“Toronto is only beginning to evolve in the design of public space…the city feels like it was designed by the public works department.”

The UQAM Residences, in Montreal. Image: VoCA

Yes it does and it’s a real shame that it’s taking so long.

After being in Montreal over the holidays, where the UQAM buildings off Sherbrooke are invigorating, challenging, high quality…anything but dull, we came back to Toronto, where the average new building has cheap doors, glass frontage right out onto the streets, few courtyards and shameful quality. (Hello, lower Jarvis Street)

Read THIS article on the Toronto architect who - we are thrilled to see - is changing that.

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[Un]Limited Colors: Recent Work by Matthew Biederman
Centre de Design de l’UQAM, Montreal
November 12 - December 13, 2009

Matthew Biederman, Color Deforming a Cone. 2008. Custom software, HD projector, computer, painted extruded aluminum. Image: art45.ca

Some of VoCA’s favorite Canadian artists work in new media: David Rokeby, Rafael Lozanno-Hemmer, David Hoffos, Lisa Steele and Kim Tomczak, Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, to name a few.

Another artist who is using both new media (customized software, video) and sculpture, music and performance in wonderful, innovative ways is Montreal’s Matthew Biederman.

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“An art gallery is like a single-cell organism: it is the crudest but also the most essential life form in the art-world food chain. It is among the easiest of public forums to start up…

Luanne Martineau, Gobbler, 2005. Image: trepanierbaer.com

…At the same time keeping a gallery going is usually fairly hard, and can seem impossibly daunting when sales slump. As small operations, galleries are…canaries in the coal mine, as they have often been called. So it made sense, as the bottom fell out of the art market last winter, that many people predicted galleries would start closing fast and furiously.”

This is from an article by Roberta Smith from the New York Times. Check it out HERE.

Graham Gillmore, Turns You On, 2005. Image: monteclarkgallery.com

Because Canada’s contemporary art market pales in comparison to that in the U.S., we don’t, perhaps give it much thought. But now’s a good time to set aside a budget to buy some art. $2000 would do nicely, and there’s the Toronto International Art Fair coming up, as well as excellent exhibitions opening this month. Here are some of our picks:

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Peut Mieux Faire
September 4 - 9 October, 2009
Atelier Punkt, Montreal

There’s a new exhibition opening on September 4 at Atelier Punkt, the year-old space that appears to be one of Montreal’s coolest art and design spaces.

Founded by artist Melinda Pap, Punkt is effectively an artist-run centre that dedicates itself to exhibitions of work by young designers, photographers, illustrators and architects from “Montreal and the world.”

Peut Mieux Faire features work by artists, performers, graphic designers, stylists, make up artists, ceramicists, jewelers, architects, authors-composers-interpreters…each of whom have been given by Emmanuel Galland (the curator ‘professor’), a classic Canada Hilroy exercise book as a ‘canvas’.

Participating artists include Suzanne Dery, Justin Stephens, Jerome Fortin and Daniel Olsen, among many others.

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“With their artists competing on an international stage, Canadians can no longer complain of their country as a cultural backwater nor luxuriate in the nostalgic charm of provincialism. In art as in political, social and economic activities, Canada is fully involved in the world of today,”
– Dr. R. H. Hubbard, former Chief Curator of the National Gallery of Canada.

Guido Molinari, Untitled, 1964. Image: artnet.com

Walking down Bloor Street in Toronto last night, we stopped at a bookshop’s outdoor display and there, right in front of us, on sale for $1.99, was a copy of Canadian Art Today, originally published in 1970 by Studio International.

Edited by William Townsend, a professor at the University of London, the slim book is filled with contributions from Canada’s art elite at the time: R.H. Hubbard, then chief curator of the National Gallery of Canada, Doris Shadbolt, then curator of the Vancovuer Art Gallery, curators Dennis Reid, Pierre Theberge and David Thompson.

“Canadian artists were dependent for generations on the artistic traditions of France and England and it is only since the last war that contemporary American influences have made a decisive impact,” writes Townsend.

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This fall in Montreal and Toronto sees a new exhibition at DHC/ART in Montreal, the legendary art critic Hal Foster at OCAD in Toronto, and the Ten Commandments at the ROM in Toronto.

Ten Commandments: A Fragment
Saturday, October 10 to Sunday, October 18, 2009
The Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto

A fragment of the Ten Commandments. Image: cogwriter.com

As part of the ROM’s excellent exhibition Dead Sea Scrolls: Words that Changed the World, which is on view through January 3, 2010, for one week only in October (due to its sensitivity to light and humidity), the ROM will showcase a fragment of one of our oldest copies of the text of the Ten Commandments.

The displayed Scroll contains the text of the Ten Commandments from Deuteronomy 5 and is the best preserved of all the Deuteronomy manuscripts discovered. A biblical scroll, it is written in Hebrew and dated to ca. 30 – 1 BCE.

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It’s summer, and you don’t want to get too serious…so here are some easy shows to check out throughout July. Swing by for free nighttime screenings in Montreal, or get outside for public art interventions in Calgary.

La Centrale Galerie Powerhouse
Montreal

In Montreal, stop by La Centrale’s window to see these screenings, which are about appearance and transformation. From dusk ’til dawn.

Stephanie Chabot, Destroyer, 2005. Image: stephaniechabot.netfirms.com

BLUE MOON
Stéphanie Chabot
2007.
July 29 to August 2, 2009

Blue Moon presents a woman coldly displayed in virtual space accompanied by a soundtrack based on an Elvis tune. Evoking beauty, pleasure, and desire, Blue Moon is a tender take on woman’s complex and sometimes contradictory situation within the myth of romance.

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Above and Below
July 18 - 12 September, 2009
Foreman Art Gallery, Bishop’s University
Sherbrooke, Quebec

Penelope Stewart, Cloche, 2008. 12′ x 10′ double photograph ( on vinyl), in the woods.
Image: penelopestewart.ca

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The annual ARTnews collectors list is out, and there are no big surprises. Over half the major collectors featured are from the United States, followed by Germany, the UK, Switzerland and other Western European countries.

Most focus on contemporary and modern art, though Impressionist, Post-Impressionist and Old Masters are also popular.

Jativa Master (also known as the Master of the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin), The Crucifixion, late 1400’s
oil on panel lined with fabric. Gift of Joey and Toby Tanenbaum to the AGO, 1995

Four Canadians make the list:

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In The Trees: Works from the Battat Collection
Battat Contemporary, Montreal
July 2 – August 15, 2009

Ed Pien, Night Gathering, 2005. All images courtesy Battat Contemporary.

Montreal’s newest collector-led art space, Battat Contemporary, run by the collector Joe Battat, opened in March 2009 and has quickly made a name for itself by mixing Battat’s interest in Old Master drawings with cutting edge contemporary pieces.

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