Your Cultural Concierge! VoCA offers critical commentary on the Canadian art scene, with a focus on Toronto. Featuring exhibition previews, critics picks, interviews and in-depth articles on art in Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Ottawa and Halifax.
November 28th, 2008 — Artists, Events/Talks, Exhibitions, Sculpture/Installation, Toronto, performance art
Iris Häussler: Honest Threads
January 22 - March 8, 2009
At Honest Ed’s
581 Bloor Street W, Toronto
Toronto’s Honest Ed’s Bargain Warehouse. Image: mac.com
VoCA loved Iris Häussler’s exhibition The Legacy of Joseph Wagenbach, in fact we wrote a feature story about it for Border Crossings magazine. See our post HERE.
November 27th, 2008 — Articles by Andrea Carson, Artists, Collecting, Exhibitions, Painting, Photography, Sculpture/Installation, Toronto, Video/New Media
Check out my reviews in the special Toronto section of the December 2008 issue of ARTnews.
Image: artnewsonline.com
Click each thumbnail twice:
Click HERE to go to the ARTnews magazine website.
November 26th, 2008 — Artists, Exhibitions, News: International, performance art
Notorious performance artist Istvan Kantor was arrested yesterday at the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, for causing a ruckus at the Joseph Beuys exhibition Die Revolution Sind Wir (We are the revolution).
Two images from Kantor’s performance with MACHINESEXACTIONGROUP at the Museum Of Contemporary Art, Toronto, 2004. Image: ccca.ca
Kantor’s piece, a response to the title of the Beuys show, was called Und Wir Auch (And we too). It was positioned as a tribute to Beuys’ idea of a revolutionary creation that extends art into all aspects of life.
Kantor arrived to the museum with a video crew and was going to proceed with a silent posing action in front of Beuys works but when he tried to unroll and hold up a sign that said: ‘UND WIR AUCH’ (and we too), he got immediately surrounded by guards and pulled out with force from the exhibition.
November 25th, 2008 — Articles, Artists, VoCA's Top Five
New York art dealer Marian Goodman - one of VoCA’s art heroes and rep of Thomas Schutte, our favorite artist - speaks to Art + Auction:
Art dealer extraordinare Marian Goodman. Image: artinfo.com
Read the article HERE
November 25th, 2008 — Art market, Artists, Collecting, News: Canada, Painting, Toronto
Lawren Harris’s sketch of Nerke, Greenland sold for $1.8 million, far beyond its pre-sale estimate of $300,000 to $500,000, at the Sotheby’s Canada auction on Monday.
Lawren Harris, Icebergs and Mountains, Greenland, 1932. (Not from the sale) Image: virtualmuseum.ca
According to the Virtual Museum of Canada, “Lawren Harris strove to embody the spiritual essence of the universe through simplified, archetypal forms and a mystical light that appears to radiate from within the canvas. One of his favoured subjects was the mountains of the Arctic north, where he believed the spiritual energies of the world originated.
November 24th, 2008 — Artists, Interviews, Toronto, Vancouver, performance art
Founded in 1993, Mammalian Diving Reflex is a “research-art atelier dedicated to investigating the social sphere, always on the lookout for contradictions to whip into aesthetically scintillating experiences, producing one-off events, theatre-based performance, theoretical texts and community happenings.”
According to their website , “It is our mission to bring people together, engage them, challenge them and get them talking, thinking and feeling.”
VoCA has been wondering for some time whether Mammalian artistic Darren O’Donnell is one of the most interesting and relevant artists in Canada. We sat down with him in Toronto to find out what his work is all about.
One of Mammalian Diving Reflex’s popular performances, “Haircuts by Children”. Image: torontolife.com
November 21st, 2008 — Art market, Collecting, Events/Talks, Painting, Toronto
We attended the auction preview last night at Ritchie’s, in association with Sotheby’s, as guests of Sotheby’s Real Estate.
The auction preview rooms - the sale will take place on Monday at 10:30 am - were filled cheek by jowl with major Canadian names including several works by Jean-Paul Riopelle, many by the Group of Seven including a tiny, perfectly formed Lawren Harris and a few works by First Nations artist Norval Morrisseau, whose enormous painting Androgyny has just been installed by Governor-General Michaëlle Jean in the grand ballroom of Rideau Hall in Ottawa.
Norval Morrisseau’s Androgyny at Rideau Hall. Image: canadianart.ca
It appears that Ritchie’s/Sotheby’s are expecting great things, particularly given the results of last week’s Heffel auction that saw 175 lots valued at almost $12.5-million, a pretty big deal in Canada. According to James Adams in the Globe and Mail, this was the third-biggest sale by dollar in Canadian art auction history. Nonetheless, many lots went unsold last week, a fact that speaks to the conservatism in the market.
November 20th, 2008 — Artists, Exhibitions, Montreal, Ottawa, Painting, Toronto
Soft Abs
November 08 – December 06, 2008
Modern Fuel Artist-Run Centre, Kingston Ontario
Sizzle Reel, Melanie Authier, 2008. Image: gibsongallery.com
VoCA contributor Catherine Toews reports on a painting show in Kingston:
The most surprising thing about Soft Abs, currently on display at Modern Fuel Artist-Run Centre is the lack of large abstract paintings on canvas in the main room gallery. The show features works by four female artists (Miranda Aschenbrenner, Melanie Authier, Christine Baigent and Milly Ristvedt) and is described in Michael Davidge’s curatorial statement as an attempt to offer “an expansive definition of abstraction to Modern Fuel’s visitors.”
November 19th, 2008 — Art market, Collecting, News: International
So…
“Late Friday afternoon Sotheby’s…reported that it had lost $28.2 million from guarantees at its contemporary art auctions last week. That brought its total losses to about $52 million this fall, all from guarantees. Executives at Christie’s…also admitted to having lost millions of dollars.”
Francis Bacon, Study for Self-Portrait, 1964. This painting, up for sale at Christie’s with a pre-sale estimate of $40 million US, failed to sell, despite the fact that a 1976 Bacon triptych went for $86.3 million in May.
However…
“Seasoned collectors…sat out the boom years and were now returning for what seemed like bargain prices. The Los Angeles financier Eli Broad, for example, could be seen near the front of the Sotheby’s salesroom last week and bought more than $8 million worth of art by Jeff Koons, Donald Judd, Ed Ruscha and Robert Rauschenberg at an auction he called a “half-price sale.”
November 18th, 2008 — Artists, Calgary, Exhibitions, Halifax, Toronto, Video/New Media
1. David Hoffos: Scenes From the House Dream
October 04 - 30 November, 2008
The Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge
David Hoffos, Scenes from a House Dream. Image: saag.ca
This exhibition, curated by Shirley Madill presents one of VoCA’s favorite Canadian artists, David Hoffos’ master work, Scenes from the House Dream. The House Dream project has formed the nexus of Hoffos’ studio practice for the past five years and serves as a compendium of the artist’s signature new/old media techniques which have been perfected over seventeen years of art production.
David Hoffos, Scenes from a House Dream. Image: saag.ca
Lethbridge, Alberta-based artist David Hoffos’ ongoing practice continues to explore the uncanny and its relationship to the everyday; his engaging mixture of both creates narratives that transcend time and place. The artist’s use of low-tech paraphernalia to produce illusions of reality has contributed to an entirely original body of work. The subject matter of his current production represents a move away from the outward-looking spectacle to a more personal examination of the human psyche.
David Hoffos is represented by Trepanier Baier Gallery. Please click HERE.
Andrea Carson writes on contemporary art, architecture and design...Read full bio