Paul Mathieu, now Vancouver-based, has turned his formidable talents to the ideas behind ceramic souvenir items and what they mean in our culture and times.  His current show is comprised of two Sets that are bound to be cause for controversy.

The Twentieth Century Disaster Salt & Pepper Shaker Sets were started four years ago as a reflection of the past century, prior to the new millennium.  The disasters portrayed start with the sinking of the Titanic (1912) and include such events as Hiroshima (1945), Tienamen Square (1989), and the Québec Referendum (1995).  A new one has been added to the series, the (+1) in the exhibition title, to commemorate this new century.  By translating these events into salt and pepper shakers, of the type found in tourist souvenir shops, they become diffused by domesticity and function while being 'immortalized' by the ceramic materials.

The Twentieth Century Sculptures Salt & Pepper Shaker Sets (and Ashtrays) rework various sculptural icons of the past century.  Examples were chosen for their potential to be transformed into shakers or ashtrays but also, with a curatorial intent, to represent various aspects of sculpture while maintaining gender balance and national representations.  The series recognizes Marcel Duchamp. Brancusi, Henry Moore, Calder, Maya Lin (public art), Rachel Whiteread and Christo (installation) to Gilbert & George (performance).  By reducing scale, down grading the material, introducing function and cheapening these famous icons, the work represents a critique of contemporary art, crafts and culture.

Paul, a recipient of the 2000 Jean A. Chalmers Award for Excellence in Crafts, teaches at the Emily Carr Institute of Art & Design.  He has been collected by such prestigious institutions as the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, England, The Los Angeles County Museum, the Montréal Museum of Decorative Arts and the Montréal Museum, the Canada Council Art Bank, etc.   The works in this exhibition will affirm those awards and garner more recognition.

"To bring together the extreme gravity of the question and the extreme lightness of the form - that has always been my ambition.  And it's not a matter of purely artistic ambition.  The union of a frivolous form and a serious subject lays bare our dramas (those that occur in our beds as well as those we play on the great stage of History) in all their terrible insignificance."  Milan Kundera, The Art Of The Novel, Harper and Row Publishers, 1986, pp.95-96.