Robert Flack: Eternal Transcendent
Dallas Fellini
Drawing from the Art Gallery of Guelph’s permanent collection, Eternal Transcendent highlights a selection of photographic works by Robert Flack (Guelph, 1957-1993). These images manipulate representation through analog processes, superimposing photographs with drawn symbols and coloured gels to create assemblages that suggest bodily malleability and transformation. Iconography that featured prominently throughout Flack’s practice repeats itself onto the fragments of bodies depicted here: a ring of fire, an assemblage of swords, a coil of rope, and a labyrinth take root within each physical form.
These photographs document a moment in which Flack was coming to terms with his own mortality. Produced after his HIV seroconversion in 1988 and shortly before he ultimately succumbed to the virus in 1993, they convey a reverence for the more-than-corporeal and a yearning for healing – something governments and medical institutions profoundly failed to provide during the AIDS epidemic. Included here are works from Flack’s Chakras series, in which the artist, faced with the failure of his own body, turned to psychic energy and the chakras as pathways to transcendence, envisioning a spiritual realm where he no longer needed his physical body.
This is the second solo exhibition of Flack’s work at the Art Gallery of Guelph, and the first since his passing in October 1993. Reflecting on Flack’s legacy three decades later, he can be understood as having achieved a form of the transcendence that preoccupied him in life through the solidification of his place within Canadian art history. In this re-presentation of these artworks, and in remembering Robert Flack and his prolific body of work, his undying energy is transformed, manifesting within the regenerative power of his photographs.
Image details: (Above) Robert Flack, Vitality (Chakras), 1990-1991, colour, 103.2 cm x 79.4 cm. Purchased with assistance from the Ontario Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Recreation and an anonymous donation, 1992. Macdonald Stewart Art Centre Collection at the Art Gallery of Guelph
(Below) Robert Flack, Warrior (Chakras), 1990-1991, colour photograph, 103.2 cm x 79.4 cm. Purchased with assistance from the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Recreation and an anonymous donation, 1993. Macdonald Stewart Art Centre Collection at the Art Gallery of Guelph
Curated by Dallas Fellini, recipient of the 2024 Middlebrook Prize for Young Canadian Curators, and presented by the Art Gallery of Guelph with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario.
About the artist
Robert Flack
Robert Flack was born in Guelph in 1957, and moved to Toronto to study at York University, receiving his BFA in 1980. He also attended Sheridan College in 1984. In 1980, Flack began working at Art Metropole, where he also worked as a layout artist for many General Idea projects such as FILE Megazine. Soon after, he began to exhibit at Toronto galleries and in 1982 was included in a two-person exhibition with Chrysanne Stathacos at Chromazone, a space co-founded by Andy Fabo. Flack would be exhibited nationally and internationally at spaces such as Das Institut Unzeit, West Berlin; Artist Space, Sydney; Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford; Rutgers University Museum, New Jersey; and W139, Amsterdam. He also lived and worked in New York, showing regularly in solo and group exhibitions with Hudson at Feature, Inc.
Since his death in 1993, Flack’s work has also been posthumously included in noteworthy exhibitions including Time is Thirsty, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna; Tributes and Tributaries 1971-1989, Art Gallery of Ontario; Par Amour/Paramour, National Gallery of Canada at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art; Standing Ground (with Will Munro), Paul Petro Contemporary Art; The Temptation of AA Bronson, Witte de With; and The Cold City Years, The Power Plant. Flack’s estate is represented by Paul Petro Contemporary Art.
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