June Gutman & Mo Lode 

Brain Storm

22.11.24 - 21.12.24

 

This duo presentation of the work of self-taught artists June Gutman (Montreal, 1995) and Mo Lode (Gent, 1989) sheds light on their shared history. It is, of course, a love story. 

 

They discovered their drawings on Instagram in 2021. June describes how they met:

 

"I was still living with my parents in their basement, isolated from the world because of my illness (SSRI withdrawal syndrome ). I can't remember who found each other first, but we started talking, and I think it was only five months before Mo decided to make his first trip here. He helped me find many parts of my life that I thought were forever lost. We were married in 2023."

 

Their initial attraction can be attributed to mutual recognition of their capacity to use art to negotiate the perpetual gap between consciousness and reality, which would, in turn, explain, at least in part, their aesthetic affinities.

 

In June's drawings, avatar bodies, haunted by their presence, participate in anatomy lessons involving art history, psychiatry, and religion. She virtually subjects her own body to the scalpel of incisive humour, which underpins, not undermines, the spiritual aura that reigns in her images. 

 

Mo's cryptic drawings evoke a crystalline Moebius-like surrealism of Moebius turned towards visions of inner, fantastic metamorphoses. The story is about an identity constantly redefining itself at the tip of a virtuoso pencil, pen, or brush.

We're reminded of the story about Turnert tying himself to the mast of a ship in the middle of a storm to more efficiently render the atmospheric phenomenon better. Obviously, in their case, the storm is on the inside.