,
passionate objects that constitute Rupen’s art are all exceedingly
well-crafted, which is not at all common in the world of contemporary
art.
“I am a form freak,” he says, as well as being particularly devoted
to monochromatic works, where the colour is a constant and the form
of the object carries the colour wherever it has to. Rupen makes
objects, usually in series, that compress, into deceptively simple
forms, a lot of rumination. One series of wooden wall works (one
hesitates to call them paintings or pictures) was developed from maps
of the railway tracks leading in and out of what Rupen describes as
“the great art cities” — New York, Paris and so forth. Rupen first
projected the patterns on beige-painted squares, routed them out so
that they became line-like fissures in the wood’s surface, and then
filled the fissures with red body filler, after which the surfaces of
the wood panels were sanded flat.
The result? Beautifully clean beige panels with red lines running
this way and that. Now, would you necessarily know these were track
maps? Probably not. But what you’d have instead are abstract pictures
of considerable physical beauty that somehow seem imbued with some
value-added meaning greater than just the pleasures of design or
décor. A lot of conceptual art of this sort is, admittedly, willfully
mute and archly inaccessible. But not Rupen’s.
Take his music-related pieces. Music means a great deal to Rupen and
although he doesn’t play an instrument himself, he is a passionate
listener and has been an avid collector of LPs, 45s and CDs since he
was 16. “I used to visit the Goodwill stores all the time,” he says.
“I’d take the records home and play them all, and then file them
alphabetically, weeding out the ones I wanted to keep and the ones I
didn’t.”
His newest work, called Two Sets of Three and now on exhibit at
Gallery 1313 in Parkdale, consists of two series of wall works, each
made up of three carefully cut-out shapes derived from those little
plastic spindles you had to snap into a 45 in order to play it.
One set, consisting of three, creamy-beige spindle forms — they are
made of primed and painted MDF — is called Instant Coffee With Milk,
for that is the colour they are. The other series is Rock ‘n’ Blue,
after their innocent shade of sky blue. (There is a third series in
his studio, painted a strange Pepto-Bismol pink.)
Some of the spindle shapes, Rupen says, are real; that is, derived
from the authentic shapes of the 45 centres, enlarged so that they
are 50 centimetres in diameter. Others, as in the second and third of
the blue series, are just fanciful, pure forms that simply resemble
the real thing. It is remarkable, in the end, how satisfying they are
as profoundly examinable shapes. Record doohickeys writ large? Yes.
Unforgettable sculptural artifacts hanging eloquently in space?
Again, yes, certainly.
Rupen’s Two Sets of Three is on sale for $800 for three pieces. On
view at Gallery 1313, 1313 Queen St. W., to Oct. 31. 416-536-6778.