Visible Magic

Flying School (École d’aviation), an installation at Rice Gallery by Québec artist Diane Landry, looks like it was created by someone with a Mary Poppins fixation. The darkened main gallery is filled with umbrellas. There are 24 of them in all—tiny children’s ones with little bears, grandma versions with fussy florals, and unisex models with restrained geometrics. The cluster of sizes and styles creates the sense of an eclectic crowd of people gathered together in a rainstorm.

Flying School (École d’aviation) by Diane Landry.

Landry automated each umbrella so that it slowly opens and closes using a simple mechanism that also is attached to a bellows. As the umbrellas open, the bellows expand and contract, mimicking the rhythm of breath rising and falling and creating a sound like someone breathing in and out on a harmonica. As you look around the room, scattered umbrellas sigh themselves into full flower and then collapse in a 30-minute cycle with no apparent beginning or end.

But the real spectacle of Flying School happens on the ceiling of the gallery. While Landry creates magic from quotidian objects, light is the key element in her work. Bulbs at the base of the umbrellas cycle on and off as the umbrellas open. The light casts bouquets of gorgeous, flower-like shadows on the gallery ceiling that slowly expand and contract and fade away. You could sit for hours in the darkened room, lulled by the sounds and the slowly evolving panorama.

In the small gallery, Landry installed Mandala Naya, a piece whose title seems to suggest some object that is elegant, minimal, and infused with Asian spirituality. In actuality, its primary component is a plastic laundry basket ringed with empty plastic bottles of Naya brand spring water.

But the effect is stunning and hypnotic. The basket bottom is mounted flat against the wall, and Landry has rigged up a track in the center along which a light moves in and out of the basket. The plastic grid of the basket and the light-distorting qualities of the bottles create a glorious display of pattern. It radiates out from the center, a universe expanding and contracting as the light moves.

Landry lures you in to seeing the spectacular visual potential of the everyday. She doesn’t hide the simple, straightforward mechanisms she uses to drive her work anymore than she disguises the discount-store objects she employs. Her matter-of-fact use of materials makes her work all the more fascinating.

In addition to creating installations, Landry is a performance artist. She presented one of her works, The Cod (La Morue), at Rice Media Center. At the performance, Landry sat at the front of the theater behind a large table, her back to the audience. In front of her were two record turntables, lights, and host of objects. The shadows of the rotating objects filled the center’s enormous screen, growing and diminishing as they circled around. The audio came from the turntables themselves. Landry let the record needle run on the bare turntable, producing a blurry atmospheric sound that changed with the weight of the objects she selected.

Sitting in the darkened space, viewers watched as The Cod presented a feminine narrative through domestic objects and bric-a-brac. A child’s ice skates were placed on the turntable and seemed to spin as if they were on the rink. Shadows from the objects on the turntables overlapped each other as Landry faded them in and out. Glass vessels cast rays of light. An iron seemed to mutate as it spun around. High-heeled shoes danced, and a figurine in a flowing dress added a Cinderella effect. Light radiating through a colander caused the audience to burst into applause.

Creating such haunting beauty, conjuring characters, and telling a story through the most banal of items is an amazing feat. Landry’s installation averaged 100 visitors a day, and her performance was standing room only. “It’s magic,” Landry says, explaining the appeal of her work. “It’s magic, but you can see it.”

—Kelly Klaasmeyer