RON KOSTYNIUK

Calgary artist Ron Kostyniuk has been making and exhibiting architecture-inspired relief structures since the 1960s.

A relief sculpture by Ron Kostyniuk. Image: Courtesy of the artist.

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An excellent book has just come out by Elspeth Cameron about the lives of 20th century Canadian sculptors Frances Loring and Florence Wyle:

Frances Loring and Florence Wyle. Image: lac-bac.ca

Read my review in Quill & Quire HERE

Simon Starling: Cuttings (Supplement) at the Power Plant, Toronto

March 1 – 11 May, 2008

Simon Starling, Infestation Piece (Musselled Moore), 2007/8. Image: thepowerplant.org

The Power Plant will open a retrospective of British conceptual artist Simon Starling with a newly commissioned work made for The Power Plant, part of the gallery’s Commissioning Program launched in 2006.

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Power to the people: The Grange Prize is an annual $50,000 contemporary photography prize where you decide who wins!

Raymonde Aprile, Miroir (mirror), ink-jet print,, 2004. Image: raymondeapril.com

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Subconscious City at the Winnipeg Art Gallery
8 February – May 11, 2008

Diana Thorneycroft, Audition for Eternal Youth, 2007. Digital photograph (triptych).
Image: wag.mb.ca

Subconscious City, currently on view at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, is an exhibition filled with a lot of quiet, quirky pieces, but the show’s impact comes through loud and clear. With an impressive, diverse roster of both emerging and established artists working in a variety of media (including video, painting, ceramics, and electronics), Subconscious City attempts to examine and explain Winnipeg’s curious civic identity.

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Pixel power: Virtual art online commands high prices in the real world

An MFA graduate exhibition in Second Life. Image: www.deanterry.com

Second Life, the virtual world that mimics the real world, has held art auctions fetching big prices. And curiously “real world” galleries have sold artworks based on online creations — capturing the image, enhancing it and transferring it to canvas. (Those pieces reportedly sold for $10,000 each.)

Read the full article HERE

Both Calgary, Alberta and Winnipeg, Manitoba are surprisingly creative cities. Calgary’s nearby Banff Centre has long been recognized as an international meeting place for creative minds, while Winnipeg’s Royal Art Lodge famously produced Marcel Dzama. (VoCA loves his new dioramas!)

But there’s more to these art scenes than meets the eye…

CALGARY

1. Collective: The Arbour Lake Sghool - click HERE

In the spring of 2007 we decided that we’d had enough of our lawn, and that a nice, rippling field of wheat would look much prettier and break up the Kentucky Bluegrass monotony of our neck of the woods. We also (ludicrously) decided to do all the work, from tearing up the old to planting the new to harvesting our crop, by hand. And we did it! We ended up using barley instead (you can make beer from barley!), donated graciously by Patterson Farms.

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1. RE-ENACTMENTS AT DHC ART FOUNDATION, MONTREAL

February 21 – May 25, 2008

Harun Farocki, still from Deep Play, 2007. Image: mustekala.info

Re-enactments gathers six media artists whose works ‘re-enact’ - in some way critically re-stage media spectacles, performance art or films – cultural events of the past – to pose compelling questions about the present.

Including work by Nancy Davenport, Stan Douglas, Ann Lislegaard, Paul Pfeiffer and Kerry Tribe.

Harun Farocki’s Deep Play (2007) garnered significant attention at last year’s Documenta in Kassel, Germany. Even if you don’t care in the least about football (soccer) – the work is mesmerizing. Twelve synchronised video projections in real time variously show the unprocessed feed from TV networks, motion traces of players, coaches evaluations, schematic depictions of passes, abstract computer-generated representations of the game, kinestesiology, visualisations, as well as soundtracks and commentary of all quantifiable events from the Berlin Olympic Stadium, police radio and TV production teams.

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Thanks to the Clint Roenisch Gallery for this Youtube link…

If you can’t see the clip, please click HERE

Celebrated Halifax-based conceptualist David Askevold passed away on January 23, 2008.

David Askevold, Love Mansion - 9 Matrix. Image: pageandstrange.com

As a teacher at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in the 1970’s, David Askevold developed and led what he called the Projects Class. During this period, Askevold selected artists, including Lawrence Weiner, Robert Smithson, Lucy Lippard, Joseph Kosuth, and Mel Bochner, and invited them to submit projects that he and his students would then carry out.

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