En Masse co-founder Jason Botkin is all about fostering dialogue with new solo exhibit

“Art in its essence is about communication,” says Jason Botkin, who is best known as a co-founder of En Masse, a collaborative mural project that has taken him around the world and received quite a bit of attention in very above ground parts of the art world (such as Miami Art Basel 2012). “It doesn’t matter what the fuck the dialogue is about, it’s that you have a dialogue. If you don’t get that, you have the problems that are rife in the world of art. A failure to communicate usually prompts another person to make [their art] more mysterious to cover up an inability to communicate.”

For someone who at an earlier point in life took a vow of celibacy and wanted to become a monk, and who gave up art after graduating from the Alberta College of Art and Design, Jason Botkin is very good at demystifying art, both in his practice and during our discussion about art, the universe and everything. “I didn’t relate to what I perceived as being contemporary art and I didn’t know how to find my way in there,” he explains regarding his hiatus from making art. “It just felt like it was soulless, self referential and indulgent. Very exclusionary.”

His first step on the journey back towards the world of art was an apprenticeship with a ceramicist in Japan (after a few years of celibacy, he fell in love and started to travel). “That reignited my relationship with just making stuff,” explains Botkin. “It wasn’t necessarily that I wanted to get back into art but I liked making stuff, using my hands and being engaged in that process. I learned a lot about the realities between craft and art, and how unimportant they were, and that was really liberating.”

Credit: LNDMRK

Blue Period
Botkin is every bit a revolutionary, a very friendly, cheerful and good natured revolutionary who seems more intent on building things than tearing them down. But make no mistake, even though he describes En Masse as “blue collar” and populist and he deeply values craftsmanship, there is nothing naïve about his own work. His art owes as much to Hieronymus Bosch and Hans Dürer as it does to underground comic art. Botkin has an extensive understanding of art history and how art, politics and society intersect.

“I’m motivated in that direction and En Masse is born of that, it’s not a political machine but it very much speaks to a sociopolitical message that is extremely potent,” he explains. “My next big project is in Afghanistan with George Gittoes, an Australian artist who has traveled around the world to war zones.” He sees the very act of creating with others, whether it’s in Detroit or Afghanistan, as political. It is the act of forging community and working collaboratively that is revolutionary.

Closer to home, his solo show ALL KIN at the LNDMRK gallery is quite heavily influenced by his work with En Masse, even though his personal work is starting to head in other directions. “I found myself much more drawn towards process oriented painting and abstraction and taking it to wildly divergent territory from what I’m doing right now. But then I realized that I have one month to make all the work for this show and how the fuck am I going to do that!”

Credit: LNDMRK

While we can look forward to one day seeing what kind of full mental abstraction falls out of Jason Botkin’s fertile mind, ALL KIN’s colorful cutouts and dolls are bound to blow some minds and capture some hearts as they cavort through a garden of unearthly delights. And, if you look and listen with an open mind, you might just hear them speak to you.

ALL KIN
Solo exhibition by Jason Botkin, presented by LNDMRK in association with Galerie Yves Laroche
Vernissage on January 29 at 6 p.m.
Exhibit runs through March 29 at Projet Beaumont | 550 Beaumont Avenue
jasonbotkin.com