– 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
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-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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.”