View on Canadian Art

SmallTalks is a series of very short podcasts hosted by the fascinating artist Darren O’Donnell, who, “like a log drifting downstream, will snag people on the bank to slow his progress toward death, and chat with them about their aspirations.”

Artist Darren O’Donnell. Image: 2.bp.blogspot.com

Created in response to a life with too much time spent on the road, Darren will be interviewing people around the world and describing the sensation of weak knees in the face of vast heights.

Darren talks with people that he meets and finds interesting, and even offers introspective commentary from a restroom. (He’s trying to use the restroom as a place to rest, he says.)

All SmallTalks are available HERE or you can follow Darren’s twitter feed for updates HERE.

Read more about Darren O’Donnell’s work, including Mammamlian Diving Reflex and Social Acupuncture, HERE.

Great curatorial minds think alike, it seems.

After what seems like an interminably long period of preciousness with Toronto’s starchitect-designed art spaces at the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Royal Ontario Museum, the gloves are off.

Both institutions have invited artists to literally destroy gallery walls.

The gorgeous, Frank Gehry-designed AGO. Image: seanjohn.com

At the AGO, the glorious collages and installations of Kenyan-American artist Wangechi Mutu will, for her first major solo exhibition, include a haunting series of drawings mounted on a ‘pockmarked’ gallery wall, which will be punctured and torn to reflect the post-colonial themes at the core of Mutu’s work.

This should be a must-see exhibition!

A collage by Wangechi Mutu. Image: 55secretstreet.com

Wangechi Mutu: This You Call Civilization?
February 24 - May 23
The Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto

Libeskind’s Royal Ontario Museum. Image: daniel-libeskind.com

Meanwhile, over at the ROM, the Romanian Dan Perjovschi will graffiti Libeskind’s walls with his cartoon-y style that offers incisive commentary on political, social and cultural issues of the moment.

Dan Perjovschi: Late News
February 15 to 21, 2010
Drawings on display until August 15, 2010
The Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto

Dan Perjovschi at the Taubman Museum of Art. Image: perjovschi.ro

We snuck in on the final day to see the Cut/Paste: Creative Reuse in Canadian Design show at the Royal Ontario Museum this past weekend, and, while the huge gallery spaces overwhelmed the design objects on display, there were a few things of particular interest, like objects that prison inmates had ingeniously cobbled together: water-boilers and crudely made toaster, to transform water and bread into toast and tea.

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Thanks to the Canadian Design Resource, who tweeted these two images, with a *sigh* that we echo:

Canadian Pavilion, or “Katimavik” at Expo 67. Image: expo67.ncf.ca

The Canadian pavilion in Vancouver.  Federal Heritage Minister James Moore shows off the exterior of the 2010 Canada Pavilion (visible in the background) for the Vancouver Olympics.
Image: vancouversun.com

You may remember the British artist Michael Landy from his piece Break Down, in which he destroyed all of his 7, 226 belongings, including his passport.

Michael Landy’s Break Down, 2001. Image: artcornwall.org

It was a project for Artangel and took place in a vacant shop on Oxford Street, in central London. Needless to say, it was a pretty controversial – but fascinating – piece.

Michael Landy, Art Bin, 2010. Image: saatchi-gallery.co.uk.

Art Bin, Landy’s new show that is on from January 29 to 14 March, 2010 at the South London Gallery, is a bit different. Landy has constructed an enormous garbage bin that takes us almost the entire gallery. He is offering to trash your art, so to speak. But not just anyone can come to dispose of their art. Landy is the ‘curator’ if you can call it that, of the bin.

Read what the BBC had to say, and watch their video, HERE.

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Some of the visual artists who will be exhibiting new works at the Vancouver 21010 Olympics:

Eric Metcalfe, Insectarium, 2005. Image: winchestergalleriesltd.com

1. ERIC METCALFE AND GEORGE LEWIS: IKONS

Ikons is a collaborative interactive art installation Vancouver performance and visual artist Eric Metcalfe and legendary American composer, trombonist and intellectual George Lewis.

For the piece, Metcalfe has created seven vibrant hand-painted sculptures, each about eight feet tall, that will house sonar sensors and speakers. The exhibition space will be full of recorded music composed by Lewis and performed by Vancouver’s contemporary/classical Turning Point Ensemble.

Ikons runs January 28 to February 28 from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. at Five-Sixty, 650 Seymour Street, Vancouver. Admission is free. Click HERE for a map.

More, including Etienne Zack, David Hoffos and Don Ritter, if you click over…

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Architect Joshua Prince-Ramus. Image: seattlepi.com

On Friday, we went to hear Joshua Prince-Ramus, the president of REX Architects in New York, speak at Toronto’s Interior Design Show, for the Azure-sponsored talks.

Prince-Ramus is an excellent and passionate speaker, who previously worked with Rem Koolhaas.  He is also an architect who - like Koolhaas -  clearly revels in the constraints imposed upon him.  As he said, “Constraints are the mother of invention.”

He spoke about architectural agency, about the need for architects to take responsibility for the fact that they have become marginalized. He noted that there was an artificial schism between creation and execution, that the idea of architect as ‘individual genius’ is a myth, and that there is a need to stitch creation and execution back together again.

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Last night, we went to the preview of the Gladstone Hotel’s alternative design event, Come Up To My Room (CUTMR). We’ve been in the past, and this year was by far the best. Each room on the hotel’s second floor was individually transformed, many with inspiring and conceptually tight installations.

Thu, Jan 21, 2010 - Sun, Jan 24, 2010
12:00 pm - 8:00 pm
$8

Here are some highlights:

1. Orest Tataryn and Bruno Billio

This was our favorite installation. A ray of neon light zooms wildly around a carefully decorated room where two chandeliers have collided. It’s wonderful, and can be re-created to commission.

Click HERE to contact the artists.

There are many more photos after the jump….

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Leading art collector and philanthropist Dr. Ydessa Hendeles is donating an extraordinary collection of 32 Canadian and international contemporary artworks to the Art Gallery of Ontario, representing the most significant single gift of contemporary art in the AGO’s 110-year history.

A work, by Barbara Kruger, currently on view at Ydessa Hendeles Art Foundation, Toronto.
Image: akimbo.ca

The gift includes works by groundbreaking Canadian contemporary artists Kim Adams, Ian Carr-Harris, Max Dean, Betty Goodwin, Liz Magor, Ken Lum, Ron Martin, John McEwen and Ian Wallace. The Hendeles gift also adds to the AGO’s contemporary collection the first works by international artists James Coleman (Irish), Gary Hill (American),Thomas Schütte (German), Bill Viola (American) and Krzysztof Wodiczko (Polish), and augments the Gallery’s holding by Giulio Paolini (Italian).

Plans are underway for an exhibition of works from the Hendeles donation within the next 18 months.

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Scott Treleaven was born in Toronto, Canada and graduated from the Ontario College of Art & Design (OCAD) in 1996.

Scott Treleaven, My Ever Changing Moods, 2009, ink, photographs, watercolour. Image: kavigupta.com

Now based in Paris, he has shown in Chicago at Kavi Gupta, in New York at John Connelly Presents and has had a limited edition book published by Printed Matter Inc.

He is probably best know for his film The Salivation Army (2002), which caught the attention of the Village Voice in 2003, screening worldwide, most notably in the official Art Basel film program in 2004 and at the Museum of Modern Art in 2006.

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