VoCA features work by all fifteen semi-finalists in Canada’s RBC Painting Competition - see below.

Here is the third group of finalists, continued from below (in alphabetical order.)

Who do you think should win? Let VoCA know! (Post comment below)

Anders Oinonen - Toronto. The Onlooker. Image: rbc. com

Continue reading →

VoCA features work by all fifteen semi-finalists in Canada’s RBC Painting Competition - see below.

Here is the third group of finalists, continued from below (in alphabetical order.)

Who do you think should win? Let VoCA know! (Post comment below)

Anders Oinonen - Toronto. The Onlooker. Image: rbc. com

Ben Pinkney - Toronto. Chris, 2006. Image: rbc.com

Aleksandra Rdest - Pouch Cove. Afterglow, 2006. Image: rbc.com

Melanie Rocan - Montreal. Silos, 2007. Image: rbc.com

Justin Stephens - Montreal. Any Door #2. Image: rbc.com

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Over the next three days, VoCA will be featuring work by all fifteen semi-finalists in Canada’s RBC Painting Competition.

In the meantime, here is the second group of finalists, continued from below (in alphabetical order.)

Who do you think should win? Let VoCA know! (Post comment below)

Elizabeth Grant - Saint John. Landscape 23, 2007. Image: rbc.com

Continue reading →

Over the next three days, VoCA will be featuring work by all fifteen semi-finalists in Canada’s RBC Painting Competition.

In the meantime, here is the second group of finalists, continued from below (in alphabetical order.)

Who do you think should win? Let VoCA know! (Post comment below)

Elizabeth Grant - Saint John. Landscape 23, 2007. Image: rbc.com

Jennifer Lefort - Toronto. Untitled, 2007. Image: rbc.com

Chris Millar - Calgary. FACEBITOR - The Untimely Transmorgification of the Problem, 2006. Image: rbc.com

Shaun Morin - Winnipeg. Saviour, 2006. Image: rbc.com

Nam Nguyen - Halifax. DriverMixBlu2, 2007. Image: rbc.com

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Melanie Authier - Toronto. Apocalyptic Picnic, 2007. Image: rbc.com

Over the next three days, VoCA will be featuring work by all fifteen semi-finalists in Canada’s RBC Painting Competition.

The judges (a group of dealers, curators and artists from across the country) looked at over 1,400 works by 690 young Canadian artists to select this shortlist of fifteen semi-finalists, one of whom will walk away with $25,000 alongside two honourable mentions of $15,000 each. The winners will also see their work included in the RBC’s collection of Canadian art.

The judges will come to their final decisions in September, after which the show of all the semi-finalists will tour the country.

In the meantime, here are the first five finalists (in alphabetical order.)

Who do you think should win? Let VoCA know! (Post comment below)

Eli Bornowsky - Vancouver. Untitled, 2007. Image: rbc.com

Arabella Campbell - Vancouver. Physical Facts Series #6, 2007. Image: rbc.com

Kim Dorland - Toronto. The View from 36 Olympic Green, Red Deer, Alberta #2, 2007. Image: rbc.com

Angus Ferguson - Vancouver. Untitled (Joe Johnston), 2007. Image: rbc.com

RBC Painting Competition exhibition tour dates 2007:

September:

The Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto - click HERE

Moncton University in New Brunswick - click HERE

October:

The MacLaren Art Centre in Barrie, Ontario - click HERE
The Winnipeg Art Gallery - click HERE

November:

The Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in Vancovuer - click HERE

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Andrea Fraser, Official Welcome, 2003. Image: muhka.be

THIS SUNDAY JULY 22, AT 2 PM

Sunday Scene: Every Sunday at 2 pm, speakers from the world of art and beyond offer their perspectives on the current exhibition, sometimes focusing on a single work or artist, at others relating our programs to cultural and intellectual debates.

I’ll be talking about the Power Plant’s current exhibition Auto Emotion: Autobiography, emotion and self-fashioning.

I will likely lead a walk around from art work to art work, joining them together in ways that aren’t necessarily how they have been laid out. There are amazing works by Andrea Fraser, Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay, Sophie Calle and others in this exhibition. It is a must-see!

Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay, Live to Tell, 2002. Image: art-action.org

- The Power Plant is FREE all summer -

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Over the past year, VoCA has been co-hosting a series of seminars on the topic “Art as an Asset Class”. The seminars focus on the reasons to, or not to, purchase art as an investment.

There’s a good article on this topic from the Financial Times right HERE

And a piece that we wrote HERE

For more information on the seminars, contact us HERE

VoCA went to the Art Gallery of Ontario this weekend.

Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Corpus, 17th c. Image: cbc.ca

We saw the stunning, and much-ballyhood Bernini sculpture, on the way to the Chuck Close exhibition and the too-small show on contemporary Indian art. Bernini’s mid-sized bronze of Jesus on the cross has been mounted on a podium, the figures outstretched arms held aloft by invisible thread. Without the cross backing the figure, the effect is one of lightness and liberation, as if he is raising his arms in a gesture of flight.

A Chuck Close portrait of VoCA favorite Lucas Samaras, 1987. Image: tfaoi.com

More on Lucas Samaras HERE

The Chuck Close exhibition presents a number of photorealist tapestries of Close’s artist friends, including Cindy Sherman and James Turrell. As you enter the exhibition, there is a wonderful, enormous black and white painting of ‘Joel’ (Joel Shapiro, we think?) What a painting. We could have looked at it for hours. We couldn’t help thinking what a sensation these works must have caused when they were first introduced in the 1970s.

Chuck Close, Joel, 1993. Image: thehamptons.com

Click HERE for more on Chuck Close.

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John Baldessari, Throwing four balls in the air to get a square (best of 36 tries), 1974. Image: desordre.net

We think you’ll find the following two articles interesting:

Jane Kallir, writing in The Art Newspaper, bemoans the rise of the collector-driven market. This is more prevalent in the US, what with the Rubell Collection and other collectors’ personal museums - complete with full-time curators, snazzy websites and in-house publications - but is symptomatic of the direction the art world is moving in, even in Canada.

Find this excellent commentary HERE

The second article is a review of two shows - artist as curator and dealers as artists - in the New York Times. VoCA favorite, artist John Baldessari has been trying his hand at curating, and his latest is apparently pretty darn good. A show that displays the creative talents of such dealers as Gavin Brown, Jasmine Guy (of Murray Guy Gallery) and Jeffrey Deitch is also reviewed.

Click HERE for the article.

John Baldessari, I will not make any more boring art, 1971. Image: desordre.net

Watch the video:

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VoCA recommends 5 summer exhibitions across Canada:

TORONTO

July 13- August 6, 2007

The 8th Annual Emerging Artist Exhibition at InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Centre

TWO STEPS BACK: featuring Adam Bellavance, Jason de Haan, Kristen Kellar, Derek Liddington, Laura Paolini, Matthew Willamson

Go to Interaccess website HERE

Technology and failure go hand in hand, sometimes with disastrous consequences, though more often with a sadly comic twist. Two Steps Back is interested in this game of trial and error, the featured artists play with glitches, futility, randomness and ridiculousness. The fraught relationship between machines and their shortcomings is often represented as apocalyptic and ominous.

CAMBRIDGE, ONTARIO

Patty Johnson’s toy bricks. Image: cbc.ca

June 30 - August 18, 2007

NORTH SOUTH PROJECT
A new model of viable design and craft collaborations in the developing world

Cambridge Galleries, Design at Riverside

Check out the North South Project website HERE

The initiative reflects the interchange between research and design and commerce and culture. Inspired by the idea of reaching across a global North/South axis, Toronto designer Patty Johnson is working with partners in Botswana, Guyana, Mexico and India to bring stylish new lines of furniture, lighting and fine craft to the North American and world market. At the same time she is continuously developing a design methodology that emphasizes a flexible and collaborative approach and the designer’s willingness to adjust to the changing conditions of the different societies in which she works.

The sustainability of each object in North South Projectis measured many times over. Every collection is designed for maximum economic, cultural, ecological and aesthetic sustainability. The long-term impact of the projects on the manufacturers, producers and communities is a principal factor of the design process.

VANCOUVER

Kristan Horton, Dr. Strangelove, 2006. Image: jessicabradleyartprojects.com

June 29 to August 19, 2007

Visit the Contemporary Art Gallery website HERE

KRISTAN HORTON
Dr. Strangelove Dr. Strangelove

DRAWINGS BY SIX ARTISTS: Kim Kennedy Austin, Luanne Martineau, Shannon Oksanen,
Laura Piasta, Ryan Sluggett and Corin Sworn

ELSPETH PRATT
Bluff

Dr. Strangelove Dr. Strangelove is an ambitious project in which Kristan Horton, a Toronto-based artist, reproduced 200 scenes from Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 film Dr. Strangelove: or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb as sculptures. Using various commonplace items from his studio (a glue-stick, garbage bags, cutlery, felt markers and dirt) Horton constructs the overall composition of each scene. He then photographs his improvised constructions to match the original film still, which are displayed side by side.

Vancouver based artist Elspeth Pratt will produce an abstract sculpture for the gallery’s street front windows. Using common building materials, she will create a unified design over nine windows. In general Pratt uses forms and materials that align closer with architecture than the history of visual art.

WINNIPEG

Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gomez-Peña. Undiscovered Amerindians, 1992. Image: yorku.ca

July 20 - August 18, 2007

Plug In ICA premieres renowned performance-based work to coincide with Winnipeg’s Fringe Festival

PRETEND: THEATRE AND VIDEO

NOTE: Open LATE every night of the Fringe Festival 10AM - 10PM

A New Opening Reception every Thursday Night from July 26 - August 16: 7-10PM
• July 20 (Friday): Tellervo Kalleinen (Finland)
• July 26: Theo Sims (UK/Canada)(artist in attendance)
• August 2: Nathalie Djurberg (Sweden/Germany)
• August 9: Omer Fast (Israel/Germany)
• August 16: Coco Fusco (USA)

In conjunction with the 2007 Winnipeg Fringe Festival, the Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art will present performance-inspired works by a group of renowned international artists working in the fields of video and installation. Combining elements of theatre, animation, and journalism with collage, melodrama, and confession, each of these artists will present their work for a single week over a four-week period, next to an in-gallery pub that turns audience members into the actors of an imaginary place.

Check the performance schedule HERE

SHAWINIGAN, QUEBEC

Carsten Holler’s slides at the Tate Modern, 2007. Image: news.bbc.co.uk

2 June - 30 September 2007

The National Gallery of Canada at Shawinigan Space (Quebec)

CARSTEN HOLLER

Read more on the website HERE

This is German artist Carsten Höller’s first major solo exhibition in Canada. Höller, who was born in Belgium and now lives and works in Stockholm, has received international acclaim for his diverse artistic practice. That includes sculpture and large-scale installation-based works aimed at challenging viewers’ perceptions and rational beliefs. Scientist turned artist, Carsten Höller has experimented with a diverse range of mediums and art forms that each ask the viewer to reconsider their relationship with natural and built environments.

So, last night we caught a glimpse of a soccer game on tv. We found ourselves wishing the camera would do a close up of the players…

See a review of Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait, below.