Click to read an article on Chthonic Youth from the Windsor Independent

Artcite Inc. is pleased to present Chthonic Youth, a solo exhibition by local, mid-career artist and concrete poet Gustave Morin. For this exhibit, Morin will draw from a quarter of a century of his published/unpublished visual poetry and other collected materials to mount an immersive installation (or what he playfully calls “xerographic wallpaper”). While “performing” on his arsenal of 27 typewriters, Morin will also inhabit and use the gallery as a laboratory-cum-studio to interact with gallery visitors as well as to produce and display new typewriter poems. Chthonic Youth is programmed in conjunction with Bookfest Windsor, Southwestern Ontario’s only literary festival.

In 2015, New Star books published Morin’s book entitled Clean Sails, a series of typewriter poems that “were wrested from dozens of typewriters, some of them hand–modified, through countless thousands of hours of typing over the past half–decade.” (New Star Books) Amongst previous works, the original copy of Clean Sails can be found in the private collection of The Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry.

In the same year, Morin officially entered the canon of western art history when Thames and Hudson featured some of his work in their award winning survey publication The Art of Typewriting.

Gustave Morin makes his happy home at The Grove Stand — located on the outer edge of the Sun Parlour of Canada — in the frontier metropolis known as Windsor/Detroit. There he is deeply involved with Common Ground, an art gallery; Media City, a film festival; Imprimerie Espontaneo, a publishing enterprise; and 23 Skidoo!, an independent film ensemble. In addition to his many dark arts, he holds a fireworks operator certificate and is a member in good standing of both CUPE 543 and I.A.T.S.E. local 580. Oi! to the savant garde!

Images by Douglas MacLellan, 2016.