“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.“ – Marcel Proust

Today, I swung by Feheley Fine Arts gorgeous new gallery at 65 George Street, where ADAC (the Art Dealers Association of Canada) was hosting a lunch in honour of the upcoming exhibition Oh, Canada that will open at Mass MoCA on May 26.

A slide for Oh, Canada showing Joyce Wieland’s piece of lipstick marking our national anthem. Click on images to enlarge them. All images: VoCA

It’s a survey of Canadian art, from the perspective of Mass MoCA’s american curator, Denise Markonish, who has spent the past four years preparing for this exhibition by travelling to nearly every province in Canada, meeting artists, curators, gallery owners and writers.

A view of Feheley Fine Arts.


The piece above is fantastic, titled Cutting Walrus on the Beach, Itee Pootoogook, 2011. It’s sold, though. The lower piece, Plane Trip, 2011 by the same artist is not sold.

I met Denise, who is very sweet and Mass MoCA long-time director, Joe Thompson, who is a friendly, lovely man.

Denise has no real connection to Canada, despite having been here on a family road trip to Toronto at age twelve, when she saw some public artworks by Michael Snow. But really, she noticed that there was very little dialogue between American and Canadian art, and set out to rectify that.

Joe Thompson, Mass MoCA director, speaking at the ADAC lunch.

Some artists that you can expect to see are Luanne Martineau, Eric Cameron, David Hoffos, Ed Pien, Michael Snow, BGL, Valerie Blass, Kim Morgan and many, many others. Quite a few artists were commissioned to make works especially for this show, including Rebecca Belmore, Dean Baldwin, Daniel Barrow, Garry Neill Kennedy and many others.

There are 62 artists in the show, I believe, and most of them I had never heard of. Which is wonderful.

Of course there has been some griping from those who (or whose artists) were not included, but they need to get over it. It’s a fantastic opportunity to learn about new artists in Canada, and of course the curator doesn’t owe anyone anything. Canada has grown up over the past decade (or so one would like to think.) There are many opportunities for artists and galleries these days. You’ve got to reach out for them, not complain when they don’t come to you.

Curator Denise Markonish.

One interesting thing that Denise did was to have each artist interview another, and in turn be interviewed. Each one gave their top five artists. She tells a great story of how the excellent senior conceptualist painter Eric Cameron took the list of artists, eliminated everyone he knew of, then further eliminated everyone whose gender he was certain of, and thus came up with his list of five.

Anyway, Denise thought that would be a great way to try to bridge the geographical divide of our country. I agree, and I look forward to reading the interviews in the catalogue, out in July.

For more info on Mass MoCA, check out their website HERE.

While it’s clear that Canada has some thriving art scenes in Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto and Winnipeg, the issue continues to be the comparatively weak market for contemporary art. We have Nuit Blanche in Montreal and Toronto (which is a good start) and we have art fairs for collectors, but the question is how to get the average non-art person visitng gallieres and purchasing work by local artists?

Darren Stebeleski, $400.

An idea to bring the gallery to the people will launch at Winnipeg’s popular Fringe Festival (July 13 – 24, 2011). Conceived by Martha Street Studio, RAW:Gallery of Architecture and Design, and Golden City Fine Art, the idea is to increase exposure and appreciation of Winnipeg’s outstanding artists. “We felt it was unfortunate that people are not able to find local contemporary artists as easily as in other markets,” say the organizers. “Thus, over some drinks we hatched POST NO BILLS temporary commercial gallery. We hope that this event, in conjunction with the Fringe Festival will help both artists and patrons to meet one another.”

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The other day I found a number of old Canadian Art magazines on sale for $2 each. I bought them, and found this questionnaire in the April 1966 issue. It’s interesting, reading over the questions how some remain relevant today and others, not so much…

My vintage copies of Canadian Art. Image: VoCA

On the following page were answers to some of the questions by the leading artists of the day, including Jean McEwen, Clive Daly, Guido Molinari, Doris McCarthy, Joyce Wieland, Christopher Pratt and Iain Baxter. I’ll reprint some of their answers in an upcoming blog post.

In the meantime, I’d love to hear your replies to some of the questions. Pick just one, or several and comment below!

Button created by Iain Baxter’s N.E. Thing Company Ltd. Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Active 1966-1978. Image: flickr.com

1. Do you think art criticism can be useful? If yes, to whom especially?

2. What should art criticism contain?

3. What do you feel is the role of the art critic today?

4. In your opinion, what constitutes the minimum training, academic or otherwise and experience in the visual arts that would equip a critic to fulfill his role?

5. Assuming art criticism has some value, in which of the following media is art criticism most necessary? (Check one only)
a. Newspapers
b. Quarterlies
c. Television
d. Art magazines
e. Radio
f. Other (specify)

6. Art criticism should be directed to reach (check as many of the following as you believe necessary)
a. Artists
b. Museum and public gallery executives
c. Private collectors
d. Other (specify)
e. Other critics
f. Students
g. The general public

7. Do you feel that sound critical reviews (good or bad) have an influence on artists’ work and its direction?

8. Do you feel that sound critical reviews have an influence on the buying public?

9. Do you feel that sound critical reviews have an influence on art appreciation generally?

10. Whether incompetent criticism praises or condemns, do you believe that unsound critical reviews ultimately damage and artist with his public? If so, why?

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From Winnipeg, VoCA contributor Whitney Light sat down with painter Krisjanis Kaktins-Gorsline to discuss the development of his painting practice, the importance of variation, biological systems and how he keeps it all interesting.

Krisjanis Kaktins-Gorsline, Rot Samba, 2009, oil on canvas. All images courtesy the artist.

VoCA: What is keeping you busy now?

KK: I’m at the start of something new. I’m interested in taking motifs from my paintings and reusing them over and over again, in pattern making and, in doing that, exploring a parallel with biological processes, or evolution. I’m trying to develop a way of painting that employs little systems. I’m interested in the way biological systems work rather than what they look like; how they make structures out of small bits.

VoCA: Who or what has motivated your ideas in this direction?

KK: Predominantly right now the two things I’m looking at are the history of ornamentation and also really trying to understand how certain biological processes work. They don’t come out directly per se, but I’m trying to use both to shape what I’m doing. Ornamentation became interesting to me because it’s a domain within which you can see an evolution of motifs and forms; it reveals small parts generating larger systems or patterns through time.

Krisjanis Kaktins-Gorsline, Untitled, 2010, Ink on paper.

VoCA: You have been looking for a model process. How does this new work compare to your previous?

KK: I was looking for ways of making things that I could get behind. My previous work (around 2008) was really almost about working without a model. On some level I had a reticence about having a model or a system. At that time, I was really interested in making paintings that would to some degree explore ideas about the production of subjectivity, or even express doubts in relation to this idea. This also paralleled an interest in and doubt around how to pursue making paintings. Rather than depicting the figure as a discrete whole, I was interested in looking at it as an assemblage of heterogeneous parts that come together briefly to form a kind of shifty multitude as opposed to an individual.

I think that my reticence around the idea of a system or a model really came out of not seeing one that didn’t in some way involve an appeal towards some kind of abstract ideal or involve me having to impose my will on the process in an aggressive way. I was more interested in pursuing something more passive and more like tending to a practice as one would a garden, preferably a pretty scruffy English garden.

I think with the newer work, looking at areas like the study of biological systems, has provided me with models or ways of working that seem less determinist or reductive. It presents models and systems that at their core are about variation, interconnectedness, evolution, and change. So things are explored as being dynamic and in constant motion as opposed to being static.

Krisjanis Kaktins-Gorsline, Comedian (blk), 2009. Oil on canvas.

VoCA: This seems to have taken you away from representational imagery toward greater abstraction. Would you agree?

KK: When I was coming out of undergrad, my favorite painters were late Medieval and early Renaissance. I pursued that for a while. And then I became done with that idea.
I still consider my work to be representational in many ways. I think it is a myth that “abstraction” operates outside of the field of representation. I find it more useful to consider the term abstraction in its original meaning as a representation that is severed from its material referent. In this sense I just think about the more painterly effects in the work as being a kind of profane or material exuberance. I think these material events maybe open up a space in the more representational aspects of the paintings and allow for a slippery read of the image. The formal play becomes a kind of categorical play in relation to the figure depicted.

I think the move away from a more concise form of representation happened because my ideas changed. When I was making my most finely tuned representational paintings (from the spring of 2007 until winter 2008) I was interested in looking at the painting as a kind of stage or virtual arena where motifs would move around within a narrative. I was really interested in Hogarth’s paintings. On some level I think I was trying to paint a movie almost. I was really interested in seeing what could go on in that virtual space but also how things could come out of that space, and tracking those movements. So the painting surface became the looking glass or a kind of fold between two types of space.

But the problem I started having was that the actual making of the work became sort of boring to me. I would figure out the image in drawings and then just paint it to the best of my abilities. In that sense the painting was just there to fulfill a technical requirement in order to create the virtual space. I always think of that work now as some sort of failed conceptual art for a really good video game.

Krisjanis Kaktins-Gorsline, Untitled, 2010. Ink on paper.

VoCA: Whose work interests you right now?

KK: Hans Arp really interests me right now. The way he works through his drawings and his paintings and his relief sculptures. He used a lot of chance but then took the results of that and it almost became a little system. I’m interested in his drawings and collages in particular, the way he reused them to make new works. They became like little machines that function on their own.

A lot of the stuff that I’m looking at right now is anonymous patterns not attributed to anybody. They’re these free-floating entities. There are motifs that go through cultures and they’re not attributed to anybody but they’re used by everybody. For instance, in Moorish architectural patterning. There were specific influences, but the motifs got adopted by successive generations and then they become these traditional forms. But they mutate as they’re used.

VoCA: Are you interested in the motifs that pervade society today, then?

KK: I am not appropriating any specific motifs, though I look at them and try to understand them; I’m actually more interested in generating my own. It’s more interesting to start from scratch. They start really simply and then I sort of reuse them in different ways across different mediums and as I do that they change and become more complex, develop relationships with each other. It’s becoming like a kind of population that I’m using and the work itself is a trace of those interactions.

Krisjanis Kaktins-Gorsline, Mellon, 2010 Oil on canvas.

VoCA: It sounds like you’re creating a sort of microcosm of images, or a fabricated history of them. Does that adequately describe what you’re working towards?

KK: Yes, in some ways. I definitely recognize that there is a kind of formal genealogy being produced. As I make the work I am producing a lot of stencils, drawings and digital files so there is a really clear visual record of what’s being made. Each one is sort of like a little specimen in a field guide.

Big congratulations to the 2011 Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts!

Robert Fones, Can-D-Man, 1971. Image: ccca.ca

They are: Photographer Geneviève Cadieux, visual artist Robert Fones, performance and visual artist Michael Morris, filmmakers David Rimmer and Barbara Sternberg and painter Shirley Wiitasalo, each for distinguished artistic achievement. Metalsmith Kye-Yeon Son won the Saidye Bronfman Award for excellence in fine crafts.

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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.

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Winnipeg artist Daniel Barrow has won the 2010 Sobey Art Award. The prize awards $50,000 to a visual artist under the age of 40. I had a feeling he’d win, having been passed up for the award in 2008.

Daniel Barrow, Flaying, 2010, from his show at the Art Gallery of York University. Image: livewithculture.ca

Daniel Barrow at work giving a projection performance. Image: livewithculture.ca

Daniel Barrow, Kiss Me Before I Die, 2010. Image: jessicabradleyartprojects.com

Please see more of Daniel Barrow’s work on his website, HERE. He shows with Jessica Bradley Art & Projects in Toronto, where he will have an exhibition from November 20 — December 23, 2010.

Did you know that Winnipeg is the ‘Culture Capital for Canada 2010′?

It was named so by Heritage Canada, though Winnipeg has long known it had special status as an art city.

A still from Winnipeg filmmaker Guy Maddin’s wonderful, bizarre film My Winnipeg. Image: tribute.ca

And it’s clear, if you visit and hang out with the arts community – they are, perhaps by necessity, an enviably close-knit group.

The city got money to fund Arts for All, a year and a half of cultural programming, the latest of which will see a three-day symposium (November 4 – 7) titled My City’s Still Breathing, that “debates the current and future relationships of art and design to city-making.” The title comes from the lyrics of The Weakerthans song Left and Leaving, by the way. And, filmmaker John Waters is going to speak.

There’s a blog for the event HERE.

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The Walrus has a good interview with Simon Brault, author of No Culture, No Future, the new book that exploresthe fact that the arts are a necessity, not a luxury.

As he puts it, the book is a “call to action” – for Brault, it’s up to everyone to communicate with one another to promote and encourage the arts.

Image: cormorantbooks.com

Here is some of what Brault has to say in the interview:

“When you look in the papers, the conversation around arts and culture is reduced to the economy or to presenting a particular cultural product. It’s not a broad conversation about what arts and culture bring to people — to children, to people who are lonely, to people who have a need for expressive life.”

“Every human being has a relationship with the arts. The fact that we are ignoring that — and trying to lecture people as if they are completely ignorant, as if they are completely disconnected from everything we believe in – is a big problem.”

“I read, I think, I write, but mostly I act. And I try to act with people around me. I still believe that ideas can change the world. I know it can sound like a very romantic vision — but it’s not so romantic because things are changing… ”

Author Simon Brault. Image: cormorantbooks.com

I haven’t read the book, but I’m looking forward to it.

If you want to know more on Brault’s thoughts vis a vis the arts in Canada (and the world), buy the book HERE.

The finalists for the 2010 Sobey Art Award were announced today. The artists, selected by a jury from each region of Canada, are competing for the Award’s $50,000 top prize. Bendan Tang may be the newest kid on the block, but our money’s on Duke & Battersby or the excellent Daniel Barrow, who was passed over in 2008.  Do we have wonderful artists in this country, or what?

The 2010 Sobey Art Prize shortlist:

• West Coast and Yukon: Brendan Lee Satish Tang

A work by Brendan Lee Satish Tang. Image: illusion.scene360.com

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