Although I stopped going to art fairs a while ago, after having been to many over the years both as a ‘gallerina’ and as a critic including Art Basel, Basel Miami, Art Chicago and Frieze, they remain popular venues for collectors, curators and, of course dealers and artists to hang out and do business.

Kristine Moran, Sidestep. Image: modto.com

New York’s Armory Show is one of the most prestigious and it takes place from March 3 – 6 in Manhattan.

Canada’s Art Dealers Association is – as per usual – organizing some programming around Canadians participating in the fair, but this year they are celebrating Canadian expat artists in New York with a series of discussions and tours of the show.

It’s a pretty good list of artists that I thought I’d share with you.

Continue reading →

As some of you probably know, I do the publicity for the Reel Artists Film Festival, which is put on each year in Toronto by the Canadian Art Foundation.

Shooting the film Picture Start, showing artist Rodney Graham. Image: courtesy Helen Yagi.

This year, four days of films on art and artists take place at Toronto’s TIFF Bell Lightbox, and will feature some of the world’s greatest artists, including:

Sol Lewitt – Canadian premiere
William Kentridge – Canadian premiere
Wanda Koop – WORLD premiere
Carl Beam – Toronto premiere
Shuvinai Ashoona
Ai Weiwei – North American premiere
Pipilotti Rist – Canadian premiere
Jenny Holzer – Toronto premiere
Olafur Eliasson – Toronto premiere
Damian Ortega – Canadian premiere
Christian Boltanski – Toronto premiere
Nam June Paik – WORLD premiere
The Chinese art market – Toronto premiere
John Baldessari – Canadian premiere
The Vancouver School (Picture Start) – WORLD premiere
Andreas Gursky – Canadian premiere

Last night, I previewed William Kentridge: Anything is Possible, about the famous South African artist. It is a must-see for artists, particularly anyone interested in drawing, animation, theatre or opera.

The film offers incredible insight into Kentridge’s artistic process, which is complex and encompasses many different approaches and ways of working. He also describes how his childhood experiences and the history of South Africa have influenced his art.

Continue reading →

Regular readers will know I’m a big fan of the late American artist Paul Thek. Recently, we stopped off in New York over the holidays to see the exhibition of work by the late, great American artist at the Whitney (on the last day of the show.)

Paul Thek – shown in Andy Warhol’s Screen Test. Image: accessibleartny.com

I’ve long been aware of Thek’s work through some collector friends who had some early, 60s pieces and in 2008, I traveled to Hamburg for the opening of the first Thek retrospective at the Falckenburg Foundation. That invitation came – kindly – from AA Bronson (see blog post below), whose work with General Idea was also part of the exhibition.

Paul Thek, Untitled, 1966 from the series Technological Reliquaries. image: linea-journal.com

I blogged about that show HERE But the Whitney show, the first American retrospective of Thek’s work, was different, and in some ways, better. The curators included some significant pieces from the Falckenburg collection, but they introduced some contextual pieces that gave the viewer a greater sense of Thek, the man. I discovered that he was the subject of one of Andy Warhol’s famous ‘screen test’ films, and more importantly, that his famous Technological Reliquary works, in which glistening, life-like wax sculptures of human limbs are encased in a super-modern, often fluorescent Perspex boxes, were an attempt to inject ‘humanity’ into the prevailing Minimalism of the day.

Artist Paul Thek, with his effigy, “Tomb”. Image: stevekasher.com

And, that his ‘Headboxes’, which often involved chairs with shoulder mounts, were created to further this approach by allowing the head of the wearer to occupy the space of the ‘art’. Fascinating, when you consider how seriously and successfully he was in pursuing the advancement of art.

Paul Thek, Untitled (Diver), 1969-70

The show is named ‘Diver’ in reference to the Diver figure in a slab from the Tomb of the Diver in Paestum, Italy, which he knew about when living in Rome, and identified strongly with it as an artist diving into the great unknown, trying to find his way.

Perhaps most impressive about Thek is that, in 1967 he created The Tomb, an effigy of himself inside a ziggurat, which he displayed and then re-displayed in different form many times. The piece became known by critics as the Death of the Hippie. Fro Thek, showing the piece was like burying himself, and it showed many times.

Paul Thek, Unititled (Self-portrait), 1966-67 from the series Technological Reliquaries. Image: bjws.com

I think that many young artists are resistant to getting this close to their art, or perhaps I should say that the current trend seems to be for artists to distance themselves from their art. But I think art is much more successful when it is brave, unafraid, unrestrained…almost dangerous. Plus, I really admire Thek’s willingness to be subservient to the art – to place the importance of his art over his own.

The exhibition catalogue has some excellent essays. I recommend it – you can buy it HERE.

There’s an interesting exhibition on at Toronto’s Christopher Cutts Gallery, of works by the late, famously prolific Harold Town.

Town was a member of Canada’s Painters Eleven (more HERE), Canada’s best known group of abstract painters – circa 1953.

The exhibition is of Town’s Snap paintings from the 1970s. The works definitely have that 70s vibe, with textured earth tones in oil with Lucite on canvas and were made by snapping a string that had been drenched in paint, onto a canvas.

Many of them are, to my eye, quite unattractive, but here are some of the better ones:

Harold Town, In Memory of Emilio del Junco. Image: Cuttsgallery.com

Continue reading →

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

Continue reading →

The other day, I did a studio visit with the young artist and very recent OCAD grad (2010) Hugh Scott-Douglas.

I had seen his ceramic sculptures at a collectors home and fell in love with them. They were mid-sized, off-balance ovals and loopy shapes that were roughly modeled but heavily and sophisticatedly glazed. Some, he showed at Clint Roenisch’s gallery in a 3-day exhibition this spring, had working light bulbs in their ends.

Hugh. Image: VoCA

I was expecting to see sculpture when I arrived, but Hugh’s tiny studio room was hung with paintings, which he was preparing for an upcoming show in L.A. (One of many shows this year, a testament to his ambition and social networking skills, but that’s another post, coming soon.)

Some ‘bad’ paintings by Hugh Scott-Douglas. Image: VoCA

He explained that while he studied in the sculpture program at school, he now worked in other media, mainly since he could stack more paintings together than he could store his extremely fragile, unfired clay sculptures.

A sculpture by Hugh Scott-Douglas. Image: verykunst.com

We spoke at length about his practice, mostly about ‘bad’ art, and the ‘willful idiocy’ that some young (and less young) painters have been bringing to their practices in recent years and which he is himself investigating.

I’m also interested in the idea of ‘bad’ art – in fact, what I loved about Hugh’s sculptures is the dichotomy between the off-kilter shapes and rich, heavy glazing. I love how much ‘bad’ art looks wonderful inside a white walled gallery. I love how clumsy execution is magically balanced by the artist’s intention. Of course, when artists make ‘bad’ art, it’s a deliberate move, a way of investigating new possibilities, or, as Raphael Rubenstein mentions in THIS article (that Hugh sent to me) a way of ignoring the ‘impossibility’ of painting.

His inspiration wall. From Mark Rothko to Tonya Harding – that’s kinda great. Image: VoCA

His tools. Image: VoCA

I feel it’s also a reaction against the market. From THIS article “Waxing Durr” in the quarterly publication Art Lies, on what they term “retard art”: “Posed as an act of passive market resistance, this recent slackerdom ultimately occupies a position of privilege and luxury, highlighting the market’s ready recuperation of any production, even the most retarded.”

Another of Hugh’s ‘bad’ paintings, soon to be shown in L.A. Image: VoCA

Check out Hugh Scott Douglas’s website HERE.

I think he’s definitely one to watch.

Since I haven’t been away – yet – this summer, my favorite summer show is in Toronto, at one of my favorite galleries.

Flavio Trevisan, The Three Dales, 2010. Image: flaviotrevisan.com

With the mayoral debate gearing up and the fact that Torontonians seem obsessed with urban issues and how to evolve our ward-centric patchwork quilt of a city, this show is particularly relevant.

Flavio Trevisan: Studies of a New Past
Diaz Contemporary
Through August 14, 2010

Hurry – don’t miss it, it’s definitely worth seeing in person.

Continue reading →

I just – finally – got the press release announcing the world premiere retrospective of El Anatsui, the African artist whose shimmering, decadent textiles made from metal bottlecaps are stunningly beautiful.

The artist El Anatsui. Image: ethicarts.org

This is going to be THE exhibition to see in Toronto, if not Canada, this fall. I’m sure of it.

El Anatsui: When I Last Wrote to You about Africa
October 2, 2010 to January 2, 2011 at the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto

Continue reading →

Ryan Van Der Hout, Slide 17, 2007, Chromogenic Print

I got a lovely email from a young artist Ryan Van Der Hout, a recent graduate of the Ryerson photography program in Toronto. He calls his phot-based work, which doesn’t involve the use of a camera, “photographic sketches that highlight the possibilities of the medium.”

He’s got an exhibition on at Toronto’s Lonsdale Gallery from May 26- June 27, 2010, with an artist’s reception this coming Saturday.

Continue reading →

Check out my article in this month’s issue of Azure magazine, on the incredible Emu feather concoctions by Colombian artist Maria Fernanda Cardoso.

One of Maria Fernanda Cardoso’s Emu Wear pieces. Image: ifoundsometreasure.com

Cardoso decided to investigate the Emu – the Australian, ostrich-like bird – as a way of relating to her new homeland, Australia. She began with feather sculptures and ended up with sculpture-like cloaks and hats that work as a kind of camouflage for the wearer.

Continue reading →