Tim Schouten, the treaty 3 suite (outside promises). Image: timschouten

Wanda Koop, Green Zone (infrared) , acrylic on canvas, 2005. Image: harbourfrontcentre.com

1. Scratching the Surface, Plug-In ICA, Winnipeg

September 14 – November 17, 2007

Public Opening: Friday, September 14 @ 8:00pm

This major exhibition explores the changing landscape of the Canadian Prairies, and in particular Winnipeg’s social, cultural, and physical character.

Sylviamatas, Warm Rain, 2004. Image: sylviamatas.com

Esther Warkov, Samples, In the House of Pear. Image: kensegalgallery.com

Many Canadian artists have and continue to be been inspired by their immediate landscape (Group of Seven, Emily Carr, Ron Kostyniuk, Gershon Iskowitz, Peter von Tiesenhausen…)

Scratching the Surface: The Post-Prairie Landscape provides a multi-generational look into this transition.

The exhibition will bring together emerging, mid-career, and established artists including Keith Berens, Sylvia Matas, Doug Smith, Melanie Bone, Kazuteru Miyauchi, Jennifer Stillwell, Paul Butler, Kim Ouellette, Ewa Tarsia, Daniel Dueck, Robert Pasternak, Esther Warkov, Simon Hughes, David Perrett, Calvin Yarush, Jean Klimack, Tim Schouten, Collin Zipp and Wanda Koop.

Kim Ouellette, Mountains with Black Clouds, 2004. Image: marciawoodgallery.com

Highlights include Paul Butler’s public art project that transforms lampposts into an urban forest via applications of veneer tape, Jennifer Stillwell’s sculptural work that engages the artificial production of geology and Esther Warkov’s epic paper cityscape.

Collin Zipp, PIXEL 15. Image: collinzipp.info

2. Kelly Mark: Stupid Heaven, Hart House Gallery @ U of T, Toronto

Kelly Mark, 33 Minute Stare, 1996. Image: ireallyshould.com

Kelly Mark is one of those artists whose sophisticated, elegant, disarmingly simple and surprisingly effective work is also accessible - she makes lots of multiples and unlimited editions - and so should be coveted by young and beginning collectors.

In 2005, her Power Plant commission Glow House transformed a mansion on Palmerston Boulevard into an eerily haunted looking house every evening whose windows were lit up by the flickering blue glow of televisions.

Read what I wrote about it HERE.

Kelly Mark, Glow House #3, Installation: Apr 13, 2005. Image: mocoloco.com

This exhibition at U of T showcases Mark’s sense of humour in a number of strong works. VoCA has often quoted Bruce Nauman: “Art is a matter of life and death. This may be melodramatic, but it is also true.”

Bruce Nauman, Self-Portrait as a Fountain, c 1966. Image: artcomgroup.com

Nauman, like Kelly Mark, Maurizio Cattelan and others, uses humor to engage the viewer in deeply serious art.

Favorite pieces included the new film installation REM, the self-explanatory video 33 minute stare and the melancholy, amusing audio recording I Really Should…1000, wherein Mark repeats phrase after phrase beginning with the words “I really should…”

“…I really should…stop using the phrase Gaylord…I really should…read something utterly tragic…”

Kelly Mark, REM, 2007. Image: courtesy the artist

Check out the artist’s website HERE.