HALIFAX:

Kelly Mark: Stupid Heaven at MSVU art gallery
Continuing through 1 June 2008

Kelly Mark, I Really Should…(Neon) - 2001. Image: kellymark.com

Kelly Mark is a VoCA favorite, and this exhibition, which originally showed at Toronto’s Hart House gallery, is now touring. We have seen it and it is great. Mark makes funny, whimsical pieces that say a lot about human nature and the way that societal constructs shape our behaviour. She uses her cat, and often her television to create her multilayered pieces.

REM is a great video “mash-up” installation where the set up of the piece (4 “living rooms”, each with a television playing the piece, each room with a wall clock set to 4:05) is as important as the video’s content. Its banal appearance (a Kelly Mark hallmark) belies its sophistication.

Kelly Mark, REM installed at the University of Toronto, 2007. (Room #2)
Image: kellymark.com

Kelly Mark, REM installed at the University of Toronto, 2007. (Room #3)
Image: kellymark.com

Kelly Mark is represented by Wynick Tuck Gallery, Toronto. Click HERE.

Masked: A silent auction of goalie masks by local artists.
SEEDS Gallery at Nascad
May 6 – 10, 2008

This slightly creepy idea for an auction is, nonetheless, original. At least it stands out from the sea of art auctions that are taking over the Canadian cultural landscape (Please, not more art auction fundraisers!)

Masks allude both to native/indigenous cultures and to the theatre, the grand european bals masques – as well as of course, the 80s horror film Friday the 13th.

Please click HERE for more info.

MONTREAL:

Love: Yves Saint Laurent
The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
May 29 - 28 September, 2008

One of VoCA’s idols: The legendary designer Yves Saint Laurent. Image: circa-club.com

Probably the most exciting - and certainly the most chic - event to hit the Canadian museum scene this year is this: The first retrospective spanning the forty years of creativity of the Maison Haute Couture Yves Saint Laurent.

Yves Saint Laurent’s supremely elegant Le Smoking. Image: elfashionista.net

Structured around four themes: “Masterful Pencil Strokes,” where the designer’s idea is followed from the original sketch; “The YSL Revolution,” where feminized versions of men’s attire rub shoulders with seductive apparel; “The Palette,” which shows how traditional rules of colour harmony were reversed in new contrasts inspired by cross-fertilization; and “Lyrical Sources,” which explores the historical, literary (Proust, Oscar Wilde, Louis Aragon, Jean Cocteau…) and artistic influences that were interpreted and translated by this genius of couture.

For more info, please click HERE.

Susan G. Scott a Projex Mtl Galerie
Jeunes Artistes: Oeuvres sur papier
1er Mai - 7 Juin, 2008

Susan G. Scott, Thinking Blue, 2005. Image: projex-mtl.com

Susan G. Scott est née à Montréal, à l’âge de 17 ans elle se rends à New-York étudier la peinture au Pratt Institute. Elle a ensuite poursuit ses études à Boston, à Montréal et au New York Studio School. Elle enseigne la peinture depuis plusieurs années à l’université Concordia à Montréal.

La série Jeunes Artistes présente le narratif du processus de l’artiste à l’œuvre. Le format du dyptique permet à Susan G. Scott d’explorer la complexe juxtaposition de la figuration et de l’abstraction amenant le spectateur à questionner les choix de l’artiste.

Pour plus information, veuillez aller ICI.

Daniel Corbeil, artist-in-residence at Centre Sagamie in Alma, Quebec.

Montreal artist Daniel Corbeil produces photographs, installations, and arrangements of models using technical mock-ups as a means of portraying the environmentally stressed landscape.

Daniel Corbeil, Nacelle pour expérimentation aérienne/Airship for experiments.
Image: theresedion.com

Daniel Corbeil, Nacelle pour expérimentation aérienne/Airship for experiments (detail)
Image: theresedion.com

Daniel Corbeil, dispositif de paysage no4, 2005. Image: theresedion.com

Daniel Corbeil, dispositif de paysage no3, 2005. Image: theresedion.com

The digital-printing project that Corbeil will produce at Sagamie will consist of assembling a number of photographs of a single model of a landscape, made beforehand in the studio. The objective is to explore, through digitization, the effects of fractioning and recomposing images to suggest the effects of the passage of time on a landscape.

The idea is to reflect on the simultaneous presence of various time frames affecting the landscape portrayed.

Corbeil is the winner of the Prix Graff 2007, an award that recognizes excellent in the visual arts in Quebec. Click HERE for more info.
Coming up on VoCA:
We recommend exhibitions in Vancouver, Ottawa, Winnipeg…

Plus Canadian artists abroad!