1. Arni Haraldsson: The Goldfinger Project at Space Studios, London.

The exhibition runs 01 September - 30 September 2007
Opening reception: 31 August, 6-8.30pm

Arni Haraldsson, Underside of Cinema, Copan, Sao Paolo, Brazil, 2003. Image: spacestudios.org.uk

Vancouver-based Arni Haraldsson’s practice documents the fading relics of High Modernist architecture through photography, film footage, historical documentation, popular cultural memorabilia, sound and resourced information.

The Goldfinger Project explores the social utopian ideology and reality of the Brutalist architectural aesthetic, documenting both fictional and factual narratives from one of Brutalism’s key exponents and a leading figure of the Modern movement - Erno Goldfinger.

Arni Haraldsson, Rugen Germany, 2005. Image: spacestudios.org.uk

The Goldfinger Project is Arni Haraldsson’s latest work in his investigation into the architectural language of the High Modernist era. This ongoing project of photographing and collecting material as a means to explore architecture and its cultural legacy has taken him around the globe from Rix Reinecke’s landmark Ocean Towers in Vancouver, Libera’s isolated Villa Malaparte on Capri to Le Corbusier’s Modernist city vision of Chandigarh in India.

Shary Boyle, Hammer Museum. Image: spacestudios.org.uk

2. Shary Boyle: The Clearances at Space Studios, London.

The exhibition runs 01 September - 30 September 2007
Opening reception: 31 August, 6-8.30pm

Shary Boyle has become known for her creates ‘live’ drawings–handanimated screen projections displayed during unique audio-visual performances to diverse audiences around the world. Her feminist sculptural series of porcelain figurines, created for a 2006 solo exhibition, has been acquired for permanent collection by National Gallery of Canada, the Musee des Beaux Arts in Montreal, the Paisley Museum of Art in Scotland and the Art Gallery of Ontario.

Shary Boyle, Scotland. Image: spacestudios.org.uk

Borrowing the title from a bitter period of 19th century Scottish resettlement the exhibition The Clearances is a construction of visual mythology based upon historical collisions of power and culture.

The Clearances depicts folklore characters, colonised peoples and brute forces of power engaged in an infinite march of erasure. Boyle’s invented historical overview illustrates the slippage that occurs when worlds, realities and imaginations collide. Working on multiple layers, the dramatically lit installation stages a theatrical display referencing educational dioramas and children’s imagery. The Clearances is a result of three sources of inspiration for Boyle: The Four Kings show at the National Portrait Gallery, the New Worlds show at the British Museum and the Marks and Spencer’s advert of Myleene Klass emerging from the sea, clad in a white bikini.

3. Koh Koh Koh: Tokyo, Thursday August 16, from 9 pm at Le Baron de Paris.

Kazumi Asamura, Item Idem – aka Cyril Duval and Numero Tokyo will hold a reception for erstwhile Canadian artist Terence Koh.

Formerly known as “asianpunkboy”, New York-based Koh creates handmade books and zines, prints, photographs, sculptures, performances, and installations. Much of his diverse work involves queer, punk, and pornographic sensibilities.

Terence Koh, Chris as Deer (Autumn Night). Image: artmetropole.com

Tokyo-based conceptual consultant and creative director Cyril Duval. Image: naymz.com

Terence Koh is represented by Peres Projects Gallery in Los Angeles, California and Berlin, Germany.

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Istvan Kantor: The Revolt of Depressed Lymphocytes at DeLeon White Gallery, Toronto.

The exhibition runs from August 9 to September 1 and is curated by artist Jubal Brown.

“An exhibition/installation of recent paintings and sculptural works dealing with the spirit of Wilhelm Reich, burning books, flags, flaming cats, sex, terror, robots, the broken clocks of the Emperor, the oppressive nature of hyper-authoritarian total control systems, the dictatorship of the Rentagon, the beauty of vandalism, the perishing of lifespace, blood and gold and bread, Queen West is dead! Amen!”

Standing on an old filing cabinet, Istvan Kantor posed, bare-legged, wearing an overcoat and sneakers. With his shaved head and sunglasses, it appeared as if a flasher had wandered up from Queen.

He held a large shepherd’s cane and lifted it up, striking a statuesque pose. Then he opened his coat to reveal his naked body, save for a strategically placed flashing light. He posed again. This display was no surprise to anyone familiar with Kantor’s work - his legendary performances regularly involve nudity, blood, fire, toxic smoke, robots and computer parts among other things.

Then he held up a wooden sign reading “Dirty Bloor West Uber Alles!” which he set alight and held aloft while it burned. He followed this with a paper flag – red on one side, black on the other. He set it alight and waved it, sending flaming bits of paper everywhere. He took a pink plastic toy keyboard and defiantly sang a song in his native Hungarian, before arranging a flaming wooden plank between two chairs and doing a cartwheel through the flames.

For the grand finale - and the most interesting part of the performance - he enlisted the help of the audience. To one side, he declared “You will be the revolutionaries!” to the other “You will be the executioners!” He then donned a red blindfold and, along with his fellow revolutionaries, staged an elaborate death at the executioners’ rapidly firing guns - “ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta!”.

Kantor is a passionte man whose work - like Neoism, the movement that he is closely aligned with - defies categorization.

Neoism is defined as “a specific subcultural network of artistic performance and media experimentalists and more generally to a practical underground philosophy. It operates with collectively shared pseudonyms and identities, pranks, paradoxes, plagiarism and fakes, and has created multiple contradicting definitions of itself.”

Is Kantor a revolutionary? It is unclear whether or not he accepts his efforts as futile. His rages against “Toronto” or “Bloor West” appear comical, yet his look and his passion are undeniably the real thing.

What lies beneath the skin of Kantor’s revolution?

Is he seeking to draw attention to the tyranny of contemporary society – our city streets, government, social infrastructure, the web’s interface design – to which we are bound?

Or is his anger directed more straightforwardly towards the city and the art institution? If so, he should go further. The basic problem in Kantor’s work is that he relies so heavily on the gallery’s infrastructure, whether using the gallery to stage his exhibitions and performances, or throwing blood on its walls. Many artists today struggle with the relevance of the museum. Being so extreme, Kantor’s performance would be more effective in an empty warehouse where the threat of arrest or injury would be real.

“My philosophy is based on the equation that life equals art equals life,” he has said. “Everything is art; everybody is an artist. The greatest art is the people in the streets, the beggars, the prostitutes, the people in the offices, executives and secretaries.”

Kantor is no stranger to extreme behavior, and yet… He has been arrested at least a dozen times, banned from the National Gallery of Canada and is known for his use of human blood. And yet, in 2004, he accepted the Canada Council’s $15,000 Governor General’s award.

Not very anti-establishment.

Read more about Istvan Kantor HERE

A still from Khanhthuan’s video Good Luck Counting Sheep. Image: courtesy TSV

On August 16, Trinity Square Video in Toronto presents it’s annual Spotlight on a Member - this year, it’s Toronto-based Vietnamese animator Khanhthuan Tran.

Khanhthuan Tran will show his new animated short Good Luck Counting Sheep, 2007 and his previous work Vietnam 1997, 2005 in tandem with Removed, 1999 by Naomi Uman and Vietnam Romance, 2003 by Eddo Stern.

A still from Khanhthuan’s video Good Luck Counting Sheep. Image: courtesy TSV

Tran will premiere his new video Good Luck Counting Sheep, where he rotoscoped a diverse collection of found footage into a narrative about cloning, copying and the endlessness of duplication in pop culture.

In his previous video Vietnam, 1997 Tran reuses his family’s travel footage and overlays it with animated text that emotionally re-inscribes his family into the landscape of Vietnam after their 18-year absence.

Also turning to Vietnam as subject, Eddo Stern’s Vietnam Romance reenacts images from iconic Vietnam war films using MIDI and video game technology. Finally, Naomi Umans’ Removed inverts the original meaning of her found footage – a 1970s 16mm porn flick – in a crude and comical way. By erasing all the females figures in the footage, Uman slyly draws our attention to what is absent in graphic pornography.

Eddo Stern, still from Vietnam Romance, 2003. Image:eddostern.com

Tran’s videos remind us of animation work by UK artist Axel Antas: Click HERE to watch Antas’s animations.

Axel Antas, Structure for Birds, 2006. Image: rokebygallery.com
Antas is represented by Rokeby Gallery, London UK.

Takashi Murakami, LV Superflat Pink, 2004. Image: artthrob.co.za

The L.A. Times says…In a move that seems sure to offend art world purists, the downtown Museum of Contemporary Art will merge the worlds of art and commerce this fall by including a fully operational Louis Vuitton boutique as part of a retrospective of the work of Japanese artist Takashi Murakami…

Examples of purses that would be sold in the MOCA Louis Vuitton boutique. Image: latimes.com

The exhibition runs at the L.A. MoCA from October 29 to February 11, 2008.

Of particular importance in the show will be the premiere of a new animated film, kaikai & kiki, and the debut of Buddha Oval, an enormous self-portrait sculpture in the guise of a Buddha.

Read more HERE

1. Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain re-opens after a summer break on August 11th with Encodeurs, an exhibition featuring Darsha Hewitt + Alexandre Quessy and Alexandre Castonguay + Mathieu Bouchard + Ken Campbell. The exhibition continues to September 1.

Vernissage: Saturday, August 25th from 2:30 - 5:00 pm

Alexandre Castonguay + Mathieu Bouchard + Ken Campbell: Drawing by numbers

Elements, Alexandre Castonguay with Mathieu Bouchard, 2005. Image: Artengine.ca

“Drawing by Numbers is an interactive exhibition comprising a wall-mounted plotter that lightly engraves participant’s images. The drawings are based on the image analysis of visitor’s movements, retaining their outlines. They are registered when people make gestures that are close enough to the coded gestures that are often characteristic of interactive art installations and of the usage of portable electronic devices.

A few typical gestures emerge: the interactive hand wave, the body shift from side to side, etc. The repetitive gestures of individuals within interactive installations are normalized as they are already socially coded.”

Darsha Hewitt + Alexandre Quessy: Rotarian Choir

Magnetic Identity Liberation Front, Stephanie Brodeur & Darsha Hewitt. Image: piksel.no

The Rotarian Choir is a sound installation featuring a chorus of table-top and wall-mounted rotary telephones. Relying solely on the original gong ringers in these modern communication devices, The Rotarian Choir chimes out a repertoire ranging from cheerful and uplifting to downright dismal compositions.

The timbral range of the phones vary from harmonious ringing to subtle clicks and muted metallic purrs.

2. Auction houses benefit from rising art prices.

“Sotheby’s and its larger competitor, Christie’s International, are benefiting from an 11-year quadrupling of contemporary-art prices. That may stall…”

Sotheby’s auctioneer Tobias Meyer auctions a Mark Rothko painting in May. Image: bloomberg.com

Read more HERE

Omer Fast: Godville runs August 7 - 11

Omer Fast, Dogville 2004. Image: plugin.org

Video Installation by Omer Fast opens this Thursday, August 9 @ 7:00pm

Plug In ICA in Winnipeg presents Israeli-born, Berlin-based artist Omer Fast’s video installation Godville. This topsy-turvey portrait of a community straddling historical periods is, at 50 minutes,long but worth it and definitely not to be missed!

Visit the Plug In website HERE

Omer Fast, Dogville 2004. Installation view. Image: postmastersart.com

From August 7-11, don’t miss this disorienting portrait of a community straddling historical periods. Fast interviews people living and playing the role of characters in Colonial Williamsburg (Virginia, USA).

Omer Fast, Dogville 2004. Installation view. Image: postmastersart.com

In this seemingly documentary context, Fast cuts and re-cuts his footage to create unsettling collages of people whose words reflect a time better left to the past.

Read Holland Cotter’s New York Times review HERE

Read more about Mr. Fast’s earlier work HERE

Leonidas Correa, Homage to the Rose II, 2000. Image: gallerymoos.com

Nicaraguan-born Costa Rican artist Leonidas Correa’s stunningly well-crafted New Realist still lifes are starkly minimalist, yet recall Magritte’s surrealist fantasy (and the more contemporary surrealism of Mark Kostabi - see bottom.)

Rene Magritte, La Chambre d’Ecoute, 1952. Image: ncsu.edu

The New Realist paintings and sculpture of (VoCA favorite) Howard Kanovitz also come to mind. Kanovitz has been called the most poetic of the group who began to forge novel expressive truths from the photographic image in the sixties.

Howard Kanovitz, The Opening, 1967. Image: howardkanovitz.com

Sam Hunter has said of Kanovitz: “The meticulous airbrush technique and Kanovitz’s exactness of vision produce an atmosphere of doubt rather than certitude, and pose questions of meaning which challenge the nature of artistic experience. Like the first discoverers of trompe l’oeil and especially the Flemish Renaissance masters, Kanovitz makes us acutely aware of artistic process and the miracle of vision, as well as material reality. The more crystalline his illusions, the less assurance they seem to provide.

Howard Kanovitz, The Dance, 1965. Image: howardkanovitz.com

However, Kanovitz magically asserts through his paintings many of the unresolvable ambiguities of vision; nothing is less sure or more sure than a given set of visual facts, especially when mediated by photographic techniques and the hard, bright simulations of illustrated commercial journalism.”

Correa’s subjects are often reflective; he is interested in optical deformities, not unlike the illusions produced by the mirror in the background of Van Dyck´s painting, The Arnolfini Wedding.

Leonidas Correa, Grapefruit and Green Pear, 2000. Image: gallerymoos.com

Leonidas Correa, Watermelon, 2002. Image: gallerymoos.com

Correa lived for fourteen years in Toronto, where he is presently represented by the Walter Moos Gallery.

Mark Kostabi, The Mathematics of Dreams, 1993. Image: thurstonroyce.com

David Adjaye’s The Dirty House, Shoreditch, East London. Image: flickr.com

1. David Adjayeis the London-based architect who made his name through the London art scene, working with Tim Noble and Sue Webster on their East London home The Dirty House in 2002 as well as with Chris Ofili and Jake Chapman. Have a look at some of Adjaye’s recent projects HERE, courtesy of the New York Times.

Continue reading →

Friendly Greeting: Is this the real (if not quite) Toronto show?

Opening: Saturday, August 4th, 1 - 5 pm at MKG127 Gallery, Toronto. The exhibition continues until September 1.

An Te Liu, Detail from Pattern Language II: Tantric (gold), 2002.
Image: renabranstengallery.com

This group exhibtion includes pieces by reliably strong Toronto artists, including Anitra Hamilton, whose most recent ‘performance’ at Toronto’s MoCCA involved letting blindfolded, axe-swinging participants loose - one at a time - on a car suspended in mid-air, a kind-of demolition-derby-meets-pinata party.

Anitra Hamilton. Who’s Gonna Tell Jesus There’s No Santa Claus, 1994-1999. Image: msvuart.ca

Other local-ish artists are Sara Graham, An Te Liu, Joy Walker, Dave Dyment & Roula Partheniou, the partly Toronto-based collective Instant Coffee, the Meaford, Ontario and Berlin-based artist Laura Kikauka and Vancouver artists Germaine Koh & Jayce Salloum.

Laura Kikauka, Babyblue, 2006. Image: dna-galerie.de

There’s also work by Denver artist Lawrence Argent and an intriguing piece - the collaborative window project between New York-based artist Micah Lexier and Calgary-based poet Christian Bök.

Micah Lexier, installation view of SELBSTPORTRAT ALS….at Gitte Weise Gallery.
Image: gitteweisegallery.com

Peter Goddard in the Toronto Star says this of the work:

“This text and the one beside it are equal,” begins the easily readable vinyl lettering by Lexier on the left side of the two windows looking over Ossington Ave. “I wrote this one first, and then I gave it to my friend Christian Bök and asked him to generate a new text using every letter and every punctuation mark that I used in mine. The other text is his.”

Bök might be right, of course. Who’s to know whose text came first? It may well have been Bök’s. Even if Lexier did conceive of his text first, he had to be reworking (perhaps unknowingly) yet another pre-existing text. Perhaps many.

Read Goddard’s full article HERE

St. George Marsh Denaturalized

Reception: Saturday August 11, 8 to 10 p.m.
Open house on Saturday August 11 and Sunday August 12 from 12 to 5 pm

St. George’s Marsh, 2006. Image: eciad.ca

This summer the Belkin Satellite has hosted a residency for Vancouver artists Gareth Moore and Jacob Gleeson’s re-interpretation of last year’s collaborative project St. George Marsh.

St. George Marsh - Click HERE for the former exhibition’s website - was a storefront commercial venture in a residential area. Recalling Claes Oldenburg’s The Store, Martha Rosler’s Garage Sale and other artists’ commerical enterprises, Moore and Gleeson’s shop featured a diverse collection of items for both sale and display, and was in a constant state of flux as materials were amassed, reconfigured and dispersed.

Claes Oldenburg’s The Store, 1961. Image: humboldt.edu

It included, among other things, a video rental department/shelf, a candy section, a garden stocked with clippings of plants, a book store and library, a grocery department, and a small gallery. By combining art and museological oddities with ingestible goods, Gleeson and Moore were interested in confusing the roles of these objects.

Martha Rosler’s Garage Sale, California, 1973. Image courtesy the artist.

In August 2006, St. George Marsh closed its doors. During their residency Moore and Gleeson have been cataloging and reorganizing the articles that remain from St. George Marsh, transforming the collection into something reflective of its past while considering its future.

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