Artist adopts alter ego to play with familiar personalities

Niklas Bergman -- comic-book artist, founder of Sensible Studios, designer for the popular Hepkid line of toys, and native son of snowy Gredeby, Sweden -- doesn't actually exist.

Joseph Reyes, a 30-year-old Winnipeg artist currently working in Korea, likes to take on personas for his art shows. For last year's Annals of Experimental and Clinical Anatomy, he became Ignacio Marquez, a medical illustrator and "controversial" practising physician. For his new show at Cre8ery, Reyes has adopted the alter ego of the extroverted, eccentric Bergman.

The Action Figurine Expo consists of 15-centimetre human figures made with Super Sculpey -- a clay polymer that is moulded, baked and painted -- and displayed in standardized commercial plastic packaging. The Toys R Us trappings are deceptive, though. Reyes isn't making kids' models. He's playing around with ideas, especially the notion that social interaction sometimes involves slotting people into familiar types.

Reyes describes his sculptural subjects as "people you sort of see every day." Swapping stories with an international gang of friends in Korea, Reyes found that certain categories seemed to pop up all over the world, from Winnipeg to Liverpool to Seoul.

Evidently, The Old Lady that Walks Everywhere with Grocery Bags is a universal phenomenon, as is The Coffee Shop Writer, the guy at Starbucks who tries to look like he's working on a literary masterpiece.

Reyes, who graduated from the University of Manitoba's School of Art in 2002, pokes mild fun at self-deception and vanity. Still Goth shows a guy hanging on to his black lipstick and ink-dipped hair long past high school, while the I Do Pilates and It Shows woman sports a workout bra and expensive yoga pants, the better to show off her powerful core.

Reyes also goes after gaps between appearance and reality. A kid in dreadlocks and Rastafarian gear is reluctantly White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, while Cutie_Girl97 is actually a bald, fat, middle-aged man.

The show is a sideways exploration of social spaces like bus stops, city streets and supermarkets, and our encounters with people whom we recognize but don't really know. Reyes offers some gentle satire, but his feelings toward his fellow citizens are mostly generous.

Just ask Niklas Bergman, who calls the figurines "ordinary superheroes."

"I see people on benches, and their inner element just springs out of them. They have more powers than super superheroes," he adds.

Speaking of ordinary superheroes, the 1 of 1 Project -- on view at SK8 Skates at the Forks Market until July 2 ---- is an arts fundraiser for the Children's Hospital Foundation of Manitoba. Artists, designers and illustrators from Winnipeg and across North America have customized 30 pairs of Vans shoes, making for some edgy, street-level art. (Check out the auction at www.the1of1project.wordpress.com.)

alison.gillmor@freepress.mb.ca

Art review

Joseph Reyes: Niklas Bergman's Action Figurine Expo

Cre8ery, 125 Adelaide St., 2nd floor

Until July 6

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition June 30, 2010 D7