Canadian Painting consists of his impressive hockey player card collection that he has assembled so as to evoke paintings by major artists in Canadian art history, such as Jean-Paul Riopelle, Paul-Émile Borduas and Serge Lemoyne. In this installation he is applying a method that he previously explored with Riopelle, a work of the same series which he produced and exhibited in 2013 at the artist centre Le Lobe in Chicoutimi. In occupying the SIGHTINGS module with this new installation, he is taking his approach even further and revealing its conceptual coherence. In displaying the works directly on the entire surface of the plexiglass panes so that they block the view into the interior space, Marc-Antoine K. Phaneuf shifts the module’s usually three-dimensional exhibition space onto two-dimensions and thus foregrounds the superficiality linked to the idolization of collection objects and millionaire athletes. Moreover, by making it impossible to provide lighting for the project, the artist links this dimness to the badly reproduced works in old art history books and, by extension, to the mediocre photographic quality of many of his hockey player cards. Each aspect of the artist’s installation was thus thought out in view of multiplying and problematizing the encounters between popular culture and specialized culture.

For the children we were, the hockey cards came with a mythology. We knew that rookie cards had the potential of increasing their value, like those of the most talented players—for instance, the Wayne Gretzky rookie card, the most coveted of all, was a rare object that we didn’t believe we would ever get to see for real, or even more unlikely, ever own.

In the summer of 2013, I stumbled upon some three thousand cards at a garage sale. I was excited to rekindle my boyhood passion. I bought the lot for twenty dollars and told myself that I was surely going to do something with it. During a residency at the artist-run centre Le Lobe in Chicoutimi, I took the time to select the funniest cards (amused grins, vintage moustaches, frightened facial expressions, concentrated players with tongues stuck out, etc.) before posting them on the wall with the somewhat vague idea of making something that would resemble a 1950s Riopelle. Ten hours later, the painting existed. The mounting was as physical as the creation of a painting must have been for Riopelle: the work’s dynamic composition expressed by each spatula stroke was replaced by the repeated act of gluing a card on the wall with masking tape.

After a production meeting with the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery team, I went to see the cube, which suddenly seemed two times bigger than I had recollected. Shit, I was going to run out of cards! I would need at least two thousand more. Like a message in a bottle cast to sea, I created a Facebook event called “Seeking hockey cards—URGENT.” Thirty-six hours later I had found five thousand cards; and ten days afterwards I had received twice as many. I met with one donor after another—friends, acquaintances, strangers—to share this memory filled, childhood passion which can still make us dream, even if we now know that the cards stored away in the back of a closet, are for the most part of little value.

We all had the same memories, and almost all of us the same series, those produced between 1990 and 1993, because all boys collected these hockey cards. Just as we share the same art history, with its heroes, Riopelle and Borduas at the top of the list and Lemoyne not far behind, our collections resembled one another and had the same qualities that fired our childhood imaginations: the players still have exotic names, the teams that don’t exist anymore are fascinating, and the Wayne Gretzky rookie card still exists. It is either worth a little more than when we were children, or far less if it isn’t in mint condition, as I was told by my friend Ian, who, much to my surprise, owns two.

With the myth undone, the cards can serve another purpose, with their colours and players’ grimaces, and become an installation that recalls some works from the history of Canadian painting.

Marc-Antoine K. Phaneuf