Saturday 4 June 2005

Max Streicher’s Inflatables

In his development of the inflatable as kinetic and interactive artwork, Max Streicher has located images of our greatest joys and our deepest fears. Combining industrial fans and simple valve mechanisms with light and papery materials, Streicher animates his fabric forms with an effortless naturalism which recalls,quite eerily, the sensation of breath. Often drawing on literary and biblical sources for his imagery, Streicher’s work provokes strong, spontaneous, and deeply psychological reactions in people of all ages and backgrounds. 

Born in Alberta, Canada in 1958, Max Streicher’s early interests were in the areas of theology and English literature. He later transferred from the seminary to studies in visual art, completing degrees at the undergraduate and graduate level. Graduating from the Master of Fine Arts programme at York University in Toronto in the late 1980s, Streicher gravitated to the artist run spaces and artist collectives that were beginning to gain prominence in the Canadian art world in the early 90s. 

Artist collectives in the 1990s emerged in part as a response to a withering economic recession in Canada, and they quickly moved to fill the void of a collapsing art economy. Groups of artists began producing exhibitions and art events unmediated by established curators and they were making and exhibiting art that was often far outside the pre-existing commercial mainstream. The collective exhibitions seemed to fit a new cultural mood in the country, one that had grown sceptical of the art market and weary of the hype that characterized international art in the 1980s. Resembling less conventional exhibitions than spontaneous actions and ephemeral performances, the artist collective exhibitions were evidence of the presence of a new generation of artists emerging from Canadian university art programmes. This new generation was not only prepared to do it themselves, they were also trained in post-modern cultural criticism and saw themselves as part of a larger international cultural revolution in the making – deconstructing the ideologically loaded art object and proposing feminist and post-colonial critiques of the institutions of Western culture.

It is in this context that Max Streicher produced his first inflatable work, Breathe(1989), exhibited at the Bloor Street United Church in Toronto.[1]It was Streicher’s first work after graduate school, a response to the new freedom from the demands of graduate school, a piece he later described as being at the time whimsical – “a lark.”[2]It consisted of a sewn nylon bag, inflated by a vacuum cleaner. Breatheemerged from a series of free association drawings the artist was making in the months just after having completed graduate school. One of the drawings depicted two ram’s heads connected at the nose by a pipe. Open to the vagaries of chance and happy accidents, Streicher came across a vacuum cleaner and a sewing machine in the street, which he incorporated in the final work. The finished piece was brought to life by the spectator who activated a timer, initiating the inflation of a sewn nylon bag. Each time Breatheinflated, it became a giant stiffening ram's horn, while the vacuum made a remarkably loud and high-pitched sound, contrasting, not incidentally, with the otherwise serene church interior. There was something slightly rude about the piece: its size and noise and its suggestion of a male erection – the kind of iconoclasm possible only by a former seminary student.[3]At the end of the timed inflation, the whine of the vacuum would stop, the form would gently sag, droop and return to a tousled mass on the floor. The anti-sculptural act of deflation was as dramatic as the work’s inflation, an element that reoccurs in Streicher’s later inflatable work. 

Breathemade an impression on many people, including John Dickson andLylaRye, who were looking for artists to form the collective which came to be known as Nether Mind.[4]Nether Mind’s first exhibition took place in an old industrial basement in the King Street West area of Toronto. Streicher exhibited the work Boilerin this inaugural show, a work which is essentially an elaboration of Breathe. The figures in Boiler were conceived as tripedal bunny suits – each with three ears, arms and legs tapered to points, like abstracted jesters. Viewers animated the pieces by engaging separate fan switches for each ‘figure,’ allowing the viewer the power to choreograph their movements.The inflation, much like Breathe, was startling – the gloomy setting of the installation only enhancing their frightening presence. 

For Boiler, Streicher had discoveredTyvek, DuPont's brand name for a water resistant synthetic paper, made from very fine, high-density polyethylene fibres. Tyvek behaves much like a hybrid of paper and fabric: it is lightweight, smooth, opaque and very “durable” – well suited to being sewn – and in its commercial form, bright white. It is primarily used as a vapour barrier in home construction, as a material for coveralls for painters and for toxic waste clean‑up. Its relative impermeability is perfect for holding air. Its papery lightness responds easily to changes in air pressure and became, for Streicher, an expressive medium capable of suggesting living flesh. 

The white, airy lightness and billowy softness of the Tyvek inevitably recall clouds. In Where There Is Smoke(1992) Streicher executed a private commission in the manner of a baroque ceiling painter, suggesting the illusion of an opening through the roof to the sky. It is a caricature of a cloud or of a plume of smoke – a pulsating vision animated by varying air currents. Another play on this theme is Pillars of Cloud, (1992). The Pillars of Cloudwere mounted on modified golf carts and inflated by the squeezing of a hand-break mechanism. The title is a Biblical reference to when Yahwehwas leading the Israelites out of Egypt and through the wilderness – leading them"by a pillar of cloud by day . . . and a pillar of fire by night."[5]In the process of realization, the soft billowy cloud forms gradually came to resemble more the sharp "peaks of church steeples and Thai architecture."[6]These pillars of cloud are like modern conveniences or consumer appliances – personal augers to the promised land of consumerism – and seem as though they should be available at any department or hardware store. 

Streicher’s fullest elaboration on this theme, however, came in the work Cloud, exhibited at the Art Gallery of Ontario in 2004. Hovering a little under two metres above the floor,Cloudtowers upwards to a height of ten metres. Apart from the stunning and uncanny presence of a cloud in an enclosed space, the spectator was offered the opportunity of entering the piece, by simply ducking under its bottom edge, giving new meaning to the experience of “having your head in the clouds.”[7]Indeed,Cloudwas inspired by Streicher’sinitial encounter with the proposed exhibition space, the Tannenbaum Atrium at the Art Gallery of Ontario, where the gridded floor andairy, light‑filled two‑storey atrium recalled for the artist a memory of flying over the Western Canadian prairies, – a feeling of being in and around clouds, a feeling Streicher likens to being inside a painting by Tiepolo or Correggio. 

A counter-point to Streicher’s impressionism is his interest in the intersections of spirituality, commercialism and consumerism – a theme illustrated in Pillars of Cloudand elaborated in the work this flesh . . .(1993). this flesh . . .featured a 16 mm film loop of an appropriated advertising inflatable effigy crudely painted to resemble the Toronto discount retailer Honest Ed with two sewn-on arms spread wide to welcome (or bless?) shoppers. The image was projected on an arrangement of four mirrors that fragmented the image and enhanced the cruciform character of the inflatable. The cruciform resemblance of the Honest Ed effigy may be merely coincidental, but the Christ-like death and resurrection character of many of Streicher's figurative inflatables is hard to miss. Streicher’s interest in theology in part reflected a fascination with the forces that animate matter. While the forces in his work are mechanical, his figures, even at their most abstract, inflate like heaving chests, and pulsate like beating hearts. They are present as physical bodies and remind us of life as both miraculous and ephemeral. 

The Endgame series began in 1999 continued a similar critique of consumer society. Endgamewas inspired by Samuel Beckett’s play featuring the two tragically absurd characters Hamm and Clov. In Streicher’s outdoor installation gigantic inflated clown heads inhabit various urban locals. The heads lay on their backs, sometimes bobbing and buffeted by the wind. Seemingly oblivious to the elements and to the commercial life of the city below them, the heads appear to gaze at the sky with expressions that read as a combination of bewilderment, alarm, and awe. With their ridiculous size and bold simple contours, they resemble advertising released from its commercial moorings. The heads appear to gaze at the sky with expressions that read as a combination of bewilderment, alarm, and awe. Instead of engaging and seducing the viewer with promises of gratification these characters are freed from commercial responsibility. They redirect our gaze to the passing clouds. They are an invocation to beingas opposed to buying.

A major theme in Streicher’s inflatable sculpture has been the figure. First intimated at in the work Boiler, with its abstract yet unmistakably anthropomorphic character, the figure in Streicher’s hands could be frightening, but also, and more often, somewhat ridiculous and pathetic. Quartet in a Box (1995) is four inflatable figures arranged in a circle, each connected to an air source through the top of the head. Each figure pulses and writhes as a rotating valve mechanism changes the air pressure to each figure. The spectator recoils with feelings of revulsion and morbidity as they inflate, recognizing in their jerking and quivering a kind of physical seizure – bodies out of control. 

Sextet(1996) was an enlargement of the Quartet in a Boxmodel. The Sextet figures were 1.5 times life size and they were attached at the navel with flexible duct that ran to a central mechanism. Each figure would strike a different pose; some sitting upright with splayed legs, arms lifting at their sides. As the valve mechanism rotated it would send an alternating pulse of air from figure to figure. This movement takes place quickly, creating the impression of a frantic, manic energy – reckless, dizzying and out of control.

With the introduction of simple electrical switching mechanisms Streicher found the ability to animate his figures with greater dramatic effect. Balancing Act(1995) consists of a pair of figures suspended from the ceiling that appear to exchange breath through rubber tubes inserted in the mouth. As each figure inflates, its chest fills and its arms thrust forward, while the back arches and legs and feet stiffen to a point. As it deflates, the stiffness slowly disappears and the legs dangle limply. The inflation is alternating, so that one figure is always inflating while the other is deflating. Streicher likens the effect to a dance, amechanical and preposterously literal variation on Nijinsky’s expiring dance in the Rites of Spring. The power of this work is that when a figure loses air, it is seemingly the illusion of physical life itself that disappears – vanishes in front of our eyes – becoming nothing more than a limp cloth bag. Quickly and unconsciously, we become intimate with these figures. As they inflate and we hear air rush into the body, we form a sort of interspecies bond – the kind of bond one might feel watching the breathing of a sleeping companion.[8]These works focus on the central role of air and the imitation of breathing, and the many emotions that it elicits. We breathe differently when asleep and awake, when we are nervous, when we are calm. By adjusting and controlling the rhythm, the sound and the speed of inflation and deflation, the artist controls these perceptions and tells a story. Currents of air in the work of Max Streicher are indeed feelings given form.

Recent works Blow(2004) and Romulus and Remus(2005) share the same mechanics, applied here to an even more dramatic effect. Returning to this theme almost ten years after Balancing Act, Streicher seems to have exchanged the gentle symbiotic melancholy of the former for a brutal co-dependency. Connected through the backs by a short piece of flexible duct, Blowand Romulus and Remusresemble blow-up Siamese twins. Not only do the figures inflate more quickly and forcefully, but unlike Balancing Act, where one figure passively deflated as the other inflated,now the inflating figure literally sucks the air from its counterpart. InBlowand Romulus and Remusdeflation is experienced empathetically, as though it were a human expiration.

Fascinated with the effect of complete deflation, Streicher decided to show these diaphanous works vacuum packed, flatted and on the wall. In 2004 this idea evolved into a series of photograms, where light replaces air in bringing his inflatable figures to life. The photograms, like the inflatables, have a ghostly animus, a sense of a fleeting presence, a remnant or trace of a mysterious, now departed being. These images are created by positioning deflated and flattened figures directly on a large format photographic paper and exposing them to light. The translucency of the nylon spinnaker allows light to pass through it and on to the photographic paper creating fascinating and subtle tonal gradations. What emerges within the silver gelatine emulsion is the impression of a figure. The subtle shading is the result of the folding and overlapping of the material when the figure is flattened, yet these figures appear three dimensional. The seams, the result of Streicher’s inflatable fabrication process, create lines that read as various internal systems – musculature, nerves, and veins. It is neither a literal three dimensional rendering, nor a representation of the fully inflated figure. These images have the mysterious and puzzling appearance of some unconventional imaging source, of an ultrasound perhaps, or the x-ray of ancient mummified corpse. 

Scale as a element in Streicher’s inflatables was on the artist’s mind as early as 1993 when he appropriated the image of the Honest Ed inflatable in this flesh . . .The version of Boilerexhibited in the at the Power Plant exhibition in 1994 was a scaled-up version of the original to twice life‑size.[9]It was also around that time that he began to develop ideas for the gigantic Swan Song, for an exhibition at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery in Lethbridge in 1996.[10]
 “My intention is to overwhelm the gallery space and impose on the viewer a sense of scale like that which a toddler might experience. I am attempting to recreate a situation like that of childhood encounters with humongous snow banks or haystacks; structures that invite a physical exuberance which in turn leads the imagination. . . In this work I want to physically embrace the viewer within a tension between pleasure and threat, enchantment and self reflexive awareness.”[11]

Sleeping Giants, (1998), and Streicher’s later version Silenus(2002), bring together the phenomenology of the physical body first ventured in Quartet in a Boxwith the scale of Swan Song. The giants in their great mass heave and sigh to the timed intervals of the blowers. Lying on their backs and sides, heads rise from the floor, legs stiffen, and chests inflate, only to relax again, as if in some futile attempt to get out of bed or off the couch. The giants recall the body as gross anatomy – of a soul trapped within spoilable flesh, and the dispirited body, incapable of action because of the sentiment of futility. The giants also recall the tragic body, the self-perpetuating machine – needy, voracious, desiring – independent of consciousness and will. 

Floating Giants(2001) installed at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation building in Toronto, combined Streicher’s interest in high-wire acrobats and oversized figures. Fabricated from nylon spinnaker, the Floating Giantsare held aloft by helium balloons and tethered to the ground by a flexible duct that also fills them with air. Measuringseven metres tall but nearly weightless, they ascend and fall, bouncing in the breeze. They are courageous and vulnerable – the image of a naïve fantasy – a dream of flying.

Streicher’s bestiary of works including Swan Song(1996), Stuck Unicorn (2003), Four Horses(2003) and now Dung Beetle(2005) are an elaboration of the metaphorical possibilities that he began with his figurative work. With Swan Song,Streicher sought a “threatening beauty,” choosing the swan because as an animal it is commonly known as a symbol of beauty and elegance, but at the same time feared for its strength and its potential for violence. Yard upon yard of silky white Tyvek pulsates and roars from the industrial fans, creating an experience for the viewer to wade through that is simultaneously dreamlike and nightmarish. As in a dream, the scale is distorted and no contour is solid – everything collapses to the touch or seems beyond reach. 

Equestrian Monument #1, (2003) Stuck Unicorn (2003)andFour Horses (2003)upset expectations that come from the history of equestrian sculpture. In stark opposition to, for example, Verrocchio’s Equestrian Monument of Bartolommeo Colleoni (ca. 1481), a bronze monument to military prowess, Streicher’s air-filled horses slumber improbably on roof tops like nesting pigeons. Shifting and nodding in the wind they appear to survey the human traffic below with blithe indifference. Too puffy and weak in the knees to consider galloping away, these horses are, like their Endgamecounterparts Hamm and Clov, contently indolent.

Dung Beetle(2005) is a 9-metre-long black beetle lying on its back. Like Endgame, Streicher has returned to classic existentialist literature for his inspiration, in this case Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis. And like EndgameDung Beetle embodies a similarly implicit critique of the culture of publicity, as the body of beetle is not made from Streicher’sfavouredTyvek or nylon spinnaker, but from vinyl that has been recycled from billboard advertising. The tragedy of Gregor Samsa’s new insect body in Kafka’s Metamorphosis is related through the reactions of his horrified family. Streicher places us all in the position of family members – sympathizers with a pointless and futile struggle, witnesses to a ghastly and unmentionable spectacle. 

The inflatable as art – the balloon, the soap bubble, the inflatable toy – is something we typically dedicate to children. Max Streicher has taken the inflatable, the prepubescent symbol of wonder and tragedy and rehabilitated it, or rather; he has given it an adult life. He has done this not by stripping the inflatable of those characteristics that appeal to children, but by probing those aspects that are fundamental to understanding ourselves. He creates tension between the playfulness of the medium and an experience that is both physical and empathetic. We favour children with balloons and they in turn are fascinated by their lightness, enthralled by their buoyancy, and devastated when they break. With each balloon, we create a round, pudgy, brightly coloured life – symbolizing at once our joy in creation and our awareness of life's fragility. And therein lies its magic: the inflatable makes the abstract character of our organic existence visible. We know we were born from nothing, we feel our breath now, and we know that we will expire. 
Gordon Hatt 


[1]The Crossing, Bloor St. United Church, coordinated by Mediums Art Centre, Toronto.
[2]Conversation with the Artist, 1998.
[3]Streicher’s free association drawings, recycled tools and found parts recall the tradition of artist flâneurs – those artists and writers from Baudelaire to Breton to Debord who traversed the city in states of distracted attention, cultivating random, spontaneous associations, drawing on the unconscious and the urban environment as a source and site for poetry. 
[4]Other artists exhibiting with Nether Mind included Tom Dean, Catherine Heard, Greg Hefford, Mickey McCarty, Mary Catherine Newcomb, Reinhard Reitzenstein, Carl Skelton, Anastasia Tzekas, and Manrico Venere. 
[5]"The Lord was going before them in a pillar of cloud by day to lead them on the way, and in a pillar of fire by night to give them light, that they might travel by day and by night. He did not take away the pillar of cloud by day, nor the pillar of fire by night, from before the people" (Exodus 13:21-22).
[6]Interview with the artist, March 20, 1998.
[7]Similarly, in the work Pleasure Dome(1997) exhibited at Pyramida Centre for Contemporary Art, Haifa, Israel, Streicher invited viewers to step inside, to share the sensations of being inside the piece.
[8]Yet, as Streicher is aware, “the source of that breath, industrial fans and rather crudely fashioned valve mechanisms, are reminiscent of respirators or some equally intrusive medical gadget, and this breath is not life, just its sobering mechanics.”
[9]Naked State, curated by Louise Dompierre and Arthur Renwick, The Power Plant, Toronto,1994.
[10]This piece was also exhibited at the Art Gallery of Peterborough in 2002 under the title Lamentation.
[11]Artist's statement, February 1998.