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>> With their joint art show, Eric Braün and Michel “Away” Langevin find a little laughter in death and devastation on a global scale
by RUPERT BOTTENBERG
The split gallery show of the artworks of Montreal’s Eric Braün and Michel “Away” Langevin makes one think of those ads for Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Y’know, two great tastes that taste great together. Yeah, exactly like chocolate and peanut butter—if peanut butter were made from the spiky, insectoid carapaces of mindless killer drones enslaved by a vile, polluted techno-dystopia, and chocolate came from the wombs of the deformed dominatrixes prowling the shadowy corners of a neo-medieval, theo-fascistic megalopolis.
Langevin’s the drummer in Voivod, the Quebec band that, since the mid-’80s, has successfully fused speed metal’s dark fury and prog rock’s epic scope. He’s also their album-jacket artist, and as such his distinct graphic style and subject matter are immediately recognizable to fans of that which is heavy.
While he’s also been known to rock (with his now-defunct band Jackalope), Braün is better known for his comics, graphic design, paintings, kinetic sculptures and engravings, and also for editing the erratically-published and dauntingly ambitious art anthology 106U (in French, that’s pronounced like “sans issue”—no exit).
Call of the walls
Langevin’s work has appeared recently in 106U, but the pair have known each other for years. Langevin first picked up on Braün’s work around ’88, spotting it in Core, an early anthology of Quebec’s second-wave underground comix art. “His stuff was original from the start,” recalls Langevin. “I liked it, and we kept in touch through the years.”
“It’s a very unique style that Away has developed over the years,” says Braün in return, “and very identifiable. It has a strength, I think, that needs to be shown to a larger audience that’s graphic-arts- or comics-oriented, as opposed to just putting everything in little sections—music here, comics there. I think people can see the same spirit in different media.”
It is indeed high time that Langevin got props for his images, and the Troubleman Unlimited record label is seeing to that with a forthcoming art book (which will follow on the heels of Voivod’s soon-to-be-released new album). The gallery show is another overdue first.
“Except for a couple of times at Casa del Popolo, I’ve never really put my work on display at all, so it’s a very good opportunity for me. Especially the front covers of the first four albums—they were paintings, and they’re at home in the closet, so it’s time for me to frame them and put them on a wall somewhere. It’ll be the first time in 20 years.”
Space bugs and beast-men
While Langevin’s contributions cover his entire career, Braün’s are more specific, primarily plush-toy fur glued to acrylic on canvas. His theme is the global beast-man, be he yeti, Sasquatch or Braün’s own Andean version with a leopard-print coat.
“I used fake fur to make very stylized silhouettes of the yeti,” says Braün, “because it represents the wild man, projecting the voice
of nature, a scream of alarm. Tsunamis here, mudslides there, glaciers melting—everything’s going crazy and it’s going faster than we thought. It’s just nature standing up and biting your head off. It’s come to that point.”
Langevin’s works, be they paintings, ink-jet prints (since ’87, his primary art tool has been the computer) or prototypical ink drawings, still betray the early influence of Heavy Metal magazine’s stable—Moebius, Caza, Bilal and especially Philippe Druillet. “When I saw Eraserhead,” Langevin says, “my art changed a little, but it’s when I saw Alien that I was blown away. Then I went towards a mixture of bones and metal and organic stuff.
“In the early ’80s, there were a couple of movies, like If You Love This Planet and The Day After, and my work went towards something similar to the hardcore scene, warnings about nuclear war and stuff like that. Also, a few things happened, like the Chernobyl accident and the Challenger explosion. My work then expressed more technological improvements versus social improvements.”
The end is nigh
The connective theme should be clear by now. “It’s pretty scary,” says Langevin, “watching the media try to keep up with the planet spinning out of control. There’s a huge feeling of panic, and I think it’s probably reflected in everybody’s artwork nowadays.”
Braün disagrees, noting how many young artists veer to the cute, cuddly and inoffensive. He prefers a middle path. “Part of the job is making people laugh, especially at things that aren’t necessarily funny. That’s very hard.”
“The link between our artwork is the cartoon aspect of it,” notes Away. “Quite often, I draw something, and I think it’s serious because it’s about something serious. But then I show it to my girlfriend and she thinks it’s cute, because it’s sort of cartoonish. That always makes me realize, okay, that’s what I’m trying to do, at the very end.
“It’s a good way to communicate a message,” Braün concludes. “When you’re drawing comics, people are expecting to laugh. They listen to you, they want to get the joke, be in on it. If you’re preaching, they won’t listen, they’ll do the exact opposite just because you’re telling them what to do. You gotta be subtle. Tickle them—hee hee hee!—and they become receptive to your message. It goes in like a bullet between the eyes.”
Eric Braün vs. Away at SubV (5666 sherbrooke W.) until March 31. Vernissage Friday, March 17, 7 p.m.
posted March 09, 2006 23:10
posted March 09, 2006 23:19
