-- LOVED
-- LOATHED
-- 25 SECONDS
-- LIFE IS ART IS LIFE PART 2
-- ALBERT OEHLEN AT THE WHITECHAPEL
-- 2 EAST LONDON GALLERIES
-- NEWS
-- CURATOR PROFILE: SHAI OHAYON
-- SOME THINGS TO CHECK OUT IN LONDON
-- LONDON PLAYLIST
-- ONE TO GOOGLE
-- TALK TO US
-- AND FINALLY...
Hello from London!
Welcome to View on Art - the collector's newsletter.
This month comes to you from a very condensed three days in London.
We loved, we loathed
We went to Tate Modern, the Serpentine Gallery, the Whitechapel.
We suggest places to go, things to do in London
We look at the Sultan's Elephant (for anyone who hasn't seen it)
We recommend some hot UK artists.
We profile a London based Canadian curator - Shai Ohayon
Also..we have an announcement!
This letter goes to over 200 curators, artists, dealers, editors and collectors in London, Florence, Rome, New York, California, Washington, Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Winnipeg and Vancouver.
Please forward it to anyone who you think would be interested! Thanks and enjoy!
With very best wishes, Andrea
LOVED
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1. The New Media works at Sublime Embrace: experiencing consciousness in contemporary art. The exhibition, at the Art Gallery of Hamilton, outside of Toronto, was curated by Shirley Madill. There were some extraordinary works in the show - I thought the best was the New Media room, with a fantastic octagonal screening installation by David Rokeby called Gathering, which was originally created for the 26th Bienal de Sao Paolo. The piece comprised a surveillance camera used to capture and isolate human activity in a separate location then each image was sorted by colour and shape and projected to create the effect of a constantly moving watercolour painting. Precious the I by Tony Oursler sat on the floor next to it, a green blob-face projected on to a ceramic oval. Across the room was Bill Viola 's Becoming Light, a video of two bodies being submerged into the depths of water.
The most spectacular of all was David Hoffos' work Scenes from the House Dream. A multimedia installation, it evolved from the artist's own dream about a house and his discovery that a “house” is a common dream motif. The effect was kind of Alice in Wonderland, the viewer peering into small scale versions of large rooms, and confronted with a surprisingly realistic hologram of a girl sitting on the floor in one corner.
The project will result in fifteen to twenty small installations, to be displayed together to tell a unified story in 2007. Phase 4 recently opened on March 31 at Trepanier Baer in Calgary. The installation in Sublime Embrace is a combination of scenes from Phases 2 and 3.
David Hoffos at Trepanier Baer
2. The Robert Longo piece in the same exhibition. Titled Dumb Running, from 1988, this piece was gold leaf on steel, with motor and timer. A large formalist work consisting of steel cylinders covered in gold that periodically move is a comment on sculpture. According to the exhibition text, the piece “echoes the work of such minimalists as Donald Judd..and its title cancels out the old order, establishing a new one where contrary and exclusive features inhabit the same space promoting a form of dissonance and collision.”
Art Gallery of Hamilton
3. The Gibraltar Point Open Studios. Toronto Island hosts an annual artist residency, courtesy of Artscape. I hadn't known about it at the time, but the facilities seem both simple and quite idyllic. At the back of the island, the grouping of small buildings gives the feeling of a small, secluded community, looking out over the lake towards the US, and yet a 15 minute ferry ride from downtown Toronto.
The 11 artists at this year's residency included a poet, a composer, visual artists, writers and a playwright. They were from London, the Netherlands, Wisconsin, Victoria BC and New York among other places. Best, I thought, were the Danish, London-based artist Tine Bech, whose balloon sound sculptures floated seductively around her studio and Christopher Butterfield, a composer from Victoria who had created a fantastic installation of musical scores covering the walls, along with a sound recording. I liked Ray Hsu's poetry, too.
Apply and/or get on the mailing list here
4. Maia Ustad at Prefix institute of Contemporary Art. Toronto curator Rhonda Corvese organized this excellent exhibition by the Norwegian artist. The piece is essentially a wall of old radios stacked on top of one another from which electronically treated sounds are emitted. The sounds are reminiscent of a time gone by, including radio- buzz, static interference, Morse code and fragments of speech. At times, the sounds form a wave of sound that runs the length of the wall, enveloping the viewer. Would be good with a Jed Lind sculpture.
5. The only video piece in the Thomas Demand exhibition at the Serpentine. A videotape made, as with all of Demand's work, from cardboard, winds slowly. It is an illusion, of course, the image is actually a series of stills jerking slightly to suggest movement. The projector is visible on the opposite wall, further enhancing the illusion. The interplay between the real projector and the cardboard film reels created a wonderful tension. It would work nicely beside a Rodney Graham film piece.
As for the photographs, they are good but I think perhaps best seen in the context of a curated group exhibit, because Demand's work is also at one level about the truth of photography. It is therefore useful to create a dialogue with other works. Maybe the curators realized that and the heavy ivy-printed wallpaper on the walls was meant to compensate, or something.
Thomas Demand at the Serpentine Gallery
LOATHED
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1. How few people came from Toronto to the opening on June 8 at the Art Gallery of Hamilton. Regional galleries are doing some of the most interesting and original work - it would be great to see a bigger turnout to openings at the always good and interesting Oakville Galleries and Hamilton Art Gallery.
3. As much as I hate to say it, I was disappointed with this year's Serpentine Pavilion by Rem Koolhaas. It was ok, but unfortunately much more rigid than the drawings and press release led everyone to believe. At the opening, most people I spoke with were of the same opinion. And the interior was quite rigid as well, with gaps on each of the four sides that create a breeze throughout the space, and a frame of unfortunate blue ivy- print wallpaper by Thomas Demand, whose show was on in the gallery.
2. The Clive Murphy/Nobuyuki Takahashi show at Mercer Union in Toronto. Actually it wasn't even that I loathed it, it was just that when I went the gallery was empty, no one to explain the work, too few instructions on how to operate an obviously interactive art work by Takahashi. And it was too hot to consider clambering onto Murphy's black plastic bouncy castle for some kind of art experience. I'm sure it was much better at the opening.
4. How long it takes to get anywhere in London. Tube delays. Heat. Ugh.
Mercer Union
25 SECONDS
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I was asked by curator Rhonda Corvese to be a part of 25sec. Toronto, a project by Berlin-based artists Andreas Schimanski and Angelika Middendorf. About 60 people working in the art world, including curators, collectors, gallery owners, writers and artists each gave a 25 second statement outlining their professional goals in relation to Toronto and the art world in general. Toronto is the second city, after Berlin, to have hosted this “video portrait” and there has now been interest from curators in Russia and China. The final statements will be edited together into a video and screened at Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art next year, after which it will likely travel to other countries.
This kind of participatory endeavor is particularly useful for less established, upcoming art scenes - it gets the art world really focused on what it wishes to accomplish. It will be interesting to hear what people have to say, but for what it's worth, I spoke about my desire to foster a competitive energy among artists in the city, to encourage a high standard of contemporary art in Toronto and Canada and to be instrumental in promoting Canadian art to the international community. Finally, I said that I wanted to encourage a view of criticism as relevant and helpful.
Look out for my upcoming text on the project's website:
25 Sec.
LIFE IS ART IS LIFE PART 2
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Puppets seem to be everywhere these days. Two examples to consider:
1. In his show that just opened at the Tate Modern, Pierre Huyghe was screening This is not a time for dreaming, a tale of two stories told as a brilliantly produced puppet show. Revolving around Le Corbusier's ill-fated commission by Harvard University for a visual arts department in 1959 which was eventually completed after his death, the second story weaves the artist's own experience into the plot, when he was invited to create a work that would celebrate the same building's 40th anniversary. The dean of deans, Mr. Harvard, floats around as a black, insect-like doom figure.
Read the real story here
2. The Sultan's Elephant was a performance art piece that took place on the streets of London this past May. An enormous wooden elephant is operated by over ten puppeteers using hydraulics and motors. There are other characters including a surprising “little” girl. The figures are magical, manipulated to wonderful, Lilliputian effect by comparatively pint-sized people. The show is created by French company Royal de Luxe.
Check it out here:
The Sultan's Elephant - Little Girl
And here:
Sultan's elephant:
Marshall McLuhan said, “As the unity of the modern world becomes increasingly a technological rather than a social affair, the techniques of the arts provide the most valuable means of insight into the real direction of our own collective purposes.”
Every act is creative, and if you believe some Indian philosophies, every act is predetermined. Creativity is therefore subjective - how can we know if we are being creative or merely following a pre-determined path, going about like so many puppets on strings? Now that the line between art and life has been well and truly blurred, the question is what is the future of art? Technology? Spirituality?
Generosity has begun to make itself felt in art, with people like Rirkrit Tiravanija cooking and feeding people in his artworks, which also of course has to do with the continued breaking down of barriers between art and life.
Drinks with Tino at the Drake Hotel in Toronto on July 7, 6- 8 pm, where London-born artist Tino Sehgal gives his time to whoever wants to drop in and have a chat. Look out for his performance piece Kiss on view at the Art Gallery of Ontario, July 9 - August 20.
And generosity is in the air - as seen on a recent cover of the Economist with the headline “Billanthropy.”
Drinks with Tino:
ALBERT OEHLEN AT THE WHITECHAPEL
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The large paintings were very 1980s and looked like a kind of throwback to a bygone era (Schnabel, Salle etc.) Upstairs, after a gallery of small, smart collages, were two grey paintings that were superb. They appeared to have been painted and then blurred overtop, so that something strange and deliberate was partially visible under the blurred grey paint. It was as if the artist was stating his uncertainty. It seemed like a deliberate move by an uncertain artist.
There was also a disturbing painting of a black painted, leotard-clad body stretching across a canvas, upon which had been pasted a giant blowup head of Chucky, the horror doll. I can't get it out of my head. It would be great hanging beside a Douglas Gordon.
Whitechapel Gallery
2 EAST LONDON GALLERIES
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I ran around to a few East London galleries this afternoon - saw a great show at Counter Gallery on Charlotte Road, near Old Street. It was called Toutes Compositions Florales and was the kind of small, tight group show that Jessica Bradley puts on.
Best were a hand coloured etching by David Thorpe called The Kingdom Spear, Le langage des fleurs by Peter Peri, a detailed, antique looking pencil drawing and a pastel sculpture by Rebecca Warren in extremely delicate unfired clay called Beau.
Counter Gallery
Also dropped into a lovely small gallery called Museum 52 on Redchurch Street, near Brick Lane. There was a show of paintings by a Chinese artist called Ji Wenyu. Not my cup of tea, they were a blend of Chinese folklore with kitsch.
The large scale oil on canvas works were well painted and spectacularly coloured in colour combinations reminiscent of the Chinese opera. Fun.
Museum 52
NEWS
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1. This newsletter is soon to become a website - View on Canadian Art - a comprehensive window onto Canada's contemporary art scene, from coast to coast. It will be a valuable resource for anyone looking for an art tour of one of Canada's major cities, or for Canadians looking to find out what's happening across the country.
Look out for it in the next month or so.
2. The gallery space at Toronto's private member's club The Spoke will now be managed and operated by Tatar Gallery. The Tatar Gallery first opened in Toronto in 1996 and has since provided a venue for Canadian and international artists working in all media. Its most recent project was Could Have Been the Weather, an exhibition of photography and new media curated by Christopher Eamon, curator of the Kramlich Collection.
The Tatar Gallery's programming will begin at The Spoke Club in the fall of 2006 with Vancouver painter George Vergette and Jerwood Prize winning photographer, London-based Veronica Bailey.
Tatar Gallery
CURATOR PROFILE: SHAI OHAYON
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I met up with Shai at Bethnal Green tube and we walked over to MOT gallery nearby, to see and document a show titled The 'Real' Canadian that he had curated there. On view was work by three young artists, Robert Waters, Jason Kronenwald and Elizabeth Fearon.
Robert Waters makes delicate wall works by covering an area in strips of shiny brown packing tape, and delicately cutting out images to make modern silhouettes. Very nice work. He's represented by P/M Gallery in Toronto.
In November Shai will curate a complimentary exhibition of British artists in Toronto at P/M Gallery, including work by Shez Dawood, Ami Clark, Simona Brinkman, Nicola Symes, Louise Harris and Paulmart.
Shai is from Toronto and has been living in London for the past 5 1/2 years. Teaching and curating, he is now curator of new contemporary galleries at the Fulham Palace, a medieval palace once home to the Bishop of London.
MOT
SOME THINGS TO CHECK OUT IN LONDON
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EAT at Yauatcha in Soho for excellent dimsum and cocktails.
Yauatcha
BUY the artist multiples and artist books section in the Tate Modern gift shop.
INDULGE in a manicure - every department store on Oxford Street has a nail salon inside.
SHOP on the high street. Best is Reiss - and Topshop, of course.
RELAX! - Buy a bottle of champagne and drink it in Queen Mary's Rose Garden in Regent's Park.
Queen Mary's Gardens
LONDON PLAYLIST
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Someone made this brilliant punk/ska playlist for me, perfect for walking the streets of London. And you can have a vaguely Janet Cardiff-like experience, knowing that I've listened to the same soundtrack a few weeks earlier.
Suspect Device by Stiff Little Fingers, In the City by The Jam, Paranoid by Black Sabbath, I'm an Upstart by Angelic Upstarts, Idle Gossip by Toy Dolls,
How Soon is Now by The Smiths, Pump it Up by Elvis Costello, King Rocker by Generation X, Same Old Thing by The Streets, Pressure Drop by The Clash,
Too Much Pressure by The Selecter, Fighting in the Streets by Cockney Rejects, Big A, Little A by Crass, No Mercy for You by The Business, Vive La Revolution by The Addicts,
Pretty Vacant by Sex Pistols, The Same Thing by UK Subs, I Turned out a Punk by Big Audio Dynamite, Baggy Trousers by Madness, From the Pubs by Peter & the Test Tube Babies,
Big Five by Judge Dread, Hundred Mile High City by Ocean Colour Scene, Hurry Up Harry by Sham 69, I Can't Explain by The Who, I Predict a Riot by Kaiser Chiefs,
Nite Club by The Specials, Plastic Gangster by 4 Skins, Police on my Back by The Clash, Skinhead Girl by Bad Manners, Something Else by Sid Vicious,
Streets of London by Anti-Nowhere League, Sunny Side of the Street by The Pogues, The Ace of Spades by Motorhead, What do I get by Buzzcocks, You Really Got Me by The Kinks.
Thank you Dan Springer for your musical taste.
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
VoCA June 2006
-- LOVED
-- LOATHED
-- LIFE IS ART IS LIFE
-- PREDATORS & PREY AT YDESSA HENDELES ART FOUNDATION
-- OCAD: A SCHOOL TO WATCH
-- A FEW ARTISTS TO WATCH
-- NEWS
-- SOME OF MY UPCOMING WRITING
-- PROFILE: PAUL BUTLER OF THE OTHER GALLERY
-- ARTISTS TO GOOGLE
-- TALK TO US
-- AND FINALLY...
Hello,
Welcome to View on Canadian Art - the collector's newsletter.
-This month looks at who and what to watch in Canada.
-We loved, we loathed
-We went to CONTACT, Toronto's photography festival
-We suggest a few films to watch
-We look at an art school in transition
-We recommend some artists to watch
-We profile Paul Butler of The Other Gallery - a dealer to watch!
This letter goes to over 200 curators, artists, dealers, editors and collectors in London, Florence, Rome, New York, California, Washington, Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Winnipeg and Vancouver.
Please forward it to anyone who you think would be interested! Thanks and enjoy!
With very best wishes, Andrea
LOVED
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1. American Icons at Corkin Shopland Gallery.The best show I saw for CONTACT in May was this fantastic exhibit featuring work by Margaret Bourke- White, Walker Evans, Edward Weston, Dorothea Lange, Alfred Stieglitz and others. A dizzying selection of phenomenal works were displayed along the two walls in the gallery's main space. One needs historical work to put so much contemporary art into perspective. The show continues through end of June.
Also in the dimly-lit back room were a number of wonderfully muted Parisian scenes by Eugene Atget.
2. Highlights from the Black Star collection at BCE place. The Black Star Historical Black and White Photography Collection was gifted to Toronto's Ryerson University by an anonymous donor. The NYC-based Black Star photojournalism agency was founded in 1935 by Kurt Safranski, Kurt Kornfeld and Ernest Mayer, all fleeing Hitler's Germany.
Many people of cultural and political significance are included in the collection, among them Marilyn Monroe, Charlie Chaplin, Malcolm X, Marshall McLuhan, Stalin, Regan, Hemingway and Matisse. Photographers include such legends as Andreas Feininger, Bill Brandt, Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Mario Giacomelli. The show was well installed in the centre of the atrium. Ryerson has plans to build a gallery and research centre to house the collection - Toronto is lucky to have it!
3. The Toronto waterfront proposals on public view at BCE place. Five proposals by the following teams to address Toronto's beleaguered waterfront:
-Foster/Zeidler/Atelier Dreiseitl
-Balmori/H3/Halcrow/Lobko/nARCHITECTS/Saski/Snohetta/ Weitz & Yoes
-Wasaw
-Tod Williams Billie Tsien/Martinez Lapenna-Torres
-West8/Dutoit Allsopp Hillier/Schollen/Diamond & Schmitt/ Arup/Halsall/Dennis
I think the best are the Tod Williams Billie Tsien team's proposal although it includes the construction of a new island. And the Allsopp/Diamond Schmitt proposal, despite the quite horrifying inclusion of floating maple-leaf shaped islands in the lake.
Toronto Waterfront website
4. Chris Gergley at Monte Clark. I really like Chris Gergley's work. But that's because I know about it. Chris is a man completely obsessed with photography, and his photographs each carry a story which links the work's title, image and occurence within itself. They are perfect works for a collector looking to bridge contemporary and historical photography, or conceptual with documentary - or for anyone who wants a conversation piece.
5. Could Have Been the Weather curated by Christopher Eamon at Tatar Gallery. Toronto has seen a number of well-curated shows in commercial galleries, a great way of contextualizing work and encouraging collectors to think in terms of relationships.
Chris Eamon, curator of the Kramlich collection (of video art), was invited by Judith Tatar for the gallery's tenth anniversary show and given curatorial carte blanche. The result was a group of moody works and photographs, the best of which was the installation by San Francisco-based artist Mads Lynnerup. A brown paper umbrella sits in the corner of the room. The sound of rain pervades the air. Upon walking behind the umbrella, you see a video of two hands scrunching a large piece of paper up into a tiny ball. The show ended on June 6, but you can get more info from the gallery's website.
Tatar Gallery
LOATHED
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-Power Ball 8 (Toronto's annual "do" in support of the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery) was mediocre. So here are 9 tips for Power Ball 9:
1. Take the dj out of the corridor.
2. Put him in the same room as the dancefloor.
3. Eliminate ALL lineups.
4. Have more decoration - energy! Colour! Make it a visual feast!
5. Make the events really outrageous. The karaoke was fun, but you can do that at the Gladstone every week. Pillow fighting? Try foam or jello and get naked!
6. Tell people what's going on! Signage!! Who knew that Francesco Vezzoli's Caligula was playing? And play it on a loop, not occasionally.
7. Don't try to be all things to all people. Take one hors d'oeuvre theme, for instance and do it well.
8. Serve CHAMPAGNE for God's sake! Or at least Cava. $160 and all I can get is prosecco???
9. Do whatever it takes to make sure people get their money's worth.
The Power Plant
-The Scotia Bank-sponsored show of work by Medecins Sans Frontieres. Five photographers from the VII Photo Agency traveled to the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2005 with MSF in order to shed light on the suffering of the Congolese people as they struggle to survive a war that remains virtually invisible to the outside world.
The idea is so important but the installation was very unfortunate. Someone brought office dividers down into a beautiful atrium, set them around the edge of the room and put up some snapshots. The installation should have given the images the importance that they deserve.
-Artist talk by Stephen Waddell. Stephen Waddell's work is often lovely and poetic - he can produce some incredible images. In his talk, he referred several times to Baudelaire's Painter of Modern Life, (Waddell began his own career as a painter.) But I didn't sense, from his talk, a strong direction for his art, and I think that's important. Otherwise how does one justify it?
-Joan Fontcuberta's Googlegrams at Artcore. The artist has used the Google image search engine to group a number of images together under the same theme. He then overlays this grid of images with an image of his own choosing (one that typically contrasts with the underlying images).
The larger image is achieved through burning and fading of the grid. For instance tiny portraits of the world's richest men and women overlaid with an image of a homeless man.
Many of the images in this show were kitsch; I kept thinking of the excellent artist (and master of kitsch) Glenn Brown.
Artcore Gallery
LIFE IS ART IS LIFE
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At the beginning of Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth, he shows some photographs of the earth from outer space. As Marshall McLuhan noted, humankind developed a new relationship to our planet once this space perspective was made available. That photograph was in a sense the ultimate photograph. To trace photography's history from the camera obscura to the camera to the mega-distancing effect of this image is also to trace man's relationship to nature.
The film's central message is that global warming is a moral issue, that we, regardless of nationality have to embrace this challenge. This will necessitate a change (complete rethinking?) of how westernized societies conduct ourselves.
Art photography has already mimicked a global perspective, in work by Andreas Gursky and others. 'Environmental' photography (Burtynsky et al) often takes a God's-eye view of the landscape. This is important because such a perspective allows for a kind of objectivity. There is a sense that we are observing ourselves and the meaning of our actions.
Photography has always been closely linked with technological advancement; digital technology has allowed for the proposing of multiple truths. At the same time, self-observation and documentation has suggested that our very actions are creative acts. The earth is our canvas.
Duchamp's readymades proved that life could be art. Today's artists are making art from life. Noviembre, a Spanish mock documentary from 2003 recently screened at Toronto's Goethe Institute is a perfect example of this.
The story follows an acting troupe based in Madrid, whose idea of real theatre begins with performance out in the streets, face to face with the public. For instance they dress as gypsies and go through the crowds as gypsies, incognito to all but themselves. Eventually they stage a fake shooting, remaining in their roles until the real ambulance arrives. Needless to say, they are arrested several times. The film ends in a terrifying episode and is well worth seeing. For the troupe, there are no limits. The question becomes, “what is the difference between a faked shooting and a real shooting, if all the surrounding circumstances are the same?”
Mark Lewis's film Rear Projection features the Canadian actress Molly Parker in what is essentially a portrait. The actress (who was filmed in Los Angeles) stands still, hands clasped, against a background filmed in Algonquin Park. The backdrop moves in and out slowly, as if breathing. (The camera was set on a 30-foot track and uses the push-pull effect of the camera's lens.)
The four-minute film references the Renaissance portrait, wherein the landscaped background would have been painted in around the central figure. Many of Lewis's works deal with the idea of double-time that exists in painting, and how that translates when the scene is re- interpreted in the time-based medium of film.
Rear Projection takes the conventions of Renaissance portraiture and gives them new meaning. One could say that he brings art to life through subtly emotive, sublty moving painting. Like Eve Sussman's 89 Seconds at Alcazar, a video recreation of Velasquez' Las Meninas, or Sam Taylor-Wood's time lapse Vanitas portrait of rotting fruit, these works ask the viewer to look through the lens of history from the present moment.
Not only are we looking down at ourselves physically, but also back at ourselves historically. What is the meaning of this perspective?
Al Gore's film - An Inconvenient Truth
Mark Lewis' films at Monte Clark Gallery Toronto until July 23:
Monte Clark Gallery
PREDATORS & PREY AT YDESSA HENDELES ART FOUNDATION
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The excellently curated show at the Ydessa Hendeles Art Foundation in Toronto opens with a bang.
A set of fine porcelain from the Hindenburg Zeppelin, inscribed with a Nazi insignia incorporating an eagle and a swastika. Beyond its own identity, this work spoke volumes about much contemporary art today, which uses the discrepancy of meaning between two opposing perspectives to make a new statement. The opening statement of the show, then, is that the difference between art and life is in the perception. This point is echoed in the second work on display. A pair of the curator's own gold, studded Gucci stilettos, every inch echoing both the predator and prey of the exhibition's title.
The exhibit continues with a series of black and white arial photographs of Zeppelins flying over exotic cities from New York to Rome to Cairo. The images are enlargements of photographs included with cigarette boxes of the day - a glamorous marketing incentive.
Other fantastic works include a vitrine arrangement of Victorian toys including Mother Goose. Another vitrine showcases an antique vampire-killing kit, arranged in precisely the same formation as in the auction catalogue from which they were purchased, and, in another room, two reproductions of antique lamps, lighting a room full of Andre Kertesz's photographs of life in a Trappist monastery.
It's wonderful how Ydessa Hendeles is so invested in understanding, and articulating the meaning of things.
OCAD: A SCHOOL TO WATCH
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Excerpts from Sara Diamond's Presidential Installation Speech at Roy Thompson Hall, Toronto.
In some quarters, we are seeing the dramatic re-enactment of the Age of Anxiety of the 1920s..This context introduces a compelling urgency for art in the 21st century, an art that, with all of its complexity and challenges, allows us to live within and resolve “the rich texture of the present.”
Canada is still, in part, bound up with the industrial age of centuries past and reliant on its resource economies..We need to move boldly and quickly to find, harness and challenge the imaginations of a new generation and to channel them into our most important endeavours - economic, scientific, social and cultural.
Let's imagine our nation, our world, where citizens placed art and design at the centre. Personalization and the direct sharing of stories and opinion are hallmarks of 21st-century mass culture. This sharing occurs in a context that is increasingly collaborative...In our time, knowledge is now cognitive, sensory and integrated.
In the 21st century, imagination is power!
In this new Age of Imagination, excellent, successful products, services, and processes make use of sophisticated art and design skills. Art and design engage our values..Artists and designers sniff the Zeitgeist, and having sensed the future, they have the disciplined imaginations that can blend emotion and form.
To be leaders in the emerging imagination economy, we require a new model army, not based on command and control but rather on distributed intelligence and on a priori-appropriate hierarchy..OCAD can unite the integrative power of art's long-term and social vision with design's systematic and creative ability to meet needs..OCAD will embrace the Ecology of the Imagination.
We will produce the Young Toronto Artists who will meld the eloquence of form, the expressive quality of materials with lilting commentary on the Age of Anxiety. These artists, with their exhibitions in Beijing, Kabul and New York, will place us on the international cultural map and make Toronto a cultural tourism magnet..To ensure that Canadians are culture makers as well as consumers, game designers as well as players.
We will build world-class, niche graduate programs, framed through interdisciplinary studios in art, design and liberal studies, and provide a gateway to the larger world of science, engineering and medical research. This will be a networked resource, built with partners across Ontario and the world..Circulating art and design in concert, not in competition, with others in Toronto.
Yes, this is a bold vision, but it does not require magic to become a reality, although we do intend its results to seem magical, indeed.
Ontario College of Art and Design
A FEW ARTISTS TO WATCH
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-Mike Bilodeau. Just a guy from Hamilton, Ontario, Mike was “discovered” by curator David Liss and given a show at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art in Toronto. His black, spidery wall-mounted sculptures are made from scrap metal and electronic machine parts that look like disconcertingly futuristic life forms.
Bilodeau showed them under ultraviolet light at Mocca for his show Exoskell, to accentuate their “exquisitely abysmal quality”. I would love to see these vaguely gothic wall sculptures alongside those of by Cathy de Monchaux's. Eaqually macabre, his are the masculine to her feminine.
Cathy de Monchaux at home
-Megan McKnight at PM Gallery. McKnight has a deft hand with paint, using it like a pastry chef, creating tiny swirls of pigment built up like coral on canvas. Her seductive technique works best on smaller canvases, and she has yet to reconcile her ideas into a wholly complete work where background and foreground come entirely together. She is loaded with possibility, though and she's one to watch.
PM Gallery
-Adam Brandjedis - won the 2006 award for Integrated Media at the Ontario College of Art and Design and he's just won the 401 Richmond Career-Launcher Prize which gives him a wonderful studio space. His sculptural project Genpets are “real” genetically modified, packaged pets. They have thankfully arrived safely in Basel where they will be included in an exhibition through August.
Check out:
Genpets
And then:
Adam's blog
-Dyan Marie (Gallery) - Opened in September 2005 with an urban- oriented mandate. The city is examining itself and Dyan Marie's artist projects are a part of this. The gallery's current project is a community and public artwork that creates "an art-embedded walking system throughout the community”.
Participating artists include Vera Frenkel, Eldon Garnet, Tony Scherman, Monica Tap and others. Each has contributed a drawing that has been recreated as a bronze relief sculpture. The drawings are set into the walkway and “walkway users can create their own print edition by covering the cast in paper and rubbing a pencil over the surface.” Free art!
Dyan Marie Projects
-Painter Mike Bayne. He's 26, with an MA from Concordia and he makes miniature, exquisitely detailed paintings. One to watch, definitely.
He shows with Katherine Mulherin Contemporary Art Projects, but there's little info and no images on her website so instead here's an interview with the artist:
Mike Bayne interview
-John Monteith - Presently shows with Xexe Gallery in Toronto, where you may have seen his pale portraits or line drawings, but more importantly he will be going to New York in the fall to study at Parsons. He has a subtle, refined sensibility and I think he's another one to watch.
-Shaan Syed - Left Toronto last year to get his MA from Goldsmiths in London. He shows with Birch Libralato in Toronto, and currently has a show at Plug-In in Winnipeg. Watch for his work to change considerably, in coming years.
Plug In ICA
NEWS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-This year's Serpentine Pavilion opens at the end of June with a stunning pavilion by Rem Koolhaas. The big draw will be the enormous, translucent egg-shaped dome floating above a lower amphitheatre.
The pavilion will hold a series of lectures and events throughout the summer. And in the gallery itself there's a Thomas Demand show through August 6. What could be better?
Serpentine Gallery pavilion
-Speaking of pavilions, in the fall Vancouver firm Pechet and Robb will represent Canada at this year's Venice Architecture Biennale, so book your tickets now. Their installation Sweaterlodge will envelop the Canadian pavilion with an enormous, orange polar fleece sweater. Once inside, visitors will pedal stationary bicycles screening vignettes that intertwine urban life with nature, to reflect the biennale's theme of "Cities, Architecture and Society”.
Afterward, the sweater will be shipped back to Canada where it will be recycledinto various garments at a public “sew-in”.
Sweaterlodge
-And speaking of Vancouver, Catriona Jeffries just opened her new gallery. The industrial warehouse space, designed by architect/artist Robert Kleyn, allows for larger installation pieces.
The current show, appropriately titled 247 East 1st, features work by Kevin Schmidt, Geoffrey Farmer, Ian Wallace, Brian Jungen, Damian Moppett, Germaine Koh, Jerry Pethick, Christos Dikeankos, Judy Radul, Roy Kiyooka, Arni Haraldsson, Alex Morrison, Myfawny MacLeod, Ron Terada and gallery newcomer Isabelle Pauwels.
Exhibtion continues until July 8.
More on Isabelle Pauwels:
Isabelle Pauwels
-London-based film artist Stuart Croft is part of How I Finally Accepted Fate, at New York's EFA Gallery. Curated by Jason Murison, the show is about “objects and images which function through memoir.” Also featuring work by Jennifer Cohen, Angela Dufresne, Maureen Duncan, Ilana Halperin, Sarah Hirzel, Matt Keegan, Keith Mayerson, Noah Sheldon and the wonderful Carolee Schneemann.
Exhibtion continues to July 28th.
Exhibition press release
SOME OF MY UPCOMING WRITING
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-A catalogue text for My Lies by Toronto- based Swedish artist Gunilla Josephson at Archive Gallery in Toronto. Gunilla Josephson tells the naked truth about her experiences in the resistance during the Second World War, her traumatic relationship with her famous film director father, and her double life with her French Viking twin. If you like Pipilotti Rist, you'll probably love this show. The exhibition opens on June 9, the catalogue launch and artist talk will take place June 24.
-A review of Body: New Art from the UK at Oakville Galleries in the summer issue of Border Crossings.
-A review of Ulf Puder's recent show at Artcore in the current (June) issue of ARTnews.
ARTnews
PROFILE: PAUL BUTLER OF THE OTHER GALLERY
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Paul Butler runs The Other Gallery, a web-based art gallery from Winnipeg, where he presides over a constantly evolving schedule of satellite gallery shows and Collage Parties at venues across North America and Europe.
Paul's circle includes artist friends from college, mostly producing small, affordable artworks in the same vein as Marcel Dzama of the Royal Art Lodge. His Collage Parties developed as a way of recapturing an art school energy. They are nomadic, informal and flexible, an basically involve a bunch of magazines, scissors and glue, friends and beer.
Paul says: “Collage parties function as creative incubators for all involved.”
Upcoming events include a number of shows using Catherine Mulherin's space on Queen Street West in Toronto, as well as the following Collage Parties:
"Footprints on the Moon" White Columns, June 23, 2006, NYC
“Paul Butler's Collage Party” ZieherSmith, June 25-29, New York, USA
“Paul Butler's Family Collage Party" MoCA LA, July, Los Angeles, USA
“Paul Butler's Collage Party” Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, August, Toronto, ON
Paul Butler
ARTISTS TO GOOGLE
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SARAH ANNE JOHNSON
Currently showing at Plug in Winnipeg:
SARAH ANNE JOHNSON
ELIZABETH FEARON
Showing with Rob Waters and Jason Kronenfeld at MOT London:
ELIZABETH FEARON
GEORGINA BRINGAS
Mexican artist showing at Diaz Contemporary in Toronto:
GEORGINA BRINGAS
RICARDO RENDON
Another Mexican at Diaz Contemporary, Toronto:
RICARDO RENDON
-- LOATHED
-- LIFE IS ART IS LIFE
-- PREDATORS & PREY AT YDESSA HENDELES ART FOUNDATION
-- OCAD: A SCHOOL TO WATCH
-- A FEW ARTISTS TO WATCH
-- NEWS
-- SOME OF MY UPCOMING WRITING
-- PROFILE: PAUL BUTLER OF THE OTHER GALLERY
-- ARTISTS TO GOOGLE
-- TALK TO US
-- AND FINALLY...
Hello,
Welcome to View on Canadian Art - the collector's newsletter.
-This month looks at who and what to watch in Canada.
-We loved, we loathed
-We went to CONTACT, Toronto's photography festival
-We suggest a few films to watch
-We look at an art school in transition
-We recommend some artists to watch
-We profile Paul Butler of The Other Gallery - a dealer to watch!
This letter goes to over 200 curators, artists, dealers, editors and collectors in London, Florence, Rome, New York, California, Washington, Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Winnipeg and Vancouver.
Please forward it to anyone who you think would be interested! Thanks and enjoy!
With very best wishes, Andrea
LOVED
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1. American Icons at Corkin Shopland Gallery.The best show I saw for CONTACT in May was this fantastic exhibit featuring work by Margaret Bourke- White, Walker Evans, Edward Weston, Dorothea Lange, Alfred Stieglitz and others. A dizzying selection of phenomenal works were displayed along the two walls in the gallery's main space. One needs historical work to put so much contemporary art into perspective. The show continues through end of June.
Also in the dimly-lit back room were a number of wonderfully muted Parisian scenes by Eugene Atget.
2. Highlights from the Black Star collection at BCE place. The Black Star Historical Black and White Photography Collection was gifted to Toronto's Ryerson University by an anonymous donor. The NYC-based Black Star photojournalism agency was founded in 1935 by Kurt Safranski, Kurt Kornfeld and Ernest Mayer, all fleeing Hitler's Germany.
Many people of cultural and political significance are included in the collection, among them Marilyn Monroe, Charlie Chaplin, Malcolm X, Marshall McLuhan, Stalin, Regan, Hemingway and Matisse. Photographers include such legends as Andreas Feininger, Bill Brandt, Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Mario Giacomelli. The show was well installed in the centre of the atrium. Ryerson has plans to build a gallery and research centre to house the collection - Toronto is lucky to have it!
3. The Toronto waterfront proposals on public view at BCE place. Five proposals by the following teams to address Toronto's beleaguered waterfront:
-Foster/Zeidler/Atelier Dreiseitl
-Balmori/H3/Halcrow/Lobko/nARCHITECTS/Saski/Snohetta/ Weitz & Yoes
-Wasaw
-Tod Williams Billie Tsien/Martinez Lapenna-Torres
-West8/Dutoit Allsopp Hillier/Schollen/Diamond & Schmitt/ Arup/Halsall/Dennis
I think the best are the Tod Williams Billie Tsien team's proposal although it includes the construction of a new island. And the Allsopp/Diamond Schmitt proposal, despite the quite horrifying inclusion of floating maple-leaf shaped islands in the lake.
Toronto Waterfront website
4. Chris Gergley at Monte Clark. I really like Chris Gergley's work. But that's because I know about it. Chris is a man completely obsessed with photography, and his photographs each carry a story which links the work's title, image and occurence within itself. They are perfect works for a collector looking to bridge contemporary and historical photography, or conceptual with documentary - or for anyone who wants a conversation piece.
5. Could Have Been the Weather curated by Christopher Eamon at Tatar Gallery. Toronto has seen a number of well-curated shows in commercial galleries, a great way of contextualizing work and encouraging collectors to think in terms of relationships.
Chris Eamon, curator of the Kramlich collection (of video art), was invited by Judith Tatar for the gallery's tenth anniversary show and given curatorial carte blanche. The result was a group of moody works and photographs, the best of which was the installation by San Francisco-based artist Mads Lynnerup. A brown paper umbrella sits in the corner of the room. The sound of rain pervades the air. Upon walking behind the umbrella, you see a video of two hands scrunching a large piece of paper up into a tiny ball. The show ended on June 6, but you can get more info from the gallery's website.
Tatar Gallery
LOATHED
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-Power Ball 8 (Toronto's annual "do" in support of the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery) was mediocre. So here are 9 tips for Power Ball 9:
1. Take the dj out of the corridor.
2. Put him in the same room as the dancefloor.
3. Eliminate ALL lineups.
4. Have more decoration - energy! Colour! Make it a visual feast!
5. Make the events really outrageous. The karaoke was fun, but you can do that at the Gladstone every week. Pillow fighting? Try foam or jello and get naked!
6. Tell people what's going on! Signage!! Who knew that Francesco Vezzoli's Caligula was playing? And play it on a loop, not occasionally.
7. Don't try to be all things to all people. Take one hors d'oeuvre theme, for instance and do it well.
8. Serve CHAMPAGNE for God's sake! Or at least Cava. $160 and all I can get is prosecco???
9. Do whatever it takes to make sure people get their money's worth.
The Power Plant
-The Scotia Bank-sponsored show of work by Medecins Sans Frontieres. Five photographers from the VII Photo Agency traveled to the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2005 with MSF in order to shed light on the suffering of the Congolese people as they struggle to survive a war that remains virtually invisible to the outside world.
The idea is so important but the installation was very unfortunate. Someone brought office dividers down into a beautiful atrium, set them around the edge of the room and put up some snapshots. The installation should have given the images the importance that they deserve.
-Artist talk by Stephen Waddell. Stephen Waddell's work is often lovely and poetic - he can produce some incredible images. In his talk, he referred several times to Baudelaire's Painter of Modern Life, (Waddell began his own career as a painter.) But I didn't sense, from his talk, a strong direction for his art, and I think that's important. Otherwise how does one justify it?
-Joan Fontcuberta's Googlegrams at Artcore. The artist has used the Google image search engine to group a number of images together under the same theme. He then overlays this grid of images with an image of his own choosing (one that typically contrasts with the underlying images).
The larger image is achieved through burning and fading of the grid. For instance tiny portraits of the world's richest men and women overlaid with an image of a homeless man.
Many of the images in this show were kitsch; I kept thinking of the excellent artist (and master of kitsch) Glenn Brown.
Artcore Gallery
LIFE IS ART IS LIFE
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
At the beginning of Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth, he shows some photographs of the earth from outer space. As Marshall McLuhan noted, humankind developed a new relationship to our planet once this space perspective was made available. That photograph was in a sense the ultimate photograph. To trace photography's history from the camera obscura to the camera to the mega-distancing effect of this image is also to trace man's relationship to nature.
The film's central message is that global warming is a moral issue, that we, regardless of nationality have to embrace this challenge. This will necessitate a change (complete rethinking?) of how westernized societies conduct ourselves.
Art photography has already mimicked a global perspective, in work by Andreas Gursky and others. 'Environmental' photography (Burtynsky et al) often takes a God's-eye view of the landscape. This is important because such a perspective allows for a kind of objectivity. There is a sense that we are observing ourselves and the meaning of our actions.
Photography has always been closely linked with technological advancement; digital technology has allowed for the proposing of multiple truths. At the same time, self-observation and documentation has suggested that our very actions are creative acts. The earth is our canvas.
Duchamp's readymades proved that life could be art. Today's artists are making art from life. Noviembre, a Spanish mock documentary from 2003 recently screened at Toronto's Goethe Institute is a perfect example of this.
The story follows an acting troupe based in Madrid, whose idea of real theatre begins with performance out in the streets, face to face with the public. For instance they dress as gypsies and go through the crowds as gypsies, incognito to all but themselves. Eventually they stage a fake shooting, remaining in their roles until the real ambulance arrives. Needless to say, they are arrested several times. The film ends in a terrifying episode and is well worth seeing. For the troupe, there are no limits. The question becomes, “what is the difference between a faked shooting and a real shooting, if all the surrounding circumstances are the same?”
Mark Lewis's film Rear Projection features the Canadian actress Molly Parker in what is essentially a portrait. The actress (who was filmed in Los Angeles) stands still, hands clasped, against a background filmed in Algonquin Park. The backdrop moves in and out slowly, as if breathing. (The camera was set on a 30-foot track and uses the push-pull effect of the camera's lens.)
The four-minute film references the Renaissance portrait, wherein the landscaped background would have been painted in around the central figure. Many of Lewis's works deal with the idea of double-time that exists in painting, and how that translates when the scene is re- interpreted in the time-based medium of film.
Rear Projection takes the conventions of Renaissance portraiture and gives them new meaning. One could say that he brings art to life through subtly emotive, sublty moving painting. Like Eve Sussman's 89 Seconds at Alcazar, a video recreation of Velasquez' Las Meninas, or Sam Taylor-Wood's time lapse Vanitas portrait of rotting fruit, these works ask the viewer to look through the lens of history from the present moment.
Not only are we looking down at ourselves physically, but also back at ourselves historically. What is the meaning of this perspective?
Al Gore's film - An Inconvenient Truth
Mark Lewis' films at Monte Clark Gallery Toronto until July 23:
Monte Clark Gallery
PREDATORS & PREY AT YDESSA HENDELES ART FOUNDATION
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The excellently curated show at the Ydessa Hendeles Art Foundation in Toronto opens with a bang.
A set of fine porcelain from the Hindenburg Zeppelin, inscribed with a Nazi insignia incorporating an eagle and a swastika. Beyond its own identity, this work spoke volumes about much contemporary art today, which uses the discrepancy of meaning between two opposing perspectives to make a new statement. The opening statement of the show, then, is that the difference between art and life is in the perception. This point is echoed in the second work on display. A pair of the curator's own gold, studded Gucci stilettos, every inch echoing both the predator and prey of the exhibition's title.
The exhibit continues with a series of black and white arial photographs of Zeppelins flying over exotic cities from New York to Rome to Cairo. The images are enlargements of photographs included with cigarette boxes of the day - a glamorous marketing incentive.
Other fantastic works include a vitrine arrangement of Victorian toys including Mother Goose. Another vitrine showcases an antique vampire-killing kit, arranged in precisely the same formation as in the auction catalogue from which they were purchased, and, in another room, two reproductions of antique lamps, lighting a room full of Andre Kertesz's photographs of life in a Trappist monastery.
It's wonderful how Ydessa Hendeles is so invested in understanding, and articulating the meaning of things.
OCAD: A SCHOOL TO WATCH
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Excerpts from Sara Diamond's Presidential Installation Speech at Roy Thompson Hall, Toronto.
In some quarters, we are seeing the dramatic re-enactment of the Age of Anxiety of the 1920s..This context introduces a compelling urgency for art in the 21st century, an art that, with all of its complexity and challenges, allows us to live within and resolve “the rich texture of the present.”
Canada is still, in part, bound up with the industrial age of centuries past and reliant on its resource economies..We need to move boldly and quickly to find, harness and challenge the imaginations of a new generation and to channel them into our most important endeavours - economic, scientific, social and cultural.
Let's imagine our nation, our world, where citizens placed art and design at the centre. Personalization and the direct sharing of stories and opinion are hallmarks of 21st-century mass culture. This sharing occurs in a context that is increasingly collaborative...In our time, knowledge is now cognitive, sensory and integrated.
In the 21st century, imagination is power!
In this new Age of Imagination, excellent, successful products, services, and processes make use of sophisticated art and design skills. Art and design engage our values..Artists and designers sniff the Zeitgeist, and having sensed the future, they have the disciplined imaginations that can blend emotion and form.
To be leaders in the emerging imagination economy, we require a new model army, not based on command and control but rather on distributed intelligence and on a priori-appropriate hierarchy..OCAD can unite the integrative power of art's long-term and social vision with design's systematic and creative ability to meet needs..OCAD will embrace the Ecology of the Imagination.
We will produce the Young Toronto Artists who will meld the eloquence of form, the expressive quality of materials with lilting commentary on the Age of Anxiety. These artists, with their exhibitions in Beijing, Kabul and New York, will place us on the international cultural map and make Toronto a cultural tourism magnet..To ensure that Canadians are culture makers as well as consumers, game designers as well as players.
We will build world-class, niche graduate programs, framed through interdisciplinary studios in art, design and liberal studies, and provide a gateway to the larger world of science, engineering and medical research. This will be a networked resource, built with partners across Ontario and the world..Circulating art and design in concert, not in competition, with others in Toronto.
Yes, this is a bold vision, but it does not require magic to become a reality, although we do intend its results to seem magical, indeed.
Ontario College of Art and Design
A FEW ARTISTS TO WATCH
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-Mike Bilodeau. Just a guy from Hamilton, Ontario, Mike was “discovered” by curator David Liss and given a show at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art in Toronto. His black, spidery wall-mounted sculptures are made from scrap metal and electronic machine parts that look like disconcertingly futuristic life forms.
Bilodeau showed them under ultraviolet light at Mocca for his show Exoskell, to accentuate their “exquisitely abysmal quality”. I would love to see these vaguely gothic wall sculptures alongside those of by Cathy de Monchaux's. Eaqually macabre, his are the masculine to her feminine.
Cathy de Monchaux at home
-Megan McKnight at PM Gallery. McKnight has a deft hand with paint, using it like a pastry chef, creating tiny swirls of pigment built up like coral on canvas. Her seductive technique works best on smaller canvases, and she has yet to reconcile her ideas into a wholly complete work where background and foreground come entirely together. She is loaded with possibility, though and she's one to watch.
PM Gallery
-Adam Brandjedis - won the 2006 award for Integrated Media at the Ontario College of Art and Design and he's just won the 401 Richmond Career-Launcher Prize which gives him a wonderful studio space. His sculptural project Genpets are “real” genetically modified, packaged pets. They have thankfully arrived safely in Basel where they will be included in an exhibition through August.
Check out:
Genpets
And then:
Adam's blog
-Dyan Marie (Gallery) - Opened in September 2005 with an urban- oriented mandate. The city is examining itself and Dyan Marie's artist projects are a part of this. The gallery's current project is a community and public artwork that creates "an art-embedded walking system throughout the community”.
Participating artists include Vera Frenkel, Eldon Garnet, Tony Scherman, Monica Tap and others. Each has contributed a drawing that has been recreated as a bronze relief sculpture. The drawings are set into the walkway and “walkway users can create their own print edition by covering the cast in paper and rubbing a pencil over the surface.” Free art!
Dyan Marie Projects
-Painter Mike Bayne. He's 26, with an MA from Concordia and he makes miniature, exquisitely detailed paintings. One to watch, definitely.
He shows with Katherine Mulherin Contemporary Art Projects, but there's little info and no images on her website so instead here's an interview with the artist:
Mike Bayne interview
-John Monteith - Presently shows with Xexe Gallery in Toronto, where you may have seen his pale portraits or line drawings, but more importantly he will be going to New York in the fall to study at Parsons. He has a subtle, refined sensibility and I think he's another one to watch.
-Shaan Syed - Left Toronto last year to get his MA from Goldsmiths in London. He shows with Birch Libralato in Toronto, and currently has a show at Plug-In in Winnipeg. Watch for his work to change considerably, in coming years.
Plug In ICA
NEWS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-This year's Serpentine Pavilion opens at the end of June with a stunning pavilion by Rem Koolhaas. The big draw will be the enormous, translucent egg-shaped dome floating above a lower amphitheatre.
The pavilion will hold a series of lectures and events throughout the summer. And in the gallery itself there's a Thomas Demand show through August 6. What could be better?
Serpentine Gallery pavilion
-Speaking of pavilions, in the fall Vancouver firm Pechet and Robb will represent Canada at this year's Venice Architecture Biennale, so book your tickets now. Their installation Sweaterlodge will envelop the Canadian pavilion with an enormous, orange polar fleece sweater. Once inside, visitors will pedal stationary bicycles screening vignettes that intertwine urban life with nature, to reflect the biennale's theme of "Cities, Architecture and Society”.
Afterward, the sweater will be shipped back to Canada where it will be recycledinto various garments at a public “sew-in”.
Sweaterlodge
-And speaking of Vancouver, Catriona Jeffries just opened her new gallery. The industrial warehouse space, designed by architect/artist Robert Kleyn, allows for larger installation pieces.
The current show, appropriately titled 247 East 1st, features work by Kevin Schmidt, Geoffrey Farmer, Ian Wallace, Brian Jungen, Damian Moppett, Germaine Koh, Jerry Pethick, Christos Dikeankos, Judy Radul, Roy Kiyooka, Arni Haraldsson, Alex Morrison, Myfawny MacLeod, Ron Terada and gallery newcomer Isabelle Pauwels.
Exhibtion continues until July 8.
More on Isabelle Pauwels:
Isabelle Pauwels
-London-based film artist Stuart Croft is part of How I Finally Accepted Fate, at New York's EFA Gallery. Curated by Jason Murison, the show is about “objects and images which function through memoir.” Also featuring work by Jennifer Cohen, Angela Dufresne, Maureen Duncan, Ilana Halperin, Sarah Hirzel, Matt Keegan, Keith Mayerson, Noah Sheldon and the wonderful Carolee Schneemann.
Exhibtion continues to July 28th.
Exhibition press release
SOME OF MY UPCOMING WRITING
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-A catalogue text for My Lies by Toronto- based Swedish artist Gunilla Josephson at Archive Gallery in Toronto. Gunilla Josephson tells the naked truth about her experiences in the resistance during the Second World War, her traumatic relationship with her famous film director father, and her double life with her French Viking twin. If you like Pipilotti Rist, you'll probably love this show. The exhibition opens on June 9, the catalogue launch and artist talk will take place June 24.
-A review of Body: New Art from the UK at Oakville Galleries in the summer issue of Border Crossings.
-A review of Ulf Puder's recent show at Artcore in the current (June) issue of ARTnews.
ARTnews
PROFILE: PAUL BUTLER OF THE OTHER GALLERY
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Paul Butler runs The Other Gallery, a web-based art gallery from Winnipeg, where he presides over a constantly evolving schedule of satellite gallery shows and Collage Parties at venues across North America and Europe.
Paul's circle includes artist friends from college, mostly producing small, affordable artworks in the same vein as Marcel Dzama of the Royal Art Lodge. His Collage Parties developed as a way of recapturing an art school energy. They are nomadic, informal and flexible, an basically involve a bunch of magazines, scissors and glue, friends and beer.
Paul says: “Collage parties function as creative incubators for all involved.”
Upcoming events include a number of shows using Catherine Mulherin's space on Queen Street West in Toronto, as well as the following Collage Parties:
"Footprints on the Moon" White Columns, June 23, 2006, NYC
“Paul Butler's Collage Party” ZieherSmith, June 25-29, New York, USA
“Paul Butler's Family Collage Party" MoCA LA, July, Los Angeles, USA
“Paul Butler's Collage Party” Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, August, Toronto, ON
Paul Butler
ARTISTS TO GOOGLE
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SARAH ANNE JOHNSON
Currently showing at Plug in Winnipeg:
SARAH ANNE JOHNSON
ELIZABETH FEARON
Showing with Rob Waters and Jason Kronenfeld at MOT London:
ELIZABETH FEARON
GEORGINA BRINGAS
Mexican artist showing at Diaz Contemporary in Toronto:
GEORGINA BRINGAS
RICARDO RENDON
Another Mexican at Diaz Contemporary, Toronto:
RICARDO RENDON
VoCA May 2006
-- LOVED:
-- LOATHED:
-- SELECTED UPCOMING EVENTS:
-- GOOD CURATING CAN:
-- AN ARTIST/CURATOR PROJECT:
-- CURATOR PROFILE: RHONDA CORVESE
-- TALK TO US:
-- AND FINALLY...
Hello,
Welcome to View on Art - the collector's newsletter.
-This month is short and sweet - I know you're all very busy!
-We look at curating. What purpose does curating serve?
-This month: We loved, we loathed
-We stayed in Toronto, but we saw loads of art!
-We look at unique curatorial strategies
-We profile curator Rhonda Corvese
This letter goes to over 200 curators, artists, dealers, editors and collectors in London, Florence, Rome, New York, California, Washington, Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Winnipeg and Vancouver.
Please forward it to anyone who you think would be interested! Thanks and enjoy!
With very best wishes, Andrea
LOVED:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1. The Centre Cannot Hold - a show at the Toronto Free Gallery curated by Brenda Goldstein. The exhibition was subtitled 'Prospects for Suburbia' and featured some excellent young art. Much of it reminded me of work I had seen before, but not in a derivative sense.
Best was a paper 'diorama' drawing of a forlorn girl with curly script by Rose Bianchini, Jason van Horne's post-nucelar miniature city on one side of the room (reminding me of Constant Nieuwenhuys “New Babylon”) complimented by a cartoonish soft sculpture city by UPBAG (Upper Parkdale Benevolent Art Guild.) Also Franco Defrancesca's piece - a little piece of suburban garden with a fountain reminiscent of the cover of Germaine Greer's book The Female Eunuch.
A surprise was the Arbour Lake Sghool, a collective from Calgary which resides in a suburban house. Their video of a massive structure made from scaffolding and brown cardboard with a large red carpet being crudely pushed through a hole at the top was titled Volcano. While they were making that piece, their neighbours wrote a letter of complaint to one of the member's parents, (in another city.) The letter was then emailed back to the collective, who used a video camera to 'read' the letter on the screen, line by line - with a John Baldessari-like humour.
Toronto Free Gallery
2. CONTACT Photography Festival: I love how this festival gets the city talking about photography. For the month of May, it seems everyone is going to galleries, looking at culture in a way that city bureaucrats can only hope to achieve.
3. Some Cats from Japan at Images Festival: Of a series of performances, this was my favorite. A guy sets up an overhead projector with a magnetized base, and proceeds to orchestrate a strangely Beckett-like duel between two paperclips. The sound was amplified, and the audience was riveted.
4. Melvin Charney at Nicholas Metivier. Most of my time as an undergrad at Concordia University in Montreal was spent at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, and ever since then, the artist Melvin Charney (who created the centre's sculpture garden) has fascinated me. His energetic exhibition at Nicholas Metivier gallery featured abstracted sculptures of running figures in addition to the Bodyworks series, in which enlargements of newspaper sex ads were overlaid with repetitive constructivist-style figures that the artist calls “armor-like sections of skin.”
5. Brandon Calvert's installation Meditation on the Hollow Shell at the OCAD (Ontario College of Art and Design) graduate exhibition. There were cryptic posters around the building inviting viewers to experience something in room 375.
Walking down a hallway on the third floor, we were drawn toward a whooshing noise coming from a door. We peered into the small, dark fenced-in room and saw a video playing. A large skin-like organ on the floor of the video began to move, eventually giving birth to a man and a woman. Each naked figure appeared daunted by their environment, and the woman discovers a seashell. She then disappears into the wall, the same wall in which the video monitor was placed. A second installation featured two large umbrellas, under which hung a sculpture made of a hanging lightbulb inside two revolving geodesic domes.
6. Lynne Cohen at Olga Korper Gallery. Formal, disciplined, perfectly composed and well-considered, these photographs are seductive shots of interior spaces that reflect our pleasure in ordered thought.
What is the meaning behind the architecture of our interiors?
Olga Korper Gallery
7. Imaging a Shattering Earth at MoCCA - Curated by Claude Baillargeon, Assistant Professor of Art and Art History at Oakland University in Michigan, this stunning exhibition brings together images of environmental destruction in a seductively beautiful manner. Yes, Ed Burtynsky is included in the show, but his works are eclipsed by work by Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison:
The ParkeHarrisons
And John Pfahl:
John Pfahl
LOATHED:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1. The OCAD grad show. My overall experience of the show was that it lacked energy and modernity. It felt as if the students weren't really aware of what was happening internationally. One exception was a great video installation by Brandon Calvert. (See above)
2. Kineko Ivic at Angell Gallery. Kineko's a nice guy, but I couldn't see the point of his faux-naïve robots on canvas. At least I hope they were faux. They were luscious with goopy paint, squeezed straight from the tube. The rectilinear robots sported vacuous slogans on their chests like 'Cold Blooded' and 'Eye Know it's Over.' One four- legged creature says 'Some day ur going 2 die' and is decorated with peace signs (peace signs!). Oh and a number of figures had marbles glued on to their nipples. What for? Furthermore, the press release claims that Ivic's works “bring to mind the work of..Jean-Michel Basquiat, Chris Ofili, Philip Guston and Alberto Giacometti.” No, no.
3. Bruno Billio in collaboration with Lee Kline. I love Bruno Billio's piled furniture installations, which I've seen in several countries and at the Gladstone Hotel in Toronto. They tend to be original and inspiring. Last summer's curated show at the Junction Arts Festival was really excellent. Here, though, in Kline's Yorkville townhouse, Billio neglected to respond the the site as he might have done. Kline's furnishings seem tailor-made for Wallpaper* and his pod table was a super design, but as far as the exhibition went, with a little more thought they could have created something really unique.
4. Karen Azoulay at Mercer Union artist-run centre. From the press release, there is a sense that this show might have been an enchanting, magical grotto. Yet the installation (taking up the entire right side of the gallery, while the left remained virtually empty) was hardly grotto-like, nor especially enchanting. The only allusion to a grotto were numerous ancient roman-style fountains displayed around the gallery. The grotto itself looked like a stage set in need of a performance. It was a lovely space of graduated colours reminiscent of a sunset, hung with correspondingly coloured yarn.
5. The fact that I missed the screening of Vincent Grenier's work at Images festival and went to the Mediatheque and no one could help me when I asked if I could view the work.
Mercer Union
SELECTED UPCOMING EVENTS:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
TORONTO:
Who is Collecting Whom?
Panel discussion on recent developments in the art of collecting photography.
Panelists are Alison Devine Nordstrom of the George Eastman House; Jeanne Parkin, art consultant and curator; Joe Baio, collector; Martin Barnes, curator of photography at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Stephen Daiter, director of the Stephen Daiter Gallery, Chicago.
CONTACT
VANCOUVER:
Access Artist Run Centre
Shadow Puncho: David Gifford
Canadian artist and magician David Gifford transforms the gallery into a cabinet of curiosities.
May 13th - June 17th, 2006 Opening: May 12, 2006 at 8 pm
Magic Show with Artist Talk following the performance: May 20, 2006 at 2 pm
Access
CALGARY:
Skew Gallery
André Ethier: New Works
"These are modern fairy tales in which happy endings tend not to count, painted with consummate ease; their intimate scale works in their favor." - The New York Times, Roberta Smith
May 18th - June 24th, 2006
Skew
MONTREAL:
Il Modo Italiano: Italian Design and Avant-garde in the 20th century
It's hard to argue with the press release: “In the course of the twentieth century, Italian design has gradually imposed itself as a force to be reckoned with internationally.”
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
GOOD CURATING CAN:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
REINVENT A SPACE OR ENVIRONMENT:
In 1998, curators Iris Dressler and Hans D. Christ organized an exhibition at the Hartware MedienKunstVerein in the former Union Brewery, Dortmund. The show, entitled 'Reservate der Sehnsucht' (reservations of longing) used as a starting point one of the desolate, utterly destroyed floors of the building. It had been stripped of all usable parts, and the concrete floors, ceiling and walls were in a state of complete destruction.
Envisioning this as a sort of 'landscape', the curators (with a nod to Caspar David Friedrich) made a “profitable virtue from failed hope.” They converted the space into a romantic garden landscape, complete with grass and romantic hills, in a piece by Jan Peter E.R. Sonntag after Manet's Dejeuner sur L'Herbe with Rodney Graham's film Vexation Island and other works. The link is in German (sorry) but there are some pictures.
Hartware
PROVIDE NEW CONTEXT:
In the 2006 Whitney Biennale, curators Chrissie Iles and Philippe Vergne included a work by French artist Sturtevant, whose installation of re-created Readymades by Marcel Duchamp was useful in contextualizing the more contemporary works.
Body: New Art from the UK. How should we view government intervention in the arts? In Canada, we tend to complain about the lack of government funding for the arts, or its clumsy attempts at promotion. In the UK, the British Council has courted much controversy in its promotion of the YBA's. In the U.S, overt government promotion of the arts tends not to be taken seriously. Curators Bruce Grenville at the Vancouver Art Gallery and Colin Ledwith from the British Council have identified an aspect of these works that moves them beyond their 'British- ness'. I would call it a post-feminist reference to identity, and it's really strong.
The show runs until May 28th.
Oakville Galleries
FORM A STORY:
The best-curated exhibtion I have ever seen was called Das Funfte Element: Geld oder Kunst? (The Fifth Element: Currency or Art?) at the Stadtische Hunstalle in Dusseldorf in 2000. Ancient coins, artifacts, works by Albrecht Durer and 17th century painting were combined with modern works by Giulio Paolin, Barbara Kruger, Thomas Schutte (my favorite), Tatsuo Miyajima, Bruce McLean and Yves Klein, among many others.
TAKE THE VIEWER ON A JOURNEY:
This was the case with another favorite show. Rodney Graham: A Little Thought at the Art Gallery of Ontario in 2004. I wrote about the show for artnet.com and here's some of what I said:
"Plato suggests that if the prisoner could free himself from his chains and venture out of the dark cave "into the light," he would become "enlightened" and would recognize true reality. The progression of the exhibition from the looped works, which suggest entrapment, towards the black and white pieces, representing possibility, is thus a most welcome and successful curatorial strategy."
ISOLATE AN ASPECT OF ART:
Man Somerlinck of Fordham Gallery, London. Somerlinck will bring his particular curtorial perspective to a show at the Netwerk Centre for Contemporary Art, Belgium, May 7 - June 10. He is concerned with a certain, specific aspect of contemporary art in society.
His projects tend to be characterized by an intuitive insight in a dynamic fragment of the London art scene, a fragment that is not connected to an institutionally confirmed circuit.
Netwerk
AN ARTIST/CURATOR PROJECT:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Toronto artist and curator Jessica Rose in collaboration with Jenn Goodwin organize The Movement Movement, an unconventional art experience in Toronto. The Movement Movement is a 5K 'art' run through art galleries, people's homes, parks, private property, alleys and other unconventional routes on the last Sunday of every month. Details tbc in next month's issue.
Although it evokes memories of those 1980's 'Participaction' ads, it should unite some disparate groups. The running crowd, the art crowd..etc.
The idea: The 'narrative' of each run with include exploring a different course through the city in the context of a group run. As opposed to running in the middle of the road, each course is brand new terrain during which an encounter with a person, a place and a thing will occur.
Please check out these Participaction videos. They are HILARIOUS.
Participaction - The early years:
Video 1
Participaction - 1983-84:
Video 2
Participaction - Body Break:
Video 3
CURATOR PROFILE: RHONDA CORVESE
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Rhonda Corvese is a Toronto-based independent curator and an Assistant Curator at the Art Gallery of York University.
Her interest in the examination of Canadian contemporary art within international frameworks is important to the development of the Canadian art scene, and she has introduced many excellent artists to Canada through a reciprocal dialogue. One recent project, The Idea of North, was a sound art exhibition and collaboration between curators in Norway, Iceland and Halifax (2005/2006). She also curated the Berlin booth - Berlin Constructions: Emergent Practices Today - as part of the special projects programme at the Toronto International Art Fair (2004).
She is presently working on 25sec., a continuation of a project begun in Berlin in 2003. A video portrait of art and cultural mediators, 25sec. focuses on individual positions from institutional and independent art contexts. It is a work by Berlin-based artists Angelika Middendorf and Andreas Schimanski.
SOME OF RHONDA'S RECOMMENDED ARTISTS:
Sofia Hulten
Sculpture, video, performance-related photography
Sofia Hulten
Valerie Mannaerts
Multi-disciplined artist (works on paper, sculpture, photography, installation, video, mixed-media.
Valerie Mannaerts
Shona Illingworth
Video and film
Shona Illingworth
Harold Offeh
Video, performance, installation
Harold Offeh
Saskia Olde Wolbers
Video
Saskia Olde Wolbers
Jennifer Stillwell
Installation, video
Jennifer Stillwell
Christof Migone
Sound, image and text
Christof Migone
Kristan Horton
Photography, multi-media
Kristan Horton
-- LOATHED:
-- SELECTED UPCOMING EVENTS:
-- GOOD CURATING CAN:
-- AN ARTIST/CURATOR PROJECT:
-- CURATOR PROFILE: RHONDA CORVESE
-- TALK TO US:
-- AND FINALLY...
Hello,
Welcome to View on Art - the collector's newsletter.
-This month is short and sweet - I know you're all very busy!
-We look at curating. What purpose does curating serve?
-This month: We loved, we loathed
-We stayed in Toronto, but we saw loads of art!
-We look at unique curatorial strategies
-We profile curator Rhonda Corvese
This letter goes to over 200 curators, artists, dealers, editors and collectors in London, Florence, Rome, New York, California, Washington, Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Winnipeg and Vancouver.
Please forward it to anyone who you think would be interested! Thanks and enjoy!
With very best wishes, Andrea
LOVED:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1. The Centre Cannot Hold - a show at the Toronto Free Gallery curated by Brenda Goldstein. The exhibition was subtitled 'Prospects for Suburbia' and featured some excellent young art. Much of it reminded me of work I had seen before, but not in a derivative sense.
Best was a paper 'diorama' drawing of a forlorn girl with curly script by Rose Bianchini, Jason van Horne's post-nucelar miniature city on one side of the room (reminding me of Constant Nieuwenhuys “New Babylon”) complimented by a cartoonish soft sculpture city by UPBAG (Upper Parkdale Benevolent Art Guild.) Also Franco Defrancesca's piece - a little piece of suburban garden with a fountain reminiscent of the cover of Germaine Greer's book The Female Eunuch.
A surprise was the Arbour Lake Sghool, a collective from Calgary which resides in a suburban house. Their video of a massive structure made from scaffolding and brown cardboard with a large red carpet being crudely pushed through a hole at the top was titled Volcano. While they were making that piece, their neighbours wrote a letter of complaint to one of the member's parents, (in another city.) The letter was then emailed back to the collective, who used a video camera to 'read' the letter on the screen, line by line - with a John Baldessari-like humour.
Toronto Free Gallery
2. CONTACT Photography Festival: I love how this festival gets the city talking about photography. For the month of May, it seems everyone is going to galleries, looking at culture in a way that city bureaucrats can only hope to achieve.
3. Some Cats from Japan at Images Festival: Of a series of performances, this was my favorite. A guy sets up an overhead projector with a magnetized base, and proceeds to orchestrate a strangely Beckett-like duel between two paperclips. The sound was amplified, and the audience was riveted.
4. Melvin Charney at Nicholas Metivier. Most of my time as an undergrad at Concordia University in Montreal was spent at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, and ever since then, the artist Melvin Charney (who created the centre's sculpture garden) has fascinated me. His energetic exhibition at Nicholas Metivier gallery featured abstracted sculptures of running figures in addition to the Bodyworks series, in which enlargements of newspaper sex ads were overlaid with repetitive constructivist-style figures that the artist calls “armor-like sections of skin.”
5. Brandon Calvert's installation Meditation on the Hollow Shell at the OCAD (Ontario College of Art and Design) graduate exhibition. There were cryptic posters around the building inviting viewers to experience something in room 375.
Walking down a hallway on the third floor, we were drawn toward a whooshing noise coming from a door. We peered into the small, dark fenced-in room and saw a video playing. A large skin-like organ on the floor of the video began to move, eventually giving birth to a man and a woman. Each naked figure appeared daunted by their environment, and the woman discovers a seashell. She then disappears into the wall, the same wall in which the video monitor was placed. A second installation featured two large umbrellas, under which hung a sculpture made of a hanging lightbulb inside two revolving geodesic domes.
6. Lynne Cohen at Olga Korper Gallery. Formal, disciplined, perfectly composed and well-considered, these photographs are seductive shots of interior spaces that reflect our pleasure in ordered thought.
What is the meaning behind the architecture of our interiors?
Olga Korper Gallery
7. Imaging a Shattering Earth at MoCCA - Curated by Claude Baillargeon, Assistant Professor of Art and Art History at Oakland University in Michigan, this stunning exhibition brings together images of environmental destruction in a seductively beautiful manner. Yes, Ed Burtynsky is included in the show, but his works are eclipsed by work by Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison:
The ParkeHarrisons
And John Pfahl:
John Pfahl
LOATHED:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1. The OCAD grad show. My overall experience of the show was that it lacked energy and modernity. It felt as if the students weren't really aware of what was happening internationally. One exception was a great video installation by Brandon Calvert. (See above)
2. Kineko Ivic at Angell Gallery. Kineko's a nice guy, but I couldn't see the point of his faux-naïve robots on canvas. At least I hope they were faux. They were luscious with goopy paint, squeezed straight from the tube. The rectilinear robots sported vacuous slogans on their chests like 'Cold Blooded' and 'Eye Know it's Over.' One four- legged creature says 'Some day ur going 2 die' and is decorated with peace signs (peace signs!). Oh and a number of figures had marbles glued on to their nipples. What for? Furthermore, the press release claims that Ivic's works “bring to mind the work of..Jean-Michel Basquiat, Chris Ofili, Philip Guston and Alberto Giacometti.” No, no.
3. Bruno Billio in collaboration with Lee Kline. I love Bruno Billio's piled furniture installations, which I've seen in several countries and at the Gladstone Hotel in Toronto. They tend to be original and inspiring. Last summer's curated show at the Junction Arts Festival was really excellent. Here, though, in Kline's Yorkville townhouse, Billio neglected to respond the the site as he might have done. Kline's furnishings seem tailor-made for Wallpaper* and his pod table was a super design, but as far as the exhibition went, with a little more thought they could have created something really unique.
4. Karen Azoulay at Mercer Union artist-run centre. From the press release, there is a sense that this show might have been an enchanting, magical grotto. Yet the installation (taking up the entire right side of the gallery, while the left remained virtually empty) was hardly grotto-like, nor especially enchanting. The only allusion to a grotto were numerous ancient roman-style fountains displayed around the gallery. The grotto itself looked like a stage set in need of a performance. It was a lovely space of graduated colours reminiscent of a sunset, hung with correspondingly coloured yarn.
5. The fact that I missed the screening of Vincent Grenier's work at Images festival and went to the Mediatheque and no one could help me when I asked if I could view the work.
Mercer Union
SELECTED UPCOMING EVENTS:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
TORONTO:
Who is Collecting Whom?
Panel discussion on recent developments in the art of collecting photography.
Panelists are Alison Devine Nordstrom of the George Eastman House; Jeanne Parkin, art consultant and curator; Joe Baio, collector; Martin Barnes, curator of photography at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Stephen Daiter, director of the Stephen Daiter Gallery, Chicago.
CONTACT
VANCOUVER:
Access Artist Run Centre
Shadow Puncho: David Gifford
Canadian artist and magician David Gifford transforms the gallery into a cabinet of curiosities.
May 13th - June 17th, 2006 Opening: May 12, 2006 at 8 pm
Magic Show with Artist Talk following the performance: May 20, 2006 at 2 pm
Access
CALGARY:
Skew Gallery
André Ethier: New Works
"These are modern fairy tales in which happy endings tend not to count, painted with consummate ease; their intimate scale works in their favor." - The New York Times, Roberta Smith
May 18th - June 24th, 2006
Skew
MONTREAL:
Il Modo Italiano: Italian Design and Avant-garde in the 20th century
It's hard to argue with the press release: “In the course of the twentieth century, Italian design has gradually imposed itself as a force to be reckoned with internationally.”
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
GOOD CURATING CAN:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
REINVENT A SPACE OR ENVIRONMENT:
In 1998, curators Iris Dressler and Hans D. Christ organized an exhibition at the Hartware MedienKunstVerein in the former Union Brewery, Dortmund. The show, entitled 'Reservate der Sehnsucht' (reservations of longing) used as a starting point one of the desolate, utterly destroyed floors of the building. It had been stripped of all usable parts, and the concrete floors, ceiling and walls were in a state of complete destruction.
Envisioning this as a sort of 'landscape', the curators (with a nod to Caspar David Friedrich) made a “profitable virtue from failed hope.” They converted the space into a romantic garden landscape, complete with grass and romantic hills, in a piece by Jan Peter E.R. Sonntag after Manet's Dejeuner sur L'Herbe with Rodney Graham's film Vexation Island and other works. The link is in German (sorry) but there are some pictures.
Hartware
PROVIDE NEW CONTEXT:
In the 2006 Whitney Biennale, curators Chrissie Iles and Philippe Vergne included a work by French artist Sturtevant, whose installation of re-created Readymades by Marcel Duchamp was useful in contextualizing the more contemporary works.
Body: New Art from the UK. How should we view government intervention in the arts? In Canada, we tend to complain about the lack of government funding for the arts, or its clumsy attempts at promotion. In the UK, the British Council has courted much controversy in its promotion of the YBA's. In the U.S, overt government promotion of the arts tends not to be taken seriously. Curators Bruce Grenville at the Vancouver Art Gallery and Colin Ledwith from the British Council have identified an aspect of these works that moves them beyond their 'British- ness'. I would call it a post-feminist reference to identity, and it's really strong.
The show runs until May 28th.
Oakville Galleries
FORM A STORY:
The best-curated exhibtion I have ever seen was called Das Funfte Element: Geld oder Kunst? (The Fifth Element: Currency or Art?) at the Stadtische Hunstalle in Dusseldorf in 2000. Ancient coins, artifacts, works by Albrecht Durer and 17th century painting were combined with modern works by Giulio Paolin, Barbara Kruger, Thomas Schutte (my favorite), Tatsuo Miyajima, Bruce McLean and Yves Klein, among many others.
TAKE THE VIEWER ON A JOURNEY:
This was the case with another favorite show. Rodney Graham: A Little Thought at the Art Gallery of Ontario in 2004. I wrote about the show for artnet.com and here's some of what I said:
"Plato suggests that if the prisoner could free himself from his chains and venture out of the dark cave "into the light," he would become "enlightened" and would recognize true reality. The progression of the exhibition from the looped works, which suggest entrapment, towards the black and white pieces, representing possibility, is thus a most welcome and successful curatorial strategy."
ISOLATE AN ASPECT OF ART:
Man Somerlinck of Fordham Gallery, London. Somerlinck will bring his particular curtorial perspective to a show at the Netwerk Centre for Contemporary Art, Belgium, May 7 - June 10. He is concerned with a certain, specific aspect of contemporary art in society.
His projects tend to be characterized by an intuitive insight in a dynamic fragment of the London art scene, a fragment that is not connected to an institutionally confirmed circuit.
Netwerk
AN ARTIST/CURATOR PROJECT:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Toronto artist and curator Jessica Rose in collaboration with Jenn Goodwin organize The Movement Movement, an unconventional art experience in Toronto. The Movement Movement is a 5K 'art' run through art galleries, people's homes, parks, private property, alleys and other unconventional routes on the last Sunday of every month. Details tbc in next month's issue.
Although it evokes memories of those 1980's 'Participaction' ads, it should unite some disparate groups. The running crowd, the art crowd..etc.
The idea: The 'narrative' of each run with include exploring a different course through the city in the context of a group run. As opposed to running in the middle of the road, each course is brand new terrain during which an encounter with a person, a place and a thing will occur.
Please check out these Participaction videos. They are HILARIOUS.
Participaction - The early years:
Video 1
Participaction - 1983-84:
Video 2
Participaction - Body Break:
Video 3
CURATOR PROFILE: RHONDA CORVESE
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Rhonda Corvese is a Toronto-based independent curator and an Assistant Curator at the Art Gallery of York University.
Her interest in the examination of Canadian contemporary art within international frameworks is important to the development of the Canadian art scene, and she has introduced many excellent artists to Canada through a reciprocal dialogue. One recent project, The Idea of North, was a sound art exhibition and collaboration between curators in Norway, Iceland and Halifax (2005/2006). She also curated the Berlin booth - Berlin Constructions: Emergent Practices Today - as part of the special projects programme at the Toronto International Art Fair (2004).
She is presently working on 25sec., a continuation of a project begun in Berlin in 2003. A video portrait of art and cultural mediators, 25sec. focuses on individual positions from institutional and independent art contexts. It is a work by Berlin-based artists Angelika Middendorf and Andreas Schimanski.
SOME OF RHONDA'S RECOMMENDED ARTISTS:
Sofia Hulten
Sculpture, video, performance-related photography
Sofia Hulten
Valerie Mannaerts
Multi-disciplined artist (works on paper, sculpture, photography, installation, video, mixed-media.
Valerie Mannaerts
Shona Illingworth
Video and film
Shona Illingworth
Harold Offeh
Video, performance, installation
Harold Offeh
Saskia Olde Wolbers
Video
Saskia Olde Wolbers
Jennifer Stillwell
Installation, video
Jennifer Stillwell
Christof Migone
Sound, image and text
Christof Migone
Kristan Horton
Photography, multi-media
Kristan Horton
VoCA April 2006
-- LOVED
-- LOATHED
-- SOMEWHERE IN BETWEEN
-- SELECTED UPCOMING EVENTS
-- ART MARKET NOTES
-- OUR TOP 8 ART TRENDS
-- HOW TO BECOME A (SUCCESSFUL) ART COLLECTOR
-- NOTES ON THE WHITNEY BIENNALE
-- GALLERY PROFILE: CSA SPACE
-- ARTISTS WE'VE GOOGLED FOR YOU
-- IN DEPTH: RAUSCHENBERG
-- WHAT'S GOING ON (WHO'S DOING WHAT)
-- TALK TO US
-- AND FINALLY..
Hello,
Welcome to View on Art - the collector's newsletter.
This month we explore the art market. What art will be around after the next market crash? What factors determine the strength of an artwork or an artist's career?
This month:
-We loved, we loathed, we were somewhere in between
-We went to New York!
-We predict our top 8 art trends
-We examine Robert Rauschenberg's Combines
-We encourage new collectors
-We profile Vancouver gallery CSA space
-We Google a Brit, a Swede and a Hamburger
This letter goes to over 200 curators, artists, dealers, editors and collectors in London, Florence, Rome, New York, California, Washington, Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Winnipeg and Vancouver.
Please forward it to anyone who you think would be interested! Thanks and enjoy!
With very best wishes, Andrea
LOVED
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1. The Elmgreen and Dragset talk at the Power Plant. I loved these guys. I find the way they have been dealing with the white cube of the gallery (not the art, but the context for the art) to be particularly relevant. I loved that they had a show where they showed renovators painting the white gallery space white. The viewer became part of the background, similarly to their piece that saw a white gallery space set deep into a museum's front lawn, like some kind of an open grave. Lit up at night it was stunningly sculptural and voyeuristic.
They propose the minimalist designer boutique as the new gallery space. One well-known artwork involved building an exact replica of a Prada boutique in the desert near Marfa, Texas. Unattended and filled with merchandise, it has been left to slowly decompose over time. Going one better in Chelsea, they installed a sign reading “Prada - coming soon” in the company's official font, on the front window of their New York dealer's gallery. Tanya Bonakdar was apparently not terribly pleased with the phone calls of concern and sympathy she received.
I just wish I would have asked the duo about their relationship to Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan. Three works seemed influenced by his. The hole in the ceiling of the gallery/floor of a private flat, through which viewers could peek echoes Cattelan's sculpture of himself peeking through the floor of a space. The Fiat and trailer seemingly rising out from the mosaic floor of the Galleria Vittorio Emmanuele in Milan recalls Cattelan's The Ninth Hour, a sculpture of the Pope crushed to the ground by a large meteorite.
The live performance piece Reg(u)arding the guards, comprising a number of security guards guarding nothing but themselves recalls, at least formally, Cattelan's famous 1997 Venice Biennale contribution of taxidermied pigeons , I Touristi.
Elmgreen & Dragset
2. PFOAC at DiVA - Montreal dealer Pierre Francois Ouellette Art Contemporain brought Luc Courchesne's rotating 360 perspective wall-mounted photographic and video discs to New York's Digital and Video Art Fair. I love when dealers really consider how to present work well in the most difficult viewing conditions. Especially new media! There should have been more Canadian presence at the fair - Canada has so many fantastic new media artists.
3. The talk by Dr. Sarat Maharaj (internationally renowned art and culture theorist) at OCAD (the Ontario College of Art and Design), March 27th. He talked about the future of the art academy. Touching on Finnegan's Wake and the term "Aufhebun” among other obscure things, his point was about the importance of the framework around which one studies art. The main question was 'What modes of knowing must we construct to know the Other?'
His final four conclusions were for the need of laboratories within laboratories, of non-discursive thinking within performance, of the need to reexamine the relationship between body and mind, to re-affirm a self- organizing congregation and to provide a laboratory without name or protocol.
Maybe the quality of emerging art in Toronto will improve now that Sara Diamond is the president at OCAD.
4. Daniel Barrow and Duke & Battersby at Jessica Bradley Art + Projects. I love Barrow's dvd of images gliding around on an overhead projector. It's like the new puppetry. The artist's presence is palpable, manipulating the gruesome yet finely rendered images. His works on paper are delicate compositions constructed from cut-out shapes. Their obsessive attention to detail is brilliantly at odds with their protagonist's extreme dejection.
5. Duke & Battersby's video begins with a lovely shot of a tree, edited in such a way that it appears to be breathing, like a pair of lungs. The character of the whimsical soundtrack, native imagery and allusions to seedlings and plants runs alongside subject matter like urban sprawl, bullying, rape and scientific study. It's bang on.
Jessica Bradley Art + Projects
6. Ulf Puder at Artcore. Artcore's programming is really unique. The latest painting show by Leipzig painter Ulf Puder was wonderful. Would I have liked it as much had I been more familiar with the over-hyped Leipzig school? Perhaps not, but on its own, the quality of Puder's painting and his mastery of the medium is impressive. His formal approach, together with an awareness of historical precedent, impacts on his use of color, content, medium and, finally subject.
Look for my upcoming review in ARTnews.
7. Toronto artist Shary Boyle's sculptures at the Power Plant. Her finely rendered porcelain figurines at the Power Plant are stunning, perfectly balanced between delicacy and repulsion. I think it's the exquisiteness of these figurines, as opposed to others by the artist, or her drawings, that makes them really special.
LOATHED
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1. The Nuit Blanche press conference: It was funny-slash-sad watching a bunch of out-of-touch city bureaucrats try to get all enthusiastic about this "fun, exciting" event "for the people of Toronto." Billed by Mayor Miller as “one of the most innovative and exciting additions to Toronto's already impressive roster of cultural celebrations” on the night of September 30, it will see “everything from swimming pools and car washes to churches and libraries.. transformed by contemporary art projects.”
Questions:
-Will the TTC offer free and/or all-night transporation?
-Will the city open the streets to pedestrians?
-Will the organizers provide street and open air performances?
-How will the city publicize it beyond their Live with Culture website?
-Will the city invest in this event beyond 2006, Toronto's Live with Culture year? What about Scotiabank, this year's sponsor?
-Will the organizers work to make the above happen?
-Will the media get on board and pressure the city to make this a really successful event?
-Will other cities rave about Toronto's Nuit Blanche the way we rave about Nuit Blanche in Paris?
I'll look forward to moving this event into the 'Loved' section.
2. Scope NY. Where to start? It was kind of refreshing to see so much terrible art all in one place. There were 'performance art' works that involved sing-alongs for parents and kids, art-mobiles honking as they drove down the aisles, again with mothers and children having a grand old time, and raucous installations of noisy junk that as well as being irritating, were nothing new. That so much horrible stuff is being churned out, indeed encouraged, must mean something. It was a spectacle, that's for sure. If there were some good artworks in there, and I'm sure there were, they would have had to struggle to be seen. The presentation at most of the booths was ad-hoc, too. It was an improvement on the hotel model, though.
I heard the Perpetual Art Machine, a travelling video database exhibition, was good but I didn't see it.
3. The Gehry renovation. The Art Gallery of Ontario is putting all this energy into promoting what might have been a really novel and exciting project for Toronto. Instead of getting a super design from a younger, cutting edge architectural practice who might really benefit from a high-profile Toronto building, we will get a "nice" Gehry addition. I'm sure that the renovation will be lovely - Gehry is an acknowledged genius - but does Toronto need to hop on the bandwagon of second- rate citites hankering for another Bilbao? It's likely that even Gehry isn't excited about this one.
Gehry has commented on the difficulty of securing funding for his projects in Canada, as opposed to in Europe, where they somehow manage.
Speaking of his current practice in Vogue magazine, Ghery says "You inevitably start repeating yourself. People want Bilbao, and I don't want to do it."
4. How people like to refer to Toronto as a 'world class city'. It isn't. Montreal is.
The Perpetual Art Machine
SOMEWHERE IN BETWEEN
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1. The Welfare Show: The works on view at Elmgreen & Dragset's show were artistic puns. (Kind of like Brian Jungen's work.) While it is true that they encouraged an intriguing methodology of thought around each object, I was disappointed with the show. Bringing reality into the gallery is old news by now.
Furthermore, when you know the story of the installation of the hyper-realistic wax baby inside a car parked in front of The Wrong Gallery in Chelsea, and the ensuing uproar from the NYPD, the same baby placed under a fake ATM machine inside a gallery space carries little of the same impact. The empty wheelchair with the bright blue helium balloon floating above felt like it belonged to one of Duane Hanson's sculptures.
2. David Adjaye's talk at the University of Toronto. I thought the most interesting thing about the 'Young British Architect' was the type of art-slash-architecture projects that he is involved with. It's good to see artists like Chris Ofili, Olafur Eliasson (and other friends of Adjaye) incorporating architectural structure as an integral part of their works.
SELECTED UPCOMING EVENTS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
TORONTO Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art Jeremy Shaw: DMT April 13 - 23
With Tammy Forsythe and J.R. Carpenter
MoCCA
TORONTO Artcore Gallery Manfred Peckl and Marco Brambilla 25 March - 6 May
Artcore Gallery
TORONTO Art Gallery of Ontario Peter Doig: Works on Paper March 22 - June 18
Art Gallery of Ontario
TORONTO Oakville Galleries Body: New Art from the UK 8 April - 28 May
Oakville Galleries
VANCOUVER Tracey Lawrence Gallery Kathy Slade: Chart Through April 29
Tracey Lawrence Gallery
VANCOUVER Monte Clark Gallery Mark Lewis April 19 - May 21
Monte Clark Gallery
ART MARKET NOTES
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Some comments from a recent issue of New York magazine:
Five Theories on Why the Art Market Can't Crash - And why it will anyway.
By Marc Spiegler.
-Art has become a luxury good. Consequently, while there's a new class of people buying art, today's market is by and large misinformed. Collectors are buying art based on market trends rather than art- historical standards.
-The art world has gone global. Competitive collectors and dealers now scour exotic places for new art. (China, Poland)
-Art Investment Funds are increasingly popular, but their popularity is proven to have been based on incomplete studies of the market. The author of one study now says "The return can be very high, but so is the volatility."
-Today's market is more diversified, with various levels and segments of popularity. Can this protect it from an overall crash?
Basically, only artists whose work looks good and also has art historical significance - for its technical or conceptual innovation - survives a market crash. The bigger the idea, the longer the career. Historically, bad markets tend to produce better art. Artists who continually push at the boundaries of their medium will survive.
OUR TOP 8 ART TRENDS
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1. TRANSFER OF MEANING (or looking at the gallery from outside)
Looking at the framework through which we view art. The greater context. Painting and drawing on paper is limited to what can be represented on a piece of paper. This was Vito Acconci's motivation for stopping drawing and moving into alternate spaces in the 1970's, inspiring his famous mastrubation work, Seedbed, (1972) where he lay beneath the gallery's floor, fantasizing about gallery patrons overhead. Elmgreen & Dragset continue this tradition by making the gallery cube the art object, thereby placing the viewer at a greater remove. Neil Campbell's nocturnal lighting installation Base at the Vancouver Art Gallery this winter also dealt with this. Of course Christo and Jeanne Claude have been doing this for years. The Berlin biennale, which takes place at venues in the city, (through May 28) seems a reflection of this trend. In 1976, Brian O'Doherty argued that the pristine, white gallery space was a more important reflection of the times than the artwork.
2. PUBLIC ART
Using the world as a stage. One of my favorite artworks is by Piero Manzoni, a large, simple bronze cube from 1961 upon which is printed, upside-down, Socle du monde - homage a Gallileo. It means 'base of the world.' German artist Gregor Schneider is also using the urban environment as an art space, as in the piece Die Familie Schneider that he did for Artangel last year inside two east London row houses. Organizations like Artangel and Creative Time in New York are great facilitators of this kind of work. And Canadian artist Kelly Mark uses the world as a stage in her performances, or 'public interventions' where she repeats the same trivial, but carefully choreographed routine every day at the same time.
3. THE SMALL SCULPTURAL OBJECT
As conceptual art becomes more popular, people are beginning to question the meaning of things. This is already what post-Duchamp art asks of the viewer. People will begin to question the everyday, and out of this small arrangements of objects may become popular. Small scale sculpture, and arrangements/tableaux that mean more together than apart. Tom Friedman's obsessive manipulating of everyday materials to create the sublime. Also casts of bodily orifices by Canadian artist Massimo Guerrera. Thomas Demand's photographs of meticulously constructed paper environments and James Casebere's flooded rooms are part of this trend, too. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a return of interest to historical still-life painting, 17th century Vanitas etc. Also LA-based Canadian Jed Lind who blends an interest in mythology, architecture and the object with sculptures from antique model ships.
4. REARRANGEMENT OF SPACE
The displacement of space that makes us aware of the limitations of our existence. Adrian Searle, the art critic for the Guardian, calls it being “thrown into the illusion.” The audio walks and forced perspective installations of Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, the famous Weather Project (a large amber 'sun') installed in the turbine hall at Tate Modern and other works by Olafur Eliasson are some artists working with this idea. Both Do-Ho Suh and Rirkrit Tirajiniva have reconstructed versions of their New York apartments in the Serpentine Gallery, London.
5. VIDEO AND FILM
Almost since its inception, the question of 'truth' in photography has been under question. Jeff Wall was perhaps the most eloquent exponent of this idea and now artists like Scott MacFarland and others are 'painting' with digital technology. That story - the investigation of photography as photography - may be nearing its end, allowing moving image work to take over, due to its ability to comment on the nature of time. Mark Lewis, Alexandre Castonguay and Rodney Graham are some artists working in this way. Also younger artists Stuart Croft and the Toronto-based Daniel Cockburn. Michael Awad is a Canadian artist who builds his own still cameras to document extended moments in time.
6. A NEW SYMBOLISM
Now that perceived reality is being exposed as only one option, thanks in part to the investigation of truth in photography, there is a renewed search for 'truth,' manifest in the invention of new languages, signs, symbols and invented characters. Dance, performance and other forms of bodily expression may also become popular. Artists who are working in with these themes include Canadian Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay, Matthew Barney and even Richard Tuttle. Also neo-feminist artists like Gunilla Josephson and Pipilotti Rist.
7. INFILTRATION
Artists who wish to better the world, in a large sense, to get out of the ghetto-ized art world are beginning to infiltrate societal, even political systems. To move away from self- concern toward social concern. William Kentridge has partially dealt with these issues, and Takashi Murakami has infiltrated the economic system with his mass production of artworks, others like Dirk Fleischmann and Patrick Meagher are working with art and economics. Also artists working with virtual reality, surveillance and interface, like David Rokeby, Tasman Richardson and other web-based artists and artist-hackers.
8. OUTSIDER ART
Already people are doubting the benefits of a strict art college education for artists. Isn't it more beneficial for an artist to apply artistic practices to a greater interest or experience? Probably. As artists critique the art institution, and as public art becomes more popular, as artists are developing their own languages and showing up the constraints of established systems, it stands to reason that there should be a renewed interest in those artists who stand emphatically outside of those systems. Daniel Johnston's cartoon drawings included in the Whitney Biennale, the current exhibition Inner Worlds Outside , at the Whitechapel Gallery in London and recent films on the life and work of outside artist Henry Darger and The Devil and Daniel Johnston are testament to this interest.
HOW TO BECOME A (SUCCESSFUL) ART COLLECTOR
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From an article I wrote last summer for a Toronto publication:
These days, art is the new fashion. From the Takashi Murakami-designed handbags at Louis Vuitton to the Marc Jacobs ad campaigns by Jurgen Teller and featuring the artist Cindy Sherman - not to mention the major collections of Madonna, David Bowie and Elton John, everyone who is anyone seems to be getting in on the act. If you've got a good job, maybe a house or condo, why not think of starting your own art collection? Now that you've rid yourself of the university futon, the 'vintage' sofa and the Ikea paper lantern and even chucked out the posters..But you haven't studied art and you leave most galleries feeling either ignorant or preached at. So what should you do? Don't worry: there is a way to navigate the waters.
BROWSE: Try these Canadian galleries: (Toronto) Robert Birch, Jessica Bradley, Stephen Bulger, Monte Clark, Mira Godard, Susan Hobbs, Nicholas Metivier, Pari Nadimi Gallery, PM Gallery, Clint Roenisch, Wynick Tuck Gallery, Odon Wagner Contemporary. (Montreal) Pierre Francois Ouellette Art Contemporain, Rene Blouin, Joyce Yahouda. (Winnipeg) The Other Gallery (Calgary) Trepanier Baer, Skew Gallery (Vancouver) Monte Clark, Catriona Jeffries, Tracey Lawrence Gallery.
These galleries all represent quality artists, and each of these dealers really knows their stuff, investing time and money in their artists' careers.
Ask questions. Gallerists are there to guide you through the variegations of contemporary art. The gallerist expects you to ask for information about work that interests you, and don't worry, you needn't know everything about the editions, prices or methods involved in an artwork. Most importantly, make sure that you love what you buy. Never buy just for resale potential - the art market is notoriously fickle.
READ: Even if all you do is read this newsletter! The more you read, the greater your chances of success. If you are looking to discover the best and the brightest upcoming artists, pick up magazines like Canadian Art, Border Crossings, C magazine, Art News, Art in America, Art Forum, Art Review, Frieze, Modern Painters. Artnet.com is a smart, easily readable online magazine. Don't look at it as a job, just read whatever takes your fancy. If you see an image you like, read about the artist. Google his or her name and read as much as you can about the work.
DETERMINE A THEME: By now, you should have an idea of what type of art you want to collect. For beginning collectors I would suggest a relatively accessible (and affordable) theme like Emerging Artists, Canadian art, Photography, Prints, Video or whatever takes your fancy.
Having a theme allows you to focus your research. You can diversify later, but if for example you collect photography, you can familiarize yourself with market intricacies straight away, and buy what appeals to you within that. Remember, you are going for longevity. There's nothing wrong with having a few bare walls around while you look around to find the right artwork for you. You should never feel pressured by a dealer, after all, the artist will always be making more work. That said..
CONSIDER YOUR PURCHASE: Once you have an idea of a piece you might like to buy, you should start thinking about pricing. Dealers try to generate excitement and interest around their young artists, because as interest grows, so do prices. Make sure the interest is justified. Make sure that you understand why the artist is being hailed as the next big thing. What is the dealer's record? Have the artists works been bought by any museums (a hallmark of value)? Does the gallery do art fairs? Which ones? (Galleries are vetted, the best ones getting in to fairs such as Art Basel, Art Forum Berlin, ARCO in Madrid, the Armory Show in NYC.) Has the artist been part of any other exhibitions? (Museum and international group shows add importance) Who has written about the artist? Check the artists' bio and CV carefully. This is very important: I strongly believe that the best artists have a Masters degree, because a secondary degree is enough financial investment for them to generate the necessary ambition to succeed.
GET THE DETAILS RIGHT: Will the work be signed? Will the gallery include certificate of authenticy on the back of the work? How long will the artwork last without fading or cracking? If it doesn't, how will you be compensated? Will the gallery install the work for you? How is it framed? Is the work protected against light damage? Will you be kept up to date on the artists' career? Can the gallery arrange for you to meet the artist?
DIVERSIFY: Once you have purchased your first few artworks, you have the makings of a collection. Your choices needn't be dictated by medium, however. Looking at historical precedents for contemporary work can help define a contemporary collection. Look at curated museum exhibitions for inspiration.
NOTES ON THE WHITNEY BIENNALE
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People expect you to be able to come up with some enlightening synopsis of the overall show. Selecting stand-out works is much more useful, or strong curatorial strategies.
One of my favorites was Sturtevant's re-creation of Marcel Duchamp's Readymades. It was a timely way of addressing the historical-ness of what the viewer was seeing. So smart, and useful:
- Sturtevant Born 1930, Lakewood, Ohio; lives in Paris, France. Sturtevant's work centers on questions of authorship, authenticity, and the ways art acquires meaning through institutional contextualization, criticism, and market valuation. Since the 1960s, she has meticulously re-created works by other artists, ranging from Pop stalwarts such as Jasper Johns, Claes Oldenburg, and Andy Warhol to Robert Gober, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and Paul McCarthy. These projects have included repeating Johns's iconic Flag (1965-66) and reconstituting, in its entirety, Oldenburg's Store (1967). Warhol in particular recognized the collaborative rather than appropriative basis of her approach and even gave her one of his Flower silkscreens to use in creating her own canvases. When later quizzed about his own painting techniques, Warhol deadpanned: "I don't know. Ask [Sturtevant]."
This collective's hour-long film Pedestrian Cinema is a complex self-referential work about "keeping the borders of film open, the idea of an outside is revived - this exterior that the film studio confronts in its work..where the people who enter into the production process also elaborate it."
- Bernadette Corporation Founded 1994; based in New York, New York, and Berlin, Germany. Bernadette Corporation produces films, publications, and interventions that pose the question of how to defect from modern living within the capitalist system. Through the shifting nature of the group's composition and their diverse modes of production- and, paradoxically, by branding themselves as a corporation- they elude any definitive, image-based identity.
I love Fischer's blown out walls on the top floor of the Biennale. Also I had seen this large sculpture last year at the Camden Arts Centre in London. A long tree branch, suspended from the ceiling and hanging close to the ground, had at its end a lit candle. The piece slowly rotated like a needle on a record:
- Urs Fischer Born 1973, Zurich, Switzerland; lives in Zurich, Switzerland, and Los Angeles, California. Urs Fischer's artistic practice is founded on a consideration of the nature of substances, the act of making, and the unpredictable processes that can result from combining the two. With an extraordinarily wide range of materials- Styrofoam, clay, mirrors, fruit, wax, wood, glass, paint, sawdust, and silicone, to name a few-he resuscitates art historical genres such as still lifes, nudes, portraits, and landscapes in potent sculptures that reflect the complexity, wonder, and banality of everyday life. His works reverberate with material transformation and decay as well as with poetic internal collisions and contradictions that cause his sculptures to oscillate between seeming beautiful or ugly, elegant or awkward, graceful or burdened.
Meckseper's slick window displays were an enticing way of approaching sculpture. Almost mini-tableaux, the consumer products and broken glass made for a kind of historical push-pull, recalling Kristallnacht:
- Josephine Meckseper Born 1964, Lilienthal, Germany; lives in New York, New York. Josephine Meckseper's installations, photographs, and films explore, as Nicolas Garait has described, "the questionable links the media establishes between images of political news, the fashion industry, and advertising." In The Complete History of Postcontemporary Art (2005), she assembles everyday objects (a stuffed rabbit, stockings, a toilet plunger) and imagery related to protest culture. Deconstructing the media's strategy of mixing advertising and editorial content, she exposes how we have become consumers not only of products but also of news and politics. In displays that recall ethnographic museums, her work sets up absurdist juxtapositions that reflect and absorb the interrupted desires created by the ideally lit shop window at midnight, where consumption is temporarily deferred and the projection of ownership meets the transgressive impulse toward looting.
*All bios taken from the Whitney Biennale website.
GALLERY PROFILE: CSA SPACE
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Opened in September of last year above a bookstore in Vancouver by critic Christopher Brayshaw, gallery owner Stephen Tong and photographer Adam Harrison, this space is less a commercial gallery than a showcase for Vancouver's latest young art. Each of the three owners has a day job, allowing them the freedom to program work that they truly believe in, regardless of its saleability.
They give artists one-off shows, and have become a destination for visiting national and international curators, in search of the Next Big Thing. Their aim is to become a “very activated space that stands for autonomous and critical thinking about art and a place where personal aesthetic tastes are the basis for each show.”
Of particular note are Sylvia Grace Borda, currently showing at CSA:
Sylvia Grace Borda
Because CSA's artists tend to be young and without gallery representation, here's a link to an artist collective in Vancouver, some of whose founding members (Khan Lee and Derek Brunen) have shown with CSA:
Inter-mission
Co-director Adam Harrison is also founder of Doppelganger magazine:
Doppelganger
ARTISTS WE'VE GOOGLED FOR YOU
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The following info gleaned from our web search:
Mans Wrange
Måns Wrange's work frequently consists of major socio- political studies that span several years and resemble research projects more than anything else. This is an artist with a social commitment above all. His choice of subject and method of approaching them affirms this. Wrange devotes enormous attention to every separate part of his work, be it the drawn-out processing of the subjects or the spatial presentation of the works.
For The Average Citizen project, Måns Wrange studied how statistical averages influence and govern our everyday lives. With help from Statistics Sweden, he deduced the statistical profile of the average Swedish citizen. The result was a 40-year-old woman who lives in a one-bedroom apartment and has an annual income of 180,000 kronor. Through a media campaign, Måns Wrange made contact with a person who matched these criteria exactly, and by interviewing this person, whose name was Marianne, put normality into perspective. As in so many of Måns Wrange's works, this was an analysis of the means by which society is described and indirectly normalised. The Average Citizen poses questions about the relationship between mean averages and representations that can shed light on how the welfare state, in its striving for equality, through the simplifications of statistics, might contribute towards certain groups being perceived by others as deviants.
Imogen Stidworthy
Imogen Stidworthy deals with language and its translation into sound and image in her videos, films, photos and sound installations. Her newest installation Alex simulates a waiting room in which the audience is transported into a therapeutic situation: the treatment of a psychosomatic problem in which the vocal cords are distorted into a permanent, silent scream. A further installation is devoid of a specific plot .. here, the voice is liberated from both body and language. As an acoustic entity, this video installation allows a spatial experience that breaks through the physical presence of the visitors and the space.
Imogen Stidworthy, born in Great Britain in 1963, lives in Amsterdam. She has taken part in numerous international exhibitions, including "Exploding Cinema" in the Museum Boymans van Beuningen in Rotterdam; "Power and the Subject," in the Central House of Artists, Moscow, and the Ninth Biennale de l'image en movement, St. Gervais, Geneva (all in 2001).
Ulla von Brandenburg
Ulla von Brandenburg works with different media such as drawing, video, film, space installation and performance. Motives of historic originals are brought forward by the illustration in a current time context and therefore act as filters that switch between the illustration and the viewer.
In Untitled (2003), von Brandenburg created a larger than life-size wall painting based on an early composite photograph by pioneer photographer Henry Peach Robinson. Enlarged and abstracted, the image leaves only the whitest areas of the photograph unpainted so as to create a striking negative effect. The figures loom out of the painting, at times reading only as abstract forms. Shot on Super-8 film, von Brandenburg's Tableaux Vivants depict static arrangements of figures that hold their carefully choreographed poses for the length of the roll of film. Occasional movements betray these grainy images as films. The nexus of gazes that temporarily binds the figures together (all of whom are contemporaries of von Brandenburg and recognisable members of Hamburg's artistic milieu) suggests possible relationships and stories between these characters.
IN DEPTH: RAUSCHENBERG
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In a nutshell:
“Painting relates to both art and life. Neither can be made. (I try to act in that gap between the two.)” - Robert Rauschenberg
Robert Rauschenberg is one of those rare artists who has managed to continue pushing the boundaries of art, making strong statements and reinventing his practice for decades. Born in Texas, he studied at the famous Black Mountain College in North Carolina with John Cage and Merce Cunningham before moving to New York. By 1958 he was showing with the renowned gallerist Leo Castelli.
Early on, in 1953, Robert Rauschenberg made what is arguably one of the more brilliant moves of the twentieth century. His Erased de Kooning drawing involved “the simultaneous unmaking of one work and the creation of another.” He got hold of a drawing from de Kooning, simply erased it, and presented the result as another artwork. This was done at a time when Abstract Expressionists like Jackson Pollock were practicing in their distinctive styles, and this move opened up possibilities for artists.
By the mid-1950's, he had begun his series of famous Combines. The first lines in the catalogue accompanying Rauschenberg's recent retrospective of these works at the Met in New York: “Much late-twentieth-century contemporary art is unthinkable without Robert Rauschenberg..(he) paved the way for new possibilities, creating a space between painting and sculpture and between performance and the object. His work opened the door to the practice of drawing the artist's own life - even time itself - into art.” The Combines are paintings that famously incorporated other paintings, items of clothing, buckets, lightbulbs, cutlery, furniture, an entire bed and most famously, a long-haired taxidermied angora goat into a painting/sculpture hybrid.
The most striking thing for me, walking through the show, was how palpable the sense of being in the artists' studio was. Pieces of his studio were literally incorporated into the works, so the effect was almost of being transported into that era. This was art of experience, and perhaps Rauschenberg's signature achievement .
Charlene, from 1954 is a case in point. It appears at first impression to be a mess of junk glued with paint onto a wooden brace. A closer look reveals that many of the objects in the composition carry a personal significance for the artist, including a white sweatshirt, a flattened umbrella, paint can lids, a postcard of the Statue of Liberty and most particularly, a letter written to him by his mother.
When you see a contemporary artwork, particularly a sculptural piece made from seemingly unconnected pieces, or of 'junk', it is worth asking how this relates to what Rauschenberg was doing. Or in trying to find the thread that leads from Rauschenberg's work to today's work.
WHAT'S GOING ON (WHO'S DOING WHAT)
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-Last week the whole of the Cultural section at the Canadian High Commission in London was made redundant.
-Curator Ried Shier makes the move from Toronto's Power Plant to Vancouver's Presentation House Gallery
-- LOATHED
-- SOMEWHERE IN BETWEEN
-- SELECTED UPCOMING EVENTS
-- ART MARKET NOTES
-- OUR TOP 8 ART TRENDS
-- HOW TO BECOME A (SUCCESSFUL) ART COLLECTOR
-- NOTES ON THE WHITNEY BIENNALE
-- GALLERY PROFILE: CSA SPACE
-- ARTISTS WE'VE GOOGLED FOR YOU
-- IN DEPTH: RAUSCHENBERG
-- WHAT'S GOING ON (WHO'S DOING WHAT)
-- TALK TO US
-- AND FINALLY..
Hello,
Welcome to View on Art - the collector's newsletter.
This month we explore the art market. What art will be around after the next market crash? What factors determine the strength of an artwork or an artist's career?
This month:
-We loved, we loathed, we were somewhere in between
-We went to New York!
-We predict our top 8 art trends
-We examine Robert Rauschenberg's Combines
-We encourage new collectors
-We profile Vancouver gallery CSA space
-We Google a Brit, a Swede and a Hamburger
This letter goes to over 200 curators, artists, dealers, editors and collectors in London, Florence, Rome, New York, California, Washington, Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Winnipeg and Vancouver.
Please forward it to anyone who you think would be interested! Thanks and enjoy!
With very best wishes, Andrea
LOVED
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1. The Elmgreen and Dragset talk at the Power Plant. I loved these guys. I find the way they have been dealing with the white cube of the gallery (not the art, but the context for the art) to be particularly relevant. I loved that they had a show where they showed renovators painting the white gallery space white. The viewer became part of the background, similarly to their piece that saw a white gallery space set deep into a museum's front lawn, like some kind of an open grave. Lit up at night it was stunningly sculptural and voyeuristic.
They propose the minimalist designer boutique as the new gallery space. One well-known artwork involved building an exact replica of a Prada boutique in the desert near Marfa, Texas. Unattended and filled with merchandise, it has been left to slowly decompose over time. Going one better in Chelsea, they installed a sign reading “Prada - coming soon” in the company's official font, on the front window of their New York dealer's gallery. Tanya Bonakdar was apparently not terribly pleased with the phone calls of concern and sympathy she received.
I just wish I would have asked the duo about their relationship to Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan. Three works seemed influenced by his. The hole in the ceiling of the gallery/floor of a private flat, through which viewers could peek echoes Cattelan's sculpture of himself peeking through the floor of a space. The Fiat and trailer seemingly rising out from the mosaic floor of the Galleria Vittorio Emmanuele in Milan recalls Cattelan's The Ninth Hour, a sculpture of the Pope crushed to the ground by a large meteorite.
The live performance piece Reg(u)arding the guards, comprising a number of security guards guarding nothing but themselves recalls, at least formally, Cattelan's famous 1997 Venice Biennale contribution of taxidermied pigeons , I Touristi.
Elmgreen & Dragset
2. PFOAC at DiVA - Montreal dealer Pierre Francois Ouellette Art Contemporain brought Luc Courchesne's rotating 360 perspective wall-mounted photographic and video discs to New York's Digital and Video Art Fair. I love when dealers really consider how to present work well in the most difficult viewing conditions. Especially new media! There should have been more Canadian presence at the fair - Canada has so many fantastic new media artists.
3. The talk by Dr. Sarat Maharaj (internationally renowned art and culture theorist) at OCAD (the Ontario College of Art and Design), March 27th. He talked about the future of the art academy. Touching on Finnegan's Wake and the term "Aufhebun” among other obscure things, his point was about the importance of the framework around which one studies art. The main question was 'What modes of knowing must we construct to know the Other?'
His final four conclusions were for the need of laboratories within laboratories, of non-discursive thinking within performance, of the need to reexamine the relationship between body and mind, to re-affirm a self- organizing congregation and to provide a laboratory without name or protocol.
Maybe the quality of emerging art in Toronto will improve now that Sara Diamond is the president at OCAD.
4. Daniel Barrow and Duke & Battersby at Jessica Bradley Art + Projects. I love Barrow's dvd of images gliding around on an overhead projector. It's like the new puppetry. The artist's presence is palpable, manipulating the gruesome yet finely rendered images. His works on paper are delicate compositions constructed from cut-out shapes. Their obsessive attention to detail is brilliantly at odds with their protagonist's extreme dejection.
5. Duke & Battersby's video begins with a lovely shot of a tree, edited in such a way that it appears to be breathing, like a pair of lungs. The character of the whimsical soundtrack, native imagery and allusions to seedlings and plants runs alongside subject matter like urban sprawl, bullying, rape and scientific study. It's bang on.
Jessica Bradley Art + Projects
6. Ulf Puder at Artcore. Artcore's programming is really unique. The latest painting show by Leipzig painter Ulf Puder was wonderful. Would I have liked it as much had I been more familiar with the over-hyped Leipzig school? Perhaps not, but on its own, the quality of Puder's painting and his mastery of the medium is impressive. His formal approach, together with an awareness of historical precedent, impacts on his use of color, content, medium and, finally subject.
Look for my upcoming review in ARTnews.
7. Toronto artist Shary Boyle's sculptures at the Power Plant. Her finely rendered porcelain figurines at the Power Plant are stunning, perfectly balanced between delicacy and repulsion. I think it's the exquisiteness of these figurines, as opposed to others by the artist, or her drawings, that makes them really special.
LOATHED
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1. The Nuit Blanche press conference: It was funny-slash-sad watching a bunch of out-of-touch city bureaucrats try to get all enthusiastic about this "fun, exciting" event "for the people of Toronto." Billed by Mayor Miller as “one of the most innovative and exciting additions to Toronto's already impressive roster of cultural celebrations” on the night of September 30, it will see “everything from swimming pools and car washes to churches and libraries.. transformed by contemporary art projects.”
Questions:
-Will the TTC offer free and/or all-night transporation?
-Will the city open the streets to pedestrians?
-Will the organizers provide street and open air performances?
-How will the city publicize it beyond their Live with Culture website?
-Will the city invest in this event beyond 2006, Toronto's Live with Culture year? What about Scotiabank, this year's sponsor?
-Will the organizers work to make the above happen?
-Will the media get on board and pressure the city to make this a really successful event?
-Will other cities rave about Toronto's Nuit Blanche the way we rave about Nuit Blanche in Paris?
I'll look forward to moving this event into the 'Loved' section.
2. Scope NY. Where to start? It was kind of refreshing to see so much terrible art all in one place. There were 'performance art' works that involved sing-alongs for parents and kids, art-mobiles honking as they drove down the aisles, again with mothers and children having a grand old time, and raucous installations of noisy junk that as well as being irritating, were nothing new. That so much horrible stuff is being churned out, indeed encouraged, must mean something. It was a spectacle, that's for sure. If there were some good artworks in there, and I'm sure there were, they would have had to struggle to be seen. The presentation at most of the booths was ad-hoc, too. It was an improvement on the hotel model, though.
I heard the Perpetual Art Machine, a travelling video database exhibition, was good but I didn't see it.
3. The Gehry renovation. The Art Gallery of Ontario is putting all this energy into promoting what might have been a really novel and exciting project for Toronto. Instead of getting a super design from a younger, cutting edge architectural practice who might really benefit from a high-profile Toronto building, we will get a "nice" Gehry addition. I'm sure that the renovation will be lovely - Gehry is an acknowledged genius - but does Toronto need to hop on the bandwagon of second- rate citites hankering for another Bilbao? It's likely that even Gehry isn't excited about this one.
Gehry has commented on the difficulty of securing funding for his projects in Canada, as opposed to in Europe, where they somehow manage.
Speaking of his current practice in Vogue magazine, Ghery says "You inevitably start repeating yourself. People want Bilbao, and I don't want to do it."
4. How people like to refer to Toronto as a 'world class city'. It isn't. Montreal is.
The Perpetual Art Machine
SOMEWHERE IN BETWEEN
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1. The Welfare Show: The works on view at Elmgreen & Dragset's show were artistic puns. (Kind of like Brian Jungen's work.) While it is true that they encouraged an intriguing methodology of thought around each object, I was disappointed with the show. Bringing reality into the gallery is old news by now.
Furthermore, when you know the story of the installation of the hyper-realistic wax baby inside a car parked in front of The Wrong Gallery in Chelsea, and the ensuing uproar from the NYPD, the same baby placed under a fake ATM machine inside a gallery space carries little of the same impact. The empty wheelchair with the bright blue helium balloon floating above felt like it belonged to one of Duane Hanson's sculptures.
2. David Adjaye's talk at the University of Toronto. I thought the most interesting thing about the 'Young British Architect' was the type of art-slash-architecture projects that he is involved with. It's good to see artists like Chris Ofili, Olafur Eliasson (and other friends of Adjaye) incorporating architectural structure as an integral part of their works.
SELECTED UPCOMING EVENTS
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TORONTO Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art Jeremy Shaw: DMT April 13 - 23
With Tammy Forsythe and J.R. Carpenter
MoCCA
TORONTO Artcore Gallery Manfred Peckl and Marco Brambilla 25 March - 6 May
Artcore Gallery
TORONTO Art Gallery of Ontario Peter Doig: Works on Paper March 22 - June 18
Art Gallery of Ontario
TORONTO Oakville Galleries Body: New Art from the UK 8 April - 28 May
Oakville Galleries
VANCOUVER Tracey Lawrence Gallery Kathy Slade: Chart Through April 29
Tracey Lawrence Gallery
VANCOUVER Monte Clark Gallery Mark Lewis April 19 - May 21
Monte Clark Gallery
ART MARKET NOTES
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Some comments from a recent issue of New York magazine:
Five Theories on Why the Art Market Can't Crash - And why it will anyway.
By Marc Spiegler.
-Art has become a luxury good. Consequently, while there's a new class of people buying art, today's market is by and large misinformed. Collectors are buying art based on market trends rather than art- historical standards.
-The art world has gone global. Competitive collectors and dealers now scour exotic places for new art. (China, Poland)
-Art Investment Funds are increasingly popular, but their popularity is proven to have been based on incomplete studies of the market. The author of one study now says "The return can be very high, but so is the volatility."
-Today's market is more diversified, with various levels and segments of popularity. Can this protect it from an overall crash?
Basically, only artists whose work looks good and also has art historical significance - for its technical or conceptual innovation - survives a market crash. The bigger the idea, the longer the career. Historically, bad markets tend to produce better art. Artists who continually push at the boundaries of their medium will survive.
OUR TOP 8 ART TRENDS
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1. TRANSFER OF MEANING (or looking at the gallery from outside)
Looking at the framework through which we view art. The greater context. Painting and drawing on paper is limited to what can be represented on a piece of paper. This was Vito Acconci's motivation for stopping drawing and moving into alternate spaces in the 1970's, inspiring his famous mastrubation work, Seedbed, (1972) where he lay beneath the gallery's floor, fantasizing about gallery patrons overhead. Elmgreen & Dragset continue this tradition by making the gallery cube the art object, thereby placing the viewer at a greater remove. Neil Campbell's nocturnal lighting installation Base at the Vancouver Art Gallery this winter also dealt with this. Of course Christo and Jeanne Claude have been doing this for years. The Berlin biennale, which takes place at venues in the city, (through May 28) seems a reflection of this trend. In 1976, Brian O'Doherty argued that the pristine, white gallery space was a more important reflection of the times than the artwork.
2. PUBLIC ART
Using the world as a stage. One of my favorite artworks is by Piero Manzoni, a large, simple bronze cube from 1961 upon which is printed, upside-down, Socle du monde - homage a Gallileo. It means 'base of the world.' German artist Gregor Schneider is also using the urban environment as an art space, as in the piece Die Familie Schneider that he did for Artangel last year inside two east London row houses. Organizations like Artangel and Creative Time in New York are great facilitators of this kind of work. And Canadian artist Kelly Mark uses the world as a stage in her performances, or 'public interventions' where she repeats the same trivial, but carefully choreographed routine every day at the same time.
3. THE SMALL SCULPTURAL OBJECT
As conceptual art becomes more popular, people are beginning to question the meaning of things. This is already what post-Duchamp art asks of the viewer. People will begin to question the everyday, and out of this small arrangements of objects may become popular. Small scale sculpture, and arrangements/tableaux that mean more together than apart. Tom Friedman's obsessive manipulating of everyday materials to create the sublime. Also casts of bodily orifices by Canadian artist Massimo Guerrera. Thomas Demand's photographs of meticulously constructed paper environments and James Casebere's flooded rooms are part of this trend, too. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a return of interest to historical still-life painting, 17th century Vanitas etc. Also LA-based Canadian Jed Lind who blends an interest in mythology, architecture and the object with sculptures from antique model ships.
4. REARRANGEMENT OF SPACE
The displacement of space that makes us aware of the limitations of our existence. Adrian Searle, the art critic for the Guardian, calls it being “thrown into the illusion.” The audio walks and forced perspective installations of Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, the famous Weather Project (a large amber 'sun') installed in the turbine hall at Tate Modern and other works by Olafur Eliasson are some artists working with this idea. Both Do-Ho Suh and Rirkrit Tirajiniva have reconstructed versions of their New York apartments in the Serpentine Gallery, London.
5. VIDEO AND FILM
Almost since its inception, the question of 'truth' in photography has been under question. Jeff Wall was perhaps the most eloquent exponent of this idea and now artists like Scott MacFarland and others are 'painting' with digital technology. That story - the investigation of photography as photography - may be nearing its end, allowing moving image work to take over, due to its ability to comment on the nature of time. Mark Lewis, Alexandre Castonguay and Rodney Graham are some artists working in this way. Also younger artists Stuart Croft and the Toronto-based Daniel Cockburn. Michael Awad is a Canadian artist who builds his own still cameras to document extended moments in time.
6. A NEW SYMBOLISM
Now that perceived reality is being exposed as only one option, thanks in part to the investigation of truth in photography, there is a renewed search for 'truth,' manifest in the invention of new languages, signs, symbols and invented characters. Dance, performance and other forms of bodily expression may also become popular. Artists who are working in with these themes include Canadian Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay, Matthew Barney and even Richard Tuttle. Also neo-feminist artists like Gunilla Josephson and Pipilotti Rist.
7. INFILTRATION
Artists who wish to better the world, in a large sense, to get out of the ghetto-ized art world are beginning to infiltrate societal, even political systems. To move away from self- concern toward social concern. William Kentridge has partially dealt with these issues, and Takashi Murakami has infiltrated the economic system with his mass production of artworks, others like Dirk Fleischmann and Patrick Meagher are working with art and economics. Also artists working with virtual reality, surveillance and interface, like David Rokeby, Tasman Richardson and other web-based artists and artist-hackers.
8. OUTSIDER ART
Already people are doubting the benefits of a strict art college education for artists. Isn't it more beneficial for an artist to apply artistic practices to a greater interest or experience? Probably. As artists critique the art institution, and as public art becomes more popular, as artists are developing their own languages and showing up the constraints of established systems, it stands to reason that there should be a renewed interest in those artists who stand emphatically outside of those systems. Daniel Johnston's cartoon drawings included in the Whitney Biennale, the current exhibition Inner Worlds Outside , at the Whitechapel Gallery in London and recent films on the life and work of outside artist Henry Darger and The Devil and Daniel Johnston are testament to this interest.
HOW TO BECOME A (SUCCESSFUL) ART COLLECTOR
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From an article I wrote last summer for a Toronto publication:
These days, art is the new fashion. From the Takashi Murakami-designed handbags at Louis Vuitton to the Marc Jacobs ad campaigns by Jurgen Teller and featuring the artist Cindy Sherman - not to mention the major collections of Madonna, David Bowie and Elton John, everyone who is anyone seems to be getting in on the act. If you've got a good job, maybe a house or condo, why not think of starting your own art collection? Now that you've rid yourself of the university futon, the 'vintage' sofa and the Ikea paper lantern and even chucked out the posters..But you haven't studied art and you leave most galleries feeling either ignorant or preached at. So what should you do? Don't worry: there is a way to navigate the waters.
BROWSE: Try these Canadian galleries: (Toronto) Robert Birch, Jessica Bradley, Stephen Bulger, Monte Clark, Mira Godard, Susan Hobbs, Nicholas Metivier, Pari Nadimi Gallery, PM Gallery, Clint Roenisch, Wynick Tuck Gallery, Odon Wagner Contemporary. (Montreal) Pierre Francois Ouellette Art Contemporain, Rene Blouin, Joyce Yahouda. (Winnipeg) The Other Gallery (Calgary) Trepanier Baer, Skew Gallery (Vancouver) Monte Clark, Catriona Jeffries, Tracey Lawrence Gallery.
These galleries all represent quality artists, and each of these dealers really knows their stuff, investing time and money in their artists' careers.
Ask questions. Gallerists are there to guide you through the variegations of contemporary art. The gallerist expects you to ask for information about work that interests you, and don't worry, you needn't know everything about the editions, prices or methods involved in an artwork. Most importantly, make sure that you love what you buy. Never buy just for resale potential - the art market is notoriously fickle.
READ: Even if all you do is read this newsletter! The more you read, the greater your chances of success. If you are looking to discover the best and the brightest upcoming artists, pick up magazines like Canadian Art, Border Crossings, C magazine, Art News, Art in America, Art Forum, Art Review, Frieze, Modern Painters. Artnet.com is a smart, easily readable online magazine. Don't look at it as a job, just read whatever takes your fancy. If you see an image you like, read about the artist. Google his or her name and read as much as you can about the work.
DETERMINE A THEME: By now, you should have an idea of what type of art you want to collect. For beginning collectors I would suggest a relatively accessible (and affordable) theme like Emerging Artists, Canadian art, Photography, Prints, Video or whatever takes your fancy.
Having a theme allows you to focus your research. You can diversify later, but if for example you collect photography, you can familiarize yourself with market intricacies straight away, and buy what appeals to you within that. Remember, you are going for longevity. There's nothing wrong with having a few bare walls around while you look around to find the right artwork for you. You should never feel pressured by a dealer, after all, the artist will always be making more work. That said..
CONSIDER YOUR PURCHASE: Once you have an idea of a piece you might like to buy, you should start thinking about pricing. Dealers try to generate excitement and interest around their young artists, because as interest grows, so do prices. Make sure the interest is justified. Make sure that you understand why the artist is being hailed as the next big thing. What is the dealer's record? Have the artists works been bought by any museums (a hallmark of value)? Does the gallery do art fairs? Which ones? (Galleries are vetted, the best ones getting in to fairs such as Art Basel, Art Forum Berlin, ARCO in Madrid, the Armory Show in NYC.) Has the artist been part of any other exhibitions? (Museum and international group shows add importance) Who has written about the artist? Check the artists' bio and CV carefully. This is very important: I strongly believe that the best artists have a Masters degree, because a secondary degree is enough financial investment for them to generate the necessary ambition to succeed.
GET THE DETAILS RIGHT: Will the work be signed? Will the gallery include certificate of authenticy on the back of the work? How long will the artwork last without fading or cracking? If it doesn't, how will you be compensated? Will the gallery install the work for you? How is it framed? Is the work protected against light damage? Will you be kept up to date on the artists' career? Can the gallery arrange for you to meet the artist?
DIVERSIFY: Once you have purchased your first few artworks, you have the makings of a collection. Your choices needn't be dictated by medium, however. Looking at historical precedents for contemporary work can help define a contemporary collection. Look at curated museum exhibitions for inspiration.
NOTES ON THE WHITNEY BIENNALE
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People expect you to be able to come up with some enlightening synopsis of the overall show. Selecting stand-out works is much more useful, or strong curatorial strategies.
One of my favorites was Sturtevant's re-creation of Marcel Duchamp's Readymades. It was a timely way of addressing the historical-ness of what the viewer was seeing. So smart, and useful:
- Sturtevant Born 1930, Lakewood, Ohio; lives in Paris, France. Sturtevant's work centers on questions of authorship, authenticity, and the ways art acquires meaning through institutional contextualization, criticism, and market valuation. Since the 1960s, she has meticulously re-created works by other artists, ranging from Pop stalwarts such as Jasper Johns, Claes Oldenburg, and Andy Warhol to Robert Gober, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and Paul McCarthy. These projects have included repeating Johns's iconic Flag (1965-66) and reconstituting, in its entirety, Oldenburg's Store (1967). Warhol in particular recognized the collaborative rather than appropriative basis of her approach and even gave her one of his Flower silkscreens to use in creating her own canvases. When later quizzed about his own painting techniques, Warhol deadpanned: "I don't know. Ask [Sturtevant]."
This collective's hour-long film Pedestrian Cinema is a complex self-referential work about "keeping the borders of film open, the idea of an outside is revived - this exterior that the film studio confronts in its work..where the people who enter into the production process also elaborate it."
- Bernadette Corporation Founded 1994; based in New York, New York, and Berlin, Germany. Bernadette Corporation produces films, publications, and interventions that pose the question of how to defect from modern living within the capitalist system. Through the shifting nature of the group's composition and their diverse modes of production- and, paradoxically, by branding themselves as a corporation- they elude any definitive, image-based identity.
I love Fischer's blown out walls on the top floor of the Biennale. Also I had seen this large sculpture last year at the Camden Arts Centre in London. A long tree branch, suspended from the ceiling and hanging close to the ground, had at its end a lit candle. The piece slowly rotated like a needle on a record:
- Urs Fischer Born 1973, Zurich, Switzerland; lives in Zurich, Switzerland, and Los Angeles, California. Urs Fischer's artistic practice is founded on a consideration of the nature of substances, the act of making, and the unpredictable processes that can result from combining the two. With an extraordinarily wide range of materials- Styrofoam, clay, mirrors, fruit, wax, wood, glass, paint, sawdust, and silicone, to name a few-he resuscitates art historical genres such as still lifes, nudes, portraits, and landscapes in potent sculptures that reflect the complexity, wonder, and banality of everyday life. His works reverberate with material transformation and decay as well as with poetic internal collisions and contradictions that cause his sculptures to oscillate between seeming beautiful or ugly, elegant or awkward, graceful or burdened.
Meckseper's slick window displays were an enticing way of approaching sculpture. Almost mini-tableaux, the consumer products and broken glass made for a kind of historical push-pull, recalling Kristallnacht:
- Josephine Meckseper Born 1964, Lilienthal, Germany; lives in New York, New York. Josephine Meckseper's installations, photographs, and films explore, as Nicolas Garait has described, "the questionable links the media establishes between images of political news, the fashion industry, and advertising." In The Complete History of Postcontemporary Art (2005), she assembles everyday objects (a stuffed rabbit, stockings, a toilet plunger) and imagery related to protest culture. Deconstructing the media's strategy of mixing advertising and editorial content, she exposes how we have become consumers not only of products but also of news and politics. In displays that recall ethnographic museums, her work sets up absurdist juxtapositions that reflect and absorb the interrupted desires created by the ideally lit shop window at midnight, where consumption is temporarily deferred and the projection of ownership meets the transgressive impulse toward looting.
*All bios taken from the Whitney Biennale website.
GALLERY PROFILE: CSA SPACE
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Opened in September of last year above a bookstore in Vancouver by critic Christopher Brayshaw, gallery owner Stephen Tong and photographer Adam Harrison, this space is less a commercial gallery than a showcase for Vancouver's latest young art. Each of the three owners has a day job, allowing them the freedom to program work that they truly believe in, regardless of its saleability.
They give artists one-off shows, and have become a destination for visiting national and international curators, in search of the Next Big Thing. Their aim is to become a “very activated space that stands for autonomous and critical thinking about art and a place where personal aesthetic tastes are the basis for each show.”
Of particular note are Sylvia Grace Borda, currently showing at CSA:
Sylvia Grace Borda
Because CSA's artists tend to be young and without gallery representation, here's a link to an artist collective in Vancouver, some of whose founding members (Khan Lee and Derek Brunen) have shown with CSA:
Inter-mission
Co-director Adam Harrison is also founder of Doppelganger magazine:
Doppelganger
ARTISTS WE'VE GOOGLED FOR YOU
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The following info gleaned from our web search:
Mans Wrange
Måns Wrange's work frequently consists of major socio- political studies that span several years and resemble research projects more than anything else. This is an artist with a social commitment above all. His choice of subject and method of approaching them affirms this. Wrange devotes enormous attention to every separate part of his work, be it the drawn-out processing of the subjects or the spatial presentation of the works.
For The Average Citizen project, Måns Wrange studied how statistical averages influence and govern our everyday lives. With help from Statistics Sweden, he deduced the statistical profile of the average Swedish citizen. The result was a 40-year-old woman who lives in a one-bedroom apartment and has an annual income of 180,000 kronor. Through a media campaign, Måns Wrange made contact with a person who matched these criteria exactly, and by interviewing this person, whose name was Marianne, put normality into perspective. As in so many of Måns Wrange's works, this was an analysis of the means by which society is described and indirectly normalised. The Average Citizen poses questions about the relationship between mean averages and representations that can shed light on how the welfare state, in its striving for equality, through the simplifications of statistics, might contribute towards certain groups being perceived by others as deviants.
Imogen Stidworthy
Imogen Stidworthy deals with language and its translation into sound and image in her videos, films, photos and sound installations. Her newest installation Alex simulates a waiting room in which the audience is transported into a therapeutic situation: the treatment of a psychosomatic problem in which the vocal cords are distorted into a permanent, silent scream. A further installation is devoid of a specific plot .. here, the voice is liberated from both body and language. As an acoustic entity, this video installation allows a spatial experience that breaks through the physical presence of the visitors and the space.
Imogen Stidworthy, born in Great Britain in 1963, lives in Amsterdam. She has taken part in numerous international exhibitions, including "Exploding Cinema" in the Museum Boymans van Beuningen in Rotterdam; "Power and the Subject," in the Central House of Artists, Moscow, and the Ninth Biennale de l'image en movement, St. Gervais, Geneva (all in 2001).
Ulla von Brandenburg
Ulla von Brandenburg works with different media such as drawing, video, film, space installation and performance. Motives of historic originals are brought forward by the illustration in a current time context and therefore act as filters that switch between the illustration and the viewer.
In Untitled (2003), von Brandenburg created a larger than life-size wall painting based on an early composite photograph by pioneer photographer Henry Peach Robinson. Enlarged and abstracted, the image leaves only the whitest areas of the photograph unpainted so as to create a striking negative effect. The figures loom out of the painting, at times reading only as abstract forms. Shot on Super-8 film, von Brandenburg's Tableaux Vivants depict static arrangements of figures that hold their carefully choreographed poses for the length of the roll of film. Occasional movements betray these grainy images as films. The nexus of gazes that temporarily binds the figures together (all of whom are contemporaries of von Brandenburg and recognisable members of Hamburg's artistic milieu) suggests possible relationships and stories between these characters.
IN DEPTH: RAUSCHENBERG
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In a nutshell:
“Painting relates to both art and life. Neither can be made. (I try to act in that gap between the two.)” - Robert Rauschenberg
Robert Rauschenberg is one of those rare artists who has managed to continue pushing the boundaries of art, making strong statements and reinventing his practice for decades. Born in Texas, he studied at the famous Black Mountain College in North Carolina with John Cage and Merce Cunningham before moving to New York. By 1958 he was showing with the renowned gallerist Leo Castelli.
Early on, in 1953, Robert Rauschenberg made what is arguably one of the more brilliant moves of the twentieth century. His Erased de Kooning drawing involved “the simultaneous unmaking of one work and the creation of another.” He got hold of a drawing from de Kooning, simply erased it, and presented the result as another artwork. This was done at a time when Abstract Expressionists like Jackson Pollock were practicing in their distinctive styles, and this move opened up possibilities for artists.
By the mid-1950's, he had begun his series of famous Combines. The first lines in the catalogue accompanying Rauschenberg's recent retrospective of these works at the Met in New York: “Much late-twentieth-century contemporary art is unthinkable without Robert Rauschenberg..(he) paved the way for new possibilities, creating a space between painting and sculpture and between performance and the object. His work opened the door to the practice of drawing the artist's own life - even time itself - into art.” The Combines are paintings that famously incorporated other paintings, items of clothing, buckets, lightbulbs, cutlery, furniture, an entire bed and most famously, a long-haired taxidermied angora goat into a painting/sculpture hybrid.
The most striking thing for me, walking through the show, was how palpable the sense of being in the artists' studio was. Pieces of his studio were literally incorporated into the works, so the effect was almost of being transported into that era. This was art of experience, and perhaps Rauschenberg's signature achievement .
Charlene, from 1954 is a case in point. It appears at first impression to be a mess of junk glued with paint onto a wooden brace. A closer look reveals that many of the objects in the composition carry a personal significance for the artist, including a white sweatshirt, a flattened umbrella, paint can lids, a postcard of the Statue of Liberty and most particularly, a letter written to him by his mother.
When you see a contemporary artwork, particularly a sculptural piece made from seemingly unconnected pieces, or of 'junk', it is worth asking how this relates to what Rauschenberg was doing. Or in trying to find the thread that leads from Rauschenberg's work to today's work.
WHAT'S GOING ON (WHO'S DOING WHAT)
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-Last week the whole of the Cultural section at the Canadian High Commission in London was made redundant.
-Curator Ried Shier makes the move from Toronto's Power Plant to Vancouver's Presentation House Gallery
VoCA March 2006
-- LOVED
-- LOATHED
-- SOMEWHERE IN BETWEEN
-- SELECTED UPCOMING EVENTS
-- RENNY RAMAKERS - DROOG
-- JACK LERNER LARSEN
-- BEST IN SHOW
-- GALLERY PROFILE: PAVILION PROJECTS
-- ARTISTS I'VE GOOGLED FOR YOU
-- IN DEPTH
-- WHAT'S GOING ON
-- CORRECTION
-- TALK TO ME
-- AND FINALLY..
Hello,
Welcome to View on Art - the collector's newsletter.
This month explores the gravity of art. Art is, by necessity, both elitist and accessible. Art is fun - today anyone can be an artist - but the best art is always, at its core, serious.
This month:
-We loved, we loathed, we were somewhere in between
-We breeze through the recent Interior Design Show in Toronto, and take a look at products by Dutch conceptual design collective Droog
-We rail against mediocrity
-We dissect Anselm Kiefer
-We compare and contrast the work of three well-known post-feminist artists.
-We profile Montreal collaborative duo Pavilion Projects
-We Google two new media artists and one working with design.
This letter goes to over 200 curators, artists, dealers, editors and collectors in London, Florence, Rome, New York, California, Washington, Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Winnipeg and Vancouver.
Please forward it to anyone who you think would be interested! Thanks and enjoy!
With very best wishes, Andrea
"Art is a matter of life and death. This may be melodramatic, but it is also true." Bruce Nauman
LOVED
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Tom Sherman's talk at the Downloading Video panel discussion, Feb 25 in Toronto.
This discussion was organized by Vtape for the launch of the new Video Art in Canada website in association with the Virtual Museum of Canada. The site will no doubt be an excellent educational and reference tool, but it isn't without disadvantages - only partial clips of the works are shown online. This was noted by Syracuse prof and pioneering video artist Tom Sherman, who gave a fascinating perspective on video art today.
He spoke of the nature of video as an unstable medium, one that is overtaking film through the cost effectiveness of its technology. He stressed the importance of referring to video as 'digital cinema' and 'cinematic video' - noting how semantics govern how things are seen. For Sherman, television, not film is the direct ancestor of video - due to its incorporation of sound. Digital video is the future, he said, but we must watch the vernacular surrounding the medium.
Video Art in Canada
-Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller's talk at OCAD (Ontario College of Art and Design), February 22.
The talk at OCAD was most interesting for the clips and discussion of their more recent projects. Pianorama comprised a player piano installed in a room, with both Janet and George's voices describing the score of a film. The piece brought to mind the ghostly sculptures of < b>Rachel Whiteread, in particular her book cases.
The Secret Hotel involved a fake, set-like chamber in the middle of a large museum. The viewer/participant entered, and encountered a hallway, lined with quaint, flowery wallpaper and modeled after a scene from The Shining. The discrepancy in tone and decor created a creepy effect. The viewer/participant climbs a flight of stairs and upon opening a second door, he finds himself wandering along a catwalk, looking down at what he eventually registers as the gallery's glass ceiling. Mid-way down the catwalk, he peers over the edge at a tiny bedroom, far, far down. (This was a forced perspective construction, 1/4 life-size.) The disconcerting environment was reminiscent of Gregor Schnider's Die Familie Schneider, a work that was constructed in two twin houses in London's East End last year for Artangel.
By the end of the talk as I was leaving the auditorium, I began to notice the construction of the seating, not dissimilar to the theatre seating in the 2001 Venice Prize-winning installation The Paradise Institute. The voices of Cardiff and Bures Miller in the films blended with their real-time comments and the whole situation began to seem like a false reality. I think that their work's strength, like Schnieder's, lies in the way it brings us closer to another dimension, by shaking our reliance on perceived truth.
-Pierre Francois Ouellette Art Contemporain's dedication to Canadian New Media artists.
I think this country's best artists are working with video, film and new media. The Montreal gallerist is the only Canadian gallery doing the Digital and Video Art Fair in New York (DiVA) this month. Look out for a review of the fair in next month's issue.
See below for more information on the fair.
-Tracey Emin and Sophie Calle films at the Canadian Art Film Series.
I loved the series. Hopefully it will eventually become something along the lines of the FIFA (International Festival of Films on Art), March 9 - 19th in Montreal. In Toronto, three of this year's films profiled post-feminist artists exploring notions of femininity. They were Tracey Emin, Sophie Calle and Sam Taylor-Wood.
Emin and Calle comment on female experience, Emin through putting herself on the line, managing to tap into a universal experience. Her extreme self- absorbtion makes her controversial (unlike similarly narcissistic artists like Lucas Samaras.) Emin's work is so bare that her vulnerability and defence mechanisms are implicit in the work.
Sophie Calle also does this, in a more elegant way. One can sense the artist hiding within her work, daring herself, pushing herself. As one commentator pointed out in the film, being a stalker of another person is really about a search for oneself.
Emin is so emotionally tied to her famous tent (embroidered with the names of everyone she'd ever slept with), and to the sea hut that she bought and shipped to New York for a show.. The sea hut is a lovely metaphor for lonliness, abandonment, freedom. Emin saw herself in that hut..
LOATHED
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Seeing all three women profiled one after another proved, to me, what I had long suspected - that Taylor-Wood's work presents too much of a remove between artist and emotion. This is implied in the distance between her and the camera, her actors and the set in her panoramic photographs.
Sam Tayor-Wood's attempt to include her personal experience into her work seems forced. The viewer gets little sense of the artist as a woman, or the difficulty of her experience, or any sense of real emotion. The work Self Portrait in Single Breasted Suit with Hare comes across simply as wryly humorous, although according to the title the work has to do with the artist's self ordeal of breast cancer and chemotherapy.
-Come Up to My Room. The Untitled Art Awards. TAAFI (Toronto Alternative Art Fair International), all at the Gladstone Hotel.
These Toronto events are offered as 'alternatives' to mainstream events like the Interior Design Show, the Sobey Awards, and the Toronto International Art Fair, respectively. Alternative events need to be viable, well- organized alternatives, not ad-hoc events for the in-crowd. If this were the case, it would presumably encourage the mainstream events to re-think their strategies, resulting in higher-quality cultural events in Toronto.
Alternative events should be well-promoted, they should be attractive to corporate sponsors, they should attract the best young talent. They should be about something more than just an alternative. They should aim to be a better alternative.
-All the fawning art writing over Rebecca Belmore's Fountainat Venice. The last straw, for me was the review in the current issue of Fuse magazine, which attempts to make something great out of what was essentially a mediocre work by an otherwise very good artist.
SOMEWHERE IN BETWEEN
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Tony Romano's exhibition at Diaz Contemporary in Toronto. Romano is a promising artist. The video work in the main gallery was presented as two projections, back to back, playing at different speeds. The work is complimented by film posters as if for an entire production, whereas the films depict only the beginning and end of a fairy tale recounted within the play Woyzeck by the German writer Georg Buchner.
The idea is strong, but the problem is that by dealing with negation (what is missing), the viewer easily loses interest, particularly if he doesn't know what was there in the first place. I found The Fisherman and His Soul, a sound piece involving a song written by the artist based on the story by Oscar Wilde, easier to appreciate. Music and flashing light fill an empty room, while a poster and a set of framed lyrics are installed the an adjacent room.
SELECTED UPCOMING EVENTS
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-VANCOUVER: Stan Brakhage, perhaps the best known of the 'experimental' filmmakers. At Presentation House, Vancouver, March 11 - April 9. Accompanied by Devour, an exhibition of work by Carolee Schneemann.
-VANCOUVER: Erin Shirreff and Colin Zaug at Helen Pitt Gallery and Artist-run centre, March 3 - April 1. Shirreff's installation, a contemporary vanitas, stars a laptop, a burning candle, and a ceaselessly morphing and turning mound of clay. Zaug's billboard-style sculpture is covered in hundreds of floating reflective discs that flutter with the slightest air circulation, concealing a more complex structure.
-NEW YORK: The Armory show March 9 - 13, 2006 Piers 90 + 92
Artcore/Fabrice Marcolini and Susan Hobbs Gallery will be the only Canadian Galleries:
-NEW YORK: Day for Night, The Whitney Biennnale 2006
-NEW YORK: DiVA - Digital and Video Art fair March 9 - 12, 2006
DiVA
RENNY RAMAKERS - DROOG
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Interior Design Show talk
Over the design weekend in Toronto (IDS and CuTMR) I noticed many young designers in Canada who put considerable thought into the aesthetics of their product, and less into its greater meaning or usefulness. This was incredibly disappointing. The beauty of design, like architecture, are its constraints. Design today, again like architecture, has a social and environmental responsibility. It's unfortunate that students aren't always given interesting enough project briefs, and don't seem motivated to create anything beyond an appealing product. Is it because they aren't exposed to contemporary design outside of Canada?
With this in mind, I present some of the values for the future of design outlined by Renny Ramakers of Droog in her talk at the IDS: Note that the categories relate to more than design.
COLLABORATION -Distribution through design, design based on interference, design by workers and universality in design. An example are cigar boxes with each worker's signature as part of the design. (This is similar to the brilliant Fish Design by legendary Italian designer Gaetano Pesce, which transfers authorship of products from the designer to assembly line workers. It is also reminiscent of work by Japanese clothing designer Issey Miyake, who has considered new methods of production for clothing.)
SLOWNESS -A glass lamp with a lump of fat inside that slowly burned. Very Joseph Beuys.
CRAFTSMANSHIP -Tactile, process-orinted. An example is a crochet chain link fence.
SAVE THE WASTE -A chair made from a stack of recycled clothing bound together with cables, and chest of various old drawers tied with a nylon belt.
MEMORIES -Decoration based on function, like Memories of Wallpaper, a wall covering with holes through which your old paper can be seen, or a tablecloth with scalloped shapes outlined for different sized tables.
(appreciation of) IMPERFECTION -Vases held together with tape, or the Droog office, in which the original 1970's office interior was preserved, but painted entirely in bold colours.
INTERACTION -A backyard fence with shapes cut into it through which various tools can be passed for sharing with one's neighbours.
PERSONALIZATION -The Crack Vase, made from porcelain and silicone, you throw it against the wall yourself to create a unique pattern.
MEANING -Design replacing nature, and preserving rituals. For example, the sun umbrella that mimics dappled sunlight through trees, or Japanese rice bowls with places for hands at bottom, traditional-style. Also a bookshelf with trompe d'oeil classic literature embedded.
DOING (ALMOST) NOTHING -Slipcovers, adding pattern, recontextualizing objects in their surroundings. This is evident in their Hotel Droog at the Milan Furniture fair several years ago.
My article on Hotel Droog
JACK LERNER LARSEN
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Interior Design Show talk
Also at the IDS, Larsen, a textile designer, offered his thoughts for the future of design, which he refered to as the 'revolution':
-Starting with people in consideration of space, LOOKING OUTWARD.
-Creating a new kind of space, PERSONALIZED SPACE (important because little else is personalized)
-MORE CHOICE is needed to stimulate individuality
-It is our responsibility to ACT RESPONSIBLE
-We must LISTEN to consumer demand
-It is unfortunate that 'MAXIMUM' eclipses 'OPTIMUM' today. Optimum has to do with abstraction, with less
BEST IN SHOW
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Best in show were the designs from the Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design at U of T. Their brief was to design a lightweight stool, on the premise that if designers reduce weight, the environmental damage of materials processing and shipping will be reduced. The students' designs were also concerned other issues such as flat-pack shipping possibilities. Work by Brett Hotson, Dov Secter and April Wong stood out.
Please see my blog for images.
The best of the rest was Nick Western's Arte Povera -style table, ash tied together with sisal rope, from Sheridan College.
View on Art: AL & D images
GALLERY PROFILE: PAVILION PROJECTS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Opened in 2004 by Robin Simpson and Maryse Lariviere, this gallery doesn't maintain a permanent space, rather mounting exhibitions in 'contextually relevant spaces.' When Robin was still at Concordia, working at a gallery, he became interested in the work of British artists Iain Forsythe and Jane Pollard and, with no resources, invited them to Canada.
Simpson and Lariviere are now working toward an art rental system, to be established this year. They want Pavilion to run parallel to artist-run centres while also catering to the younger collector and the general public.
They are interested in exhibiting “artists with whom we identify, who subscribe to a particular undercurrent - a source of energy that is outside the art milieu, that is underground. We are interested in artworks that tap into something that can cross over.”
They host exhibitions in Nice, France and in other international locales periodically too.
Of particular note are Ulla von Brandenburg who makes esoteric installations, films and illustrations.
Ulla von Brandenburg
Mattieu Beausejour, director of Clark gallery. Pavilion showed a performance of his in Nice.
Mattieu Beausejour
Stephanie Chabot, a painter working in a naïve, hedonistic style. Also she casts costumes and large rubber gloves from rubber and photographs herself wearing these monster costumes.
Stephanie Chabot
This month Pavilion is showing Re-Shuffle: Notions of an Itinerant Museum, “a survey about the possibilities for the museums of today and the future.”
Pavilion Projects
ARTISTS I'VE GOOGLED FOR YOU
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The following info gleaned from my web search:
Natalie Bookchin is involved in net art and net activism. She lives in LA and teaches at CalArts. She works collaboratively and independently and exhibits, performs and lectures widely in the US, Europe and on the Internet. In 2000, Bookchin earned an honorary mention in the .net category of the Prix Ars Electronica (Linz, Austria).
Bookchin began her career as a photographer and fibre artist. After moving from fibre works to photography, Bookchin began to investigate how to manipulate the medium and critique the media.
After experimenting with digital photography, Bookchin began to consider newer technologies such as the CD-ROM and the Internet as formal veins for her critical discourse. In 1996, she produced an interactive CD-ROM titled The Databank of the Everyday that relies on still photography of the human body, banal actions and movements, the idea of photography's documentary role, and the principles of the contemporary database.
I could spend hours playing the art games on this site
Alan Currall is an English artist living in Glasgow, Scotland. He works in video and web-based art. He is a graduate of Staffordshire University (1992) and Glasgow School of Art (1995). He is now an Academic Researcher at Glasgow School of Art where he has lectured since 1997, currently in the department of Sculpture and Environmental Art.
In its broadest terms Currall's art practice is an investigation into human nature. It deals with questions of belief and identity, and the limitations of our capacity to understand these concepts.
In 1998 he was awarded The Richard Hough Bursary, Scotland's chief lens-based media prize. He was the Scottish Arts Council's Artist in Residence at Canberra School of Art in 2001. In 2003 he received a Scottish Arts Council Artist's Award and was short-listed for the Beck's Futures Prize.
Alan Currall's website
Leopold L. Foulem is internationally renowned in the contemporary ceramic world. Born in Caraquet, New Brunswick, he received his MFA from Indiana State University in 1988. He currently divides his time between Caraquet and Montreal.
Foulem creates works that are meant to address our knowledge and understanding of ceramics, while challenging our presumed stereotypes, and exploring the fringes of respected traditions. A technical wizard, Foulem's pieces combine erudition and humour to create a vocabulary which is indisputably his own, playing on semantic reversals.
Foulem is a world authority on Picasso's ceramic work, and has collected considerable documentation on the subject over the past 25 years, with his research resulting in a number of publications. In addition, Foulem taught for more than 20 years in the ceramics programme of the CEGEP de Vieux Montréal, and more recently has been teaching at the CEGEP St-Laurent in Montreal's north end. In 1999, he received the Jean A. Chalmers National Craft Award, in recognition of his more-than 30-year history in ceramics.
Foulem images
IN DEPTH
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Anselm Kiefer: What you need to know.
'After Auschwitz, to write a poem is barbaric' - Theodor Adorno
I had first seen work by Anselm Kiefer at the Kunstmuseum in Bonn, when I was eighteen. (I was taken there by the late Mrs. Gertrud Johnssen, a German collector and unbelievably chic woman to whom I owe my interest in and passion for art) Even without knowing much about art, one is immediately affected by their sheer power and grandeur. Not only in subject matter, which at first glance is somewhat nebulous, but also in its physicality. Huge, apocalyptic canvases are covered in cracked earth, lead, charcoal, broken glass, dried flowers and weeds. They are strikingly barren, starkly serious and awesome.
Walking into the show in Montreal, I was struck by how fundamental this work is. The abstract and the pictorial merge, the canvas functioning as a frame for Kiefer's vision. They work almost look like film stills.
Kiefer was born in Germany in 1945 and is now living in a bunker-type studio in Barjac, France. He was a big deal in the 1980's.
The title of the Montreal exhibition, Heaven and Earth (Himmel und Erde) illustrates Kiefer's preoccupation with fundamental, existential questions. He uses art to explore these questions, indeed was influenced by legendary artist/shaman Joseph Beuys. In the introduction to the catalogue, Michael Auping writes “Kiefer's meetings with Joseph Beuys reinforced many of his ideas about the possibility of a content that engaged a larger context for art.” Central to his art is German post-war history. Kiefer's work is a 'real working through of German history. He has a need to address it in his own mind.'
I think Kiefer is best appreciated in a retrospective, like Barnett Newman, because it is helpful to see where he has come from, and how his ideas have developed. One brilliant early work from 1973 is Quaternity, an investigation of which can explain much of Keifer's later career. It is a finely detailed charcoal drawing of a dramatically tilted wooden artists studio. In one corner, three burning fires represent the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. A serpent joins the trinity. Keifer's portrayal/use of fire, wood, forest and charcoal reflect, as Auping notes, his interest in “fire (as) a powerful symbol mediating between heaven and earth, originating in the skies (lightening and stars), as well as in the hand of man.” Forest and fire come together and play off of one another.
The serpent suggests that evil is implicit in good, “a fundamental element in the spiritual matrix.” The dramatic perspective of the room positions the viewer along with the artist in the (universal) search for balance between heaven and earth. This is central to much of Keifer's later work.
Why is he important? I believe it is ultimately because he spends time "thinking quietly - about the larger issues", and manages to include, in his investigation, the artist as well as humankind.
'Religion can pretend to be pure. History cannot.' - Anselm Kiefer.
Musee d'Art Contemporain de Montreal
WHAT'S GOING ON
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-Catriona Jeffries is moving into what should be a stunning space on Vancouver's East side, perfect for the activities of the gallery's artists: According to the press release, (which could almost qualify as a piece of conceptual art itself):
“Such activities contribute to a myriad of connections, references and overlappings that have instigated the gallery's relocation and its configuration as a civic site of production. This practice now turns away from the one-way mirror-power retail context of South Granville and transforms eastward into an industrially zoned mix of warehouses, auto body shops, alternative galleries and artist live/work studios.
If the city is envisioned as a series of spatial complexes that interlace and interact, then as an intermediary focal point the forthcoming new practice at Catriona Jeffries presents a unique perspective on, and compelling commitment to artists' representation in the city and the larger world.”
New space at 274 East 1st Avenue, Vancouver. From May 2006
-Stephen Bulger is expanding his world-class photography gallery. In the coming months, he will take over Camera, Atom Egoyan's bar/screening room, where he will show films on photography and related events. On Queen Street West in Toronto.
Stephen Bulger Gallery
CORRECTION
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Last month: David Kramer's quote came from Feigen Contemporary website, not Deitch Projects.
-- LOATHED
-- SOMEWHERE IN BETWEEN
-- SELECTED UPCOMING EVENTS
-- RENNY RAMAKERS - DROOG
-- JACK LERNER LARSEN
-- BEST IN SHOW
-- GALLERY PROFILE: PAVILION PROJECTS
-- ARTISTS I'VE GOOGLED FOR YOU
-- IN DEPTH
-- WHAT'S GOING ON
-- CORRECTION
-- TALK TO ME
-- AND FINALLY..
Hello,
Welcome to View on Art - the collector's newsletter.
This month explores the gravity of art. Art is, by necessity, both elitist and accessible. Art is fun - today anyone can be an artist - but the best art is always, at its core, serious.
This month:
-We loved, we loathed, we were somewhere in between
-We breeze through the recent Interior Design Show in Toronto, and take a look at products by Dutch conceptual design collective Droog
-We rail against mediocrity
-We dissect Anselm Kiefer
-We compare and contrast the work of three well-known post-feminist artists.
-We profile Montreal collaborative duo Pavilion Projects
-We Google two new media artists and one working with design.
This letter goes to over 200 curators, artists, dealers, editors and collectors in London, Florence, Rome, New York, California, Washington, Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Winnipeg and Vancouver.
Please forward it to anyone who you think would be interested! Thanks and enjoy!
With very best wishes, Andrea
"Art is a matter of life and death. This may be melodramatic, but it is also true." Bruce Nauman
LOVED
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tom Sherman's talk at the Downloading Video panel discussion, Feb 25 in Toronto.
This discussion was organized by Vtape for the launch of the new Video Art in Canada website in association with the Virtual Museum of Canada. The site will no doubt be an excellent educational and reference tool, but it isn't without disadvantages - only partial clips of the works are shown online. This was noted by Syracuse prof and pioneering video artist Tom Sherman, who gave a fascinating perspective on video art today.
He spoke of the nature of video as an unstable medium, one that is overtaking film through the cost effectiveness of its technology. He stressed the importance of referring to video as 'digital cinema' and 'cinematic video' - noting how semantics govern how things are seen. For Sherman, television, not film is the direct ancestor of video - due to its incorporation of sound. Digital video is the future, he said, but we must watch the vernacular surrounding the medium.
Video Art in Canada
-Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller's talk at OCAD (Ontario College of Art and Design), February 22.
The talk at OCAD was most interesting for the clips and discussion of their more recent projects. Pianorama comprised a player piano installed in a room, with both Janet and George's voices describing the score of a film. The piece brought to mind the ghostly sculptures of < b>Rachel Whiteread, in particular her book cases.
The Secret Hotel involved a fake, set-like chamber in the middle of a large museum. The viewer/participant entered, and encountered a hallway, lined with quaint, flowery wallpaper and modeled after a scene from The Shining. The discrepancy in tone and decor created a creepy effect. The viewer/participant climbs a flight of stairs and upon opening a second door, he finds himself wandering along a catwalk, looking down at what he eventually registers as the gallery's glass ceiling. Mid-way down the catwalk, he peers over the edge at a tiny bedroom, far, far down. (This was a forced perspective construction, 1/4 life-size.) The disconcerting environment was reminiscent of Gregor Schnider's Die Familie Schneider, a work that was constructed in two twin houses in London's East End last year for Artangel.
By the end of the talk as I was leaving the auditorium, I began to notice the construction of the seating, not dissimilar to the theatre seating in the 2001 Venice Prize-winning installation The Paradise Institute. The voices of Cardiff and Bures Miller in the films blended with their real-time comments and the whole situation began to seem like a false reality. I think that their work's strength, like Schnieder's, lies in the way it brings us closer to another dimension, by shaking our reliance on perceived truth.
-Pierre Francois Ouellette Art Contemporain's dedication to Canadian New Media artists.
I think this country's best artists are working with video, film and new media. The Montreal gallerist is the only Canadian gallery doing the Digital and Video Art Fair in New York (DiVA) this month. Look out for a review of the fair in next month's issue.
See below for more information on the fair.
-Tracey Emin and Sophie Calle films at the Canadian Art Film Series.
I loved the series. Hopefully it will eventually become something along the lines of the FIFA (International Festival of Films on Art), March 9 - 19th in Montreal. In Toronto, three of this year's films profiled post-feminist artists exploring notions of femininity. They were Tracey Emin, Sophie Calle and Sam Taylor-Wood.
Emin and Calle comment on female experience, Emin through putting herself on the line, managing to tap into a universal experience. Her extreme self- absorbtion makes her controversial (unlike similarly narcissistic artists like Lucas Samaras.) Emin's work is so bare that her vulnerability and defence mechanisms are implicit in the work.
Sophie Calle also does this, in a more elegant way. One can sense the artist hiding within her work, daring herself, pushing herself. As one commentator pointed out in the film, being a stalker of another person is really about a search for oneself.
Emin is so emotionally tied to her famous tent (embroidered with the names of everyone she'd ever slept with), and to the sea hut that she bought and shipped to New York for a show.. The sea hut is a lovely metaphor for lonliness, abandonment, freedom. Emin saw herself in that hut..
LOATHED
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Seeing all three women profiled one after another proved, to me, what I had long suspected - that Taylor-Wood's work presents too much of a remove between artist and emotion. This is implied in the distance between her and the camera, her actors and the set in her panoramic photographs.
Sam Tayor-Wood's attempt to include her personal experience into her work seems forced. The viewer gets little sense of the artist as a woman, or the difficulty of her experience, or any sense of real emotion. The work Self Portrait in Single Breasted Suit with Hare comes across simply as wryly humorous, although according to the title the work has to do with the artist's self ordeal of breast cancer and chemotherapy.
-Come Up to My Room. The Untitled Art Awards. TAAFI (Toronto Alternative Art Fair International), all at the Gladstone Hotel.
These Toronto events are offered as 'alternatives' to mainstream events like the Interior Design Show, the Sobey Awards, and the Toronto International Art Fair, respectively. Alternative events need to be viable, well- organized alternatives, not ad-hoc events for the in-crowd. If this were the case, it would presumably encourage the mainstream events to re-think their strategies, resulting in higher-quality cultural events in Toronto.
Alternative events should be well-promoted, they should be attractive to corporate sponsors, they should attract the best young talent. They should be about something more than just an alternative. They should aim to be a better alternative.
-All the fawning art writing over Rebecca Belmore's Fountainat Venice. The last straw, for me was the review in the current issue of Fuse magazine, which attempts to make something great out of what was essentially a mediocre work by an otherwise very good artist.
SOMEWHERE IN BETWEEN
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tony Romano's exhibition at Diaz Contemporary in Toronto. Romano is a promising artist. The video work in the main gallery was presented as two projections, back to back, playing at different speeds. The work is complimented by film posters as if for an entire production, whereas the films depict only the beginning and end of a fairy tale recounted within the play Woyzeck by the German writer Georg Buchner.
The idea is strong, but the problem is that by dealing with negation (what is missing), the viewer easily loses interest, particularly if he doesn't know what was there in the first place. I found The Fisherman and His Soul, a sound piece involving a song written by the artist based on the story by Oscar Wilde, easier to appreciate. Music and flashing light fill an empty room, while a poster and a set of framed lyrics are installed the an adjacent room.
SELECTED UPCOMING EVENTS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-VANCOUVER: Stan Brakhage, perhaps the best known of the 'experimental' filmmakers. At Presentation House, Vancouver, March 11 - April 9. Accompanied by Devour, an exhibition of work by Carolee Schneemann.
-VANCOUVER: Erin Shirreff and Colin Zaug at Helen Pitt Gallery and Artist-run centre, March 3 - April 1. Shirreff's installation, a contemporary vanitas, stars a laptop, a burning candle, and a ceaselessly morphing and turning mound of clay. Zaug's billboard-style sculpture is covered in hundreds of floating reflective discs that flutter with the slightest air circulation, concealing a more complex structure.
-NEW YORK: The Armory show March 9 - 13, 2006 Piers 90 + 92
Artcore/Fabrice Marcolini and Susan Hobbs Gallery will be the only Canadian Galleries:
-NEW YORK: Day for Night, The Whitney Biennnale 2006
-NEW YORK: DiVA - Digital and Video Art fair March 9 - 12, 2006
DiVA
RENNY RAMAKERS - DROOG
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Interior Design Show talk
Over the design weekend in Toronto (IDS and CuTMR) I noticed many young designers in Canada who put considerable thought into the aesthetics of their product, and less into its greater meaning or usefulness. This was incredibly disappointing. The beauty of design, like architecture, are its constraints. Design today, again like architecture, has a social and environmental responsibility. It's unfortunate that students aren't always given interesting enough project briefs, and don't seem motivated to create anything beyond an appealing product. Is it because they aren't exposed to contemporary design outside of Canada?
With this in mind, I present some of the values for the future of design outlined by Renny Ramakers of Droog in her talk at the IDS: Note that the categories relate to more than design.
COLLABORATION -Distribution through design, design based on interference, design by workers and universality in design. An example are cigar boxes with each worker's signature as part of the design. (This is similar to the brilliant Fish Design by legendary Italian designer Gaetano Pesce, which transfers authorship of products from the designer to assembly line workers. It is also reminiscent of work by Japanese clothing designer Issey Miyake, who has considered new methods of production for clothing.)
SLOWNESS -A glass lamp with a lump of fat inside that slowly burned. Very Joseph Beuys.
CRAFTSMANSHIP -Tactile, process-orinted. An example is a crochet chain link fence.
SAVE THE WASTE -A chair made from a stack of recycled clothing bound together with cables, and chest of various old drawers tied with a nylon belt.
MEMORIES -Decoration based on function, like Memories of Wallpaper, a wall covering with holes through which your old paper can be seen, or a tablecloth with scalloped shapes outlined for different sized tables.
(appreciation of) IMPERFECTION -Vases held together with tape, or the Droog office, in which the original 1970's office interior was preserved, but painted entirely in bold colours.
INTERACTION -A backyard fence with shapes cut into it through which various tools can be passed for sharing with one's neighbours.
PERSONALIZATION -The Crack Vase, made from porcelain and silicone, you throw it against the wall yourself to create a unique pattern.
MEANING -Design replacing nature, and preserving rituals. For example, the sun umbrella that mimics dappled sunlight through trees, or Japanese rice bowls with places for hands at bottom, traditional-style. Also a bookshelf with trompe d'oeil classic literature embedded.
DOING (ALMOST) NOTHING -Slipcovers, adding pattern, recontextualizing objects in their surroundings. This is evident in their Hotel Droog at the Milan Furniture fair several years ago.
My article on Hotel Droog
JACK LERNER LARSEN
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Interior Design Show talk
Also at the IDS, Larsen, a textile designer, offered his thoughts for the future of design, which he refered to as the 'revolution':
-Starting with people in consideration of space, LOOKING OUTWARD.
-Creating a new kind of space, PERSONALIZED SPACE (important because little else is personalized)
-MORE CHOICE is needed to stimulate individuality
-It is our responsibility to ACT RESPONSIBLE
-We must LISTEN to consumer demand
-It is unfortunate that 'MAXIMUM' eclipses 'OPTIMUM' today. Optimum has to do with abstraction, with less
BEST IN SHOW
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Best in show were the designs from the Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design at U of T. Their brief was to design a lightweight stool, on the premise that if designers reduce weight, the environmental damage of materials processing and shipping will be reduced. The students' designs were also concerned other issues such as flat-pack shipping possibilities. Work by Brett Hotson, Dov Secter and April Wong stood out.
Please see my blog for images.
The best of the rest was Nick Western's Arte Povera -style table, ash tied together with sisal rope, from Sheridan College.
View on Art: AL & D images
GALLERY PROFILE: PAVILION PROJECTS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Opened in 2004 by Robin Simpson and Maryse Lariviere, this gallery doesn't maintain a permanent space, rather mounting exhibitions in 'contextually relevant spaces.' When Robin was still at Concordia, working at a gallery, he became interested in the work of British artists Iain Forsythe and Jane Pollard and, with no resources, invited them to Canada.
Simpson and Lariviere are now working toward an art rental system, to be established this year. They want Pavilion to run parallel to artist-run centres while also catering to the younger collector and the general public.
They are interested in exhibiting “artists with whom we identify, who subscribe to a particular undercurrent - a source of energy that is outside the art milieu, that is underground. We are interested in artworks that tap into something that can cross over.”
They host exhibitions in Nice, France and in other international locales periodically too.
Of particular note are Ulla von Brandenburg who makes esoteric installations, films and illustrations.
Ulla von Brandenburg
Mattieu Beausejour, director of Clark gallery. Pavilion showed a performance of his in Nice.
Mattieu Beausejour
Stephanie Chabot, a painter working in a naïve, hedonistic style. Also she casts costumes and large rubber gloves from rubber and photographs herself wearing these monster costumes.
Stephanie Chabot
This month Pavilion is showing Re-Shuffle: Notions of an Itinerant Museum, “a survey about the possibilities for the museums of today and the future.”
Pavilion Projects
ARTISTS I'VE GOOGLED FOR YOU
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The following info gleaned from my web search:
Natalie Bookchin is involved in net art and net activism. She lives in LA and teaches at CalArts. She works collaboratively and independently and exhibits, performs and lectures widely in the US, Europe and on the Internet. In 2000, Bookchin earned an honorary mention in the .net category of the Prix Ars Electronica (Linz, Austria).
Bookchin began her career as a photographer and fibre artist. After moving from fibre works to photography, Bookchin began to investigate how to manipulate the medium and critique the media.
After experimenting with digital photography, Bookchin began to consider newer technologies such as the CD-ROM and the Internet as formal veins for her critical discourse. In 1996, she produced an interactive CD-ROM titled The Databank of the Everyday that relies on still photography of the human body, banal actions and movements, the idea of photography's documentary role, and the principles of the contemporary database.
I could spend hours playing the art games on this site
Alan Currall is an English artist living in Glasgow, Scotland. He works in video and web-based art. He is a graduate of Staffordshire University (1992) and Glasgow School of Art (1995). He is now an Academic Researcher at Glasgow School of Art where he has lectured since 1997, currently in the department of Sculpture and Environmental Art.
In its broadest terms Currall's art practice is an investigation into human nature. It deals with questions of belief and identity, and the limitations of our capacity to understand these concepts.
In 1998 he was awarded The Richard Hough Bursary, Scotland's chief lens-based media prize. He was the Scottish Arts Council's Artist in Residence at Canberra School of Art in 2001. In 2003 he received a Scottish Arts Council Artist's Award and was short-listed for the Beck's Futures Prize.
Alan Currall's website
Leopold L. Foulem is internationally renowned in the contemporary ceramic world. Born in Caraquet, New Brunswick, he received his MFA from Indiana State University in 1988. He currently divides his time between Caraquet and Montreal.
Foulem creates works that are meant to address our knowledge and understanding of ceramics, while challenging our presumed stereotypes, and exploring the fringes of respected traditions. A technical wizard, Foulem's pieces combine erudition and humour to create a vocabulary which is indisputably his own, playing on semantic reversals.
Foulem is a world authority on Picasso's ceramic work, and has collected considerable documentation on the subject over the past 25 years, with his research resulting in a number of publications. In addition, Foulem taught for more than 20 years in the ceramics programme of the CEGEP de Vieux Montréal, and more recently has been teaching at the CEGEP St-Laurent in Montreal's north end. In 1999, he received the Jean A. Chalmers National Craft Award, in recognition of his more-than 30-year history in ceramics.
Foulem images
IN DEPTH
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Anselm Kiefer: What you need to know.
'After Auschwitz, to write a poem is barbaric' - Theodor Adorno
I had first seen work by Anselm Kiefer at the Kunstmuseum in Bonn, when I was eighteen. (I was taken there by the late Mrs. Gertrud Johnssen, a German collector and unbelievably chic woman to whom I owe my interest in and passion for art) Even without knowing much about art, one is immediately affected by their sheer power and grandeur. Not only in subject matter, which at first glance is somewhat nebulous, but also in its physicality. Huge, apocalyptic canvases are covered in cracked earth, lead, charcoal, broken glass, dried flowers and weeds. They are strikingly barren, starkly serious and awesome.
Walking into the show in Montreal, I was struck by how fundamental this work is. The abstract and the pictorial merge, the canvas functioning as a frame for Kiefer's vision. They work almost look like film stills.
Kiefer was born in Germany in 1945 and is now living in a bunker-type studio in Barjac, France. He was a big deal in the 1980's.
The title of the Montreal exhibition, Heaven and Earth (Himmel und Erde) illustrates Kiefer's preoccupation with fundamental, existential questions. He uses art to explore these questions, indeed was influenced by legendary artist/shaman Joseph Beuys. In the introduction to the catalogue, Michael Auping writes “Kiefer's meetings with Joseph Beuys reinforced many of his ideas about the possibility of a content that engaged a larger context for art.” Central to his art is German post-war history. Kiefer's work is a 'real working through of German history. He has a need to address it in his own mind.'
I think Kiefer is best appreciated in a retrospective, like Barnett Newman, because it is helpful to see where he has come from, and how his ideas have developed. One brilliant early work from 1973 is Quaternity, an investigation of which can explain much of Keifer's later career. It is a finely detailed charcoal drawing of a dramatically tilted wooden artists studio. In one corner, three burning fires represent the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. A serpent joins the trinity. Keifer's portrayal/use of fire, wood, forest and charcoal reflect, as Auping notes, his interest in “fire (as) a powerful symbol mediating between heaven and earth, originating in the skies (lightening and stars), as well as in the hand of man.” Forest and fire come together and play off of one another.
The serpent suggests that evil is implicit in good, “a fundamental element in the spiritual matrix.” The dramatic perspective of the room positions the viewer along with the artist in the (universal) search for balance between heaven and earth. This is central to much of Keifer's later work.
Why is he important? I believe it is ultimately because he spends time "thinking quietly - about the larger issues", and manages to include, in his investigation, the artist as well as humankind.
'Religion can pretend to be pure. History cannot.' - Anselm Kiefer.
Musee d'Art Contemporain de Montreal
WHAT'S GOING ON
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-Catriona Jeffries is moving into what should be a stunning space on Vancouver's East side, perfect for the activities of the gallery's artists: According to the press release, (which could almost qualify as a piece of conceptual art itself):
“Such activities contribute to a myriad of connections, references and overlappings that have instigated the gallery's relocation and its configuration as a civic site of production. This practice now turns away from the one-way mirror-power retail context of South Granville and transforms eastward into an industrially zoned mix of warehouses, auto body shops, alternative galleries and artist live/work studios.
If the city is envisioned as a series of spatial complexes that interlace and interact, then as an intermediary focal point the forthcoming new practice at Catriona Jeffries presents a unique perspective on, and compelling commitment to artists' representation in the city and the larger world.”
New space at 274 East 1st Avenue, Vancouver. From May 2006
-Stephen Bulger is expanding his world-class photography gallery. In the coming months, he will take over Camera, Atom Egoyan's bar/screening room, where he will show films on photography and related events. On Queen Street West in Toronto.
Stephen Bulger Gallery
CORRECTION
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Last month: David Kramer's quote came from Feigen Contemporary website, not Deitch Projects.
VoCA February 2006
-- LOVED
-- LOATHED
-- SELECTED UPCOMING EVENTS
-- GALLERY PROFILE: Clint Roenisch Gallery, Toronto
-- ARTISTS I'VE GOOGLED FOR YOU
-- IN DEPTH: Richard Tuttle
-- WHAT'S GOING ON
-- TALK TO ME
-- AND FINALLY
Hello,
Welcome to View on Art - The first collector's edition!
This month, View on Art re-launches as a collector's newsletter. Each month we will feature the who, what, where, when and why of contemporary art in Canada and abroad - aimed exclusively at all collectors, from the beginner to the renowned.
WHO - what young artists to look at, and what established artists are again becoming relevant.
WHAT - what exhibitions to see this month, what exhibitions were worthwhile recently and why
WHERE - what galleries are showing the most interesting artists? Who are the most reliable art dealers?
WHEN - dates of upcoming art fairs, exhibitions, openings, artist talks etc.
WHY - an in-depth point-of-view piece, why an artist is interesting and worthwhile. This piece will look at the artists' place within art history and draw links to past masters.
HOW - occasionally, we will focus on under-the- radar artists that will help to contexualize a collection. For instance, which mid-career artists would be good to consider for a collection of emerging contemporary Canadian photography..
This letter goes to over 150 curators, artists, dealers, editors and collectors in London, Florence, Rome, New York, California, Washington, Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Winnipeg and Vancouver.
Please forward it to anyone who you think would be interested! Thanks and enjoy!
With very best wishes, Andrea
LOVED
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-I saw the Richard Tuttle show at the Whitney in New York last week: As Madeleine Grynsztein says in one of the catalogue's essays, “Independence is precisely the point of Tuttle's artistic endeavor.” The way he combined form with shadow, line and free expression was revolutionary. My favorites were the wire sculptures. Each end of a piece of wire nailed to the wall, with the wire itself bent outwards into a shape, casting a shadow, which was complimented by a similarly-shaped pencil line drawn directly onto the wall. The interplay between the wire, the line drawing and the shadow was striking.
For more on Tuttle, see the IN DEPTH section below.
-Minna Langstrom, one of the media artists from Finland showing at Inter Access in Toronto. Her piece, entitled The Bubble, consisted of an enormous, Alice-in-Wonderland sized table and chair and correspondingly large jar and wand with which the viewer/ participant could blow virtual bubbles. The bubbles would then appear on a screen and inside each bubble was a scene of war, drawn from a random Internet search. The url would appear at the bottom of the screen. After a few seconds each bubble would burst, to be replaced with another. It successfully mimicked our engagement with, and attention span for, scenes of war in the media.
-Pete Gazendam's gnashing teeth sound piece at Unititled: Thoughts about Sound at Diaz Contemporary in Toronto. The (overly?) cute, conceptual show was curated by the very good artist Kelly Mark. Gazendam's piece consisted of a set of earphones on a pillar. You put them on and heard the sound of gnashing teeth repeated. For me, it added a grounding aspect to the light conceptualism of the exhibition - the show was about sound and music while this work was strikingly real. It had a universal quality that really brought you back to your self.
-The Perm Show at the MoCCA (Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art). It turns out that the MoCCA has a pretty good permanent collection. I liked the entire wall of the late first nations artist Carl Beam, and the two-part sculpture rising from the concrete floor, by 2005 Governor General's award winner Roland Poulin. Exhibition continues to March 26.
-Chris Marker's video installation The Hollow Men at Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art in Toronto. The incredibly seductive, rhythmic eight-monitor installation, inspired by T.S Eliot's poem, comprised a somber sequence of text and imagery evoking the First World War as the opening of the 20th century. Exhibition continues to March 4.
-While in New York last week I stopped in at the opening of Everything beautiful and noble is the result of reason and calculation, at the Elizabeth Foundation: I thought Alex Hubbard's burning videos of beach scenes were ok, and the lemon installation, a laboratory-like investigation into the production of water from lemons, by David Adamo and Michael Portnoy was also good.
LOATHED
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Disclaimer: The observations in this section are my initial impression, based on relatively brief engagement with the work. I judge them as someone who has seen, studied, read and written about a great deal of art, both in Canada and abroad. I hope that those who make it into this section benefit from my observations, however terse they may seem.
-The video by Beagles and Ramsay in the Diaz show. Two old Brits sitting in the bath on the loo tiredly speaking the lyrics to a Madonna song. I've seen the work a few times - It's popular - but each time it seems obvious to me. But then I find it's hard for an artist in the current climate to make a video work referencing pop culture (films, pop songs) and stand apart from the crowd.
-The Alison Mitchell installation at the entrance of MoCCA - This is horror vacui - fear of empty space - in a 1970's knitting aesthetic. But I'm not clear on what it actually says..
-The discussion for Nuit Blanche Toronto, Gladstone Hotel January 10. It's great that Toronto is organizing a take on the famous Parisian all-night culture event, to be held the night of September 30, 2006. It seems that it will be up to individual curators to create inspired events that will allow Nuit Blanche to become the sophisticated cultural event< /b> that it aims to be. Here's hoping.
-French artist Sandy Amerio's DVD, Hear me, children- yet-to-be-born, at Vtape, in Toronto. I didn't loathe it, actually. I just found it rather alienating. It wasn't particularly seductive. I thought the piece was well-produced, but at 45 minutes rather too long, without needing to be. Also it relied too heavily on the viewer's ability to get information on the artist's interest in storytelling.
-Vancouver artist Brian Jungen,'s increasing popularity. I'm still not convinced, but judge for yourself at:
Catriona Jeffries Gallery
SELECTED UPCOMING EVENTS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Montreal: Saidye Bronfman Centre for the Arts February 10 to April 2, 2006
DATABASE IMAGINARY Cory Arcangel, Natalie Bookchin, Heath Bunting and Kayle Brandon, Alan Currall, Graham Harwood/Mongrel, Agnes Hegedûs, Pablo Helguera, Lisa Jevbratt/C5, Lev Manovich, Muntadas, Edward Poitras, Preemptive Media, Thomson & Craighead, University of Openess, Angie Waller, Cheryl L'Hirondelle Waynohtêw
Database Imaginary
Vancouver: Access Artist Run Center February 18th - March 25th, 2006
100 SNAKES: ARCHITECTURE FOR THE EYE Alisdair MacRae
Access
Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario Feb 18 - May 7, 2006
Frank Gehry: Works
AGO
Toronto: Ontario College of Art and Design Feb 22 at 6:30 pm
Artist Speaker Series: Janet Cardiff and George Bures Milller
OCAD
Toronto: Canadian Art Film Series Feb 24 - 26, 2006
See films on Chris Ofili, Olafur Eliasson, Tracey Emin, Sophie Calle and Lucien Freud among others.
Click the link below for schedule, ticket and other information:
Canadian Art
GALLERY PROFILE: Clint Roenisch Gallery, Toronto
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Roenisch is originally from Calgary. He studied at Queens university and worked at Kitchener Waterloo Art Gallery and the Kelowna Art Gallery, both public spaces. After several years as director of the Monte Clark Gallery in Toronto, he opened his own space because, he says “I wanted to present artists whose work I believed in that weren't being shown here. I liked working in museums but it was much slower. With a gallery you have a visible stake in what's important.”
At his small storefront space next to the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art on Toronto's Queen Street West West, Roenisch brings a selection of established Canadian artists to a new audience. He also introduces young international artists to Toronto collectors.
Of particular note are Harold Klunder (massive oil paintings)
Harold Klunder
Marcel Van Eeden (small pencil drawings as a continual project)
Massimo Guerrera (drawings and paintings and sculpture)
Massimo Guerrera
and Peter von Tiesenhausen (drawings, sculpture, installation, land art)
Peter von Tiesenhausen
This month Roesnisch is showing work by Alberta artist Chris Cran. Vaguely op-arty, these striped paintings obsuring portraits, floral arrangements and other scenes reminded me of Richter, too.
Clint Roenisch Gallery
ARTISTS I'VE GOOGLED FOR YOU
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The following info gleaned from my web search:
Zin Taylor
A young conceptual artist, Zin Taylor's work often has to do with repetition. For one exhibition he recorded live performances of his favorite underground bands in Toronto that he passed on as bootleg CDs. In last year's Power Plant show Dedicated to you, but you weren't listening, Taylor created a non-collaboration with Japanese musician Aki Tsuyuko. Artist Sally McKay observes: “Without having ever met Tsuyuko, Taylor made a video inspired by her music. His video is an exploration of dirt piles in extreme close up, the image breaking down into buzzing video dust in darkest shadows. The camera slowly pans by gaping holes, weird orifices in the dirt. In an accompanying booklet, correspondence between Taylor and Tsuyuko reveals that the musician is mystified, unimpressed and possibly slightly insulted by Taylor's interpretation of her music.”
According to former Interaccess program director Kathleen Pirrie Adams, "Zin has a really different approach..With all of the bootleg materials he has, you're left with the question of 'Where's the original?' It's about the replication of the song."
Zin has also created a drinks tumbler, The Cousin available as an editioned multiple from Jessica Bradley Art + Projects, where "The content of this glass in determined by what was last served."
Jessica Bradley Art + Projects
Dana Samuel
Dana Samuel is a media artist, curator, writer and sometime designer. As an artist, she has shown her performance and media installations at venues across Canada.
Most recently, Dana was invited as artist-in-residence at the Office for Contemporary Art Norway to create a sound work for radio in Oslo. The work was presented in the group exhibition curated by Rhonda Corvese, The Idea of North, at Galleri F15 in Moss, Norway, and at Dalhousie Art Gallery in Halifax. Dana holds an MFA from the University of Western Ontario and completed undergraduate studies in Life Sciences at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, and at the Ontario College of Art & Design in Toronto, where she reconciled her research interests in science with a practice in art.
Dana Samuel
David Kramer
David Kramer's artwork includes self-deprecating personal stories of his reality compared to clichéd expectations of success and splendor. With a wry and perceptive sense of humor, the artist takes his life as subject matter while commenting on the everyday aesthetic of middle class American values. His drawings, sculptures and video performances have been widely appreciated in the United States and Canada.
Kramer's work has an odd John Baldessari-like aesthetic that I love. His introspective, self-absorbed attitude is also one that I think we can all relate to. His work has an honest, Everyman quality that I think is great. You can stop by his Toronto dealer, Robert Birch to see his work. He also has a funny DVD, Milion Dollar Moment, inspired by The Fountainhead, that recounts his real-life story of artistic mistaken identity.
From Deitch Projects website: “Perceived inadequacies at work or awkwardness at parties are magnified by juxtaposing his self-deprecating stories with the clichéd expectations of success and splendor showcased in the unreal world of flashy advertising and popular culture.”
Birch Libralato
IN DEPTH: Richard Tuttle
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
What's the big deal?
In the letter from the editor in this month's issue of Modern Painters, Karen Wright tells how a friend, to whom she had recommended the Tuttle show at the Whitney, had thought it work 'any pre-schooler could have done'.
I walked into the Tuttle show at the Whitney in New York recently and immediately felt alienated. The front wall is covered with small ambiguous metal shapes, not letters, but rather unidentifiable symbols, placed at odd angles. There is little clue as to what it means, what Tuttle was thinking or what justifies all the hoopla over his work.
This piece, Letters is initially frustrating and seemingly senseless, the 26 shapes only vaguely reminiscent of letters of the alphabet. But therein lies their power. As Grynsztein says in her catalogue essay, “The power of the work derives from the overlapping of two distinct systems at the threshold of comprehension: the sculptural is inflected with the linguistic.”
“He deliberately cultivates a(n)..incoherence in order to achieve a fundamental independence from assumed or received systems and to create an altogether new space for communication.” This is also what I saw in David Rokeby's work The Giver of Names in his show at Oakville Galleries last year.
David Rokeby: Giver of Names
The basic reason for Tuttle's importance, it seems to me, is the timing of what he was doing. Looking back, the history of contemporary art had come out of the Minimalist era, where everyone was busy blurring boundaries, reducing, simplifying. The time was ripe for Tuttle's new, personal (thus alienating to the novice viewer) vocabulary for art that helped propel it forward. He successfully blended media: sculpture, drawing and painting came together in really experimental, innovative ways.
One reason why I believe Tuttle remains important today is the continuity of his work. I agree with the writer Matthew Collings that good art must look back at, and recognize its own history. It must come out of a tradition, it must refer back to other ideas, and it must be continuous.
I thought some of the best work was the wire sculptures, for their elegant simplicity. Each end of a piece of wire nailed to the wall, with the wire itself bent outwards into a shape, casting a shadow, which was complimented by a similarly- shaped pencil line drawn directly onto the wall. The interplay between the wire, the line drawing and the shadow was strking. Just when you thought nothing more could be done with a line..And also his small talismanic paintings, more like objects, for which he had specially crafted the frames and made them part of the piece. These crude, magical works, shown strung up together or as single works, reminded me, for various reasons of Lucas Samaras' voodoo boxes. It was Tuttle's attempt at extending his art, or perhaps creating another dimension between the artwork and the gallery wall.
Tuttle was using the detritus of his present day to construct his works while looking backward at history and forward to possibility and innovation.
From the catalogue: “Tuttle transposes the methods, materials, and liminality of drawing, onto painting sculpture, even architecture, and in so doing he exceeds and overturns the traditional bounds of each.”
-- LOATHED
-- SELECTED UPCOMING EVENTS
-- GALLERY PROFILE: Clint Roenisch Gallery, Toronto
-- ARTISTS I'VE GOOGLED FOR YOU
-- IN DEPTH: Richard Tuttle
-- WHAT'S GOING ON
-- TALK TO ME
-- AND FINALLY
Hello,
Welcome to View on Art - The first collector's edition!
This month, View on Art re-launches as a collector's newsletter. Each month we will feature the who, what, where, when and why of contemporary art in Canada and abroad - aimed exclusively at all collectors, from the beginner to the renowned.
WHO - what young artists to look at, and what established artists are again becoming relevant.
WHAT - what exhibitions to see this month, what exhibitions were worthwhile recently and why
WHERE - what galleries are showing the most interesting artists? Who are the most reliable art dealers?
WHEN - dates of upcoming art fairs, exhibitions, openings, artist talks etc.
WHY - an in-depth point-of-view piece, why an artist is interesting and worthwhile. This piece will look at the artists' place within art history and draw links to past masters.
HOW - occasionally, we will focus on under-the- radar artists that will help to contexualize a collection. For instance, which mid-career artists would be good to consider for a collection of emerging contemporary Canadian photography..
This letter goes to over 150 curators, artists, dealers, editors and collectors in London, Florence, Rome, New York, California, Washington, Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Winnipeg and Vancouver.
Please forward it to anyone who you think would be interested! Thanks and enjoy!
With very best wishes, Andrea
LOVED
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-I saw the Richard Tuttle show at the Whitney in New York last week: As Madeleine Grynsztein says in one of the catalogue's essays, “Independence is precisely the point of Tuttle's artistic endeavor.” The way he combined form with shadow, line and free expression was revolutionary. My favorites were the wire sculptures. Each end of a piece of wire nailed to the wall, with the wire itself bent outwards into a shape, casting a shadow, which was complimented by a similarly-shaped pencil line drawn directly onto the wall. The interplay between the wire, the line drawing and the shadow was striking.
For more on Tuttle, see the IN DEPTH section below.
-Minna Langstrom, one of the media artists from Finland showing at Inter Access in Toronto. Her piece, entitled The Bubble, consisted of an enormous, Alice-in-Wonderland sized table and chair and correspondingly large jar and wand with which the viewer/ participant could blow virtual bubbles. The bubbles would then appear on a screen and inside each bubble was a scene of war, drawn from a random Internet search. The url would appear at the bottom of the screen. After a few seconds each bubble would burst, to be replaced with another. It successfully mimicked our engagement with, and attention span for, scenes of war in the media.
-Pete Gazendam's gnashing teeth sound piece at Unititled: Thoughts about Sound at Diaz Contemporary in Toronto. The (overly?) cute, conceptual show was curated by the very good artist Kelly Mark. Gazendam's piece consisted of a set of earphones on a pillar. You put them on and heard the sound of gnashing teeth repeated. For me, it added a grounding aspect to the light conceptualism of the exhibition - the show was about sound and music while this work was strikingly real. It had a universal quality that really brought you back to your self.
-The Perm Show at the MoCCA (Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art). It turns out that the MoCCA has a pretty good permanent collection. I liked the entire wall of the late first nations artist Carl Beam, and the two-part sculpture rising from the concrete floor, by 2005 Governor General's award winner Roland Poulin. Exhibition continues to March 26.
-Chris Marker's video installation The Hollow Men at Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art in Toronto. The incredibly seductive, rhythmic eight-monitor installation, inspired by T.S Eliot's poem, comprised a somber sequence of text and imagery evoking the First World War as the opening of the 20th century. Exhibition continues to March 4.
-While in New York last week I stopped in at the opening of Everything beautiful and noble is the result of reason and calculation, at the Elizabeth Foundation: I thought Alex Hubbard's burning videos of beach scenes were ok, and the lemon installation, a laboratory-like investigation into the production of water from lemons, by David Adamo and Michael Portnoy was also good.
LOATHED
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Disclaimer: The observations in this section are my initial impression, based on relatively brief engagement with the work. I judge them as someone who has seen, studied, read and written about a great deal of art, both in Canada and abroad. I hope that those who make it into this section benefit from my observations, however terse they may seem.
-The video by Beagles and Ramsay in the Diaz show. Two old Brits sitting in the bath on the loo tiredly speaking the lyrics to a Madonna song. I've seen the work a few times - It's popular - but each time it seems obvious to me. But then I find it's hard for an artist in the current climate to make a video work referencing pop culture (films, pop songs) and stand apart from the crowd.
-The Alison Mitchell installation at the entrance of MoCCA - This is horror vacui - fear of empty space - in a 1970's knitting aesthetic. But I'm not clear on what it actually says..
-The discussion for Nuit Blanche Toronto, Gladstone Hotel January 10. It's great that Toronto is organizing a take on the famous Parisian all-night culture event, to be held the night of September 30, 2006. It seems that it will be up to individual curators to create inspired events that will allow Nuit Blanche to become the sophisticated cultural event< /b> that it aims to be. Here's hoping.
-French artist Sandy Amerio's DVD, Hear me, children- yet-to-be-born, at Vtape, in Toronto. I didn't loathe it, actually. I just found it rather alienating. It wasn't particularly seductive. I thought the piece was well-produced, but at 45 minutes rather too long, without needing to be. Also it relied too heavily on the viewer's ability to get information on the artist's interest in storytelling.
-Vancouver artist Brian Jungen,'s increasing popularity. I'm still not convinced, but judge for yourself at:
Catriona Jeffries Gallery
SELECTED UPCOMING EVENTS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Montreal: Saidye Bronfman Centre for the Arts February 10 to April 2, 2006
DATABASE IMAGINARY Cory Arcangel, Natalie Bookchin, Heath Bunting and Kayle Brandon, Alan Currall, Graham Harwood/Mongrel, Agnes Hegedûs, Pablo Helguera, Lisa Jevbratt/C5, Lev Manovich, Muntadas, Edward Poitras, Preemptive Media, Thomson & Craighead, University of Openess, Angie Waller, Cheryl L'Hirondelle Waynohtêw
Database Imaginary
Vancouver: Access Artist Run Center February 18th - March 25th, 2006
100 SNAKES: ARCHITECTURE FOR THE EYE Alisdair MacRae
Access
Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario Feb 18 - May 7, 2006
Frank Gehry: Works
AGO
Toronto: Ontario College of Art and Design Feb 22 at 6:30 pm
Artist Speaker Series: Janet Cardiff and George Bures Milller
OCAD
Toronto: Canadian Art Film Series Feb 24 - 26, 2006
See films on Chris Ofili, Olafur Eliasson, Tracey Emin, Sophie Calle and Lucien Freud among others.
Click the link below for schedule, ticket and other information:
Canadian Art
GALLERY PROFILE: Clint Roenisch Gallery, Toronto
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Roenisch is originally from Calgary. He studied at Queens university and worked at Kitchener Waterloo Art Gallery and the Kelowna Art Gallery, both public spaces. After several years as director of the Monte Clark Gallery in Toronto, he opened his own space because, he says “I wanted to present artists whose work I believed in that weren't being shown here. I liked working in museums but it was much slower. With a gallery you have a visible stake in what's important.”
At his small storefront space next to the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art on Toronto's Queen Street West West, Roenisch brings a selection of established Canadian artists to a new audience. He also introduces young international artists to Toronto collectors.
Of particular note are Harold Klunder (massive oil paintings)
Harold Klunder
Marcel Van Eeden (small pencil drawings as a continual project)
Massimo Guerrera (drawings and paintings and sculpture)
Massimo Guerrera
and Peter von Tiesenhausen (drawings, sculpture, installation, land art)
Peter von Tiesenhausen
This month Roesnisch is showing work by Alberta artist Chris Cran. Vaguely op-arty, these striped paintings obsuring portraits, floral arrangements and other scenes reminded me of Richter, too.
Clint Roenisch Gallery
ARTISTS I'VE GOOGLED FOR YOU
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The following info gleaned from my web search:
Zin Taylor
A young conceptual artist, Zin Taylor's work often has to do with repetition. For one exhibition he recorded live performances of his favorite underground bands in Toronto that he passed on as bootleg CDs. In last year's Power Plant show Dedicated to you, but you weren't listening, Taylor created a non-collaboration with Japanese musician Aki Tsuyuko. Artist Sally McKay observes: “Without having ever met Tsuyuko, Taylor made a video inspired by her music. His video is an exploration of dirt piles in extreme close up, the image breaking down into buzzing video dust in darkest shadows. The camera slowly pans by gaping holes, weird orifices in the dirt. In an accompanying booklet, correspondence between Taylor and Tsuyuko reveals that the musician is mystified, unimpressed and possibly slightly insulted by Taylor's interpretation of her music.”
According to former Interaccess program director Kathleen Pirrie Adams, "Zin has a really different approach..With all of the bootleg materials he has, you're left with the question of 'Where's the original?' It's about the replication of the song."
Zin has also created a drinks tumbler, The Cousin available as an editioned multiple from Jessica Bradley Art + Projects, where "The content of this glass in determined by what was last served."
Jessica Bradley Art + Projects
Dana Samuel
Dana Samuel is a media artist, curator, writer and sometime designer. As an artist, she has shown her performance and media installations at venues across Canada.
Most recently, Dana was invited as artist-in-residence at the Office for Contemporary Art Norway to create a sound work for radio in Oslo. The work was presented in the group exhibition curated by Rhonda Corvese, The Idea of North, at Galleri F15 in Moss, Norway, and at Dalhousie Art Gallery in Halifax. Dana holds an MFA from the University of Western Ontario and completed undergraduate studies in Life Sciences at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, and at the Ontario College of Art & Design in Toronto, where she reconciled her research interests in science with a practice in art.
Dana Samuel
David Kramer
David Kramer's artwork includes self-deprecating personal stories of his reality compared to clichéd expectations of success and splendor. With a wry and perceptive sense of humor, the artist takes his life as subject matter while commenting on the everyday aesthetic of middle class American values. His drawings, sculptures and video performances have been widely appreciated in the United States and Canada.
Kramer's work has an odd John Baldessari-like aesthetic that I love. His introspective, self-absorbed attitude is also one that I think we can all relate to. His work has an honest, Everyman quality that I think is great. You can stop by his Toronto dealer, Robert Birch to see his work. He also has a funny DVD, Milion Dollar Moment, inspired by The Fountainhead, that recounts his real-life story of artistic mistaken identity.
From Deitch Projects website: “Perceived inadequacies at work or awkwardness at parties are magnified by juxtaposing his self-deprecating stories with the clichéd expectations of success and splendor showcased in the unreal world of flashy advertising and popular culture.”
Birch Libralato
IN DEPTH: Richard Tuttle
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
What's the big deal?
In the letter from the editor in this month's issue of Modern Painters, Karen Wright tells how a friend, to whom she had recommended the Tuttle show at the Whitney, had thought it work 'any pre-schooler could have done'.
I walked into the Tuttle show at the Whitney in New York recently and immediately felt alienated. The front wall is covered with small ambiguous metal shapes, not letters, but rather unidentifiable symbols, placed at odd angles. There is little clue as to what it means, what Tuttle was thinking or what justifies all the hoopla over his work.
This piece, Letters is initially frustrating and seemingly senseless, the 26 shapes only vaguely reminiscent of letters of the alphabet. But therein lies their power. As Grynsztein says in her catalogue essay, “The power of the work derives from the overlapping of two distinct systems at the threshold of comprehension: the sculptural is inflected with the linguistic.”
“He deliberately cultivates a(n)..incoherence in order to achieve a fundamental independence from assumed or received systems and to create an altogether new space for communication.” This is also what I saw in David Rokeby's work The Giver of Names in his show at Oakville Galleries last year.
David Rokeby: Giver of Names
The basic reason for Tuttle's importance, it seems to me, is the timing of what he was doing. Looking back, the history of contemporary art had come out of the Minimalist era, where everyone was busy blurring boundaries, reducing, simplifying. The time was ripe for Tuttle's new, personal (thus alienating to the novice viewer) vocabulary for art that helped propel it forward. He successfully blended media: sculpture, drawing and painting came together in really experimental, innovative ways.
One reason why I believe Tuttle remains important today is the continuity of his work. I agree with the writer Matthew Collings that good art must look back at, and recognize its own history. It must come out of a tradition, it must refer back to other ideas, and it must be continuous.
I thought some of the best work was the wire sculptures, for their elegant simplicity. Each end of a piece of wire nailed to the wall, with the wire itself bent outwards into a shape, casting a shadow, which was complimented by a similarly- shaped pencil line drawn directly onto the wall. The interplay between the wire, the line drawing and the shadow was strking. Just when you thought nothing more could be done with a line..And also his small talismanic paintings, more like objects, for which he had specially crafted the frames and made them part of the piece. These crude, magical works, shown strung up together or as single works, reminded me, for various reasons of Lucas Samaras' voodoo boxes. It was Tuttle's attempt at extending his art, or perhaps creating another dimension between the artwork and the gallery wall.
Tuttle was using the detritus of his present day to construct his works while looking backward at history and forward to possibility and innovation.
From the catalogue: “Tuttle transposes the methods, materials, and liminality of drawing, onto painting sculpture, even architecture, and in so doing he exceeds and overturns the traditional bounds of each.”
VoCA January 2006
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A View on Art
A point of view
January 2006
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-- 1. TORONTO
-- 2. OTTAWA
-- 3. MONTREAL
-- 4. NEW YORK
-- 5. LONDON
-- 6. LOVED
-- 7. LOATHED
-- 8. ARTISTS TO GOOGLE
-- 9. AND FINALLY...
Happy New Year,
Welcome to View on Art 2006!
A brief and hopefully engaging monthly look at the art world - from Toronto and abroad - wherever my travels take me.
I thought the new year should be brought in with a PREVIEW to offset the countless REVIEWS out there..
So please find a carefully edited selection of art exhibitions, talks and events that I think will be worth seeing over the next few months.
This letter goes to over 100 curators, artists, dealers, editors and collectors in London, Florence, Rome, New York, California, Washington, Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Winnipeg and Vancouver.
Please forward it to anyone who you think would be interested! Thanks and enjoy!
With very best wishes,
Andrea
1. TORONTO
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-7th ANNUAL BILL HUFFMAN AWARDS: JAN 13/06 6 - 8 PM
Last year the great and the good of Toronto's art world watched as student Tejpal Ajji sat, bound to a chair while his brother burned his back with piping hot deep-fried pakoras, in a compelling and off-putting performance that evoked both Rirkrit Tiravanija and to a lesser extent, Herman Nitsche. The project was overseen by performance artists Louise Lilliefeldt and Tanya Mars.
This year's rather more tame painting show honours student Alison Kobayashi.
“The Bill Huffman Award for excellence in studio practice highlights significant promise in the work of a young artist, and underscores the donor's commitment to connecting artists of different generations as a way of bridging the transition from school to the professional arena."
This year, contributions by six Toronto artists - Sara Angelucci, Louise Bak, Catherine Heard, Rachel Kalpana James, Lorna Mills, and Camille Turner - add to the exhibition.
-POWER PLANT TALK: FEB 3/06 7 PM
Royal College of Art Senior Curator David Batchelor's book, Chromophobia, argued that “there is a tradition of resistance to colour in the West that can be traced back to antiquity and remains evident in contemporary culture. The book analysed chromophobic and chromophilic impulses in art, art theory and criticism, architecture, flim and literature.” He has recently shown his artwork at Ikon Gallery, in the 2004 Sao Paulo biennale and in Extreme Abstraction at the Albright-Knox last year.
Also Berlin-based architectural artists Elmgreen & Dragset are bringing their "Welfare Show" to the Power Plant 25 March - 28 May/06
Elmgreen & Dragset
-CINEMATHEQUE: KARL KELS IN PERSON: MARCH 1/06 6:30 PM
This carte-blanche programme at the AGO's Jackman Hall presents German filmmaker Karl Kels. Kels employs a method of working with fixed camera, no sound and unstaged subjects to explore “the fictionalization of time in cinema, and the tensions between documentary footage and plastic editing”. His films explore the interaction between animals and the spaces they inhabit.
-GOETHE INSTITUTE TALK: MARCH 1/06 7 PM
German photographer Beate Gutschow has become known for her seemingly authentic landscapes combined from dozens of separate shots. This talk should be particularly interesting if you are familiar with Vancouver artist Scott McFarland's work.
Gutschow's work is a part of the exhibition “Variations on the Picturesque” at the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery.
Beate Gutschow
-AL&D TALK: MARCH 15/06 6:30 PM
The University of Toronto's Department of Architecture, Landscape and Design continues its brilliant speaker series with David Adjaye: Making Public Buildings, by the “artist's architect” who built Tim Noble and Sue Webster's home in East London, worked with Chris Ofili on The Upper Room and on his glitzy contribution to the 2003 Venice Biennale.
AL&D
-ART GALLERY OF ONTARIO: PETER DOIG: MARCH 22- JUNE 18/06
For me, Peter Doig's work is all about memory. I'll never forget Blizzard Seventy Seven, his 1998 show at London's Whitechapel gallery and my introduction to Doig's work. In his paintings there are both overt and subtle glimpses of nostalgia for the Canada where he grew up. I wonder what his watercolours will bring?
-ART GALLERY OF ONTARIO: ANDY WARHOL: JULY 8 - OCT 1/06
Coming from the Walker Art Center, this show (excitedly billed as "installed in collaboration with David Cronenberg") aims to focus on the “polarity within Andy Warhol's imagination that pairs celebrity with tragedy.”
-NUIT BLANCHE TORONTO: SEPT 30-OCT 1/06 7:01PM - 7:15AM
One of the events that is managing to surface above Toronto's uninspired "Live with Culture" initiative, this “All Night Contemporary Art Thing” will see the doors of the city's cultural institutions open all night.
Modelled after the highly successful annual event in Paris, it promises “public art commissions, all-night exhibitions, performances and programs.”
And it's all free.
2. OTTAWA
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-NATIONAL GALLERY OF CANADA: CAI GUO-QIANG: JUNE 10 - 1 OCT/06
Firecracker artist Cai Guo-Qiang who created an amazing gunpowder piece “Money Net” in the courtyard at the Royal Academy in London in 2002, will be the subject of a solo show, featuring sculpture, video and gunpowder drawings.
-NATIONAL GALLERY OF CANADA: PHOTOGRAPHY AS THEATRE: JUNE 16 - 1 OCT/06
If you're going all the way to Ottawa, you can - handily - take in both of these excellent shows. This curated survey will bring together artists as seemingly disparate as Julia Margaret Cameron, Henry Peach Robinson, Jeff Wall, Wang Quingsong and others.
3. MONTREAL
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-MACM: ANSELM KIEFER: FEB 11 - APRIL 30/06
This exhibition is - unbelievably - the first Canadian showing of Anselm Keifer's work. His enormous, harsh, apocalyptic works must be seen all together! I had the opportunity many years ago to see a room dedicated to Keifer's work at Kunstmuseum Bonn, I think, and it was breathtaking.
Keifer show
4. NEW YORK
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-WHITNEY BIENNALE 2006: MARCH 2 - MAY 28/06
According to curator Chrissie Iles “Through the curatorial lens of the Biennale, Day for Night (isn't that a Bryan Ferry song?) explores the artifice of American culture in what could be described as a pre-Enlightenment moment, in which culture is preoccupied with the irrational, the religious, the dark, the erotic, and the violent, filtered through a sense of flawed beauty..this mood suggests a shift in the accepted values that have formed the basis of 20th century Western culture”
Rodney Graham, Urs Fischer and Michael Snow are among the featured artists...
-NEUE GALERIE: JOSEF HOFFMAN INTERIORS: FALL 06
Neue Galerie is one of my favorite places in New York, (with a brilliant cafe.)
This is bound to be a fascinating look at the work of the Wiener Werkstatte founder, architect and designer. Best, you can shop for Hoffman reproductions in the amazing gallery store.
Neue Galerie
-ALBRIGHT KNOX: ANDREA ZITTEL: OCTOBER 6/06 - JAN 7/07
The Albright Knox is a sprawling set of buildings with a collection to match - the Extreme Abstraction show last year was really good and so, I'm sure, will the Andrea Zittel exhibition - Critical Space, the first comprehensive solo show of her work in North America.
I hear the show will travel to the Vancouver Art Gallery,too.
Andrea Zittel
5. LONDON
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-STUART CROFT SCREENING: CENTURY CITY: JAN 11/06 6:30 - 8:30 PM
Film artist Stuart Croft presents a preview of his newest work, Century City at his gallery Fred (London) Ltd, 45 Vyner Street London E2. If his excellent Hit (2003) is anything to go by, it should be really good.
A synopsis: Century City is a dual-screen crime thriller that never ends. Cape Town detective Nancy Delport is investigating the murder of actress Crystal Fallone, who has been shot dead whilst filming a re-make of JL Godard's 'Contempt' in South Africa. Detective Delport puts in an implausible phone call to Crystal's bereaved father, Peter Kashlin - a burnt out, washed up TV-movie director who is on the Los Angeles set of his latest, dubious crime thriller.
-TATE BRITAIN: CHRIS OFILI: THE UPPER ROOM: CONTINUING TO MAY 1/06
This exhibition blew me away when I saw it in 2002 at the Victoria Miro Gallery. The twelve glittery monkeys are Andy Warhol, they are Diana Ross, they are Christ's apostles, and they are gorgeous.
-V&A: ANNA PIAGGI - FASHION-OLOGY: FEB 2 - APRIL 23/06
I had the pleasure of meeting Italian Vogue's Anna Piaggi, one of fashion's true supporters of creative freedom, many years ago while working in Milan. Her monthly double page spreads are consistently prescient, and she dresses both them and herself with refreshing un- selfconcious abandon.
An exhibition is overdue, and this one should be great.
Anna Piaggi article
-JONATHAN MEESE PERFORMANCE: TATE MODERN: FEB 25/06 10PM & 11 PM
I've never seen Jonathan Meese perform, but if I was in London I'd go for sure. He shows with Modern Art, London and his performances have been described as “some of the most provocative and dynamic to have emerged in Germany during the past decade.” It's in the Turbine Hall and it's free.
-SERPENTINE PAVILION: REM KOOLHAAS: SUMMER 06
With the MVRDV project cancelled (they were going to cover the entire gallery with earth and grass - leaving only the crown peeking through!) Rem Koolhaas has stepped in to create his first project in the United Kingdom. Last year's stunning pavilion by Alvaro Siza & Eduardo Souto de Moura was brilliant!
From my short text on last year's pavilion for AZURE magazine:
"..Previous participants (Zaha Hadid, Daniel Libeskind, Toyo Ito and Oscar Niemeyer) have created unique experiments in form, shadow, material and effect. This year's collaboration between Alvaro Siza and Eduardo Souto de Moura of Portugal is no exception. Resembling an animal poised for movement, their structure of exposed interlocking timber trusses is partially covered with a semi-translucent polycarbonate roof, which is divided into panels with a small light visible from inside and out. The undulating roof contrasts with the carpet of grey bricks set into the grass, accentuating the interplay between fluidity and rigidity. Inside, minimalist wooden furniture designed by the architects invites audiences to sit down and contemplate the creative possibilities of contemporary architecture."
Rem Koolhaas
TATE MODERN: PIERRE HUYGHE: JULY 5 - 24 SEPTEMBER/06
The films of French artist Pierre Huyghe are great, and his first solo show in the UK will comprise completely new film, sculpture and performance works.
6. LOVED
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1. VAG: NEIL CAMPBELL The flickering lights in the front windows of the Vancouver Art Gallery each night over Christmas were spooky and wonderful.
2. CBC.CA/ARTS TOP 100 of 2005 LIST One of the best years-in-review, there was some I agreed with, lots I didn't, and there was also lots I hadn't heard of.
3. CARL DREYER'S 1927 FILM LA PASSION DE JEANNE D'ARC Stunning. Silent. Brilliant.
4. MERCER UNION'S MUSIC NIGHTS Nothing beats a soothing sound artwork to quell insipid art chat at an opening.
5. MURDERBALL You must see this film!
MURDERBALL TRAILER
7. LOATHED
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1. COLD CITY SHOW AT THE POWER PLANT Not that I disliked the show, but it should have been much bigger, more comprehensive and more important.
2. TORONTO'S OVER-HYPED 'ARCHITECTURAL RENAISSANCE' Yes we have major architects Libeskind and Gehry building in town - and that's great - but it's innovative, unusual buildings of quality that make a city great, not simply brand names.
How does Foster's University of Toronto project compare (in terms of visual impact) to either his Swiss Re building in London or the brand new Hearst building in Manhattan? (8th Ave at 56th)
Click on the link below to compare Libeskind's Royal Ontario Museum extension with his Creative Media Centre in Hong Kong, his Denver Art Museum extension in Denver, his Grand Canal Performing Arts Centre in Dublin and his Militarhistorisches Museum in Dresden.
Project numbers 2, 4, 7, 12 and 14 respectively.
Libeskind projects
8. ARTISTS TO GOOGLE
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Here are some of my favorite Canadian artists - keep your eye out for their work in 2006:
Evan Lee (Photography) For his current (Jan 21) solo show at Presentation House gallery in Vancouver, and also for the images that his dealer, Monte Clark showed at the Toronto International Art Fair this year.
Geoffrey Farmer (Installation) For his ambitiously conceptual pieces, and his intriguing show at the Power Plant in Toronto recently.
Scott McFarland (Photography) For his effort in taking photography forward, following in the footsteps of Jeff Wall.
Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay (Performance/video) For his lovely 'Singing Diorama' on Queen Street West in December in Toronto.
Daniel Cockburn (video) For his having been awarded an impressive grant this year.
Jed Lind (Sculpture/installation) For his incredible debut show at Jessica Bradley Art + Projects in Toronto.
Renata Morales (Fashion) For her mad catwalk shows and her newly launched men's collection.
Massimo Guerrera (Sculpture/mixed media) For his decadent, sexy feast of an exhibition at Clint Roenisch Gallery this year.
A View on Art
A point of view
January 2006
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-- 1. TORONTO
-- 2. OTTAWA
-- 3. MONTREAL
-- 4. NEW YORK
-- 5. LONDON
-- 6. LOVED
-- 7. LOATHED
-- 8. ARTISTS TO GOOGLE
-- 9. AND FINALLY...
Happy New Year,
Welcome to View on Art 2006!
A brief and hopefully engaging monthly look at the art world - from Toronto and abroad - wherever my travels take me.
I thought the new year should be brought in with a PREVIEW to offset the countless REVIEWS out there..
So please find a carefully edited selection of art exhibitions, talks and events that I think will be worth seeing over the next few months.
This letter goes to over 100 curators, artists, dealers, editors and collectors in London, Florence, Rome, New York, California, Washington, Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Winnipeg and Vancouver.
Please forward it to anyone who you think would be interested! Thanks and enjoy!
With very best wishes,
Andrea
1. TORONTO
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-7th ANNUAL BILL HUFFMAN AWARDS: JAN 13/06 6 - 8 PM
Last year the great and the good of Toronto's art world watched as student Tejpal Ajji sat, bound to a chair while his brother burned his back with piping hot deep-fried pakoras, in a compelling and off-putting performance that evoked both Rirkrit Tiravanija and to a lesser extent, Herman Nitsche. The project was overseen by performance artists Louise Lilliefeldt and Tanya Mars.
This year's rather more tame painting show honours student Alison Kobayashi.
“The Bill Huffman Award for excellence in studio practice highlights significant promise in the work of a young artist, and underscores the donor's commitment to connecting artists of different generations as a way of bridging the transition from school to the professional arena."
This year, contributions by six Toronto artists - Sara Angelucci, Louise Bak, Catherine Heard, Rachel Kalpana James, Lorna Mills, and Camille Turner - add to the exhibition.
-POWER PLANT TALK: FEB 3/06 7 PM
Royal College of Art Senior Curator David Batchelor's book, Chromophobia, argued that “there is a tradition of resistance to colour in the West that can be traced back to antiquity and remains evident in contemporary culture. The book analysed chromophobic and chromophilic impulses in art, art theory and criticism, architecture, flim and literature.” He has recently shown his artwork at Ikon Gallery, in the 2004 Sao Paulo biennale and in Extreme Abstraction at the Albright-Knox last year.
Also Berlin-based architectural artists Elmgreen & Dragset are bringing their "Welfare Show" to the Power Plant 25 March - 28 May/06
Elmgreen & Dragset
-CINEMATHEQUE: KARL KELS IN PERSON: MARCH 1/06 6:30 PM
This carte-blanche programme at the AGO's Jackman Hall presents German filmmaker Karl Kels. Kels employs a method of working with fixed camera, no sound and unstaged subjects to explore “the fictionalization of time in cinema, and the tensions between documentary footage and plastic editing”. His films explore the interaction between animals and the spaces they inhabit.
-GOETHE INSTITUTE TALK: MARCH 1/06 7 PM
German photographer Beate Gutschow has become known for her seemingly authentic landscapes combined from dozens of separate shots. This talk should be particularly interesting if you are familiar with Vancouver artist Scott McFarland's work.
Gutschow's work is a part of the exhibition “Variations on the Picturesque” at the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery.
Beate Gutschow
-AL&D TALK: MARCH 15/06 6:30 PM
The University of Toronto's Department of Architecture, Landscape and Design continues its brilliant speaker series with David Adjaye: Making Public Buildings, by the “artist's architect” who built Tim Noble and Sue Webster's home in East London, worked with Chris Ofili on The Upper Room and on his glitzy contribution to the 2003 Venice Biennale.
AL&D
-ART GALLERY OF ONTARIO: PETER DOIG: MARCH 22- JUNE 18/06
For me, Peter Doig's work is all about memory. I'll never forget Blizzard Seventy Seven, his 1998 show at London's Whitechapel gallery and my introduction to Doig's work. In his paintings there are both overt and subtle glimpses of nostalgia for the Canada where he grew up. I wonder what his watercolours will bring?
-ART GALLERY OF ONTARIO: ANDY WARHOL: JULY 8 - OCT 1/06
Coming from the Walker Art Center, this show (excitedly billed as "installed in collaboration with David Cronenberg") aims to focus on the “polarity within Andy Warhol's imagination that pairs celebrity with tragedy.”
-NUIT BLANCHE TORONTO: SEPT 30-OCT 1/06 7:01PM - 7:15AM
One of the events that is managing to surface above Toronto's uninspired "Live with Culture" initiative, this “All Night Contemporary Art Thing” will see the doors of the city's cultural institutions open all night.
Modelled after the highly successful annual event in Paris, it promises “public art commissions, all-night exhibitions, performances and programs.”
And it's all free.
2. OTTAWA
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-NATIONAL GALLERY OF CANADA: CAI GUO-QIANG: JUNE 10 - 1 OCT/06
Firecracker artist Cai Guo-Qiang who created an amazing gunpowder piece “Money Net” in the courtyard at the Royal Academy in London in 2002, will be the subject of a solo show, featuring sculpture, video and gunpowder drawings.
-NATIONAL GALLERY OF CANADA: PHOTOGRAPHY AS THEATRE: JUNE 16 - 1 OCT/06
If you're going all the way to Ottawa, you can - handily - take in both of these excellent shows. This curated survey will bring together artists as seemingly disparate as Julia Margaret Cameron, Henry Peach Robinson, Jeff Wall, Wang Quingsong and others.
3. MONTREAL
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-MACM: ANSELM KIEFER: FEB 11 - APRIL 30/06
This exhibition is - unbelievably - the first Canadian showing of Anselm Keifer's work. His enormous, harsh, apocalyptic works must be seen all together! I had the opportunity many years ago to see a room dedicated to Keifer's work at Kunstmuseum Bonn, I think, and it was breathtaking.
Keifer show
4. NEW YORK
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-WHITNEY BIENNALE 2006: MARCH 2 - MAY 28/06
According to curator Chrissie Iles “Through the curatorial lens of the Biennale, Day for Night (isn't that a Bryan Ferry song?) explores the artifice of American culture in what could be described as a pre-Enlightenment moment, in which culture is preoccupied with the irrational, the religious, the dark, the erotic, and the violent, filtered through a sense of flawed beauty..this mood suggests a shift in the accepted values that have formed the basis of 20th century Western culture”
Rodney Graham, Urs Fischer and Michael Snow are among the featured artists...
-NEUE GALERIE: JOSEF HOFFMAN INTERIORS: FALL 06
Neue Galerie is one of my favorite places in New York, (with a brilliant cafe.)
This is bound to be a fascinating look at the work of the Wiener Werkstatte founder, architect and designer. Best, you can shop for Hoffman reproductions in the amazing gallery store.
Neue Galerie
-ALBRIGHT KNOX: ANDREA ZITTEL: OCTOBER 6/06 - JAN 7/07
The Albright Knox is a sprawling set of buildings with a collection to match - the Extreme Abstraction show last year was really good and so, I'm sure, will the Andrea Zittel exhibition - Critical Space, the first comprehensive solo show of her work in North America.
I hear the show will travel to the Vancouver Art Gallery,too.
Andrea Zittel
5. LONDON
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-STUART CROFT SCREENING: CENTURY CITY: JAN 11/06 6:30 - 8:30 PM
Film artist Stuart Croft presents a preview of his newest work, Century City at his gallery Fred (London) Ltd, 45 Vyner Street London E2. If his excellent Hit (2003) is anything to go by, it should be really good.
A synopsis: Century City is a dual-screen crime thriller that never ends. Cape Town detective Nancy Delport is investigating the murder of actress Crystal Fallone, who has been shot dead whilst filming a re-make of JL Godard's 'Contempt' in South Africa. Detective Delport puts in an implausible phone call to Crystal's bereaved father, Peter Kashlin - a burnt out, washed up TV-movie director who is on the Los Angeles set of his latest, dubious crime thriller.
-TATE BRITAIN: CHRIS OFILI: THE UPPER ROOM: CONTINUING TO MAY 1/06
This exhibition blew me away when I saw it in 2002 at the Victoria Miro Gallery. The twelve glittery monkeys are Andy Warhol, they are Diana Ross, they are Christ's apostles, and they are gorgeous.
-V&A: ANNA PIAGGI - FASHION-OLOGY: FEB 2 - APRIL 23/06
I had the pleasure of meeting Italian Vogue's Anna Piaggi, one of fashion's true supporters of creative freedom, many years ago while working in Milan. Her monthly double page spreads are consistently prescient, and she dresses both them and herself with refreshing un- selfconcious abandon.
An exhibition is overdue, and this one should be great.
Anna Piaggi article
-JONATHAN MEESE PERFORMANCE: TATE MODERN: FEB 25/06 10PM & 11 PM
I've never seen Jonathan Meese perform, but if I was in London I'd go for sure. He shows with Modern Art, London and his performances have been described as “some of the most provocative and dynamic to have emerged in Germany during the past decade.” It's in the Turbine Hall and it's free.
-SERPENTINE PAVILION: REM KOOLHAAS: SUMMER 06
With the MVRDV project cancelled (they were going to cover the entire gallery with earth and grass - leaving only the crown peeking through!) Rem Koolhaas has stepped in to create his first project in the United Kingdom. Last year's stunning pavilion by Alvaro Siza & Eduardo Souto de Moura was brilliant!
From my short text on last year's pavilion for AZURE magazine:
"..Previous participants (Zaha Hadid, Daniel Libeskind, Toyo Ito and Oscar Niemeyer) have created unique experiments in form, shadow, material and effect. This year's collaboration between Alvaro Siza and Eduardo Souto de Moura of Portugal is no exception. Resembling an animal poised for movement, their structure of exposed interlocking timber trusses is partially covered with a semi-translucent polycarbonate roof, which is divided into panels with a small light visible from inside and out. The undulating roof contrasts with the carpet of grey bricks set into the grass, accentuating the interplay between fluidity and rigidity. Inside, minimalist wooden furniture designed by the architects invites audiences to sit down and contemplate the creative possibilities of contemporary architecture."
Rem Koolhaas
TATE MODERN: PIERRE HUYGHE: JULY 5 - 24 SEPTEMBER/06
The films of French artist Pierre Huyghe are great, and his first solo show in the UK will comprise completely new film, sculpture and performance works.
6. LOVED
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1. VAG: NEIL CAMPBELL The flickering lights in the front windows of the Vancouver Art Gallery each night over Christmas were spooky and wonderful.
2. CBC.CA/ARTS TOP 100 of 2005 LIST One of the best years-in-review, there was some I agreed with, lots I didn't, and there was also lots I hadn't heard of.
3. CARL DREYER'S 1927 FILM LA PASSION DE JEANNE D'ARC Stunning. Silent. Brilliant.
4. MERCER UNION'S MUSIC NIGHTS Nothing beats a soothing sound artwork to quell insipid art chat at an opening.
5. MURDERBALL You must see this film!
MURDERBALL TRAILER
7. LOATHED
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1. COLD CITY SHOW AT THE POWER PLANT Not that I disliked the show, but it should have been much bigger, more comprehensive and more important.
2. TORONTO'S OVER-HYPED 'ARCHITECTURAL RENAISSANCE' Yes we have major architects Libeskind and Gehry building in town - and that's great - but it's innovative, unusual buildings of quality that make a city great, not simply brand names.
How does Foster's University of Toronto project compare (in terms of visual impact) to either his Swiss Re building in London or the brand new Hearst building in Manhattan? (8th Ave at 56th)
Click on the link below to compare Libeskind's Royal Ontario Museum extension with his Creative Media Centre in Hong Kong, his Denver Art Museum extension in Denver, his Grand Canal Performing Arts Centre in Dublin and his Militarhistorisches Museum in Dresden.
Project numbers 2, 4, 7, 12 and 14 respectively.
Libeskind projects
8. ARTISTS TO GOOGLE
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Here are some of my favorite Canadian artists - keep your eye out for their work in 2006:
Evan Lee (Photography) For his current (Jan 21) solo show at Presentation House gallery in Vancouver, and also for the images that his dealer, Monte Clark showed at the Toronto International Art Fair this year.
Geoffrey Farmer (Installation) For his ambitiously conceptual pieces, and his intriguing show at the Power Plant in Toronto recently.
Scott McFarland (Photography) For his effort in taking photography forward, following in the footsteps of Jeff Wall.
Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay (Performance/video) For his lovely 'Singing Diorama' on Queen Street West in December in Toronto.
Daniel Cockburn (video) For his having been awarded an impressive grant this year.
Jed Lind (Sculpture/installation) For his incredible debut show at Jessica Bradley Art + Projects in Toronto.
Renata Morales (Fashion) For her mad catwalk shows and her newly launched men's collection.
Massimo Guerrera (Sculpture/mixed media) For his decadent, sexy feast of an exhibition at Clint Roenisch Gallery this year.
VoCA December 2005
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A View on Art
A point of view
December 2005
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-- 1. MIAMI: A SYNOPSIS
-- 2. LOVED
-- 3. LOATHED
-- 4. NOTICED...
-- 5. ARTISTS TO GOOGLE:
-- 6. MARTHA ROSLER - excerpt from my review in the current issue of C magazine
-- 7. GEOFFREY FARMER & JOELLE TUERLINCKX - excerpt from the current Art Papers
-- 8. ON THE HORIZON
-- 9. AND FINALLY..
Hello,
Welcome to my newsletter - the Miami edition!
A brief and hopefully enlightening monthly look at the art world - from Toronto and abroad - wherever my travels take me.
I was in Miami only very briefly, and opted to focus on three events: Art Basel Miami Beach (ABMB), New Art Dealers Association Fair (NADA), the Design fair (MIAMI 05) and some talks..
..so I didn't get to the younger fairs Pulse or Aqua..and only breezed through Scope, the hotel fair.
But following are some abstract musing on some things I've recently read, noticed, experienced and want to recommend to you, along with short pieces of my writing and upcoming projects.
This letter goes to over 100 curators, artists, dealers, editors and collectors in London, Florence, Rome, New York, California, Washington, Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Winnipeg and Vancouver.
Please forward it to anyone who you think would be interested! Thanks and enjoy!
With very best wishes,
Andrea
1. MIAMI: A SYNOPSIS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Say what you will about Miami, the week(end) offered an incredibly stimulating environment.
NADA: my favorite galleries at the fair: Hales Gallery (London), Murray Guy (New York), Daniel Reich (New York)
Hales Gallery
ART BASEL MIAMI: items of interest: Carlier Gebauer gallery, a brilliant Rodney Graham silkscreen on mirror entitled A Glass of Beer at Christine Burgin Gallery and a lovely Thomas Schutte architectural maquette sculpture at Marian Goodman.
The Georg Herold sculptures at Capitain/Petzel were fantastic!
Galerie Gisela Capitain
I met Olivier Blanckart, a New York-based French artist, who had a large super-realist packing-tape sculpture at Loevenbruck Gallery.
Blanckart was shortlisted this year for the Marcel Duchamp prize - the french art prize sponsored by the Centre Georges Pompidou.
ART BASEL: CONVERSATIONS I heard a lecture entitled Architecture for Art/Museum Architecture with Kutlug Ataman, Doug Aitken, Minerva Cuevas, moderated by Terence Riley (chief curator of architecture at MoMA, of course) and Stefano Boeri, editor of Domus.
The general discussion evolved around the types of (and problematics of) the museum space. Kutlug Ataman spoke about the language of the space,the language of each artwork (its own internal language/contstructs) and the relationship between the two. He gave an example of having had his work Kuba shown at the Carnegie International and then also in a post office in London, a project sponsored by Artangel. I think he felt that perhaps the London showing was more successful, because of the meaning inherent in the history of the space.
Although it wasn't picked up on in the talk, it is my feeling that Artangel offers one workable alternative to the museum space, by working closely with artists and also with the architecture of the city. It wasn't brought up, and in retrospect I should have asked the question myself. I wonder how artists feel about the experience and how/if it affects the success of their work?
How dependent is the artwork on its environment? Should/ can an artwork exist autonomously? How are museums changing? Doug Aitken mentioned that museum spaces and the trajectory of modern art must develop simultaneously. It was also noted that the museum operates as a link between the museum spectator and the artwork.
The experience of art as related to its environment is crucial to think about. Ataman mentioned an example of having seen an Ernesto Neto sculptural installation of sexual forms weaving in and out from one another, in the top space of an old, musty museum building in Vienna. Being Freud's city, the idea of having a sexual, dream-like installation on the top floor (the brain) of an old building seemed to him, quite perfect.
I also thought about video: it can be shown easily enough in the rarified environment of the museum, but also at an art fair or for instance, in the Art Basel video lounge, where there were some works on view but also over 50 works available to be viewed on separate monitors. How is video affected by context?
Stefano Boeri of Domus spoke about the rigidity of the museum interior, versus the flexibile interior of an art fair. Museums have become landmarks that offer one perspective of an artwork while more flexible spaces offer a different (I would say perhaps more valuable) experience. But it was agreed that it depends on the artwork.
DESIGN 05: Multi-colours in Design I went to another lecture, Multi-colours in Design, moderated by Barbara Bloeminck, curatorial director of the Cooper-Hewitt in New York. It was on colour and design with National Design Award winner Yves Behar, head designer for Mini Gert Hildebrand, Mary Murphy, VP Design for Maharam, and Colour Designer Beatrice Santiccioli.
How much does colour affect design and choices in design? There was talk of the changing nature of design, towards design as fashion, with the example of Swatch watches that had to be re-thought seasonally. I would suggest that now design has become a fashion, that we are only as good as our latest, hippest purchase. Who wants last season's Prada - who wants last season's Moooi? Actually fashion has already eclipsed that issue; following fashion has become unfashionable - will design follow suit?
Different countries have different attitudes to colour; designers are often asked to mute colours for an American market, or brighten colours for a European market.
After much discussion regarding client and consumer, about what unusual combinations can work in terms of colour (black yogurt containers in France, red razors) and what doesn't (powder blue cookware), an audience member asked a question: Would we be having the same discussion in India, a place with an entirely different relationship to colour?
How much is colour reflective of social/cultural constructs?
ART BASEL: VIDEO LOUNGE A really entertaining video by Vera Chytilova entitled Daisies from 1966 that had the spirit of a Gunilla Josephson (a forerunner, perhaps?) or Pipilotti Rist.
Text on Vera Chytilova's films
2. LOVED
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1. ANDY FABO AT MOCCA (Toronto) This is a brilliant show! Mocca is just getting better and better in its programming - an Andy Fabo restrospective was long overdue, and it has arrived in all its wry, gay, painterly splendor.
2. THE BLUR BUILDING - It's not new, but it is stunning. Karen Love mentioned this in her curator's talk at Oakville Galleries. If you haven't seen it, check out this link. Diller + Scofidio's amazing use of materials make Ghery and Libeskind look tame.
Blur Building
3. DESIGN 05 - This small show comprising four floors of the Moore building in the Design District was super. It was the right size (small!) with a select group of dealers, including the always brilliant David Gill and Barry Friedman Ltd. I could live in that shop! Work ranged from contemporary US designers to early 20th century Europeans.
My favorite, at Friedman, was a stunning mint condition Kuramata stool, with three feathers trapped in its Perspex base. Made in an edition of 40, it was selling for around $40,000 U.S.
There was an amazing lamp by artist Franz West, made of (I think) bronzed industrial chain link, so that it stood about 5 feet high, a single chain rising like a cobra, with a bare lightbulb at the top.
And also a lovely Ettore Sottsass commode and bookshelf.
Over at the Moss exhibit, there were some enormous, stunning vases by my design hero, Gaetano Pesce. Unfortunately I missed his talk.
4. FREE STUFF! - The Art Basel Champagne brunch! VIP passes and free tickets floating around! With so many parties, a few discreet inquiries meant my biggest expense was taxi fare.
Barry Friedman Ltd.
3. LOATHED
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1. ZAHA HADID INTERVIEW AT DESIGN 05 There were lineups down the block, the room was packed. Hadid took her seat opposite Craig Robins for a much- anticipated interview.
Robins is an art collector, developer, Miami man-about-town and friend of Hadid. He is also not an interviewer. He made the interview mostly about himself and his escapades with Hadid over the years, complete with inside jokes - seemingly oblivious that the ENTIRE audience was there to hear Hadid's opinions, thoughts, insights.
Sample question: “How does it feel to design a factory?” (I'm not kidding)
2. TORONTO: CANDICE BREITZ LECTURE AT MERCER UNION I went to this lecture because Breitz's “Mother Father” video piece was one of the few things I found intriguing at the Arsenale at the Venice Biennale this past summer. I arrived late, at a point where she was showing a work that she had made wherein she extracted only the moments of Sharon Stone's dialogue in the film Basic Instinct. It was seven or so minutes, she said, excitedly. Can you imagine? How much she gets paid? And how much Sharon Stone we get? And on and on the lecture went..needless to say, I wasn't terribly impressed. Somehow, Mother Father had managed, through slick presentation and well-chosen characterization, to far exceed the artist's other work. And even the success of that piece depended on the juxtaposition/ contrast between the two. And even then, it was fairly lighthearted.
3. PAUL WONG PRESENTS at Vtape Saturday Nov 26th. This curated screening was perplexing. The theme seemed to encapsulate a sense of loss, or despair. But the works were all over the map in terms of quality. Some were downright dodgy. The best was Ross Turnbull's film noir, Letters From R., about correspondence from a psychiatric patient to his (former) lover. It was beautifully written and stunningly constructed. I thought it was almost perfect. Cooper Battersby also had a good little film, which was, I believe the second part in a trilogy. I guess they can be shown separately, too. It was about Time, with Cooper giving a monologue about an outsider's perspective of time. It vaguely reminded me of one of my favorite films, Herzog's The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, in that it's often enlightening to question that which we take absolutely for granted. Those that do are often labeled “crazy”, but who's to say who is crazy?
4. Aesthetic overload. How long can these art fair extravaganzas keep going? One requires a distinct m.o., but it's a challenge, with so much vying for the viewer's attention.
5. Scope art fair. Actually, I loathe the idea of Scope; an art fair in small hotel rooms down cramped hallways was never a great idea - and the installations only work if the gallerist treats the whole room as a real place for art, rather than a substitute gallery space.
4. NOTICED...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-NADA: Loads of detailed pencil drawings, but a lot of the painting looked kind of tired to me..
-Sculpture: Some sculpture was looking really strong, I thought at both NADA and ART BASEL MIAMI.
-Young Toronto artist Jessica Thompson's Soundbike was a hit. I ran into them by the beach just as Martin Margulies was finishing his ride.
Jessica Thompson at PM Gallery
-New York dealer Sean Kelly on the outrageously priced straight-from-art-school artists: “Smart people have stopped buying fashion and started buying substance”
-The very cool and much talked-about Jeppe Hein installation at the Moore Space (Miami) - where everyone entering the space set off a ball rolling down a track that wove in and out, from room to room.
-The fact that Simon Starling won the Turner Prize!!
Starling article in the Guardian
Are you in London?
THIS SATURDAY 10 DECEMBER 2005 19:45 - 24:45
10th Tense Collaboration of Film and Music
Admission £3 door (£2 advanced booking) RSVP: 10thgroup@gmail.com
Non-stop films, music and performances by: No.W.Here Lab, Simon Bookish, David Cunningham, Trio Electroniche, Raresonik, Garioke, DJ Rockwolf, DJ Mighty Mitre, DJ Ninon Von Dachau
10th Tense
5. ARTISTS TO GOOGLE:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hugo Boss 2006 shortlist:
-Tacita Dean (My fave)
-John Bock
-Tino Sehgal
-Damian Ortega
-Aida Ruilova
-Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla
6. MARTHA ROSLER - excerpt from my review in the current issue of C magazine
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Art continues to imitate life, as artists pose questions about our everyday existence, or more specifically, about our relationship to our immediate surroundings. Witness the public interventions and replicated environments of Kelly Mark, Jeff Wall, Thomas Demand and Gregor Schneider, not to mention the recent exhibit at Toronto's Power Plant by Geoffrey Farmer and Joelle Tuerlinckx. Context has seemingly overtaken content. But how will this work read in thirty years' time? Will it remain current or be valued as a relic, a mere precursor to the art of the future?
In 1975, Martha Rosler created a work entitled Garage Sale, the newest version of which was on view June 4 - July 17, 2005 at London's Institute of Contemporary Arts. Items of every description were piled on tables throughout the main gallery of the ICA, some old, others new. The smell of vintage clothing permeated the space, lending the the installation the authentic feel of a church basement jumble sale. The striking thing - and the thing that made the work classic Rosler - was the prevailing domesticity throughout, from book titles to handmade crochet doilies. 1970s girlie mags sat alongside kitchenware, clothing and a pair of fetching purple sequined pasties. This was less a garage-sale-style artwork than an actual garage sale inside an art gallery. Everything was priced for sale, and visitors were encouraged to haggle with the gallery attendants. A black and white video of past installations was playing in the corner, voiced over by Rosler asking: 'Who wants these things?' 'What is the value of a thing?' 'What makes you want it?'
I had been vintage shopping the previous day, and while perusing the exhibition it struck me that I hadn't been altogether aware of what I had been doing. In other words, art can give insight into the everyday. Most viewers are doubtless aware that an object changes its status when placed inside a gallery (thanks to Marcel Duchamp), a fact that today says more about the status of art and the gallery environment than it does about the object. Indeed, the point of Rosler's piece is neither the objects for sale, nor the installation itself, but the way in which the meaning of our actions are automatically re-contextualized within the art gallery space. Garage Sale is about rendering tangible the invisible structures that define contemporary art (the very structures that compel so many to dismiss it.)
Read the rest of the article in C magazine
7. GEOFFREY FARMER & JOELLE TUERLINCKX - excerpt from the current Art Papers
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Considering the universality of Proustian memory, the sense of smell is surprisingly under-used in contemporary art. Artists Wolfgang Laib, Sonja Alhauser, and a few others have harnessed the power of smell in their artwork. So, now, has Vancouver conceptualist Geoffrey Farmer. His installation, A Pale Fire, is paired with No ‘W’ (no Rest. no Room. no Things. no Title) by Belgian Joëlle Tuerlinckx in a show at the Power Plant [September 24—November 20, 2005].
The smell of a wood-burning fire entices the viewer into the main gallery, which is almost entirely filled with second-hand furniture bleakly awaiting destruction in a temporary glass- fronted “factory” installed against one wall. Abandoned during gallery hours as a kind of stage set, this is where dismantling, stripping, and sandblasting take place, reducing the wood down to firelog size. At the centre of the cavernous gallery, an austere fireplace designed in 1968 by Frenchman Dominique Imbert hovers dramatically above the floor, its burning mouth agape. The factory’s final room is set up for making ink. The soot from the fireplace is collected, mixed with a variety of other ingredients, and used to print exhibition posters. Their text is copied from a card that Farmer found taped to one of the desks. It suggests a fraternal society, perhaps the brainchild of a slightly demonic office worker. “The Rules of the Order” comprises eight rules, including “Disorder is TREACHERY,” “The road to HELL is paved with badly laid stones,” and ”A TIDY worker is a HAPPY worker.”
Traditionally a communal site rich in memory, the fireplace suggests control of nature while its pure, modernist design makes it costly and desirable. By contrast, cheap, unwanted furniture holds little value; significantly, most of this furniture appears to come from schools or offices. The disparity between the two, and the social dimensions therein, suggest commodity fetishism by engaging objects of great and little worth in a replication of the industrial process. Overriding this play on value is the notion of conceptual art as the ultimate objectification of labor.
Read the rest of the article in Art Papers
8. ON THE HORIZON
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A review of Weathervane (a group show curated by Karen Love) at Oakville Galleries for Art Papers..
A review of Javier Tellez at the Power Plant in the next (or so) issue of Canadian Art Magazine
N.B: For events in Toronto, check out my listings page on martiniboys.com. It's a selection of events, including those that I think are of particular note.
A View on Art
A point of view
December 2005
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-- 1. MIAMI: A SYNOPSIS
-- 2. LOVED
-- 3. LOATHED
-- 4. NOTICED...
-- 5. ARTISTS TO GOOGLE:
-- 6. MARTHA ROSLER - excerpt from my review in the current issue of C magazine
-- 7. GEOFFREY FARMER & JOELLE TUERLINCKX - excerpt from the current Art Papers
-- 8. ON THE HORIZON
-- 9. AND FINALLY..
Hello,
Welcome to my newsletter - the Miami edition!
A brief and hopefully enlightening monthly look at the art world - from Toronto and abroad - wherever my travels take me.
I was in Miami only very briefly, and opted to focus on three events: Art Basel Miami Beach (ABMB), New Art Dealers Association Fair (NADA), the Design fair (MIAMI 05) and some talks..
..so I didn't get to the younger fairs Pulse or Aqua..and only breezed through Scope, the hotel fair.
But following are some abstract musing on some things I've recently read, noticed, experienced and want to recommend to you, along with short pieces of my writing and upcoming projects.
This letter goes to over 100 curators, artists, dealers, editors and collectors in London, Florence, Rome, New York, California, Washington, Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Winnipeg and Vancouver.
Please forward it to anyone who you think would be interested! Thanks and enjoy!
With very best wishes,
Andrea
1. MIAMI: A SYNOPSIS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Say what you will about Miami, the week(end) offered an incredibly stimulating environment.
NADA: my favorite galleries at the fair: Hales Gallery (London), Murray Guy (New York), Daniel Reich (New York)
Hales Gallery
ART BASEL MIAMI: items of interest: Carlier Gebauer gallery, a brilliant Rodney Graham silkscreen on mirror entitled A Glass of Beer at Christine Burgin Gallery and a lovely Thomas Schutte architectural maquette sculpture at Marian Goodman.
The Georg Herold sculptures at Capitain/Petzel were fantastic!
Galerie Gisela Capitain
I met Olivier Blanckart, a New York-based French artist, who had a large super-realist packing-tape sculpture at Loevenbruck Gallery.
Blanckart was shortlisted this year for the Marcel Duchamp prize - the french art prize sponsored by the Centre Georges Pompidou.
ART BASEL: CONVERSATIONS I heard a lecture entitled Architecture for Art/Museum Architecture with Kutlug Ataman, Doug Aitken, Minerva Cuevas, moderated by Terence Riley (chief curator of architecture at MoMA, of course) and Stefano Boeri, editor of Domus.
The general discussion evolved around the types of (and problematics of) the museum space. Kutlug Ataman spoke about the language of the space,the language of each artwork (its own internal language/contstructs) and the relationship between the two. He gave an example of having had his work Kuba shown at the Carnegie International and then also in a post office in London, a project sponsored by Artangel. I think he felt that perhaps the London showing was more successful, because of the meaning inherent in the history of the space.
Although it wasn't picked up on in the talk, it is my feeling that Artangel offers one workable alternative to the museum space, by working closely with artists and also with the architecture of the city. It wasn't brought up, and in retrospect I should have asked the question myself. I wonder how artists feel about the experience and how/if it affects the success of their work?
How dependent is the artwork on its environment? Should/ can an artwork exist autonomously? How are museums changing? Doug Aitken mentioned that museum spaces and the trajectory of modern art must develop simultaneously. It was also noted that the museum operates as a link between the museum spectator and the artwork.
The experience of art as related to its environment is crucial to think about. Ataman mentioned an example of having seen an Ernesto Neto sculptural installation of sexual forms weaving in and out from one another, in the top space of an old, musty museum building in Vienna. Being Freud's city, the idea of having a sexual, dream-like installation on the top floor (the brain) of an old building seemed to him, quite perfect.
I also thought about video: it can be shown easily enough in the rarified environment of the museum, but also at an art fair or for instance, in the Art Basel video lounge, where there were some works on view but also over 50 works available to be viewed on separate monitors. How is video affected by context?
Stefano Boeri of Domus spoke about the rigidity of the museum interior, versus the flexibile interior of an art fair. Museums have become landmarks that offer one perspective of an artwork while more flexible spaces offer a different (I would say perhaps more valuable) experience. But it was agreed that it depends on the artwork.
DESIGN 05: Multi-colours in Design I went to another lecture, Multi-colours in Design, moderated by Barbara Bloeminck, curatorial director of the Cooper-Hewitt in New York. It was on colour and design with National Design Award winner Yves Behar, head designer for Mini Gert Hildebrand, Mary Murphy, VP Design for Maharam, and Colour Designer Beatrice Santiccioli.
How much does colour affect design and choices in design? There was talk of the changing nature of design, towards design as fashion, with the example of Swatch watches that had to be re-thought seasonally. I would suggest that now design has become a fashion, that we are only as good as our latest, hippest purchase. Who wants last season's Prada - who wants last season's Moooi? Actually fashion has already eclipsed that issue; following fashion has become unfashionable - will design follow suit?
Different countries have different attitudes to colour; designers are often asked to mute colours for an American market, or brighten colours for a European market.
After much discussion regarding client and consumer, about what unusual combinations can work in terms of colour (black yogurt containers in France, red razors) and what doesn't (powder blue cookware), an audience member asked a question: Would we be having the same discussion in India, a place with an entirely different relationship to colour?
How much is colour reflective of social/cultural constructs?
ART BASEL: VIDEO LOUNGE A really entertaining video by Vera Chytilova entitled Daisies from 1966 that had the spirit of a Gunilla Josephson (a forerunner, perhaps?) or Pipilotti Rist.
Text on Vera Chytilova's films
2. LOVED
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1. ANDY FABO AT MOCCA (Toronto) This is a brilliant show! Mocca is just getting better and better in its programming - an Andy Fabo restrospective was long overdue, and it has arrived in all its wry, gay, painterly splendor.
2. THE BLUR BUILDING - It's not new, but it is stunning. Karen Love mentioned this in her curator's talk at Oakville Galleries. If you haven't seen it, check out this link. Diller + Scofidio's amazing use of materials make Ghery and Libeskind look tame.
Blur Building
3. DESIGN 05 - This small show comprising four floors of the Moore building in the Design District was super. It was the right size (small!) with a select group of dealers, including the always brilliant David Gill and Barry Friedman Ltd. I could live in that shop! Work ranged from contemporary US designers to early 20th century Europeans.
My favorite, at Friedman, was a stunning mint condition Kuramata stool, with three feathers trapped in its Perspex base. Made in an edition of 40, it was selling for around $40,000 U.S.
There was an amazing lamp by artist Franz West, made of (I think) bronzed industrial chain link, so that it stood about 5 feet high, a single chain rising like a cobra, with a bare lightbulb at the top.
And also a lovely Ettore Sottsass commode and bookshelf.
Over at the Moss exhibit, there were some enormous, stunning vases by my design hero, Gaetano Pesce. Unfortunately I missed his talk.
4. FREE STUFF! - The Art Basel Champagne brunch! VIP passes and free tickets floating around! With so many parties, a few discreet inquiries meant my biggest expense was taxi fare.
Barry Friedman Ltd.
3. LOATHED
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1. ZAHA HADID INTERVIEW AT DESIGN 05 There were lineups down the block, the room was packed. Hadid took her seat opposite Craig Robins for a much- anticipated interview.
Robins is an art collector, developer, Miami man-about-town and friend of Hadid. He is also not an interviewer. He made the interview mostly about himself and his escapades with Hadid over the years, complete with inside jokes - seemingly oblivious that the ENTIRE audience was there to hear Hadid's opinions, thoughts, insights.
Sample question: “How does it feel to design a factory?” (I'm not kidding)
2. TORONTO: CANDICE BREITZ LECTURE AT MERCER UNION I went to this lecture because Breitz's “Mother Father” video piece was one of the few things I found intriguing at the Arsenale at the Venice Biennale this past summer. I arrived late, at a point where she was showing a work that she had made wherein she extracted only the moments of Sharon Stone's dialogue in the film Basic Instinct. It was seven or so minutes, she said, excitedly. Can you imagine? How much she gets paid? And how much Sharon Stone we get? And on and on the lecture went..needless to say, I wasn't terribly impressed. Somehow, Mother Father had managed, through slick presentation and well-chosen characterization, to far exceed the artist's other work. And even the success of that piece depended on the juxtaposition/ contrast between the two. And even then, it was fairly lighthearted.
3. PAUL WONG PRESENTS at Vtape Saturday Nov 26th. This curated screening was perplexing. The theme seemed to encapsulate a sense of loss, or despair. But the works were all over the map in terms of quality. Some were downright dodgy. The best was Ross Turnbull's film noir, Letters From R., about correspondence from a psychiatric patient to his (former) lover. It was beautifully written and stunningly constructed. I thought it was almost perfect. Cooper Battersby also had a good little film, which was, I believe the second part in a trilogy. I guess they can be shown separately, too. It was about Time, with Cooper giving a monologue about an outsider's perspective of time. It vaguely reminded me of one of my favorite films, Herzog's The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, in that it's often enlightening to question that which we take absolutely for granted. Those that do are often labeled “crazy”, but who's to say who is crazy?
4. Aesthetic overload. How long can these art fair extravaganzas keep going? One requires a distinct m.o., but it's a challenge, with so much vying for the viewer's attention.
5. Scope art fair. Actually, I loathe the idea of Scope; an art fair in small hotel rooms down cramped hallways was never a great idea - and the installations only work if the gallerist treats the whole room as a real place for art, rather than a substitute gallery space.
4. NOTICED...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-NADA: Loads of detailed pencil drawings, but a lot of the painting looked kind of tired to me..
-Sculpture: Some sculpture was looking really strong, I thought at both NADA and ART BASEL MIAMI.
-Young Toronto artist Jessica Thompson's Soundbike was a hit. I ran into them by the beach just as Martin Margulies was finishing his ride.
Jessica Thompson at PM Gallery
-New York dealer Sean Kelly on the outrageously priced straight-from-art-school artists: “Smart people have stopped buying fashion and started buying substance”
-The very cool and much talked-about Jeppe Hein installation at the Moore Space (Miami) - where everyone entering the space set off a ball rolling down a track that wove in and out, from room to room.
-The fact that Simon Starling won the Turner Prize!!
Starling article in the Guardian
Are you in London?
THIS SATURDAY 10 DECEMBER 2005 19:45 - 24:45
10th Tense Collaboration of Film and Music
Admission £3 door (£2 advanced booking) RSVP: 10thgroup@gmail.com
Non-stop films, music and performances by: No.W.Here Lab, Simon Bookish, David Cunningham, Trio Electroniche, Raresonik, Garioke, DJ Rockwolf, DJ Mighty Mitre, DJ Ninon Von Dachau
10th Tense
5. ARTISTS TO GOOGLE:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hugo Boss 2006 shortlist:
-Tacita Dean (My fave)
-John Bock
-Tino Sehgal
-Damian Ortega
-Aida Ruilova
-Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla
6. MARTHA ROSLER - excerpt from my review in the current issue of C magazine
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Art continues to imitate life, as artists pose questions about our everyday existence, or more specifically, about our relationship to our immediate surroundings. Witness the public interventions and replicated environments of Kelly Mark, Jeff Wall, Thomas Demand and Gregor Schneider, not to mention the recent exhibit at Toronto's Power Plant by Geoffrey Farmer and Joelle Tuerlinckx. Context has seemingly overtaken content. But how will this work read in thirty years' time? Will it remain current or be valued as a relic, a mere precursor to the art of the future?
In 1975, Martha Rosler created a work entitled Garage Sale, the newest version of which was on view June 4 - July 17, 2005 at London's Institute of Contemporary Arts. Items of every description were piled on tables throughout the main gallery of the ICA, some old, others new. The smell of vintage clothing permeated the space, lending the the installation the authentic feel of a church basement jumble sale. The striking thing - and the thing that made the work classic Rosler - was the prevailing domesticity throughout, from book titles to handmade crochet doilies. 1970s girlie mags sat alongside kitchenware, clothing and a pair of fetching purple sequined pasties. This was less a garage-sale-style artwork than an actual garage sale inside an art gallery. Everything was priced for sale, and visitors were encouraged to haggle with the gallery attendants. A black and white video of past installations was playing in the corner, voiced over by Rosler asking: 'Who wants these things?' 'What is the value of a thing?' 'What makes you want it?'
I had been vintage shopping the previous day, and while perusing the exhibition it struck me that I hadn't been altogether aware of what I had been doing. In other words, art can give insight into the everyday. Most viewers are doubtless aware that an object changes its status when placed inside a gallery (thanks to Marcel Duchamp), a fact that today says more about the status of art and the gallery environment than it does about the object. Indeed, the point of Rosler's piece is neither the objects for sale, nor the installation itself, but the way in which the meaning of our actions are automatically re-contextualized within the art gallery space. Garage Sale is about rendering tangible the invisible structures that define contemporary art (the very structures that compel so many to dismiss it.)
Read the rest of the article in C magazine
7. GEOFFREY FARMER & JOELLE TUERLINCKX - excerpt from the current Art Papers
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Considering the universality of Proustian memory, the sense of smell is surprisingly under-used in contemporary art. Artists Wolfgang Laib, Sonja Alhauser, and a few others have harnessed the power of smell in their artwork. So, now, has Vancouver conceptualist Geoffrey Farmer. His installation, A Pale Fire, is paired with No ‘W’ (no Rest. no Room. no Things. no Title) by Belgian Joëlle Tuerlinckx in a show at the Power Plant [September 24—November 20, 2005].
The smell of a wood-burning fire entices the viewer into the main gallery, which is almost entirely filled with second-hand furniture bleakly awaiting destruction in a temporary glass- fronted “factory” installed against one wall. Abandoned during gallery hours as a kind of stage set, this is where dismantling, stripping, and sandblasting take place, reducing the wood down to firelog size. At the centre of the cavernous gallery, an austere fireplace designed in 1968 by Frenchman Dominique Imbert hovers dramatically above the floor, its burning mouth agape. The factory’s final room is set up for making ink. The soot from the fireplace is collected, mixed with a variety of other ingredients, and used to print exhibition posters. Their text is copied from a card that Farmer found taped to one of the desks. It suggests a fraternal society, perhaps the brainchild of a slightly demonic office worker. “The Rules of the Order” comprises eight rules, including “Disorder is TREACHERY,” “The road to HELL is paved with badly laid stones,” and ”A TIDY worker is a HAPPY worker.”
Traditionally a communal site rich in memory, the fireplace suggests control of nature while its pure, modernist design makes it costly and desirable. By contrast, cheap, unwanted furniture holds little value; significantly, most of this furniture appears to come from schools or offices. The disparity between the two, and the social dimensions therein, suggest commodity fetishism by engaging objects of great and little worth in a replication of the industrial process. Overriding this play on value is the notion of conceptual art as the ultimate objectification of labor.
Read the rest of the article in Art Papers
8. ON THE HORIZON
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A review of Weathervane (a group show curated by Karen Love) at Oakville Galleries for Art Papers..
A review of Javier Tellez at the Power Plant in the next (or so) issue of Canadian Art Magazine
N.B: For events in Toronto, check out my listings page on martiniboys.com. It's a selection of events, including those that I think are of particular note.
VoCA November 2005
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A View on Art
A point of view
November 2005
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-- 1. NEW
-- 2. LOVED
-- 3. LOATHED
-- 4. NOTICED..ART MARKET MADNESS
-- 5. ZENOMAP REVIEW
-- 6. DOCUMENTA 12 TALK
-- 7. TORONTO ART FAIRS
-- 8. ARTISTS TO GOOGLE
-- 9. PLEASE FORWARD THIS NEWSLETTER
-- 10. CORRECTION
Hello,
Welcome to my newsletter!
A brief and hopefully enlightening monthly look at the art world - from Toronto and abroad - wherever my travels take me.
Things I've read, noticed, experienced and want to recommend to you, along with short pieces of my writing and upcoming projects.
This letter goes to curators, artists, dealers, editors and collectors in London, Florence, New York, California, Washington, Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Winnipeg and Vancouver.
Please forward it to anyone who you think would be interested! Thanks and enjoy!
With very best wishes,
Andrea
1. NEW
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
New this month is my blog where I have archived the past three issues along with a longer text or two.
Please check it out - I welcome your comments!
View on Art Blog
2. LOVED
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1. The talk at the Goethe Institute on Oct 12th for Urban Transformations, photographs by Michael Awad of Toronto, and Robin Merkisch of Dusseldorf
It was a well-moderated talk about the romanticizing of urban space. Awad's work certainly holds an unabashedly romantic view of Toronto twenty or so years ago. In fact he echoed the feelings of many by brazenly suggesting that 'less-good' buildings are now replacing older ones. Merkisch asked why the new would necessarily be less-good than the old? It was an enlightening confrontation.
Someone suggested that Europeans are less inclined to romanticize the old (particularly Germans, I would argue, given their 20th century history).
Another comment concerned the notion of the 'sublime', and of old industrial architecture as a modern version of nature. We regard abandoned buildings with similar pleasurable awe to which we used to regard forests, before they were brought under our control through industrialization, reforestation projects, the camera, art etc.
What is the effect of the romanticizing of urban space and how is it linked to Canada's need for historical identity?
Another comment compared the urban jungle to the evolution of a swamp, with beavers as architects, building dams which flood rivers, creating marshes and eventually medows. Each destructive action creates another space possibility.
It kind of brings to mind the video work of June Bum Park. (You'll have to click through 4 or 5 to see the ones with the hands)
June Bum Park
2. The Tinder Box by Hans Christian Andersen. I'm serious - if you don't know it, Google it and read it, it's brilliant!
3. Simon Starling shortlisted for the Turner Prize. (He should win!)
Starling's conceptual works often involve a voyage, and a deconstruction and/or reconstruction. They are usually large- scale and stunning.
Do you remember his work at the Scotland pavilion at 2003's Venice Biennale? See #5 (below) for the short piece I wrote on it.
Turner Prize
3. LOATHED
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1. Are you loving the Libeskind design for the Royal Ontario Museum Crystal?
You can buy a genuine napkin sketch (seriously) for the project. Max Protetch Gallery recently had a show of his designs.
How many napkin sketches did Libeskind make beforehand and save in mint condition? Or did he make sketches on napkins for the gallery to sell? A bit kitsch, no?
Speaking of Libeskind, on my blog I've posted an abridged version of a long piece I wrote back in 2001 on the World Trade Center re-build as an example of a cultural democracy. If you're interested..
Max Protetch Gallery
2. The Istvan Kantor works priced at $400 (??) at TAAFI (Toronto Alternative Art Fair International) at the Gladstone.
Good news, I suppose, for those who bought similar work at MoCCA a few months back for $30 -$50 when Kantor hosted his Queen West Art-Scum Garage Salem.
Kantor's ambiguous and hypocritical relationship with the art world is partly what makes his work so compelling..
4. NOTICED..ART MARKET MADNESS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Off the Hook: American collector Steve Cohen bought a painting from Leo Koenig's artist twenty five-year-old Justin Faunce for twenty five thousand dollars.
Galleries at this year's Zoo art fair in London were selling works for 11,000 Pounds. Zoo presents emerging contemporary art talent.
“At first it's nice to hear of such high sums; at the same time it's horrifying. Most importantly, because it's the wrong motivation for work. As a rule, (buyers are) paying way too much for art. There is a complete lack of balance between the value and relevance of art and the absurd prices that are paid for it.” - Gerhard Richter, in a recent edition of Der Spiegel
On the home front: If a dealer begins dramatically increasing prices without basing such increases on museum exhibitions, corporate and institutional acquisitions, international representation and critical praise, then there's a good chance his collectors are being hoodwinked. Obviously, an artist's CV should reflect their prices.
5. ZENOMAP REVIEW
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Here's a little review I did of the Scottish pavilion 2003. Starling's piece was great.
Zenomap: A presentation of new work from Scotland for the Venice Biennale 2003
Clare Barclay, Jim Lambie and Simon Starling Palazzo Giustinian-Lolin/Fondazione Ugo e Olga Levi 15 June - 2 November 2003
'Zenomap' refers to the map of the North Atlantic created by Venetian brothers Antonio and Nicolo Zeno, who, in the 14th century had set sail to explore unfamiliar territories with the Scottish adventurer Henry Sinclair.
This extraordinary partnership was recalled in the heavy air at the Palazzo Giustinian - Lolin with the presentation of work by Clare Barclay, Jim Lambie and Simon Starling. The faded grandeur of the space, its walls of threadbare silk damask and shadowy mirrors made for a strong juxtaposition between old and new, exemplified in the mesmerising floor sculptures of sharply cut, reassembled doors and mirrors by Jim Lambie. A darkly erotic interpretation of Venetian silk damask backed the deconstructed wooden scaffolding of Barclay's large structure, from which hung a stark white leather Doge's cap. Next door were evocative hanging sculptures including a simple beam of blown glass sheathed in black leather.
The star of the show, however, was Simon Starling's piece, Island for Weeds (Prototype). It was a plant-filled basin at one end of the foyer anchored with long rusting chains to large oil drums at the other, a slick metaphor challenging the acceptance of new ideas, surprisingly resonant in the floating city that is Venice.
Read more on Starling
6. DOCUMENTA 12 TALK
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Power Plant talk by Roger Buergel and Ruth Noack, Director and Curator of Documenta 12, on Nov 5 (at the Toronto International Art Fair) offered an intriguing peek into their thoughts and plans for 2007.
The couple began by outlining the strong historical relationship of Documenta to the city of Kassel. Originally intended as a one-off exhibition, it was radical from the start in terms of its curatorial style. Its then-director hung works off of plastic curtains and back-to-back in the center of the room on poles. It was about the way the audience interacted with the works.
Buergel and Noack spoke of the museum as medium, rather than vitrine. They emphasized the relationship between the architectural environment and real life, a way of opening the dialogue between viewer and artwork. They are interested in the “positioning of the threshold.”
They spoke of their awareness of the challenges they face as curators of Documenta: considerations such as the geopolitical identity of artists, the notion of the curator as singular intellect, the artistic canon. They seek to avoid fetishizing, in fact the goal of Documenta can probably be summed up as being one free of both didacticism and fetishism.
To this end, they have planned to work with editorial boards around the world, using magazines as distribution method for questions central to their curatorial mandate. Working with 80 magazines worldwide “that matter to artists” over the next two years, they will incite discussions on the main themes of Documenta 12.
The topics will no doubt, relate to the three central points that Buergel and Noack outlined in the talk: 1. Is Modernity Our Antiquity? 2. Bare Life 3. Education.
In elucidating these points they spoke of the idea of the stateless person, of antiquity as the foundations of contemporary society, of modernity and violence, modernity as universal level. They spoke of human vulnerability, of pleasure and the apocalyptic, of the relationship between the people of Kassel and Documenta, the empowerment of young audiences, and of audiences engaging in an act of communication.
Find out more, especially about the magazine project at:
Documenta 12
7. TORONTO ART FAIRS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-The Monte Clark Gallery at the Toronto International Art Fair (TIAF) was the best thing there. The booth, with lovely wallpaper and club chairs, was informed by design firm LA Designs of Toronto. The artwork was great too. Keep your eye on Vancouver artist Evan Lee.
-The Susan Hobbs Gallery at the Toronto Alternative Art Fair International (TAFFI) was easily the best hotel room art installation I've ever seen.
Aside from the usual decor, there was apparently little in the room, save for a hanging coat, a wallet on a side table, a business card and a camera.
Each object was an artwork, of course.
Susan Hobbs Gallery
-David Rokeby photographs, or perhaps more precisely computer-generated stills, at the Pari Nadimi gallery at TIAF.
-The Jed Lind sculpture at Jessica Bradley Art + Projects at TAAFI at the Gladstone. A model ship sliced in two and transformed into speakers, plugged into an amp with a book and a meteorite lying on top.
The book made reference to the story of Donald Crowhurst, a mad englishman who attempted to win the Golden Globe yacht race in the late 60's. When he realized his boat, the Teignmouth Electron, wasn't strong enough, he plotted elaborate false charts in a bid to cheat his way to third place.
He eventually committed suicide at sea, leaving his floating boat and its thorough documentation to be found. It remains one of the most elaborate hoaxes of the 20th century.
Read more about the mystery at:
www.teignmouthelectron.org
8. ARTISTS TO GOOGLE
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-David Kramer - New York
-Mark Lewis - London: Check out his new work (especially the stunning Rush Hour, 2005) at the Monte Clark Gallery Toronto/Vancouver or Galerie Cent8, Paris
-Bob Partington - New York
A View on Art
A point of view
November 2005
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-- 1. NEW
-- 2. LOVED
-- 3. LOATHED
-- 4. NOTICED..ART MARKET MADNESS
-- 5. ZENOMAP REVIEW
-- 6. DOCUMENTA 12 TALK
-- 7. TORONTO ART FAIRS
-- 8. ARTISTS TO GOOGLE
-- 9. PLEASE FORWARD THIS NEWSLETTER
-- 10. CORRECTION
Hello,
Welcome to my newsletter!
A brief and hopefully enlightening monthly look at the art world - from Toronto and abroad - wherever my travels take me.
Things I've read, noticed, experienced and want to recommend to you, along with short pieces of my writing and upcoming projects.
This letter goes to curators, artists, dealers, editors and collectors in London, Florence, New York, California, Washington, Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Winnipeg and Vancouver.
Please forward it to anyone who you think would be interested! Thanks and enjoy!
With very best wishes,
Andrea
1. NEW
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
New this month is my blog where I have archived the past three issues along with a longer text or two.
Please check it out - I welcome your comments!
View on Art Blog
2. LOVED
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1. The talk at the Goethe Institute on Oct 12th for Urban Transformations, photographs by Michael Awad of Toronto, and Robin Merkisch of Dusseldorf
It was a well-moderated talk about the romanticizing of urban space. Awad's work certainly holds an unabashedly romantic view of Toronto twenty or so years ago. In fact he echoed the feelings of many by brazenly suggesting that 'less-good' buildings are now replacing older ones. Merkisch asked why the new would necessarily be less-good than the old? It was an enlightening confrontation.
Someone suggested that Europeans are less inclined to romanticize the old (particularly Germans, I would argue, given their 20th century history).
Another comment concerned the notion of the 'sublime', and of old industrial architecture as a modern version of nature. We regard abandoned buildings with similar pleasurable awe to which we used to regard forests, before they were brought under our control through industrialization, reforestation projects, the camera, art etc.
What is the effect of the romanticizing of urban space and how is it linked to Canada's need for historical identity?
Another comment compared the urban jungle to the evolution of a swamp, with beavers as architects, building dams which flood rivers, creating marshes and eventually medows. Each destructive action creates another space possibility.
It kind of brings to mind the video work of June Bum Park. (You'll have to click through 4 or 5 to see the ones with the hands)
June Bum Park
2. The Tinder Box by Hans Christian Andersen. I'm serious - if you don't know it, Google it and read it, it's brilliant!
3. Simon Starling shortlisted for the Turner Prize. (He should win!)
Starling's conceptual works often involve a voyage, and a deconstruction and/or reconstruction. They are usually large- scale and stunning.
Do you remember his work at the Scotland pavilion at 2003's Venice Biennale? See #5 (below) for the short piece I wrote on it.
Turner Prize
3. LOATHED
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1. Are you loving the Libeskind design for the Royal Ontario Museum Crystal?
You can buy a genuine napkin sketch (seriously) for the project. Max Protetch Gallery recently had a show of his designs.
How many napkin sketches did Libeskind make beforehand and save in mint condition? Or did he make sketches on napkins for the gallery to sell? A bit kitsch, no?
Speaking of Libeskind, on my blog I've posted an abridged version of a long piece I wrote back in 2001 on the World Trade Center re-build as an example of a cultural democracy. If you're interested..
Max Protetch Gallery
2. The Istvan Kantor works priced at $400 (??) at TAAFI (Toronto Alternative Art Fair International) at the Gladstone.
Good news, I suppose, for those who bought similar work at MoCCA a few months back for $30 -$50 when Kantor hosted his Queen West Art-Scum Garage Salem.
Kantor's ambiguous and hypocritical relationship with the art world is partly what makes his work so compelling..
4. NOTICED..ART MARKET MADNESS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Off the Hook: American collector Steve Cohen bought a painting from Leo Koenig's artist twenty five-year-old Justin Faunce for twenty five thousand dollars.
Galleries at this year's Zoo art fair in London were selling works for 11,000 Pounds. Zoo presents emerging contemporary art talent.
“At first it's nice to hear of such high sums; at the same time it's horrifying. Most importantly, because it's the wrong motivation for work. As a rule, (buyers are) paying way too much for art. There is a complete lack of balance between the value and relevance of art and the absurd prices that are paid for it.” - Gerhard Richter, in a recent edition of Der Spiegel
On the home front: If a dealer begins dramatically increasing prices without basing such increases on museum exhibitions, corporate and institutional acquisitions, international representation and critical praise, then there's a good chance his collectors are being hoodwinked. Obviously, an artist's CV should reflect their prices.
5. ZENOMAP REVIEW
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Here's a little review I did of the Scottish pavilion 2003. Starling's piece was great.
Zenomap: A presentation of new work from Scotland for the Venice Biennale 2003
Clare Barclay, Jim Lambie and Simon Starling Palazzo Giustinian-Lolin/Fondazione Ugo e Olga Levi 15 June - 2 November 2003
'Zenomap' refers to the map of the North Atlantic created by Venetian brothers Antonio and Nicolo Zeno, who, in the 14th century had set sail to explore unfamiliar territories with the Scottish adventurer Henry Sinclair.
This extraordinary partnership was recalled in the heavy air at the Palazzo Giustinian - Lolin with the presentation of work by Clare Barclay, Jim Lambie and Simon Starling. The faded grandeur of the space, its walls of threadbare silk damask and shadowy mirrors made for a strong juxtaposition between old and new, exemplified in the mesmerising floor sculptures of sharply cut, reassembled doors and mirrors by Jim Lambie. A darkly erotic interpretation of Venetian silk damask backed the deconstructed wooden scaffolding of Barclay's large structure, from which hung a stark white leather Doge's cap. Next door were evocative hanging sculptures including a simple beam of blown glass sheathed in black leather.
The star of the show, however, was Simon Starling's piece, Island for Weeds (Prototype). It was a plant-filled basin at one end of the foyer anchored with long rusting chains to large oil drums at the other, a slick metaphor challenging the acceptance of new ideas, surprisingly resonant in the floating city that is Venice.
Read more on Starling
6. DOCUMENTA 12 TALK
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Power Plant talk by Roger Buergel and Ruth Noack, Director and Curator of Documenta 12, on Nov 5 (at the Toronto International Art Fair) offered an intriguing peek into their thoughts and plans for 2007.
The couple began by outlining the strong historical relationship of Documenta to the city of Kassel. Originally intended as a one-off exhibition, it was radical from the start in terms of its curatorial style. Its then-director hung works off of plastic curtains and back-to-back in the center of the room on poles. It was about the way the audience interacted with the works.
Buergel and Noack spoke of the museum as medium, rather than vitrine. They emphasized the relationship between the architectural environment and real life, a way of opening the dialogue between viewer and artwork. They are interested in the “positioning of the threshold.”
They spoke of their awareness of the challenges they face as curators of Documenta: considerations such as the geopolitical identity of artists, the notion of the curator as singular intellect, the artistic canon. They seek to avoid fetishizing, in fact the goal of Documenta can probably be summed up as being one free of both didacticism and fetishism.
To this end, they have planned to work with editorial boards around the world, using magazines as distribution method for questions central to their curatorial mandate. Working with 80 magazines worldwide “that matter to artists” over the next two years, they will incite discussions on the main themes of Documenta 12.
The topics will no doubt, relate to the three central points that Buergel and Noack outlined in the talk: 1. Is Modernity Our Antiquity? 2. Bare Life 3. Education.
In elucidating these points they spoke of the idea of the stateless person, of antiquity as the foundations of contemporary society, of modernity and violence, modernity as universal level. They spoke of human vulnerability, of pleasure and the apocalyptic, of the relationship between the people of Kassel and Documenta, the empowerment of young audiences, and of audiences engaging in an act of communication.
Find out more, especially about the magazine project at:
Documenta 12
7. TORONTO ART FAIRS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-The Monte Clark Gallery at the Toronto International Art Fair (TIAF) was the best thing there. The booth, with lovely wallpaper and club chairs, was informed by design firm LA Designs of Toronto. The artwork was great too. Keep your eye on Vancouver artist Evan Lee.
-The Susan Hobbs Gallery at the Toronto Alternative Art Fair International (TAFFI) was easily the best hotel room art installation I've ever seen.
Aside from the usual decor, there was apparently little in the room, save for a hanging coat, a wallet on a side table, a business card and a camera.
Each object was an artwork, of course.
Susan Hobbs Gallery
-David Rokeby photographs, or perhaps more precisely computer-generated stills, at the Pari Nadimi gallery at TIAF.
-The Jed Lind sculpture at Jessica Bradley Art + Projects at TAAFI at the Gladstone. A model ship sliced in two and transformed into speakers, plugged into an amp with a book and a meteorite lying on top.
The book made reference to the story of Donald Crowhurst, a mad englishman who attempted to win the Golden Globe yacht race in the late 60's. When he realized his boat, the Teignmouth Electron, wasn't strong enough, he plotted elaborate false charts in a bid to cheat his way to third place.
He eventually committed suicide at sea, leaving his floating boat and its thorough documentation to be found. It remains one of the most elaborate hoaxes of the 20th century.
Read more about the mystery at:
www.teignmouthelectron.org
8. ARTISTS TO GOOGLE
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-David Kramer - New York
-Mark Lewis - London: Check out his new work (especially the stunning Rush Hour, 2005) at the Monte Clark Gallery Toronto/Vancouver or Galerie Cent8, Paris
-Bob Partington - New York
VoCA October 2005
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A View on Art
A point of view
August 2005
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-- 1. LOVED
-- 2. LOATHED
-- 3. LOVED AND LOATHED
-- 4. RECENTLY NOTICED...
-- 5. MATTHEW BARNEY - Cremaster Cycle text
-- 6. BRUCE MAU - Massive Change unpublished
-- 7. UPCOMING
-- 8. ARTISTS TO GOOGLE et cetera
-- PLEASE FORWARD THIS NEWSLETTER
Hello,
Welcome to the THIRD edition!
I hope you're enjoying these so far. I've had some good feedback and love hearing your thoughts! I should preface this issue by explaining my current predicament. I'm in need of a sponsor. Wait, please keep reading! It's only $15/month to keep this newsletter functioning. If one of you fabulous patrons-of-the-arts sponsored it, it would give me loads of incentive to keep it going. And I could increase my mailing list from 50 to 500!
Already this letter goes to curators, artists, dealers, editors and collectors in London, New York, California, Washington, Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Winnipeg and Vancouver.
So there you go. Either I need one person to cover $15/ month, or I suppose three people at $5/month. That's not much to ask, is it?
carsonandrea@hotmail.com if you want to help me out. Thanks and enjoy!
With very best wishes,
Andrea
1. LOVED
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1. Matthew Barney: Drawing Restraint 9 Toronto International Film Festival
Not as good as the Cremaster Cycle, due to the slow start. Barney is best when working on a set and somehow the sweeping landscapes seemed a bit mainstream. Unfortunately I missed the artist's talk, but here is my take on the film.
Barney's films are hard work for the viewer. One feels compelled to try to dissect them as one is watching. I often find myself thinking, 'What does this mean? What does that represent?' Overall, I felt that the film dealt sweetly with his relationship with Bijork. The two of them were depicted as king and queen, respectful of one another. They engaged in a very deliberate, intimate embrace while cutting away the flesh of their lower bodies under water, in a sinking Japanese whaling vessel. The cutting away for me suggested their ability to communicate on a spiritual level. Also there appeared to be a spinal cord as a main image, representing the nerve centre. Other themes were the ritualistic wrapping (of paper, of the body in elaborate costume) and history of whaling in Japan. Whale blubber/vaseline was consistently shaped into Barney's by- now-familiar football field insignia. Two whaling ships followed each other like the whales themselves, echoing a beautiful courtship, and both Barney and Bijork had blow- holes at the top of their spines. I didn't think the dialogue added anything that could not have been communicated through gesture.
Please see ARTICLE 5 (below) for a little something that I wrote, a few years ago, on Barney's work.
2. Ulysses Castellanos at the Drake Hotel. We saw a performance on the front steps, on a Tuesday night at 10, featuring an artful display of stuffed animals and a semi- naked Castellanos hack his way out of a cardboard monolith with a kitchen knife to sing a lovely rendition of '(Don't Go) Wastin' My Time'..
3. The InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Centre in Toronto. The inaugural show in their new location showed work by four of Canada's best new media artists: Vera Frenkel, David Rokeby, Norman White and Nell Tenhaaf.
The new director, Dana Samuel is great (and an artist herself). Check out the website for more info:
Interaccess Electronic Media Arts Centre
4. Jed Lind at Jessica Bradley Art + Projects. Lind, a recent grad from Cal Arts, makes work of stunning quality and I liked it immediately. I'd have to know a bit more about it to make a final decision, but initial signs are really good. It reminded me a bit of some of Thomas Schutte's work, kind of folkloric. In any case, Jessica Bradley has got an impeccable eye and is bringing a new style of programming to the city.
Jessica Bradley Art + Projects
2. LOATHED
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1. The current show at artist-run center Mercer Union in Toronto. From the press release I was expecting good things, but there were only a few dated-looking pictures by Ron Terada (visual puns of street signs) and a video by Xu Zhen, which might have been interesting had it had any kind of hook to keep me watching.
2. The photographs of a guy with a cigarette-burn necklace at Diaz Contemporary in Toronto. Not my cup of tea. Nor were the foil candy wrappers by Kristian Horton, although I kind of liked the photographs by Horton on the gallery's website.
The space is very nice, the show is colourful, and the stable - Mexican and Canadian is unique..I got a vague Felix Gonzalez-Torres feeling at the opening.
Diaz Contemporary
3. LOVED AND LOATHED
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I heard Sarah Milroy (arts writer for Canada's national paper, the Globe and Mail) speak at Olga Korper Gallery, on Robert Mapplethorpe's work for the Canadian Art Gallery Hop on Saturday Sept 17.
Sarah's talk expressed her frustration with Mapplethorpe's work, a theme which was likely appropriate for the audience at the gallery that day. But Mapplethorpe is such a complex artist! His work relies on the fact that it pushes buttons. Here is my take: Mapplethorpe was undoubtedly a man of extremes, given his proclivity for hard-core sex. He took a manner of working (extreme classicism, extreme formalism) and extreme subject matter (S & M sex) and brought them together.
The question is less about whether one finds such imagery distasteful, and more about how successfully Mapplethorpe was able to challenge bourgeois attitudes. Faultless in composition and lighting, in the tradition of Weston et al, his work remains supremely effective at getting people to question socially constructed mores. Especially since, as Sarah mentioned, homosexual scenes are depicted on Greco Roman artifacts (on view at the Met.)
While I appreciate Korper's decision not to show the hard core work, it must be remembered that the brilliance of Mapplethorpe's work lies in the fact that he chose to photograph sex, not lilies.
Olga Korper Gallery
4. RECENTLY NOTICED...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-The Wayward Cloud - a Chinese film I saw at the TIFF. It was basically a sex-filled story about a porn star with these incredible, kitsch song-and-dance sequences scattered throughout. Oh, and the film's theme was watermelons. They are used in sex, eaten, juiced, carried around. Watermelon-pattered umbrellas are used to stunning effect in one dance sequence. Director Tsai Ming-Liang said that he wanted the dance numbers to remind the audience that they weren't actually watching a porn film. And there is a shocking - shocking! - final sequence..
-Jeremy Shaw (aka March 21), a Vancouver new media artist and dj/producer. Check out this website and download his tunes, in collaboration with SWAYZAK. 'In the Car Crash' is great.
Swayzak
5. MATTHEW BARNEY - Cremaster Cycle text
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Here's a portion of a text that I wrote a few years ago after having seen the entire Cremaster Cycle:
In the recently completed Cremaster Cycle, the astonishing body of work by controversial American artist Matthew Barney, film is used to its most dramatic potential as a vehicle for conceptual art. Critics and audiences stand divided, but Michael Kimmelman of the New York Times has described him as 'the most crucial artist of his generation.'1 Barney fearlessly explores idea after idea, using grandiose sets, costumes and otherworldly prosthetic makeup to create a baroque extravaganza that has been described as 'audacious and brilliant..potent in (its) symbolism and private mythology'.2 A creature incubates under a table in a Goodyear blimp suspended over an empty football stadium, notorious murderer Gary Gilmore rides a bronco at a rodeo, a goatman tapdances through the floor and into a Vaseline lined birth canal, former Bond girl Ursula Andress sings a Hungarian opera, and Richard Serra surveys it all from his post at the top of New York's Chrysler building. The cycle of five films is designed to be looked at as a kind of pyramid, Cremaster 3 overseeing Cremasters 1 and 2 on one side and 4 and 5 on the other.3 Each film encapsulates a main theme, inside of which the artist stars as the protagonist, playing out a visual feast of conceptual ideas, strung together by a loose narrative. According to Roger D. Hodge in Harper's Magazine: 'Each film enacts dramas of resistance and overcoming, attachment and separation, confinement and metamorphosis'.4 The films all center on the idea of self- exploration as related to cultural evolution, examining the development of mythologies in our society alongside Barney's personal investigation of his own sexuality, while his persistent use of such favorite masculine elements as American football, cowboys, motorbikes and the like fall into place.
Not only is he the pre-eminent artist of his generation working with film as 'high art', but in accordance with Berger's idea that 'every image embodies a way of seeing'5 Matthew Barney has changed the way in which we view film, appropriating the camera for his own needs, by carefully controlling the conditions in which he documents his highly stylized world. Barney is insisting that the viewer concentrate and accept his work in a conceptual manner at the same time as he is inviting the audience to question their automatic reception of the work by showing 'high' art in the 'low' realm of the local cinema.
In his essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Walter Benjamin notes that the painter, prior to the invention of photography, had been able to paint only what his eye could see, his unique personal vision. That changed with the invention of the camera, whose impartial lens awarded each element of a scene equal significance.6 According to Barney, the characters in the films are part of an elaborate sculptural system wherein each scene is composed. He doesn't look at a monitor or purposefully 'direct' his actors, because, he says, 'the genesis of these projects is in the object. My concerns have to do with developing an 'object narrative', so (viewing) the monitor for me is about framing the objects rather than directing characters.'7 The 'action' in the film results from the juxtaposition of the many scenes; each scene generally comprises a single idea, the characters move very little, often repeating the same action over and over. For example in Cremaster 3, one scene shows five Chrysler Imperials demolishing a Chrysler New Yorker in the lobby of the Chrysler building. Barney returns to that scene as the viewer watches the car being slowly destroyed. In another scene, a beautiful woman sits alone, carefully slicing potatoes with a blade attached to the bottom of her shoe. Again Barney returns to the scene several times. The audience's attention is drawn away from the progression of the narrative and toward the concept inherent in each scene, which is strictly controlled by the artist. Throughout the cycle, there are no characters other than those central to the story, no props intended to simulate the appearance of the real world. Football stadiums, racetracks, petrol stations, the Chrysler Building are all hauntingly empty save for the essential characters.
Barney has ruthlessly abused the dictatorial stance of the camera in the construction of his artworks. The viewer's reception of the Cremaster cycle is tactically manipulated through the often excruciatingly slow pace of the films, each scene weighty with complex multi-dimensional meaning. In the three-hour-long Cremaster 3, for example, there is no sign of the approaching end of the film, as the pace consistently slows. As each scene unfolds, the viewer is left struggling to find the ever-elusive point. At a certain stage, one ceases to follow the narrative, or even to attempt an interpretation. The viewer is confronted with a deep dissatisfaction in his inability to 'get' the film, yet frustrated at his unwillingness to leave, lest it all make sense at the end. Barney's domination of the camera means that we are straight jacketed into the artist's world, forced into conceptual thinking; for those unable or unwilling to take this on, the Cremaster cycle remains a work of utterly mystifying beauty.
6. BRUCE MAU - Massive Change unpublished
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Here's an excerpt from a review I did of Massive Change, the exhibition that was recently at the AGO and is currently at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago Sept 16 - 31 December. There are plans for a world tour of the show over the next few years, so I thought I'd include my thoughts. Anyway, the piece was never published, for reasons beyond my control..
Massive Change - what does that title actually deliver? Massive Hype? Massive Boredom? There has been much conjecture and debate surrounding the exhibition since it opened at the Vancouver Art Gallery in October 2004, for Massive Change is not an art exhibit befitting a gallery, but rather an ambitious design show aiming to illustrate the potential of forward-thinking design solutions. The show expresses Mau's fervent belief in the importance of design through eleven so-called 'Design Economies'. His hope is that people “walk away with the realization that their world is being designed around them, that design shapes their reality, and that they can play a role in how it is shaped.” This is no mere Massive Change, but rather MASSIVE CHANGE. Mau isn't into subtlety.
Toronto-based Bruce Mau is well known as a graphic designer - anyone with an interest in radical avant-garde book design will be familiar with his two doorstopper-size manifestos, S,M,L,XL (a collaboration with Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas) and his studio's monograph LifeStyle. Through his high profile work with architects Frank Ghery and Koolhaas, his name has become virtually synonymous with bold, oversized text. So why did he make the leap from designer of font to designer of an explosive, controversial art gallery exhibition?
As Mau explains it, he was perplexed at the negative attitude surrounding design and technological advancement among the general public. He himself was aware of many unprecedented global innovations, yet he didn't see this awareness reflected in the public realm. So when the Vancouver Art Gallery approached him with an offer to commission a show, he began to articulate his ideas. At around the same time, he was approached by George Brown Toronto City College with an idea for a one-year, post-grad educational joint project with his studio, resulting in the Institute without Boundaries, a program wherein students from a broad range of backgrounds spend one year at Bruce Mau Design collaborating on various projects, the first of which is this traveling exhibition.
The scale and ambition of the show demands an intensive collaborative effort, reflected in the dense visual effects and over-design that is obviously the product of much dogged brainstorming. Be forewarned: the show is challenging, overwhelming, stimulating to the senses, educational and loaded with information. Difficult to absorb in its entirety, it suffers from too many facts, statistics, quips and data. Ideally, you would have a browse through the website (www.massivechange.com) or the comprehensive exhibition book beforehand, but in any case it will help to remember the following: it exists to show you how design unites technology with the consumer. Each object should thus be viewed as a kind of marriage between technology and design. Upon seeing Daimler Chrysler's POEMAtec car seat, for instance, made entirely of coconut fibers and natural rubber, you need to remember the exhibition's unstated mantra, that design is what allows this technology to be visible to consumers, which ultimately improves the health of the planet and of our lives. The same goes for the entire show. The exhibition is both a really neat science exhibit and an overly didactic text-driven manifesto wrongly placed in an 'art' gallery. It aims to make you feel happy that design is creating great hope in the world, which is fair, but it does this without assessing the larger picture - that behavioral changes are necessary for innovative technologies to really succeed. Warp speed kicks in immediately upon entering the exhibition. Everything seems larger, louder, faster, more modern and all encompassing than normal, giving it the feel of Tokyo's Shinjuku station at rush hour. The catchphrase 'Now that we can do anything, what will we do?' begins the experience, which is then is divided into a number of 'Economies', obscurely explained as the events, ideas and people investigating various design dilemmas.
The website www.massivechange.com is a more successful way of digesting the often fascinating information. The site offers two options: Learn and Act. You can 'Learn' about the exhibition under four subheadings, and then under the second option, 'Act', Mau has provided an online forum, intended to encourage the progression from 'communication to action.' You can connect with people around the world or down the street to discuss critical issues and exchange ideas. Finally, there are tools for learning and case studies, through the Institute without Boundaries, where likeminded organizations can be contacted.
Sadly, the exhibition lacks finesse. It should be thought of as an adjunct to the greater project Massive Change, whose nucleus is either the website or the unsurprisingly excellent book (which should be required reading). Other notable 'Project Outcomes' include a radio show and an educational curriculum. Massive Change seeks to broaden our thinking. What do these objects reveal about our abilities to shape our world? Yes, it is too optimistic, too complex, too ambitious, but the opening quote suggests that technology can encourage a new way of seeing our world. Can it also encourage the behavioral changes that such design innovations require to be truly successful? Bruce Mau and the Institute without Boundaries are betting on it.
Massive Change
7. UPCOMING
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I can't print them now since they have yet to be published, but next month find excerpts from my review of Martha Rosler's show "Garage Sale" at ICA London for C magazine and Geoffrey Farmer/Joelle Tuerlinckx at Toronto's Power Plant for Art Papers.
I'll be at Jessica Bradley's room at the Toronto Alternative Art Fair International (TAAFI) at the Gladstone Hotel November 3 - 7. Please drop by if you're in town!
I'm foregoing Frieze this year for New York. Expect a report on NYC in the next month or so..
8. ARTISTS TO GOOGLE et cetera
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Stuart Croft (London)
Ella Gibbs (London)
Robert Morin (Montreal)
Ronny Heiremans & Katleen Vermeir (Belgium)
A View on Art
A point of view
August 2005
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-- 1. LOVED
-- 2. LOATHED
-- 3. LOVED AND LOATHED
-- 4. RECENTLY NOTICED...
-- 5. MATTHEW BARNEY - Cremaster Cycle text
-- 6. BRUCE MAU - Massive Change unpublished
-- 7. UPCOMING
-- 8. ARTISTS TO GOOGLE et cetera
-- PLEASE FORWARD THIS NEWSLETTER
Hello,
Welcome to the THIRD edition!
I hope you're enjoying these so far. I've had some good feedback and love hearing your thoughts! I should preface this issue by explaining my current predicament. I'm in need of a sponsor. Wait, please keep reading! It's only $15/month to keep this newsletter functioning. If one of you fabulous patrons-of-the-arts sponsored it, it would give me loads of incentive to keep it going. And I could increase my mailing list from 50 to 500!
Already this letter goes to curators, artists, dealers, editors and collectors in London, New York, California, Washington, Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Winnipeg and Vancouver.
So there you go. Either I need one person to cover $15/ month, or I suppose three people at $5/month. That's not much to ask, is it?
carsonandrea@hotmail.com if you want to help me out. Thanks and enjoy!
With very best wishes,
Andrea
1. LOVED
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1. Matthew Barney: Drawing Restraint 9 Toronto International Film Festival
Not as good as the Cremaster Cycle, due to the slow start. Barney is best when working on a set and somehow the sweeping landscapes seemed a bit mainstream. Unfortunately I missed the artist's talk, but here is my take on the film.
Barney's films are hard work for the viewer. One feels compelled to try to dissect them as one is watching. I often find myself thinking, 'What does this mean? What does that represent?' Overall, I felt that the film dealt sweetly with his relationship with Bijork. The two of them were depicted as king and queen, respectful of one another. They engaged in a very deliberate, intimate embrace while cutting away the flesh of their lower bodies under water, in a sinking Japanese whaling vessel. The cutting away for me suggested their ability to communicate on a spiritual level. Also there appeared to be a spinal cord as a main image, representing the nerve centre. Other themes were the ritualistic wrapping (of paper, of the body in elaborate costume) and history of whaling in Japan. Whale blubber/vaseline was consistently shaped into Barney's by- now-familiar football field insignia. Two whaling ships followed each other like the whales themselves, echoing a beautiful courtship, and both Barney and Bijork had blow- holes at the top of their spines. I didn't think the dialogue added anything that could not have been communicated through gesture.
Please see ARTICLE 5 (below) for a little something that I wrote, a few years ago, on Barney's work.
2. Ulysses Castellanos at the Drake Hotel. We saw a performance on the front steps, on a Tuesday night at 10, featuring an artful display of stuffed animals and a semi- naked Castellanos hack his way out of a cardboard monolith with a kitchen knife to sing a lovely rendition of '(Don't Go) Wastin' My Time'..
3. The InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Centre in Toronto. The inaugural show in their new location showed work by four of Canada's best new media artists: Vera Frenkel, David Rokeby, Norman White and Nell Tenhaaf.
The new director, Dana Samuel is great (and an artist herself). Check out the website for more info:
Interaccess Electronic Media Arts Centre
4. Jed Lind at Jessica Bradley Art + Projects. Lind, a recent grad from Cal Arts, makes work of stunning quality and I liked it immediately. I'd have to know a bit more about it to make a final decision, but initial signs are really good. It reminded me a bit of some of Thomas Schutte's work, kind of folkloric. In any case, Jessica Bradley has got an impeccable eye and is bringing a new style of programming to the city.
Jessica Bradley Art + Projects
2. LOATHED
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1. The current show at artist-run center Mercer Union in Toronto. From the press release I was expecting good things, but there were only a few dated-looking pictures by Ron Terada (visual puns of street signs) and a video by Xu Zhen, which might have been interesting had it had any kind of hook to keep me watching.
2. The photographs of a guy with a cigarette-burn necklace at Diaz Contemporary in Toronto. Not my cup of tea. Nor were the foil candy wrappers by Kristian Horton, although I kind of liked the photographs by Horton on the gallery's website.
The space is very nice, the show is colourful, and the stable - Mexican and Canadian is unique..I got a vague Felix Gonzalez-Torres feeling at the opening.
Diaz Contemporary
3. LOVED AND LOATHED
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I heard Sarah Milroy (arts writer for Canada's national paper, the Globe and Mail) speak at Olga Korper Gallery, on Robert Mapplethorpe's work for the Canadian Art Gallery Hop on Saturday Sept 17.
Sarah's talk expressed her frustration with Mapplethorpe's work, a theme which was likely appropriate for the audience at the gallery that day. But Mapplethorpe is such a complex artist! His work relies on the fact that it pushes buttons. Here is my take: Mapplethorpe was undoubtedly a man of extremes, given his proclivity for hard-core sex. He took a manner of working (extreme classicism, extreme formalism) and extreme subject matter (S & M sex) and brought them together.
The question is less about whether one finds such imagery distasteful, and more about how successfully Mapplethorpe was able to challenge bourgeois attitudes. Faultless in composition and lighting, in the tradition of Weston et al, his work remains supremely effective at getting people to question socially constructed mores. Especially since, as Sarah mentioned, homosexual scenes are depicted on Greco Roman artifacts (on view at the Met.)
While I appreciate Korper's decision not to show the hard core work, it must be remembered that the brilliance of Mapplethorpe's work lies in the fact that he chose to photograph sex, not lilies.
Olga Korper Gallery
4. RECENTLY NOTICED...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-The Wayward Cloud - a Chinese film I saw at the TIFF. It was basically a sex-filled story about a porn star with these incredible, kitsch song-and-dance sequences scattered throughout. Oh, and the film's theme was watermelons. They are used in sex, eaten, juiced, carried around. Watermelon-pattered umbrellas are used to stunning effect in one dance sequence. Director Tsai Ming-Liang said that he wanted the dance numbers to remind the audience that they weren't actually watching a porn film. And there is a shocking - shocking! - final sequence..
-Jeremy Shaw (aka March 21), a Vancouver new media artist and dj/producer. Check out this website and download his tunes, in collaboration with SWAYZAK. 'In the Car Crash' is great.
Swayzak
5. MATTHEW BARNEY - Cremaster Cycle text
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Here's a portion of a text that I wrote a few years ago after having seen the entire Cremaster Cycle:
In the recently completed Cremaster Cycle, the astonishing body of work by controversial American artist Matthew Barney, film is used to its most dramatic potential as a vehicle for conceptual art. Critics and audiences stand divided, but Michael Kimmelman of the New York Times has described him as 'the most crucial artist of his generation.'1 Barney fearlessly explores idea after idea, using grandiose sets, costumes and otherworldly prosthetic makeup to create a baroque extravaganza that has been described as 'audacious and brilliant..potent in (its) symbolism and private mythology'.2 A creature incubates under a table in a Goodyear blimp suspended over an empty football stadium, notorious murderer Gary Gilmore rides a bronco at a rodeo, a goatman tapdances through the floor and into a Vaseline lined birth canal, former Bond girl Ursula Andress sings a Hungarian opera, and Richard Serra surveys it all from his post at the top of New York's Chrysler building. The cycle of five films is designed to be looked at as a kind of pyramid, Cremaster 3 overseeing Cremasters 1 and 2 on one side and 4 and 5 on the other.3 Each film encapsulates a main theme, inside of which the artist stars as the protagonist, playing out a visual feast of conceptual ideas, strung together by a loose narrative. According to Roger D. Hodge in Harper's Magazine: 'Each film enacts dramas of resistance and overcoming, attachment and separation, confinement and metamorphosis'.4 The films all center on the idea of self- exploration as related to cultural evolution, examining the development of mythologies in our society alongside Barney's personal investigation of his own sexuality, while his persistent use of such favorite masculine elements as American football, cowboys, motorbikes and the like fall into place.
Not only is he the pre-eminent artist of his generation working with film as 'high art', but in accordance with Berger's idea that 'every image embodies a way of seeing'5 Matthew Barney has changed the way in which we view film, appropriating the camera for his own needs, by carefully controlling the conditions in which he documents his highly stylized world. Barney is insisting that the viewer concentrate and accept his work in a conceptual manner at the same time as he is inviting the audience to question their automatic reception of the work by showing 'high' art in the 'low' realm of the local cinema.
In his essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Walter Benjamin notes that the painter, prior to the invention of photography, had been able to paint only what his eye could see, his unique personal vision. That changed with the invention of the camera, whose impartial lens awarded each element of a scene equal significance.6 According to Barney, the characters in the films are part of an elaborate sculptural system wherein each scene is composed. He doesn't look at a monitor or purposefully 'direct' his actors, because, he says, 'the genesis of these projects is in the object. My concerns have to do with developing an 'object narrative', so (viewing) the monitor for me is about framing the objects rather than directing characters.'7 The 'action' in the film results from the juxtaposition of the many scenes; each scene generally comprises a single idea, the characters move very little, often repeating the same action over and over. For example in Cremaster 3, one scene shows five Chrysler Imperials demolishing a Chrysler New Yorker in the lobby of the Chrysler building. Barney returns to that scene as the viewer watches the car being slowly destroyed. In another scene, a beautiful woman sits alone, carefully slicing potatoes with a blade attached to the bottom of her shoe. Again Barney returns to the scene several times. The audience's attention is drawn away from the progression of the narrative and toward the concept inherent in each scene, which is strictly controlled by the artist. Throughout the cycle, there are no characters other than those central to the story, no props intended to simulate the appearance of the real world. Football stadiums, racetracks, petrol stations, the Chrysler Building are all hauntingly empty save for the essential characters.
Barney has ruthlessly abused the dictatorial stance of the camera in the construction of his artworks. The viewer's reception of the Cremaster cycle is tactically manipulated through the often excruciatingly slow pace of the films, each scene weighty with complex multi-dimensional meaning. In the three-hour-long Cremaster 3, for example, there is no sign of the approaching end of the film, as the pace consistently slows. As each scene unfolds, the viewer is left struggling to find the ever-elusive point. At a certain stage, one ceases to follow the narrative, or even to attempt an interpretation. The viewer is confronted with a deep dissatisfaction in his inability to 'get' the film, yet frustrated at his unwillingness to leave, lest it all make sense at the end. Barney's domination of the camera means that we are straight jacketed into the artist's world, forced into conceptual thinking; for those unable or unwilling to take this on, the Cremaster cycle remains a work of utterly mystifying beauty.
6. BRUCE MAU - Massive Change unpublished
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Here's an excerpt from a review I did of Massive Change, the exhibition that was recently at the AGO and is currently at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago Sept 16 - 31 December. There are plans for a world tour of the show over the next few years, so I thought I'd include my thoughts. Anyway, the piece was never published, for reasons beyond my control..
Massive Change - what does that title actually deliver? Massive Hype? Massive Boredom? There has been much conjecture and debate surrounding the exhibition since it opened at the Vancouver Art Gallery in October 2004, for Massive Change is not an art exhibit befitting a gallery, but rather an ambitious design show aiming to illustrate the potential of forward-thinking design solutions. The show expresses Mau's fervent belief in the importance of design through eleven so-called 'Design Economies'. His hope is that people “walk away with the realization that their world is being designed around them, that design shapes their reality, and that they can play a role in how it is shaped.” This is no mere Massive Change, but rather MASSIVE CHANGE. Mau isn't into subtlety.
Toronto-based Bruce Mau is well known as a graphic designer - anyone with an interest in radical avant-garde book design will be familiar with his two doorstopper-size manifestos, S,M,L,XL (a collaboration with Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas) and his studio's monograph LifeStyle. Through his high profile work with architects Frank Ghery and Koolhaas, his name has become virtually synonymous with bold, oversized text. So why did he make the leap from designer of font to designer of an explosive, controversial art gallery exhibition?
As Mau explains it, he was perplexed at the negative attitude surrounding design and technological advancement among the general public. He himself was aware of many unprecedented global innovations, yet he didn't see this awareness reflected in the public realm. So when the Vancouver Art Gallery approached him with an offer to commission a show, he began to articulate his ideas. At around the same time, he was approached by George Brown Toronto City College with an idea for a one-year, post-grad educational joint project with his studio, resulting in the Institute without Boundaries, a program wherein students from a broad range of backgrounds spend one year at Bruce Mau Design collaborating on various projects, the first of which is this traveling exhibition.
The scale and ambition of the show demands an intensive collaborative effort, reflected in the dense visual effects and over-design that is obviously the product of much dogged brainstorming. Be forewarned: the show is challenging, overwhelming, stimulating to the senses, educational and loaded with information. Difficult to absorb in its entirety, it suffers from too many facts, statistics, quips and data. Ideally, you would have a browse through the website (www.massivechange.com) or the comprehensive exhibition book beforehand, but in any case it will help to remember the following: it exists to show you how design unites technology with the consumer. Each object should thus be viewed as a kind of marriage between technology and design. Upon seeing Daimler Chrysler's POEMAtec car seat, for instance, made entirely of coconut fibers and natural rubber, you need to remember the exhibition's unstated mantra, that design is what allows this technology to be visible to consumers, which ultimately improves the health of the planet and of our lives. The same goes for the entire show. The exhibition is both a really neat science exhibit and an overly didactic text-driven manifesto wrongly placed in an 'art' gallery. It aims to make you feel happy that design is creating great hope in the world, which is fair, but it does this without assessing the larger picture - that behavioral changes are necessary for innovative technologies to really succeed. Warp speed kicks in immediately upon entering the exhibition. Everything seems larger, louder, faster, more modern and all encompassing than normal, giving it the feel of Tokyo's Shinjuku station at rush hour. The catchphrase 'Now that we can do anything, what will we do?' begins the experience, which is then is divided into a number of 'Economies', obscurely explained as the events, ideas and people investigating various design dilemmas.
The website www.massivechange.com is a more successful way of digesting the often fascinating information. The site offers two options: Learn and Act. You can 'Learn' about the exhibition under four subheadings, and then under the second option, 'Act', Mau has provided an online forum, intended to encourage the progression from 'communication to action.' You can connect with people around the world or down the street to discuss critical issues and exchange ideas. Finally, there are tools for learning and case studies, through the Institute without Boundaries, where likeminded organizations can be contacted.
Sadly, the exhibition lacks finesse. It should be thought of as an adjunct to the greater project Massive Change, whose nucleus is either the website or the unsurprisingly excellent book (which should be required reading). Other notable 'Project Outcomes' include a radio show and an educational curriculum. Massive Change seeks to broaden our thinking. What do these objects reveal about our abilities to shape our world? Yes, it is too optimistic, too complex, too ambitious, but the opening quote suggests that technology can encourage a new way of seeing our world. Can it also encourage the behavioral changes that such design innovations require to be truly successful? Bruce Mau and the Institute without Boundaries are betting on it.
Massive Change
7. UPCOMING
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I can't print them now since they have yet to be published, but next month find excerpts from my review of Martha Rosler's show "Garage Sale" at ICA London for C magazine and Geoffrey Farmer/Joelle Tuerlinckx at Toronto's Power Plant for Art Papers.
I'll be at Jessica Bradley's room at the Toronto Alternative Art Fair International (TAAFI) at the Gladstone Hotel November 3 - 7. Please drop by if you're in town!
I'm foregoing Frieze this year for New York. Expect a report on NYC in the next month or so..
8. ARTISTS TO GOOGLE et cetera
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Stuart Croft (London)
Ella Gibbs (London)
Robert Morin (Montreal)
Ronny Heiremans & Katleen Vermeir (Belgium)
VoCA September 2005
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A View on Art
A point of view
September 2005
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-- 1. LOVED
-- 2. LOATHED
-- 3. LOVED AND LOATHED...
-- 4. RECENTLY NOTICED...
-- 5. COMPARE AND CONTRAST:
-- 6. CONNECTIONS...
-- 7. MY BIO
-- 8. ET CETERA
-- 9. ARTISTS TO GOOGLE
-- 10. PLEASE FORWARD THIS NEWSLETTER
Hello,
Welcome to the second edition!
For those of you new to my mailing list, this newsletter is intended as a light, informative peek into the best and most interesting work, trends and people that I come across in Canada and in my travels abroad. September is a busy time, so this issue is short and sweet.
Hopefully it will also become a catalyst for debate and opinion. Enjoy!
With very best wishes,
Andrea
1. LOVED
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-The Robert Mapplethorpe summer exhibition at the Guggenheim New York. The show compared his work to a series of classical mannerist prints from the State Hermitage, and it was inspired curating.
His awareness of light and shadow is breathtaking, as is his ability to convey a range of emotion in a single image - a wilting calla lily suggests hope, pathos, humility..
Guggenheim
-The Neue Galerie. For anyone who hasn't been - you must go! It's the perfect place for lunch when you're on Museum Mile.
-The recently released DVD of Vera Frenkel's work. The brilliant From the Transit Bar, (1992), a video installation originally screened at Documenta IX is a complex study of many forms of alienation - and in a way, our universal alienation from one another.
On the DVD the artist states:“I have always been more interested in translation than in languages themselves” and her early video work (The Secret Life of Cornelia Lumsden, 1979 and This Is Your Messiah Speaking, 1991) anticipated much of today's preoccupation with truth and fiction, historical fact and fantasy. Frenkel notes: “The truth can be useful or not: but never true”
Vtape
2. LOATHED
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When is a bookmark not a bookmark? When a curator describes it thus:
'The bookmark serves as a navigational checkpoint--a recognizable feature that orients the reader in an otherwise nondescript textual landscape. Like an outpost in a vast terrain, the bookmark demarcates the known and the yet unknown regions of a text, and serves as a roving beacon that remains always at the reader's furthest foothold, and on the verge of discovery.'
The Bookmark Project 2005 November 6 to 13, Organized by the Koffler Gallery, Toronto
Koffler Gallery
Anna Torma: Draw Me a Garden
Very pretty, whimsical stream-of-conciousness embroideries...great art? I'm not convinced. Decide for yourself:
Spin Gallery
3. LOVED AND LOATHED...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Queen West Art Scum Garage Salem at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (MoCCA)
Organized by Istvan Kantor
The show, fueled by Kantor's distain for the institutionalization of art, was a motley group of work brought together market-style: the good, the bad and the ugly. A great idea! Kantor's work stood out - naturally - as his work was properly contextualized. The others, unfortunately fared less well..
MoCCA
4. RECENTLY NOTICED...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Performa 05 First Biennale of New Visual Art Performance New York City November 2005
The programme will include a musical-theatre film by Laurie Simmonds at Salon 94 as well as a series of performance re- enactments by Marina Abramovich of works originally performed by Joseph Beuys, Vito Acconci, VALIE EXPORT, Bruce Nauman and Gina Pane. At the Guggenheim, Nov 9 - 15.
Anyone going to London?
Check out Francis Alys: Seven Walks, an Artangel project at 21 Portman Square, W1 and the National Portrait Gallery, WC2. From 28 September - 20 November
This is the artist who moved a sand dune (assisted by a thousand people) in Lima..
CHECK OUT THIS AMAZING GALLERY!! This East London gallery, recently opened by a curator - Man Somerlinck - who I rate very highly. It's worth a look, and DEFINITELY a visit when you're in London:
Fordham Gallery
Ivan Otis
It's not everyday that you see art equally repulsive and fascinating. Ivan Otis's photographs are, though.
A former fashion photographer, he creates remarkable, compelling, wonderful, horribly crude and kitch photographs that recall both Nobuyoshi Araki and Esquire magazine's Varga girl of the 1940's. These highly detailed images are of exceptional quality, somehow reminiscent of the paintings of Glenn Brown.
5. COMPARE AND CONTRAST:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Photography by Ed Burtynsky
Ed Burtynsky images
And photography by Chris Jordan
(Thanks Arabella!)
Chris Jordan images
6. CONNECTIONS...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The multi-faceted, reciprocal connection among players in the art world must never be forgotten or dismissed; rather, it must be taken advantage of. Artists need dealers - who need collectors - who are important to museum curators - who are important to artists..and so on
Sometimes I wonder if we overlook these connections in Toronto.
The best art rises to the top as writers, curators, dealers and collectors engage with it and seek to understand it within a particular context. When they work in relationship to one another, the system provides a thriving art community.
Artists:
Focus energy. Translate the emotional into the visual. Provide an alternate way of reading the world. Reflect societal ideologies. Anticipate ideas.
Dealers:
Understand the artwork. Support artists. Make the artwork available to the public. Create a dialogue of understanding with collectors. Foster/encourage support for the contemporary arts.
Collectors:
Are instrumental in supporting artists and galleries. Raise awareness for contemporary art. Provide long-term care for artworks. Support the canon through museum endowment. Are instrumental to the secondary market..
Museum curators:
Have a highly developed sense of the language of visual art. Have an awareness of historical precedent. Help to establish a canon. Contextualize artworks. Provide a stamp of approval by giving shows, acquiring works.
7. MY BIO
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I have some spare room this month, so here's my bio:
Andrea Carson writes on contemporary art, architecture and design. She returned to her hometown of Toronto in 2004 after having spent six years in London, U.K where she managed several art galleries and received her Masters degree in Art Criticism from City University. She is interested in promoting Canadian art internationally, and has curated a number of projects, including Revealed: New Canadian Video, a screening at Canada House, Trafalgar Square, London in 2003.
Her broad range of interests include video and conceptual installation artwork, product design, architecture and cultural administration. Her writing has appeared in exhibition catalogues and on Artnet.com, in Contemporary, Border Crossings, C magazine, Canadian Art, CONTACT magazine, Fuse, Vertigo, Videopool and Azure among other publications.
8. ET CETERA
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
No articles this month, I'm afraid. I'm busy writing behind the scenes. Look out for reviews in Art Papers (Power Plant) Border Crossings (Iron Men) and C magazine (Martha Rosler) among other things in the next month or so.
Artists/Institutions/Organizations: I'll write your grant applications for you! Contact me for a quote: carsonandrea@hotmail.com
Check out my critic's picks of the best art shows, parties, screenings and performances to see across Canada, launching very soon on Martiniboys.com
Martiniboys
9. ARTISTS TO GOOGLE
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Daniel Cockburn - VIDEO (Toronto)
Jennifer Marman/Daniel Borins - INSTALLATION (Toronto)
Lisa Klapstock - PHOTOGRAPHY (Toronto)
Louise Liliefeldt - PERFORMANCE (Toronto)
A View on Art
A point of view
September 2005
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-- 1. LOVED
-- 2. LOATHED
-- 3. LOVED AND LOATHED...
-- 4. RECENTLY NOTICED...
-- 5. COMPARE AND CONTRAST:
-- 6. CONNECTIONS...
-- 7. MY BIO
-- 8. ET CETERA
-- 9. ARTISTS TO GOOGLE
-- 10. PLEASE FORWARD THIS NEWSLETTER
Hello,
Welcome to the second edition!
For those of you new to my mailing list, this newsletter is intended as a light, informative peek into the best and most interesting work, trends and people that I come across in Canada and in my travels abroad. September is a busy time, so this issue is short and sweet.
Hopefully it will also become a catalyst for debate and opinion. Enjoy!
With very best wishes,
Andrea
1. LOVED
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-The Robert Mapplethorpe summer exhibition at the Guggenheim New York. The show compared his work to a series of classical mannerist prints from the State Hermitage, and it was inspired curating.
His awareness of light and shadow is breathtaking, as is his ability to convey a range of emotion in a single image - a wilting calla lily suggests hope, pathos, humility..
Guggenheim
-The Neue Galerie. For anyone who hasn't been - you must go! It's the perfect place for lunch when you're on Museum Mile.
-The recently released DVD of Vera Frenkel's work. The brilliant From the Transit Bar, (1992), a video installation originally screened at Documenta IX is a complex study of many forms of alienation - and in a way, our universal alienation from one another.
On the DVD the artist states:“I have always been more interested in translation than in languages themselves” and her early video work (The Secret Life of Cornelia Lumsden, 1979 and This Is Your Messiah Speaking, 1991) anticipated much of today's preoccupation with truth and fiction, historical fact and fantasy. Frenkel notes: “The truth can be useful or not: but never true”
Vtape
2. LOATHED
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When is a bookmark not a bookmark? When a curator describes it thus:
'The bookmark serves as a navigational checkpoint--a recognizable feature that orients the reader in an otherwise nondescript textual landscape. Like an outpost in a vast terrain, the bookmark demarcates the known and the yet unknown regions of a text, and serves as a roving beacon that remains always at the reader's furthest foothold, and on the verge of discovery.'
The Bookmark Project 2005 November 6 to 13, Organized by the Koffler Gallery, Toronto
Koffler Gallery
Anna Torma: Draw Me a Garden
Very pretty, whimsical stream-of-conciousness embroideries...great art? I'm not convinced. Decide for yourself:
Spin Gallery
3. LOVED AND LOATHED...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Queen West Art Scum Garage Salem at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (MoCCA)
Organized by Istvan Kantor
The show, fueled by Kantor's distain for the institutionalization of art, was a motley group of work brought together market-style: the good, the bad and the ugly. A great idea! Kantor's work stood out - naturally - as his work was properly contextualized. The others, unfortunately fared less well..
MoCCA
4. RECENTLY NOTICED...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Performa 05 First Biennale of New Visual Art Performance New York City November 2005
The programme will include a musical-theatre film by Laurie Simmonds at Salon 94 as well as a series of performance re- enactments by Marina Abramovich of works originally performed by Joseph Beuys, Vito Acconci, VALIE EXPORT, Bruce Nauman and Gina Pane. At the Guggenheim, Nov 9 - 15.
Anyone going to London?
Check out Francis Alys: Seven Walks, an Artangel project at 21 Portman Square, W1 and the National Portrait Gallery, WC2. From 28 September - 20 November
This is the artist who moved a sand dune (assisted by a thousand people) in Lima..
CHECK OUT THIS AMAZING GALLERY!! This East London gallery, recently opened by a curator - Man Somerlinck - who I rate very highly. It's worth a look, and DEFINITELY a visit when you're in London:
Fordham Gallery
Ivan Otis
It's not everyday that you see art equally repulsive and fascinating. Ivan Otis's photographs are, though.
A former fashion photographer, he creates remarkable, compelling, wonderful, horribly crude and kitch photographs that recall both Nobuyoshi Araki and Esquire magazine's Varga girl of the 1940's. These highly detailed images are of exceptional quality, somehow reminiscent of the paintings of Glenn Brown.
5. COMPARE AND CONTRAST:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Photography by Ed Burtynsky
Ed Burtynsky images
And photography by Chris Jordan
(Thanks Arabella!)
Chris Jordan images
6. CONNECTIONS...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The multi-faceted, reciprocal connection among players in the art world must never be forgotten or dismissed; rather, it must be taken advantage of. Artists need dealers - who need collectors - who are important to museum curators - who are important to artists..and so on
Sometimes I wonder if we overlook these connections in Toronto.
The best art rises to the top as writers, curators, dealers and collectors engage with it and seek to understand it within a particular context. When they work in relationship to one another, the system provides a thriving art community.
Artists:
Focus energy. Translate the emotional into the visual. Provide an alternate way of reading the world. Reflect societal ideologies. Anticipate ideas.
Dealers:
Understand the artwork. Support artists. Make the artwork available to the public. Create a dialogue of understanding with collectors. Foster/encourage support for the contemporary arts.
Collectors:
Are instrumental in supporting artists and galleries. Raise awareness for contemporary art. Provide long-term care for artworks. Support the canon through museum endowment. Are instrumental to the secondary market..
Museum curators:
Have a highly developed sense of the language of visual art. Have an awareness of historical precedent. Help to establish a canon. Contextualize artworks. Provide a stamp of approval by giving shows, acquiring works.
7. MY BIO
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I have some spare room this month, so here's my bio:
Andrea Carson writes on contemporary art, architecture and design. She returned to her hometown of Toronto in 2004 after having spent six years in London, U.K where she managed several art galleries and received her Masters degree in Art Criticism from City University. She is interested in promoting Canadian art internationally, and has curated a number of projects, including Revealed: New Canadian Video, a screening at Canada House, Trafalgar Square, London in 2003.
Her broad range of interests include video and conceptual installation artwork, product design, architecture and cultural administration. Her writing has appeared in exhibition catalogues and on Artnet.com, in Contemporary, Border Crossings, C magazine, Canadian Art, CONTACT magazine, Fuse, Vertigo, Videopool and Azure among other publications.
8. ET CETERA
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
No articles this month, I'm afraid. I'm busy writing behind the scenes. Look out for reviews in Art Papers (Power Plant) Border Crossings (Iron Men) and C magazine (Martha Rosler) among other things in the next month or so.
Artists/Institutions/Organizations: I'll write your grant applications for you! Contact me for a quote: carsonandrea@hotmail.com
Check out my critic's picks of the best art shows, parties, screenings and performances to see across Canada, launching very soon on Martiniboys.com
Martiniboys
9. ARTISTS TO GOOGLE
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Daniel Cockburn - VIDEO (Toronto)
Jennifer Marman/Daniel Borins - INSTALLATION (Toronto)
Lisa Klapstock - PHOTOGRAPHY (Toronto)
Louise Liliefeldt - PERFORMANCE (Toronto)
VoCA August 2005
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A View on Art
A point of view
August 2005
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-- 1. LOVED
-- 2. LOATHED
-- 3. RECENTLY NOTICED...
-- 4. KELLY MARK - excerpt from my review in the current issue of Fuse magazine
-- 5. DAVID ROKEBY - excerpt from my article in the current issue of Canadian Art
-- 6. GUNILLA JOSEPHSON - excerpt from catalogue text for 'Resistance' at the SAAG
-- 7. SOME RESPONSES
-- 8. ARTISTS TO GOOGLE et cetera
-- PLEASE FORWARD THIS NEWSLETTER
Hello,
Please consider this newsletter a peek into an obsession with art, architecture and design; some of the people, places and things that have caught my attention recently, both in Canada and abroad. Each newsletter will be short and to the point. It will provide names and links to the best artists that I come across, along with relevant books, magazines and articles and websites. It will introduce you to dynamic people making positive changes in the art world worth knowing about.
Future issues will include interviews with collectors, curators along with some ideas for improving cultural awareness in Canada
Hopefully it will also become a catalyst for debate and opinion.
I hope you enjoy reading it!
With very best wishes,
Andrea
1. LOVED
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-The JEFF WALL retrospective at the SHAULAGER in Basel - a portion only of which will be shown at TATE MOD from 21 Oct - Jan 8, 2006
-A huge, breathtaking quasi-religious painting by KATHARINA GROSSE in the upper hall of the first (main?) building at the Extreme Abstraction show at ALBRIGHT KNOX in Buffalo.
Albright Knox
-Cinematheque Ontario's programming. LES ENFANTS DU PARADIS (voted best French film of the century) is a Brechtian must-see!
-Works by MALCOM MORLEY 'At a First-Aid Center in Vietnam' (1971) and Martha Rosler's 'Bringing the War Home: In Vietnam' (DATE) in 'COVERING THE REAL' at Kunstmuseum Basel. Both are reminders of the positive and negative effects of physical and emotion al distance.
Kunstmuseum Basel
2. LOATHED
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-The TAMPON CHANDELIER by Joana Vasconcelas that opened the Arsenale at Venice - I'm not a fan of 'one-liner' artwork. Shouldn't art be more sophisticated? One good thing about the work was its size - enormous. Filling the room with such presence almost made up for the works' tiresome feminist rhetoric.
-A sculpture by (product designer) Karim Rashid at the Albright Knox show entitled...get ready...'Karim-sutra'
-The writer DOUGLAS COUPLAND as an artist? I'm not convinced but check for yourself at:
Monte Clark Gallery
3. RECENTLY NOTICED...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In the latest issue of AZURE, Wiel Arets, the architect of the dark, stunning new library at the University of Utrecht says: “In a time when individual separation is an issue, to be in a social place is important.' This recalls McLuhan and by extending the logic further I think we can expect communal buildings, public spaces, PERFORMANCE ART and interactive events as becoming increasingly important.
FOX(Y) HOTEL Art, architecture, design, advertising... Copenhagen's new Fox Hotel is a brand-free (artistic) ADVERTISING ENVIRONMENT subtly masterminded by Volkswagen for the launch of the new Volkswagen Fox.
Read more...
4. KELLY MARK - excerpt from my review in the current issue of Fuse magazine
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Glow House was a temporary installation by Toronto-based artist Kelly Mark. The piece was curated by Ried Shier of the Power Plant as part of this year's Off Screen program at the IMAGES FESTIVAL, a program of curated new media installations throughout Toronto that has been a part of Images since 1995.
Fifty television sets had been tuned to the same channel and installed around the front rooms of a house on Palmerston Blvd, transforming it into a living sculpture. This year, Glow House was the only 'public' art installation to be part of the festival. Mark likes the idea of an artwork as a subtle intervention, so Glow House had only a small notice on the door, informing people of its status as an artwork meant to be viewed from the exterior.
The idea for Glow House evolved from an earlier piece called Prime Time (1999), a video of intermittently changing channels, played on a television set within a living room-style installation. From working with television, Mark became interested in trying to capture and isolate its glow. Throughout her practice, Mark deals with the peripheries, the empty space surrounding an object.She is adamant about her own working class background, and is thus eager to avoid over-intellectualizing her work, intentionally relinquishing control to exterior circumstances, freeing up the audience's reactions; with Glow House she opted for City TV, a channel particularly 'of the people,' but not one that guaranteed constant visual drama, as Much Music might have.
The work, which had shown twice before, for one night in Winnipeg in 2001 and for just over a week at Birmingham's IKON GALLERY in 2003, elicited varying reactions. Winnipeg brought a small but dedicated group of art lovers, while the Birmingham installation, in a posh area of town, drew a large, enthusiastic response.At the 'opening' in Toronto, on April 7th after dark, as a crowd gathered on the sidewalk opposite, both curator and artist had to endure some viewer's reservations about the artwork. Palmerston Boulevard in Toronto is a street of old mansions that have been mostly divided into apartments; locals responded with bemusement. Mark recalls a passer-by wondering aloud “But they can't all be watching the same program?!”
From an aesthetic standpoint, Glow House seemed to encourage an instinctive response in the viewer. It tapped into the sublime in a way that can be compared to the feeling when one stands before the saturated paintings of ROTHKO or the grand simplicity of BARNETT NEWMAN. Like work by these painters, one could have sought to 'understand' Mark's work, but it was enough to simply experience its effect. It was 'just a bunch of televisions,' like Rothko is 'just a bunch of paint on a canvas', yet it was also truly odd and unexpected and gorgeous. An alternate reading might be one of loss; the house's unusual nocturnal lighting suggested that'real' life had been relinquished, showing up the unsettling solitude and potential danger of (sub)urban neighborhoods, represented in films like Poltergeist and Twin Peaks.
Arguably the most successful aspect of Glow House was its site-specificity. There is a significant need for contemporary artistic urban interventions in public spaces, for bringing art out of the cloistered environment of the museum into a realm where it can be more relevant to the viewer. Temporary public installations generate immediate and heartfelt reactions,they encourage debate and challenge the public.
Read the rest of the review in Fuse Magazine
5. DAVID ROKEBY - excerpt from my article in the current issue of Canadian Art
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
David Rokeby develops new software like a painter who invents new colours for his paintings.The comparison is apt because Rokeby's work, its disparate aptitudes and technological complexity notwithstanding, is at its core uncomplicated, his medium a vehicle for ideas. Rokeby's spare use of computer hardware gives his transcendent installations a sophisticated quality in which screens, monitors and surveillance cameras together create ambiguous environments in which viewers become participants, finding themselves integral to the functioning of the artwork, often with oddly disorienting results.
As with many other artists involved in new media, Rokeby has worked quietly beneath the radar of the commercial gallery system, yet he has screened works to great acclaim at national and international festivals, sustained by organizations such as the Banff Centre, FONDATION DANIEL LANGLOIS in Montreal and the Canada Council for the Arts.
The result has kept many of his most interesting works from the view of the general public. Despite a stellar career that has seen his participation in international exhibitions such as the 1986 VENICE BIENNALE, Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria (three times), the GWANJU BIENNALE (in 1996) and the 2002 Venice Architecture Biennale, wide public recognition has thus far eluded Rokeby; nonetheless, he is without a doubt one of Canada's most exceptional artists.
INTERFACE-the systems that communicate with one another to facilitate navigation through cyberspace-is the starting point for Rokeby's work.In his practice, the computer interface is likened to a road map and the artist is a kind of technological urban planner. He investigates the systems that create our cyber-experience, sharing with many other current artists an interest in how systems, economic, social, linguistic or otherwise, have shaped our experience of the world. Rokeby is acutely aware of the power of interface; indeed, a concern for society's ignorance of the hidden systems that ultimately shape contemporary ideologies is central to his practice. Marshall MCLUHAN predicted such trouble long ago and, as Rokeby says, “The phrase 'the medium is the message' became a tired cliché long before our media became flexible and intelligent enough to live up to its epithet.”
Read the rest of the article in Canadian Art
6. GUNILLA JOSEPHSON - excerpt from catalogue text for 'Resistance' at the SAAG
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Words are often used carelessly, with little regard to their precise meaning or indeed to the great difference in meaning of apparently similar words. The terms resistance and rebellion seem at first to both stem from a similar reluctant, opposing stance, yet the former suggests an emotional abandon and the latter a stubborn, solid control. Rebellion recalls the chaos of unorganized political uprisings, while resistance brings to mind a studied plan of action, alluding also to the French Resistance of World War II. Finally, rebellion is the female quality, resistance the male.
THE BLOOD-RED HEART OF JOHANNA DARKE is a tale of resistance and rebellion, illustrated by a puzzling narrative that weaves in and out of reality, history and mythology. Rebellion, moreover, is a personal theme that has occupied a large part of Gunilla Josephson's video practice since her first work in that medium in 1998.
The effect of time's healing and distancing nature has rendered much 1960's and 70's feminist video art - with its overt opposition to patriarchal authority - rather bemusing to today's viewer. Nonetheless, centuries spent “as LOOKING- GLASSES - reflecting the figure of man” have displaced woman's sense of self, propelling much of today's feminist inquiry toward a more individual investigation of female identity. Josephson's work sits comfortably within this tradition, alongside the work of Cindy Sherman, LOUISE BOURGEOIS and others, in her remarkably forthright experimentation with character, technique and a number of personal themes. Further, the prevailing intimacy of her work and use of her own body and immediate surroundings functions within the tradition set by early video art pioneers Vito Acconci, Lisa Steele and others. The grotesque, duality and issues of control and identity combine in a rebellion against limitations, an exploration of self, and a need to be accepted on her own terms.
An additional layer of GROTESQUE behavior is explored with Josephson's alter-ego, a character named Hedda, who features in a work made up of a series of eight videos (2001). Hedda, whose name suggests either a play on the Scandinavian mythological Edda, or Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, becomes, in Josephson's hands, a 'mad' woman. The home video style technique that the artist refers to as 'guerilla film- making' keeps the viewer aware of the structure of the work, and of the artist's presence.
Josephson has created a distillation of womanhood in Hedda, a character both guided by and at the mercy of her emotions. She uses emotion with naïve abandon, 'as if riding a horse, a locomotive or an ocean wave.' Most of the Hedda videos are set in a house in Normandy, France, on or around an elegant, well-mannered suite of traditional Swedish furniture, in particular a settee. The furniture carries with it the weight of personal memory for the artist, who uses it as a foil for her character's actions. The green rococo-style furniture functions as a memory-space of endless waiting, anticipation and nervousness, a stage for ritual, for the subversion of domesticity. In Meat Madonna, Hedda grapples with the heavy rubber looking covering of the settee. She dances, grappling with the skin as if flaying an animal, struggling with its innate “residue of conflict and oppression.” According to the artist, the work concerns 'the human condition - the body: our prison, and our triumph.' As the character manipulates the skin, attempting and failing to override its dominating presence, the character's movements are edited into an absurdly choreographed dance. The artist thus works effectively inside (as character) and outside (as editor) of the video itself, resisting the conventions of video-making and again asserting control.
Find the catalogue at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery
7. SOME RESPONSES
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“It was really a smart bit of writing. Happy to see the work set historically and not just physically described (which is what most reviews consist of.) Thanks” -Kelly Mark
“Thanks! In fact there were a couple of really insightful moments that had me thinking for a while... a rare pleasure!" -David Rokeby
“Andrea, this is an extraordinary essay!!! I am delighted, shocked, impressed, happy, all at the same time... Thank you for clarifying my work, even to myself” -Gunilla Josephson
8. ARTISTS TO GOOGLE et cetera
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
ARTISTS TO GOOGLE: Dirk Fleischmann (Frankfurt), Mauro Saccardo (Venice), Hannah Rickards (London)
SOMETHING FREE: Keep an eye out for my monthly column in YYZ Lifestyle - a FREE Toronto paper
YYZ Lifestyle
A View on Art
A point of view
August 2005
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-- 1. LOVED
-- 2. LOATHED
-- 3. RECENTLY NOTICED...
-- 4. KELLY MARK - excerpt from my review in the current issue of Fuse magazine
-- 5. DAVID ROKEBY - excerpt from my article in the current issue of Canadian Art
-- 6. GUNILLA JOSEPHSON - excerpt from catalogue text for 'Resistance' at the SAAG
-- 7. SOME RESPONSES
-- 8. ARTISTS TO GOOGLE et cetera
-- PLEASE FORWARD THIS NEWSLETTER
Hello,
Please consider this newsletter a peek into an obsession with art, architecture and design; some of the people, places and things that have caught my attention recently, both in Canada and abroad. Each newsletter will be short and to the point. It will provide names and links to the best artists that I come across, along with relevant books, magazines and articles and websites. It will introduce you to dynamic people making positive changes in the art world worth knowing about.
Future issues will include interviews with collectors, curators along with some ideas for improving cultural awareness in Canada
Hopefully it will also become a catalyst for debate and opinion.
I hope you enjoy reading it!
With very best wishes,
Andrea
1. LOVED
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-The JEFF WALL retrospective at the SHAULAGER in Basel - a portion only of which will be shown at TATE MOD from 21 Oct - Jan 8, 2006
-A huge, breathtaking quasi-religious painting by KATHARINA GROSSE in the upper hall of the first (main?) building at the Extreme Abstraction show at ALBRIGHT KNOX in Buffalo.
Albright Knox
-Cinematheque Ontario's programming. LES ENFANTS DU PARADIS (voted best French film of the century) is a Brechtian must-see!
-Works by MALCOM MORLEY 'At a First-Aid Center in Vietnam' (1971) and Martha Rosler's 'Bringing the War Home: In Vietnam' (DATE) in 'COVERING THE REAL' at Kunstmuseum Basel. Both are reminders of the positive and negative effects of physical and emotion al distance.
Kunstmuseum Basel
2. LOATHED
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-The TAMPON CHANDELIER by Joana Vasconcelas that opened the Arsenale at Venice - I'm not a fan of 'one-liner' artwork. Shouldn't art be more sophisticated? One good thing about the work was its size - enormous. Filling the room with such presence almost made up for the works' tiresome feminist rhetoric.
-A sculpture by (product designer) Karim Rashid at the Albright Knox show entitled...get ready...'Karim-sutra'
-The writer DOUGLAS COUPLAND as an artist? I'm not convinced but check for yourself at:
Monte Clark Gallery
3. RECENTLY NOTICED...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In the latest issue of AZURE, Wiel Arets, the architect of the dark, stunning new library at the University of Utrecht says: “In a time when individual separation is an issue, to be in a social place is important.' This recalls McLuhan and by extending the logic further I think we can expect communal buildings, public spaces, PERFORMANCE ART and interactive events as becoming increasingly important.
FOX(Y) HOTEL Art, architecture, design, advertising... Copenhagen's new Fox Hotel is a brand-free (artistic) ADVERTISING ENVIRONMENT subtly masterminded by Volkswagen for the launch of the new Volkswagen Fox.
Read more...
4. KELLY MARK - excerpt from my review in the current issue of Fuse magazine
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Glow House was a temporary installation by Toronto-based artist Kelly Mark. The piece was curated by Ried Shier of the Power Plant as part of this year's Off Screen program at the IMAGES FESTIVAL, a program of curated new media installations throughout Toronto that has been a part of Images since 1995.
Fifty television sets had been tuned to the same channel and installed around the front rooms of a house on Palmerston Blvd, transforming it into a living sculpture. This year, Glow House was the only 'public' art installation to be part of the festival. Mark likes the idea of an artwork as a subtle intervention, so Glow House had only a small notice on the door, informing people of its status as an artwork meant to be viewed from the exterior.
The idea for Glow House evolved from an earlier piece called Prime Time (1999), a video of intermittently changing channels, played on a television set within a living room-style installation. From working with television, Mark became interested in trying to capture and isolate its glow. Throughout her practice, Mark deals with the peripheries, the empty space surrounding an object.She is adamant about her own working class background, and is thus eager to avoid over-intellectualizing her work, intentionally relinquishing control to exterior circumstances, freeing up the audience's reactions; with Glow House she opted for City TV, a channel particularly 'of the people,' but not one that guaranteed constant visual drama, as Much Music might have.
The work, which had shown twice before, for one night in Winnipeg in 2001 and for just over a week at Birmingham's IKON GALLERY in 2003, elicited varying reactions. Winnipeg brought a small but dedicated group of art lovers, while the Birmingham installation, in a posh area of town, drew a large, enthusiastic response.At the 'opening' in Toronto, on April 7th after dark, as a crowd gathered on the sidewalk opposite, both curator and artist had to endure some viewer's reservations about the artwork. Palmerston Boulevard in Toronto is a street of old mansions that have been mostly divided into apartments; locals responded with bemusement. Mark recalls a passer-by wondering aloud “But they can't all be watching the same program?!”
From an aesthetic standpoint, Glow House seemed to encourage an instinctive response in the viewer. It tapped into the sublime in a way that can be compared to the feeling when one stands before the saturated paintings of ROTHKO or the grand simplicity of BARNETT NEWMAN. Like work by these painters, one could have sought to 'understand' Mark's work, but it was enough to simply experience its effect. It was 'just a bunch of televisions,' like Rothko is 'just a bunch of paint on a canvas', yet it was also truly odd and unexpected and gorgeous. An alternate reading might be one of loss; the house's unusual nocturnal lighting suggested that'real' life had been relinquished, showing up the unsettling solitude and potential danger of (sub)urban neighborhoods, represented in films like Poltergeist and Twin Peaks.
Arguably the most successful aspect of Glow House was its site-specificity. There is a significant need for contemporary artistic urban interventions in public spaces, for bringing art out of the cloistered environment of the museum into a realm where it can be more relevant to the viewer. Temporary public installations generate immediate and heartfelt reactions,they encourage debate and challenge the public.
Read the rest of the review in Fuse Magazine
5. DAVID ROKEBY - excerpt from my article in the current issue of Canadian Art
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
David Rokeby develops new software like a painter who invents new colours for his paintings.The comparison is apt because Rokeby's work, its disparate aptitudes and technological complexity notwithstanding, is at its core uncomplicated, his medium a vehicle for ideas. Rokeby's spare use of computer hardware gives his transcendent installations a sophisticated quality in which screens, monitors and surveillance cameras together create ambiguous environments in which viewers become participants, finding themselves integral to the functioning of the artwork, often with oddly disorienting results.
As with many other artists involved in new media, Rokeby has worked quietly beneath the radar of the commercial gallery system, yet he has screened works to great acclaim at national and international festivals, sustained by organizations such as the Banff Centre, FONDATION DANIEL LANGLOIS in Montreal and the Canada Council for the Arts.
The result has kept many of his most interesting works from the view of the general public. Despite a stellar career that has seen his participation in international exhibitions such as the 1986 VENICE BIENNALE, Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria (three times), the GWANJU BIENNALE (in 1996) and the 2002 Venice Architecture Biennale, wide public recognition has thus far eluded Rokeby; nonetheless, he is without a doubt one of Canada's most exceptional artists.
INTERFACE-the systems that communicate with one another to facilitate navigation through cyberspace-is the starting point for Rokeby's work.In his practice, the computer interface is likened to a road map and the artist is a kind of technological urban planner. He investigates the systems that create our cyber-experience, sharing with many other current artists an interest in how systems, economic, social, linguistic or otherwise, have shaped our experience of the world. Rokeby is acutely aware of the power of interface; indeed, a concern for society's ignorance of the hidden systems that ultimately shape contemporary ideologies is central to his practice. Marshall MCLUHAN predicted such trouble long ago and, as Rokeby says, “The phrase 'the medium is the message' became a tired cliché long before our media became flexible and intelligent enough to live up to its epithet.”
Read the rest of the article in Canadian Art
6. GUNILLA JOSEPHSON - excerpt from catalogue text for 'Resistance' at the SAAG
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Words are often used carelessly, with little regard to their precise meaning or indeed to the great difference in meaning of apparently similar words. The terms resistance and rebellion seem at first to both stem from a similar reluctant, opposing stance, yet the former suggests an emotional abandon and the latter a stubborn, solid control. Rebellion recalls the chaos of unorganized political uprisings, while resistance brings to mind a studied plan of action, alluding also to the French Resistance of World War II. Finally, rebellion is the female quality, resistance the male.
THE BLOOD-RED HEART OF JOHANNA DARKE is a tale of resistance and rebellion, illustrated by a puzzling narrative that weaves in and out of reality, history and mythology. Rebellion, moreover, is a personal theme that has occupied a large part of Gunilla Josephson's video practice since her first work in that medium in 1998.
The effect of time's healing and distancing nature has rendered much 1960's and 70's feminist video art - with its overt opposition to patriarchal authority - rather bemusing to today's viewer. Nonetheless, centuries spent “as LOOKING- GLASSES - reflecting the figure of man” have displaced woman's sense of self, propelling much of today's feminist inquiry toward a more individual investigation of female identity. Josephson's work sits comfortably within this tradition, alongside the work of Cindy Sherman, LOUISE BOURGEOIS and others, in her remarkably forthright experimentation with character, technique and a number of personal themes. Further, the prevailing intimacy of her work and use of her own body and immediate surroundings functions within the tradition set by early video art pioneers Vito Acconci, Lisa Steele and others. The grotesque, duality and issues of control and identity combine in a rebellion against limitations, an exploration of self, and a need to be accepted on her own terms.
An additional layer of GROTESQUE behavior is explored with Josephson's alter-ego, a character named Hedda, who features in a work made up of a series of eight videos (2001). Hedda, whose name suggests either a play on the Scandinavian mythological Edda, or Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, becomes, in Josephson's hands, a 'mad' woman. The home video style technique that the artist refers to as 'guerilla film- making' keeps the viewer aware of the structure of the work, and of the artist's presence.
Josephson has created a distillation of womanhood in Hedda, a character both guided by and at the mercy of her emotions. She uses emotion with naïve abandon, 'as if riding a horse, a locomotive or an ocean wave.' Most of the Hedda videos are set in a house in Normandy, France, on or around an elegant, well-mannered suite of traditional Swedish furniture, in particular a settee. The furniture carries with it the weight of personal memory for the artist, who uses it as a foil for her character's actions. The green rococo-style furniture functions as a memory-space of endless waiting, anticipation and nervousness, a stage for ritual, for the subversion of domesticity. In Meat Madonna, Hedda grapples with the heavy rubber looking covering of the settee. She dances, grappling with the skin as if flaying an animal, struggling with its innate “residue of conflict and oppression.” According to the artist, the work concerns 'the human condition - the body: our prison, and our triumph.' As the character manipulates the skin, attempting and failing to override its dominating presence, the character's movements are edited into an absurdly choreographed dance. The artist thus works effectively inside (as character) and outside (as editor) of the video itself, resisting the conventions of video-making and again asserting control.
Find the catalogue at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery
7. SOME RESPONSES
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“It was really a smart bit of writing. Happy to see the work set historically and not just physically described (which is what most reviews consist of.) Thanks” -Kelly Mark
“Thanks! In fact there were a couple of really insightful moments that had me thinking for a while... a rare pleasure!" -David Rokeby
“Andrea, this is an extraordinary essay!!! I am delighted, shocked, impressed, happy, all at the same time... Thank you for clarifying my work, even to myself” -Gunilla Josephson
8. ARTISTS TO GOOGLE et cetera
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
ARTISTS TO GOOGLE: Dirk Fleischmann (Frankfurt), Mauro Saccardo (Venice), Hannah Rickards (London)
SOMETHING FREE: Keep an eye out for my monthly column in YYZ Lifestyle - a FREE Toronto paper
YYZ Lifestyle
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