The Quebec art scene is ON FIRE.

La Belle Province is home to the country’s most exciting artists, many of which are included in the excellent Quebec Triennale at the MAC in Montreal.

Montreal also hosted the recent IKT (International Association of Curators of Contemporary Art) congress in May, which brought international curatorial eyes to the city thanks to Chantal Pontbriand of Parachute.

One of Canada’s best new galleries, the DHC Art Foundation, continues to make waves with their programming –Feist is playing the opening of Sophie Calle’s solo exhibition later this week.

Canadian chanteuse Leslie Feist. Image: rcrdlbl.com

The MMFA has co-organized the superb YSL retrospective and with the always excellent Canadian Centre for Architecture and the city’s many galleries, there is no doubt that Quebec and Montreal in particular, is the hottest place in contemporary Canadian art right now.

Here are a few of VoCA’s discoveries:

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Image: canadiandesignresource.ca

Coming up next week:

-The Quebec Triennale at the Musee d’art contemporain

-YSL at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

-Adad Hannah at Pierre Francois Ouellette Art Contemporain

-Carl Ostendarp, Peter Schuyff and Yves Tessier at Projex-Mtl

-Massimo Guerrera, Jessica Warboys, Jocelyne Alloucherie and Jean-Paul Ganem at Quartier Ephemere

…And more!

In addition to the Power Plant’s summer exhibition, Not Quite How I Remember It, featuring work by Gerald Byrne, Diane Borsato and Nestor Kruger, VoCA recommends Object Factory at the Gardiner Museum, which features ceramics by the likes of VoCA favorites Cindy Sherman and the late, great Ettore Sottsass (see previous post HERE.)

Cindy Sherman, Madame de Pompadour (née Poisson) Soup Tureen, 1990. Image: mintwiki.pbwiki.com

For the Power Plant, please click HERE and for the Gardiner museum, click HERE.

We also recommend checking out one of Toronto’s best new galleries, MKG 127.

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…plus c’est la meme chose.

From Reuters: A Monet water-lily painting sold for 41 million pounds ($80.5 million) Tuesday, doubling the previous auction record for the artist and ensuring London’s key art market season got off to a flying start.

Claude Monet, Le Bassin aux Nympheas, 1899. Image: intermonet.com

“Le Bassin aux Nympheas” had been expected to fetch 18-24 million pounds, but after an intense bidding battle it smashed the previous Monet auction record of $41.5 million set in May…

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1. MALE: WORK FROM THE COLLECTION OF VINCE ALETTI
ATTILA RICHARD LUKACS / POLAROIDS / MICHAEL MORRIS
Presentation House Gallery, Vancouver
June 28 to August 3, 2008

Bruce Bellas [Bruce of LA], “Untitled,” c. 1960. Image: presentationhousegall.com/vince aletti

Male is an exhibition of portrait works drawn from the personal collection of curator, writer and The New Yorker photography critic Vince Aletti. It features more than 100 photographs as well as drawings, sculptures, and paintings, juxtaposing works by celebrated figures with works by emerging artists, alongside anonymously authored images and flea market finds.

Attila Richard Lukacs / Polaroids / Michael Morris showcases over 600 Polaroid photographs by Vancouver painter Attila Richard Lukacs produced over the past twenty years as referents for paintings, assembled and collaged by Vancouver Island artist Michael Morris. Utilizing the unique characteristics of the Polaroid medium, Lukacs’ painter’s sensibility is evident in the photograph’s rich hues, deep chiaroscuro, romantic sensuality and graphic immediacy.

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St. Catharines and the Niagara region is home to a good number of excellent artists and art-related spaces. Cram, the NAC and Brock University’s Rodman Hall Art Gallery (see links below) all have strong programming.

Perhaps the best-kept secret in the St. Catharines art community is the Teutloff Collection of Sculpture that exists across Brock’s campus. In 1988, then president Terry White reached an agreement with German art collector Lutz Teutloff to display his large-scale sculptures on campus. The collection includes work by Fabrizio Plessi, Ilan Averbuch, Reinhard Reitzenstein and Bucky Schwartz.

Ilan Averbuch, The Bleeding Harp. Image: collegepublisher.com

Please click HERE for more info.

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Greg Curnoe, Self-Portrait #4, 1992. Image: ccca.ca

New York and London are the twin centres of today’s international art world, but what about less-visible, off-the-map places, like Hamburg, Chicago or Winnipeg, the almost unbelievably creative geographical heart of this country?

(We saw Guy Maddin narrate his acclaimed, celebratory, idiosyncratic film, My Winnipeg, live last night in Toronto – click HERE to watch the trailer)

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From James Adams in yesterday’s Globe and Mail:

“When its September, 2007, online sale resulted in gross revenues of about $600,000 on 156 lots, (Heffel Fine Art Auction House) started to think seriously about going with a separate live auction (for post-war and contemporary art) and “concentrate more on this growing component of the market,” noted Nina Kim, Heffel’s director of postwar and contemporary art…”

For the rest of the article, please click HERE.

Tom Thomson, View from a Height, Algonquin Park, Fall, 1916.
Auction Estimate: $800,000-1,200,000
Price Realized: $1,207,500

While the Canadian auction ’scene’ may seem laughable next to the inflated numbers bandied about in the U.S and the U.K these days, we are finally seeing increased interest in Canadian art since 1945, which is great because it has, for so long been terribly undervalued.

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1. DONIGAN CUMMINGS: EX VOTOS

MSVU Art Gallery, Halifax

21 June-10 August 2008

One of Donigan Cumming’s collages. Image: canada-culture.org

Montreal-based artist Donigan Cumming is known for his staged portraits of the aging, ill and socially assisted poor, in the form of photographs, videos and, best of all, his photographic collages.

Cumming’s work deliberately attacks the objectivity claimed by traditional documentary media. His disturbingly intimate images have been influenced by Artaud’s “theatre of cruelty,” Surrealism and cinema verite, among other historical art forms.

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“What separates true artistic development from mere rehashing?” asks Artforum’s Brian Sholis in his review of Canadian art star Brian Jungen’s new show at Casey Kaplan in New York.

Artist Brian Jungen. Image: voyage5capefarewell.com

“Some artists focus exclusively upon a narrow set of concerns but manage to find nuanced and varied expressions of them. Jungen, though formally creative, seems to be on intellectual autopilot.”

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