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.
May 19th, 2009 — Articles by Andrea Carson, Calgary and region, Edmonton, Halifax and Eastern Canada, Montreal, Ottawa, Thoughts on art, Toronto and region, Vancouver and region, Winnipeg
How relevant are art schools today? Do artists really require education beyond basic technical training? Do art institutions hinder, rather than help the creative expression of artists today?
Bruce Nauman, The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths (Window or Wall Sign), 1967.
Image: truthinart.wordpress.com
And what does Bruce Nauman think?
Read my opinion piece on the brand new news website, The Mark.
Click HERE.
May 19th, 2009 — Architecture
“This is a story of a man’s ambition: for a museum, for a city, and ultimately, for himself…”
Thus begins The Museum, Kenton Vaughn’s insider glimpse into Daniel Libeskind’s controversial extension to Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum. The documentary, which is released on dvd this weekend, is a revealing look at the process of building the ROM crystal, from the hubris and passion to the dangers of pinning ones’ hopes on ‘starchitecture’.
Architect Daniel Libeskind explains the concept of his building to ROM director William Thorsell. Image: nationalpost.com
William Thorsell seems to have been so convinced of Libeskind’s star power – “I feel like the person in the middle of a miracle,” he says – that he was blinded to the realities of the situation, most notably that Libeskind wasn’t all that experienced.
May 14th, 2009 — Toronto and region, Upcoming Events & Exhibitions, Video/New Media
In conjunction with the Art Gallery of Ontario’s excellent exhibition Surreal Things – which we reviewed HERE, Cinematheque Ontario is screening an impressive series of Surrealist films.
A still from Un Chien Andalou, 1929. Image: midnightcafe.com
The films include Un Chien Andalou (1929), Surrealism’s most famous film, by Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel. Billed as “a staggering assault on beauty and normality”, the film is of course a non-sensical series of events that occur between a ‘wife’ and her ‘lover’, depicted in black and white with a wonderful soundtrack. The film’s famous scene where a woman’s eyeball is cut open is presented casually, at the film’s start, as if to prepare the viewer for what they are in for. (Nothing too unnerving, it turns out)
May 12th, 2009 — Montreal, Performance art, Sculpture/Installation, Video/New Media
Kalup Linzy: Recessed Depressed… Child Just Tell Me…
May 8 – June 13, 2009
Parisian Laundry
Kalup Linzy. Image: artnews.org
One of the hottest names in video art, Linzy’s best known work is a series of video art pieces satirizing the tone and narrative approach of television soap opera. Linzy performs most of the characters himself, and was once described as ‘Part Richard Pryor, part RuPaul.‘
Click HERE for more info on Linzy, and some great videos.
Click HERE for Parisian Laundry’s website.
COMING UP!
Michal Rovner: Particles of Reality
DHC Art Foundation
May 21 – September 27, 2009
May 11th, 2009 — Calgary and region, Sculpture/Installation, Toronto and region
We were struck by Toronto artist Kerri Reid’s dust drawings when we saw them at Red Bull gallery, as part of the excellent exhibition What It Really Is, curated by the hot young curator Nick Brown, in Toronto back in January.
We’ve seen artwork in this vein before, but we’re always impressed by work that is so well produced and executed. And Kerri’s obsession with detail is remarkable, as is the fact that she sees value is reproducing images of dust. (Dust!)
May 8th, 2009 — Art Market, Collecting, First Nations/Inuit
In the current issue of VoCA’s favorite magazine, Art + Auction, Jori Finkel tries – without success – to present an opposing argument to what we have been saying for months (along with other critics, including the fabulous New Yorkers Holland Cotter and Jerry Saltz):
That the economic shakedown is the best thing that could have happened to the art world.
Will Kent Monkman, one of Canada’s most overrated artists (we think), survive the recession?
Si je t’aime prends garde à toi, 2007. Image: canadianart.ca
May 8th, 2009 — Toronto and region
Surreal Things
May 9 – August 30, 2009
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto
This is an excellent show, well worth seeing.
Salvador Dali, Ruby Lips brooch, 1949. Image: ago.net
It comes from London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, and is filled with marvelous objects that demonstrate the creative cross-fertilization between surrealist artists and designers.
There are stunningly modern Schiaparelli dresses, ceramics, textiles, jewellery and, of course Duchamp’s famous readymades.
May 7th, 2009 — Loved & Loathed, Toronto and region, Video/New Media
Last night we saw Enjoy Poverty at Hot Docs, the documentary film festival currently on in Toronto.
The neon sign. Image: fadwebsite.com
Seeing as how it was sponsored by the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, we were surprised to recognize only two artists – Lisa Steele and Kim Tomczak – in the audience.
The film sees Dutch artist Renzo Martens travel through the Congo armed with a camera and an enormous neon sign that reads, in English, ‘Enjoy Poverty (please)’, which he erects at various intervals amid desperately poor Congolese villagers.
There’s something incredibly uncomfortable about watching someone with his own agenda filming the tragedy of poverty stricken Africa. He befriends the villagers and interviews them about the difficulty of their situation, their malnourished children and the fact that they barely make enough to get by.
They put their trust in him, but his own agenda (to put up his signs in their villages) is entirely foreign to them. Even as he explains to them that their situation is unlikely to change, the bewilderment on their faces is clear. He’s here, what can they do? To the audience it verges on a kind of exploitation.
Until you realize what’s really going on.
May 6th, 2009 — First Nations/Inuit, Painting, Performance art, Sculpture/Installation, Toronto and region, Vancouver and region
Here are two exhibitions worth checking out on either side of the country this month:
1. Toronto
South Asian Visual Arts Centre at the University of Toronto Arts Centre
The One Year Drawing Project: May 2005 – October 2007: A Sri Lankan artists’ collaboration
25 May – 1 August 2009
Image: savac.net
In May 2005, four artists simultaneously created four unique drawings in their respective studios in Sri Lanka. These drawings were exchanged by post, finding their way between Jaffna in the north and the suburbs of the capital Colombo.
Upon receipt of the drawings, four more were generated in response to the first set of drawings, creating a chain of events that evolved into the One Year Drawing Project.
The participating artists in this drawing exchange are four of Sri Lanka’s most critically acclaimed contemporary artists – Muhanned Cader, Thamotharampillai Shanaathanan, Chandraguptha Thenuwara and Jagath Weerasinghe.
May 5th, 2009 — Architecture, Interviews
“Money and art: it’s a difficult question,” (says Miuccia Prada.) “But art has always been about very rich people – think of the great popes and princes of the Renaissance.”
The Prada Transformer, Rem Koolhaas’s incredible re-think of what architecture is. Image: gadget.ca
We think Ms. Prada is on to something here. Today, we were at a talk sponsored by the Canadian Art Foundation, by the Paris-based curator Vincent Honore, who works for the David Roberts Art Foundation in London.
Andrea Carson writes on contemporary art, architecture and design...Read full bio