I came across the work of artist Julie Gladstone when I was perusing the aisles of the Artist Project for potential artists to showcase on Artbomb.

Artist Julie Gladstone. All images: VoCA

I immediately liked the unconventional colour in her work, lots of pale minty colours jolted alive with fluorescent spray paint and then brought together with strips of striped black and white. They look a bit like maps, and a bit like quilts.

When she came to see me about participating in Artbomb, (her work will be up shortly) we discussed me stopping by her studio. She rents the main floor of a house downtown, and I thought you’d like a little glimpse of her work in progress:

A view into her studio.

A large, dark painting.

And a large, pale one.

You can see quite a bit of texture in her mixed media work (which also often includes nails and spraypaint), and she explained to me that she applies paint skins (the dried surface of paint) as she builds up the work.

She begins with several colours of paint poured on board, achieving a kind of Abstract Expressionist style, which she then disguises with more paint, leaving parts that she likes showing through. The paintings end up being very layered. The road map analogy seems appropriate if you think of roads as being laid down and bits of earth showing through in between.

Her paints.

The palette.

Gladstone paints with both oil and acrylic, but as she told me (and I think I’ve got this right) oil paint on top of acrylic is archival, but the reverse is not.

A work in progress.

Paint sticks.

Two small works on a mantlepiece.

Storage.

One last piece..

Last week I paid a visit to the studios of a young art collective called vsvsvs. The group, made up of eight young artists, most of whom are grads from Guelph University’s Fine Arts programme, live and work in a fantastic space off Cherry Street, in the port lands of Toronto.

A sculpture by vsvsvs member Anthony Cooper. Click on images to enlarge. All images: VoCA

The series of small rooms includes  an “open by chance” gallery space, where they show work by local artists and their friends. They were between shows when I visited, but should have something up again soon. You can check their website, HERE for info.

Three group members where there to show me their work when I arrived. James Gardner met me at the door and ushered me inside, passing two people who were making a solar oven, with plans to bake an apple crumble.

Two group members, making apple crumble.


The solar oven, made from an insulated cardboard box.

A number of small works from previous exhibitions were on display  on shelves along the living room wall, and they had prepared a nice spread of cheese and crackers for me.

The living room wall, with small works from past exhibitions.


A paper sculpture by Duy Khuong Pham

The cheese board.

James Gardner makes large wooden crudely painted sculptures that jut from the wall as if trying desperately to become three dimensional. They mostly are paintings of rooms, of art galleries. He uses lots of wood and lots of paint. Though none of the work was completely finished, the level of experimentation is good; my favourite thing though, was a partially deflated sculpture of balloons and foam insulation that hung from the ceiling. I look forward to seeing how Gardner’s work progresses over the next few years.

An experimental piece hanging from Gardner’s ceiling.


The studio of James Gardner, member of the art collective vsvsvs.


One of Gardner’s works.

Next was Wallis Cheung. I loved the paint chips laid out in rainbow stripes on her studio wall. Much more exacting and girly than Gardner’s work, my favourite pieces were the two densely painted works sitting on the floor and some quite wonderful miniature sculptures made of paint. They looked like otherworldly landscapes, and they were lovely.

Cheung’s studio wall, with rainbow coloured paint samples.

A very nice large painting, one of two.

An impressive, small paint sculpture.

Last was Anthony Cooper. I walked into his studio filled with wood, bits of plaster, plastic and bric-a-brac and couldn’t actually see any art. After a few minutes he pointed out these sculptures, from a series which he said was about the plinth supporting the plinth:

This is a kind of ‘poor’, minimalist sculpture that I’ve seen more of lately – Hugh Scott Douglas and Callum Schuster are also doing this kind of thing. I like it, it’s like a new kind of minimal ‘arte povera’, which itself was about questioning art and the establishment.

This is a kind of ugly art, but one that, at its best, delights in the experimentation of materials and pushing technologies to achieve a very subtle, and often very beautiful, result. It’s back to basics, but not. There’s a great article about food in the Financial Times this weekend that discusses a similar idea.

Some shelves displaying small casts of plaster-filled baggies.


This is how he envisions displaying them, but I prefer them displayed as above.

I sat down with legendary performance artist Marina Abramovic who was in Toronto last week for the Canadian premiere of The Artist Is Present, a documentary on her work, which screened at the Reel Artists Film Festival. Click HERE to read part one of the interview.

Photo: Marco Anelli. Courtesy Show of Force.

VoCA: I asked people for some questions to ask you on Facebook, and one person wanted to know about your performance scars.  How do you feel about them today?  They mark a time in your life. Are you proud, indifferent, nostalgic?

You know I don’t even think about them. Each scar was a part of a performance. I have scars here (shows one on her wrist), but you know I never look back. Always forward. You know the only time I really feel old is when I make a book, and I have to look back at all the documentation and I say ‘Oh my god…’ I really don’t have nostalgia. It’s all about the now.

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I sat down with legendary performance artist Marina Abramovic who was in Toronto this week for the Canadian premiere of The Artist Is Present, a documentary on her work, which screens at the Reel Artists Film Festival this Sunday. Click HERE for tickets.

She is also setting up an institute for the preservation of performance art, in Hudson, New York. Stay tuned for more on that.

Marina Abramovic. Image: Moma.org

VoCA: Do you think we are headed toward the 4^th dimension – a new age of awareness where we go beyond the five senses?

That’s a good question. I believe we are in an entirely new system of truth. I really believe things are different, consciousness is shifting, and it’s connected. Most people don’t see these things, I mean apart from global warming, apart from the things going on with the planet. I really believe that consciousness is going to another dimension. I’m reading this science fiction book and I’m one of the characters in the book – I’m doing galactic performances on mercury or on asteroids. I asked the author how this idea came about? And he said The Artist Is Present is perfect for galactic traveling because it’s the same material.  I really feel that we have reached a point where the artist is…immaterial. It’s all about energy.

We are going to be aware of things, see things that we haven’t seen before…we on the border of creating a new system. Artists are the antennas of society, we are the function and we have a duty to deliver the messages..

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I was in New York last weekend, to see friends but also to see the Maurizio Cattelan retrospective the day before it closed. It has gotten quite a bit of attention for its unusual installation. The work was hung entirely from the ceiling, down the central atrium, with absolutely nothing on the walls of the notoriously difficult gallery. It transformed Frank Lloyd Wright’s museum into a theatre, which made strangely perfect sense.

The viewer/audience on the ramp, looking into the atrium. All images: VoCA. Click images to enlarge.


The atrium, filled with works hung from a metal scaffold. Click images to enlarge.

The show had been hailed as a must-see by art critic friends of mine, but also panned by Peter Schjeldahl in the New Yorker.

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There’s all kinds of art out there.

One of the things that I find so exciting and inspiring about my new project ARTBOMB is seeing art by such varied artists, from the not-so-art-educated to the very highly educated. There is an enormous range of work, which is what makes art (as a language) so incredible and potentially mind-opening.

All work by Erika Stanley at Galeria Valanti. All images: VoCA

Another thing that achieves this is travel. Seeing art being made in other locations, with other influences for other markets is often inspiring. This was definitely the case years ago when I first saw contemporary Chinese art for instance. And again when recently in Costa Rica, where I was introduced to the Galeria Valanti.

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The other day, I visited artist Paulette Phillips at her home in Toronto, to be interviewed for her upcoming artwork. Called The Directed Lie, it involved being put to the test – the lie detector test.

Me with Paulette Phillips, undergoing the polygraph. All images: Scott Barker/VoCA

Phillips has trained as a professional polygraph technician in the United States, and owns a polygraph machine, which is cleverly disguised as a suitcase, but it’s the real deal. I don’t know why, but I surprised that it was such an authentic experience, complete with blood pressure and respiration monitors, and carefully considered questions.

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I visited artist Josh Malcolm in his studio this afternoon. His large oils on canvas were everywhere, and I found them very intriguing. They are very high energy – Malcolm says he’s inspired by European and American expressionist painting. But they’re quite different, and quite challenging. At first glance, they looked, to me very modern…but sort of unfinished.

In the studio. All images: VoCA

Cartoon limbs stuck out everywhere in an homage to Phillip Guston, and there are raw, stripey brushstrokes at funny angles across many canvases. I was struck by one piece in particular. It was a black painting, with several arms tangled up and a large swipe of paint crudely smeared across the bottom of the canvas and what looks to be a palette knife a the far side. It make me think of a fist fight.  More precisely, it seemed as if the artist was fighting with himself.

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The other day, I stopped in at the studio of Toronto artist Francisco Gomez.

A detail from Empire of Dust, Macca, 2009. All images: VoCA

Born in Caracas Venezuela, he moved to Canada in 1991 and studied at OCAD. Gomez generally works in ink and pastel on mylar – an unusual combination that Gomez tells me is difficult, since the pastel resists the mylar after a certain point, but it’s a very clean, effective look. I can see why he likes it.

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I stopped by the studio of young painter Rob Davidovitz the other afternoon. Rob doesn’t paint in the traditional sense, though. Instead he uses paint to create these textile/painting hybrids.

A woven painting by Rob Davidovitz. All images: VoCA

He mixes paint colours in a kind of pastry tube (more on that below) and squeezes it out in long lines, like thread. Each ‘thread’ incorporates its own mix of colour that blends nicely in the final piece.They he lets the paint dry and weaves the strips, which he attaches to board. Pretty simple.

Another view.

The work may not be terribly mature (yet) -  he’s a young guy, but it’s beautiful, and an interesting approach when you consider other artists who have used paint in a sculptural way – I’m thinking of Kim Dorland‘s earlier work, for one. It’s also interesting that Davidovitz cites the poured paint sculptures of feminist artist Lynda Benglis as an influence. His woven paintings do come off as strangely feminist, meaning that one can comfortably view them through the lens of feminist art–weaving being a traditionally ‘feminine’ craft.

The works are seductive – Davidovitz encourages you to touch and bend them; they’re not delicate.

The back of the work. The paint is glued to the board.

Davidovitz went to art school with plans to be a photographer. Believe it or not, he was working in a bakery, making a cake when he came up with the idea of pushing paint through a piping bag. Shortly thereafter he began experimenting, and eventually perfected the technique..

Three smaller finished works.

Are the works paintings or textiles? “I weave paint,” says Davidovitz. He’s been showing here and there (including at Toronto’s Textile Museum) since he graduated in 2005 and is currently preparing for a group show titled Hard Twist at the Gladstone Hotel which opens on November 25th. The exhibition, all textile-based work by 40 artists, will feature his largest work to date, an enormous piece that weighs over two hundred pounds and involved over twenty gallons of paint to create.

This is good – he should be encouraged to think big and beyond, the way Benglis does.

The artist with a single strand from his Gladstone Hotel piece.

Some small strands.

The weaving process.

An early, experimental work.