How can exploring a family archive transform our understanding of the collective present?

The Past Is Before You explores this question by considering how memories can be examined, reimagined and even uplifted, shedding new light on the artist’s personal history.

An exercise in catharsis, Arnie Lipsey’s paintings forgo linear time, choosing instead to collapse the past, present, and future. Each work begins with an archival family photograph, and branches out into thematic explorations of war, survival, immigration, family life, as well as leisure. Lipsey’s paintings depict everyday Jewish life in Eastern Europe and Montreal from his family’s vantage point, highlighting stories transmitted across generations that are simultaneously loving, comforting, humorous, and haunting.

Evoking the spirit of magical realism, Lipsey’s dreamlike compositions lie somewhere along the boundaries of fantasy and reality: saturated hues replace the black-and-white source material, and figures are posed in the midst of often-surreal and multi-temporal settings. By filling in the blanks of family lore, it feels logical that Lipsey’s compositions lean into the absurd and surreal. Lipsey’s paintings call into question the potential of art as a tool to grasp ancestral memories that are not entirely our own.

To some – and especially among those Jewish families who experienced displacement and have a limited historical record – the family photo album is a private, even sacred, object. In vivid colour, The Past Is Before You demonstrates alternative methods and new possibilities for preserving the family archive.