Patrick Howlett: The Personal Atmosphere

Patrick Howlett

The Personal Atmosphere

Toronto, ON – Opening on Thursday, 1 December 2016 from 6 to 8 p.m. and continuing through to 28 January 2017, Susan Hobbs Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new work by Patrick Howlett.

What do you want your life to look like? Do you lack the power values to achieve unlimited success? Are you prepared to assert yourself and take control? INITIATIVE! – Do you see it? Do you feel it? 

Years ago, feeling good, the artist stumbled upon an old book at the Goodwill store: The Personal Atmosphere, by Frank Channing Haddack PhD. He bought it. Years later, feeling bad, he opened the book and used its questionable power to make this show. It is a turn of the century ‘positive thinking’ mantra, a Power-for-Success series written with a storm of pseudoscientific proofs on electro-magnetic vibrations shaking up the ether:

The self vibrates the universal ether within the body, and around the person, and coextensively with the objective arena. A certain region within the objective arena, and centering in the deepest vibrant self, is distinctively individualized, so that it may be called the personal atmosphere. The personal atmosphere extends beyond, but pervades, the body, yet is not entirely coextensive with the objective arena. 

As in most of my work of the last ten years, my starting point is a text. The Personal Atmosphere is a 1908 self-help book with a jauntily esoteric vibe.  At a time when cubism was diagraming the picture plane and abstraction becoming central to understanding and disseminating advances in science, The Personal Atmosphere suggests one can influence the world around you by being aware of and controlling unseen psychic forces. Loosely connecting this early gem of power pop ‘psychology’ to modern roots of current individualism is an exploration of the two-part relationship of figure (positive space) and ground (negative space), a pictorial predicament that has echoes in relations outside the canvas as well. Consider a diagram fragment as wireless router, or bricks so thin they look like paint chips. Two-word phrases run throughout several works (selfishly altruistic, indolent energy, gloomily cheerful) often embedded within a jelly-like multi-colour field. In containing an inherent contradiction, these phrases actually resist the either/or scenario of dualistic thinking. They demonstrate that apprehension is never at rest, but rather a continual meeting and crossing of influences.