1. Mark Lewis

BFI Southbank Gallery, London

September 13 - 11 November, 2007

Mark Lewis, Rush Hour, Morning and Evening, Cheapside, 2005. Film still. Image: fillip.ca

This past May, Mark Lewis was awarded the Gershon Iskowitz Prize for his contribution to visual arts in Canada. The prize was created in 1985 by abstract artist Gershon Iskowitz and is now jointly administered by Toronto’s Art Gallery of Ontario and the Gershon Iskowitz Foundation.

2. Rodney Graham: Wet on Wet: My Late Early Styles

Lisson Gallery, London

October 10 - 17 November, 2007

Rodney Graham, “Gifted Amateur”, 2007, Production still. Photo: Scott Livingstone. © Rodney Graham, 2007. Courtesy of Lisson Gallery

This new body of works reflects on the practice of painting. Graham will adopt the eccentric persona of the ‘gifted amateur’, to encompass a variety of styles.

More info HERE

3. David Rokeby: Silicon Remembers Carbon

CCA Glasgow

August 4 - 15 September, 2007

David Rokeby, Taken, 2002. Surveillance Installation. Image: telegraph.co.uk

“I am fascinated by the way we transform the raw impressions streaming in through our senses into a coherent mental picture of reality. So I create artworks that look and listen, and try to make sense of what they see and hear. I am caught in the daily clash between the logical world of the computer and the embodied experience of living. So I bring these two worlds into closer dialogue to see what fails and what resolves.”

Read a review of the show HERE

VoCA reports from Montreal. So far, we recommend:

Stan Douglas, Klatsassin Portraits (Prisoner) 2006. Image: davidzwirner.com

1. Stan Douglas: Klatsassin at Quartier Ephemere

Vancouver artist Stan Douglas’s installation comprises a 70-minute long film with a number of corresponding photographs next door. There are three black and white, vintage looking portraits of cowboys and Indians (actually the actors in the film) alongside a number of images that are of, or refer to 19th century Canadian Gold Rush mountain camps.

Stan Douglas, Still from Klatsassin, 2006. Image: davidzwirner.com

The film is a cowboy film that adopts the narrative structure of Akira Kurosawa’s legendary film Rashomon (1950). As curator Marie Fraser says, though, Douglas’s film “develops…in the manner of a musical score, with five levels of narration that interrupt and overlay one another.

Like Rodney Graham’s work, the viewer is unable to follow a narrative arc, as the piece presents various ‘solutions’ to the story that flow back upon themselves.

Also, from September 15, 2007 until January 6, 2008, the Württembergische Kunstverein and the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart will be presenting a comprehensive exhibition of the works of Stan Douglas.

2. Salla Tykka: Zoo at Espaces Video/Video Rooms

There is much to see at the Espaces Video/Video Rooms, including work by Mike Hoolboom, Eve. K. Tremblay and Althea Thauberger, but best is the Finnish artist Salla Tykka’s film Zoo. The piece follows a Hitchockian blonde through a zoo as she surveys and photographs various animals. The scene is intercut with another of a violent-seeming aquatic rugby match. A Hitchcock-style soundtrack and superb camerawork makes the piece even more riveting.

Salla Tykka, Zoo, 2006. Image: e-flux.com

3. Eve Sussman: The Rape of the Sabine Women, atParisian Laundry

If you like extremely well-produced, large-scale colour photography in the manner of Gregory Crewdson, Jeff Wall and others, you will like the new work by Carlos and Jason Sanchez at Parisian Laundry.

Downstairs, don’t miss Eve Sussman’s seductive 2006 film The Rape of the Sabine women, a 1960s cocktail-party style re-interpretation of the Roman legend of the abduction of the Sabine women, as depicted by Jacques-Louis David’s 1799 painting.

Eve Sussman, The Rape of the Sabine Women, 2006.
Photo: Benedikt Partenheimer/Image: nyfa.org

Francesco Vezzoli, a poster for ‘Marlene Redux: A True Hollywood Story!’ 2006.
Image: saatchi-gallery.co.uk

Italian artist extraordinaire Francesco Vezzoli’s exhibition, which includes the North American premiere of his new 22-minute fake television show Marlene Redux : A True Hollywood Story!, opens at Toronto’s Power Plant on September 7th.

The exhibition also features a series of film posters that the artist has commissioned from long-forgotten, Italian film-poster artists; and a number of his embroideries.

Vezzoli reformulates this classic film as a sensational fake television programme about art, fame and the deconstruction of a public persona.

Francesco Vezzoli, a poster for ‘Marlene Redux: A True Hollywood Story!’ 2006.
Image: thepowerplant.org

VoCA CAUGHT UP WITH VEZZOLI AS HIS WORK WAS BEING INSTALLED AT THE POWER PLANT:

Continue reading →

CHRIS GERGLEY: COPY WORK AND GOBO

The Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver

September 7 - November 08, 2007

Opening Reception: Thursday, September 6, 6-9pm

Chris Gergley, Apartment El Mirador, 1998. Image: monteclarkgallery.com

For Copy Work and Gobo, his ambitious solo exhibition at the Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver artist Chris Gergley continues to work with his archive of found and self-produced images and photographic paraphernalia to build a complex narrative of his relationship to photography.

Like many Vancouver photographers, he is often inspired by his immediate urban environment, whether Vancouver of the artist’s hometown of Regina, Saskatchewan. Often banal images belie fascinating stories or inconceivable sequences of events experienced by Gergley and captured on film.

An artist talk by Chris Gergley will be held on Thursday, October 25, 2007, at 7pm

Chris Gergley, Queen City, 1998. Image: monteclarkgallery.com

BGL: LA SENTEUR DE MES MAINS/THE MARKS OF MY HANDS

The Koffler Gallery, Toronto

September 6 to November 25, 2007

BGL, La senteur de mes mains / The Marks of My Hands, Installation view. Image: kofflercentre.com

Quebec-city art collective and 2006 Sobey Art Award finalists BGL presents La senteur de mes mains / The Marks of My Hands, a new site-specific installation that was shaped by the artsits’ experience of the gallery space.

The human imprint on these sculptors’ hand-made objects poignantly contrasts the generic nature of the mass-produced. Generating plays of exchange and displacement between the worlds of art and commerce, BGL prompts the viewer to slow down and see things differently.

The collective has rarely shown in Canada outside of Quebec, though they are well-known in their province and increasingly so internationally.

BGL, La Source. From the 2004 edition of the International Garden Festival. Image: mocoloco.com

A sketch for Daniel Libeskind’s addition to Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum. Image: torontohispano.com

In the current issue of Nuvo magazine, the 80-year-old grande dame of architecture, Phyllis Lambert (C.C., G.O.Q., M.Arch., O.A.L., F.R.A.I.C., F.R.S.C., R.C.A., LL.D), founder of the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, former Bronfman and early Mies van der Rohe champion, calls ’starchitect’ Frank Gehry seriously overrated.

Continue reading →

Toronto International Film Festival, September 6 – 15, 2007.

For complete info on TIFF, click HERE

Wavelenths is a curated presentation of 25 of the best in artist-made film and video from around the world.

This year’s programme is presented in 6 curated programmes running September 7 – 10, 2007.

Nicky Hamlyn, Risoni, film still. Image: lumen.org.uk

The programme features new work from such celebrated artists as Ken Jacobs, Peter Hutton, Karø Goldt, David Gatten, Nicky Hamlyn, Pip Chodorov, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Hannes Schüpbach, Bruce McClure, Heinz Emigholz, Jean-Marie Straub and the late Danièle Huillet.

Here are some of VoCA’s suggestions from each programme:

Wavelengths 1:

David Gatten’s WHAT THE WATER SAID, NOS. 4-6 (USA) offers sounds and images resulting from strips of unexposed celluloid encased in crab traps being buffeted by salt water, sand and rocks off the coast of South Carolina. Former merchant seaman Peter Hutton delivers a magisterial story about the birth, life and death of a container ship in AT SEA (USA).

David Gatten, The Great Art of Knowing, 2004 (film still). Image: loopcollective.com

Wavelengths 2:

Ken Jacobs‘ CAPITALISM: SLAVERY (USA) awakens flickering worlds out of nineteenth-century stereoscopic images of cotton-picking slaves. John Gianvito’s PROFIT MOTIVE AND THE WHISPERING WIND (USA) is a breathtakingly beautiful visual poem on America’s progressive history as seen through its cemeteries, plaques and monuments.

Peter Hutton, Time and Tide, 2000 (film still). Image: filminc.com

Wavelengths 3:

Daïchi Saïto’s ALL THAT RISES (Canada) combines hand-processed and printed footage with sounds from violionist Malcolm Goldstein to form a unique tribute to the duo’s Montreal neighbourhood… Combining archival footage and poetic text together, Chris Kennedy’s THE ACROBAT (USA/Canada) is a compelling consideration of the significance of allowing oneself to fall. ECHO (Canada) is an atypical self-portrait by Izabella Pruska-Oldenhof which explores homesickness and cultural yearning through visual imagery, song and text.

Izabella Pruska-Oldenhof, Song of the Firefly, 2002. Image: photogram.org

Wavelengths 4:

Leading British filmmaker Nicky Hamlyn’s QUARTET (UK) comprises four variations on the same twenty shots of a room. ERZÄHLUNG (Switzerland/Italy) by Hannes Schüpbach is a graceful portrait of 80-year-old Italian sculptor Cesare Ferronato. The billowing softness of Karø Goldt’s GONE (Germany/Austria) is created through the animation of a photograph of an arum plant that visualizes a beautiful evanescence.

Karo Goldt, été, 2006 (film still). Image: fdk-berlin.de

Wavelengths 5:

Heinz Emigholz’s Photography and Beyond series, SCHINDLER’S HOUSES (Austria) offers “architecture as autobiography” by presenting 40 houses – circa 1931 to 1952 – built in and around Los Angeles by Austro-American architect Rudolf M. Schindler.

Heinz Emigholz, Schindlers Hauser, 2007 (film still). Image: imageschack.us

Wavelengths 6:

Henri Storck’s 1929 film POUR VOS BEAUX YEUX (Belgium) – made in collaboration with painter Félix Labisse – tells the tale of a young dandy who tries to send a glass eye through the post, to no avail. The ubiquitous shape of film reels endlessly unspooling is recalled in the op art-influenced spirals of Pip Chodorov’s FAUX MOUVEMENTS (France). Chris Kennedy’s TAPE FILM (USA/Canada) cycles through five different film stocks and a variety of processing methods to offer a portrait of the artist at play. In John Price’s otherworldly ECP 2D: SUN (Canada), a home-movie snippet is transformed into a bold colour frieze… Bruce McClure’s EVERTWO CIRCUMFLICKSRENT… PAGE 298 (USA) is a feverish excursion into flickering light and intense reverberating sound

Bruce McClure. Image: wkv-stuttgart.de

**TOMORROW: VoCA SPOTLIGHTS FUTURE PROJECTIONS: TIFF’S PROGRAMME OF FILM-RELATED ART INSTALLATIONS**

“Le marchand - voilà l’ennemi!”, said Picassso of art dealers, referring perhaps to his own dealer, Wildenstein.

Les Pains de Picasso (Picasso’s Bread), reportage for Le Point, Vallauris, 1952. Image: dailyrefill.blogs.com

This article from The Economist is a good quick weekend read.

Find it HERE

The late Daniel Wildenstein and his two sons Alec and Guy photographed by Helmut Newton.
Image: petroz.com

There’s more gossipy reading on the uber-art collecting family right HERE

The article asks whether dealers are the saints or the sinners of the art world. Perhaps in an effort to avoid having to find out, a new model of artist has arisen, exemplified by British enfant terrible Damien Hirst who seems to be taking not only his career, but the market for his work, into his own hands.

(Even as his own hands have less and less to do with actual art making.)

Damien Hirst at the exhibition In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. Image: BBC/heise.de

Hirst has famously negotiated to buy his own work back in the past, which makes his dealer, Jay Jopling seem somewhat superfluous.

Now he has joined with an investor group to purchase For the Love of God, his famous diamond-studded skull for 50 million British Pounds.

Read the details HERE