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Catch and Release from Récits Fragmentés (SUPPLIED PHOTO)

Shaun Morin: Récits Fragmentés
Until Nov. 17, La Maison des artistes visuels françophones (219 Provencher Blvd.)

There’s some crazy magic going on in the paintings of Shaun Morin.
   
Kooky and spooky, a top hat produces a shower of colourful bones surrounded by cherries, snakes and horseshoes in Au Revior (2008). This painting is uncannily perfect. The patterns and shapes Morin has reproduced from a patchwork quilt fit just right with the strategies of comic strips — each special image is squished into its uneven square, a kind of grab bag or treasure box of favourites. Thick ridges of pale marine impasto surround a mermaid, who seems to be marshalling this rag-tag group — including a ladybug carrying three female legs encased in fishnet stockings, a witty visual echo —with her trident.
   
Morin’s rubric of symbols has more in common with a child’s wish-making than dark and creepy spell-making. Each painting is a motley collection of images that Morin moves around like toys in his cosmology of luck, chance, fortune, dread, horror, dejection and innocent delights infused with risk.
   
Récits Fragmentés is crammed with all kinds of retro indulgences — from the dusty, worn-out colours and nasty absurdity of Depression-era funny papers to the bright, blocky charm of Nintendo video games.
   
Le Faim (2008) includes a rendering of a telephone pole bristling with nails, recalling Morin’s "nail bombing" past, in which he and his comrades in street art would pepper wooden poles and fences with tiny canvases. Morin’s large canvases mimic this method of clustering several small pictures together, mixing scale while keeping each element slightly separate.
   
Mostly these elements float around autonomously, and occasionally there is a logic for the floating — as in the sodden-themed Attraper et Relacher (2009). A saucer-eyed octopus (or, more accurately a quadopus) peeps unhappily from a fish bowl. Nearby, brightly striped octopus arms grasp a cluster of balloons while a hovering pair of scissors could sever more than just the strings. A tiny umbrella is imprisoned in a raindrop and a desolate-looking pink elephant douses himself with water from his trunk while soaking in a bath. With all the water, one might wonder what Morin intends to catch and release here. More than a fish or octopus, it’s the viewer’s attention. One can hardly help but be spellbound by the odd combos he throws up, such as a stack of squat sheet ghosts in clown makeup — a sort of snowman/totem pole of pathetic-ness.
   
Scale and accumulation are pivotal to older works, Boutelles sur le Wagon (2002) and Village du Party (2002). This port town, composed of giant liquor bottles, might have too much of a good thing going on.
   
Morin’s exhibition at La Maison des artistes visuels françophones, which includes only 10 paintings (although some of those are crammed with as much stuff as 20 regular paintings), is not nearly too much of a good thing. It’s a surprising and perfect act of magic.
   
Sandee Moore left the mild climes of her B.C. home for the warm embrace of the Winnipeg arts community six years ago. She is an intermedia artist, a former director of Video Pool and occasional arts writer.