1. Mercer Union, Toronto: TONIGHT, for the closing of Seducing Down the Door, Dean Baldwin has constructed a fully stocked mini-bar in the back gallery, from which he will serve tiny cocktails, in a welcoming but somewhat claustrophobic Alice-in-Wonderland environment.

Click HERE for more info.

Dean Baldwin at his bar. Image: mercerunion.org

Baldwin was born in the year of the bull in Orangeville, Ontario, and is based in Toronto. Recent projects include a commissioned signature cocktail for artist-run centre YYZ called the “The Why Why Cocktail,” and “The Cooked Book,” an eight channel video installation at Harbourfront Centre as a part of the Images festival.

He is represented by Katharine Mulherin Contemporary Art Projects. Baldwin likes a nice Brandy Alexander on a cool winter’s night.

2. Plug-in ICA, Winnipeg: From July 26 to August 18, Theo Sims’ The Candahar will fill the front half of the gallery with a place that is simultaneously an artwork, a theatre, a prop, and an intersection between art and life.

Theo Sims’ bar. Image: plugin.org

Named after an artist-friendly street in Belfast, this seemingly humble, modular structure assembles into a fully functional Belfast pub complete with alcohol, wooden bartop, seating, television, framed pictures, ceiling panels, and an authentic Belfast barkeep.

Chris Roddy is an artist as well as a former bar-owner in Belfast, and will be manning the taps from July 26- August 2.

Click HERE for more info.

3. The following is from an interview with Marina Abramovic by Katy Deepwell - from a conversation with Marina Abramovic at her home in Amsterdam in September 1996.

Marina Abramovic, The Onion, 1995. Image: migraine-aura.org

Marina Abramovic: If you look in history, the most difficult thing is to work in a simple way but if you succeed you can reach everybody. I’m not sure how many artists do this but I start with hundreds of ideas running around in my baroque mind and then I start reducing, reducing.

There are today, thousands and thousands of artists producing all kinds of art. The studios are stuffed with works - like a postoffice - producing, producing but when you think how little work really matters, how little art makes real sense, its incredible. All the really important artists of this century can really change the way society thinks, Duchamp did it, Malevich did it, Rothko,Klein,Pollock - certain key points and then the rest, you have thousands of people following their work.

Katy Deepwell: These are all artists who distil ideas, reduce to pure form.

Marina Abramovic: Yes, you need to reduce to the essence but it is a question of how to get the essence out? But then you see how their work comes from a very deep personal level and they succeed in shifting this experience into something else.

See Abramovic’s The Onion at the Power Plant, Toronto this summer. Click HERE for more info.

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