Here is another example of how art and life – through design – are drawing closer together all the time. Mirror has a long history in art going back to at least the Renaissance and of course more recently the wonderful pieces by Michelangelo Pistoletto and Michael Snow, David Altmejd and Jeff Wall, among many, many others. Over the past few years, I’ve been predicting the return of mirror as a material in art, and now it’s seemingly everywhere.

Sweden’s Tree Hotel has a room called Mirrorcube. Image: geeknewscentral.com

I came across this awesome hotel room that looks very similar to one of Michel de Broin’s sculptures, his Superficial from 2004, which is essentially a large mirrored rock that he installed in a forest in Alsace, France and then documented. I love the idea of using mirror to create camouflage.

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This just in…

Toronto art dealer Mira Godard has died. Until recently, no one had reported it, but now you can read more on BlogTO HERE and at the Globe and Mail HERE.

Mira Godard. Image: torontolife.com

From the Art Dealers Association press release:

Her contribution to creating an art scene and art market in Canada cannot be underoverstated. The Mira Godard Gallery has shown some of Canada’s most important artists – Alex Colville, Christopher and Mary Pratt, David Milne, the Estate of Lawren Harris, Jean-Paul Riopelle and Joe Fafard, to name a few.

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By now it’s all over the web. The story began when Anishnaabe artist Rebecca Belmore yelled “I quit!” after a performance outside the VAG in Vancouver last Saturday titled WORTH (–statement of Defence), leading many in the art world to think that she may well do just that, frustrated as she is by an ongoing legal battle with her Toronto dealer, Pari Nadimi.

Rebecca Belmore, View of the Artist and Truck, 2009. Image: canadianart.ca

According to a press release, the performance “demonstrates the artist’s public commitment to vigorously defending herself, her art practice and more broadly, the rights of all artists against those who seek to exploit them.”

Watch the performance on YouTube HERE.

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Here’s my review of Ross King‘s excellent book on the Group of Seven, in the current issue of Quill and Quire. It’s also at the Quill and Quire website, HERE.

Image: mcmichael.com

Defiant Spirits: The Modernist Revolution of the Group of Seven

by Ross King

From a young age, Canadians learn about our country’s most famous painting movement in art classes, yet the Group of Seven’s dramatic landscapes and blazing depictions of Canada’s wilderness still don’t seem to get the respect they deserve.

Ross King, the best-selling author of Brunelleschi’s Dome and, more recently, Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling, redresses this imbalance by situating the group of artists within a larger historical context. His compellingly detailed account begins in 1912, as the painters were just meeting, and continues through the Great War, culminating with the group’s eventual disbanding in the 1930s. King’s elegant prose is a joy to read as he introduces each figure, giving the reader a rare glimpse into the lives of young men who were united by the desire to create a distinctly Canadian painting style at a time when critics, collectors, and the public were hostile toward the aspiring modernists.

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I spoke with Lethbridge artist David Hoffos a few days ago on the eve of his excellent, magical exhibition Scenes from a House Dream, a long term, five-phase series of illusionary installation works that premiered in 2008 in Lethbridge, Alberta at The Southern Alberta Art Gallery, before going to the National Gallery in Ottawa (where I saw it.) The show is now at MOCCA in Toronto and will soon head to Calgary’s Illingworth Kerr Gallery. The touring exhibition is curated by Shirley Madill and circulated by Rodman Hall Art Centre.

Scenes from Scenes From The House Deam, Phase Two: Airport Hotel. Image: seemagazine.com

Scenes from a House Dream
Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (MOCCA)
Toronto
September 10 – 31 December, 2010

Another still from Scenes from a House Dream. Image: Viewoncanadianart.com

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Lady Gaga’s meat dress. Image: highsnobiety.com

Well, ok not exactly.

But Lady Gaga definitely channels Montreal artist Jana Sterbak, who made a huge splash when her piece Vanitas: Flesh Dress for an Albino Anorectic (1987) was first displayed at the National Gallery of Canada.

The Vogue cover was shot – big surprise – by fashion provocateur Terry Richardson and styled by Nicola Formichetti.

According to THIS excerpt, Sterbak’s installation, originally shown on a hanger for emphasis, was aiming to “emphasize the contrast between vanity and bodily decay.”

It’s quite interesting to think of that idea in relation to Lady Gaga, no?

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The Toronto International Film Festival opens on September 9 and goes until the 19th.

An image by artist Douglas Gordon. Image: ursusbooks.com

This year, the buzz is bigger than ever, with TIFF’s new building downtown that is sure revitalize King Street near John. The small, old-Toronto style strip of buildings opposite, which house mostly touristy restaurants, have become TIFF’s poor cousins. Probably not long before they’re demolished.

In any case, this year’s Future Projections program, which sees film-based installations in galleries throughout the city, has a stellar lineup of international names, including Douglas Gordon, Michael Nyman and Stan Douglas.

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So we went to New York for five days last weekend. It was the usual late August hot, humid weather but we had two amazing art experiences that made it all entirely worthwhile.

1. Big Bambu on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum.

Doug and Mike Starn’s 40-foot high bamboo structure exemplifies what I always say about artists that do design-y type installations. It’s important to go big. The installation should always overwhelm the viewer so that the viewer feels the effect of the artwork. And that may mean that the artist needs to work for days, months on the project to get it large enough. A lot of young installation artists should heed this advice, I think.

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I’m working on a video exhibition with the public art organization No. 9 Contemporary Art & the Environment. It’s called Four Directions, and its opening will coincide with the opening of Evergreen at the Brickworks, Toronto.

SUNDAY September 26, 2010 – December 31, 2010

The exhibition is designed to reflect the mandate of the public art organization No. 9: that contemporary art can stimulate positive social and environmental change. The group video exhibition features four powerful environmentally themed video artworks, each screened inside one of four restored drying kilns (long tunnels). The kilns are located at the North end of the Heritage Brick Factory, Building 16, which is a 52,000 square foot space, the largest building on-site.

A still from Lessons of Darkness. Image: uashome.alaska.edu

The works to be screened are Lessons of Darkness by the legendary German filmmaker Werner Herzog and three Canadian artists:

L’Or blanc/White Gold, a No. 9 commission by Isabelle Hayeur
The Cyanide Flats: 50?54´15´´N / 95?20´20´´W, a No. 9 commission by Val Klassen
Waterspeak by Dana Claxton

The exhibition’s goal is to acknowledge manmade environmental destruction and to offer alternative ways of thinking about a healthy earth that suggest re-growth and healing. The exhibition will present a journey for the viewer from Herzog’s bleak documentation of Kuwait’s burning oil fields to Isabelle Hayeur’s curtain of softly falling salt crystals, followed by Val Klassen’s still signs of hope within a ravaged landscape, to Dana Claxton’s mesmerizing plea on behalf of water.

Without being overly didactic or preachy, together the three works will provide a response to Herzog’s Lessons of Darkness. As the viewer progresses through each tunnel, he/she will witness environmental devastation, followed by works that engage the emotions to suggest mindfulness, respect and honour for our environment.

Check out No. 9 Contemporary Art & the Environment, HERE.

Every city is full of those little artistic gestures, those flourishes made – sometimes deliberately, often not – by people who take the time to do things a little differently.I think they are too often overlooked – and I find them inspiring. Not as high art of course, but possibly inspiring for architects or designers looking for ways to inject more visual interest in our world.At Harbord and Spadina, a framed piece of fence, decorated with string that blow in the breeze. Continue reading →