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..

“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.

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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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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Hi everyone,

Wow – great response to THIS article in today’s Toronto Star!

To subscribe to ARTBOMB please go HERE. and click ‘SUBSCRIBE’ at the bottom of the page.

Artists – to submit your work, please email carsonandrea@hotmail.com with a link to your website or low res images and ‘artbomb’ in the subject line. Toronto artists only (for now) please. More info HERE.

Thanks!

AC

I went to see the new show at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art the other day.

I discovered that since they have begun collaborating with the National Gallery of Canada, they no longer allow dogs inside, which was an unfortunate discovery for Hudson, who was with me.

Faith La Rocque, Crystal Ladder, 2011. All images: VoCA

Anyway, I found the work on view to be fresh and exciting! When all of a sudden you see work like this you realize something special is going on. There’s an energy here that I haven’t seen in the city for some time. Bravo to curator Camilla Singh for bringing it all together.

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The other week I dropped in to see one of my new favorite galleries, General Hardware Contemporary, in Parkdale. Not only was owner Niki Dracos super friendly, happily accompanying me in my rush around the gallery (I was late for a talk at Art Toronto) but I was really impressed by the work.

Paintings by Anahita Rezvani-Rad. All images: VoCA

R.M. Vaughn is right, in his Globe and Mail review, that we don’t see these kinds of shows often enough in Toronto and when we do, it’s with relief to those of us who deplore the art scene’s typical back-patting. As Vaughn points out, what makes it so vital is that it is work “seen through the eyes of artists experiencing displacement (internal or geographic) from their homelands.”

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One of Canada’s most important collections of vintage and modern photography will go on view at the University of Toronto Art Centre in the new year.

Peter Henry Emerson. A Stiff Pull, ca. 1886, photomechanical process, photogravure. Image:utac.utoronto.ca

The Malcolmson Collection, which I can tell you is a spectacular, very special selection of rare photographs,  is comprised of work dating from the mid-nineteenth century to the present and includes work by Gustave Le Gray, Eugene Atget, Man Ray and many others.

A Man Ray photograph from the Malcolmson Collection. Image:meandmymamiya.com

The exhibition, which will feature selections from the collection, is curated by Heather Diack to examine the relationships “that are created between individuals and photographs and between individuals within photographs.”

On top of that, it’s good to think about the earliest days of photography, long before digital processes and consider all that was involved for these artists to capture an image. There was a connection to the experience and an artistry that we just don’t see as much anymore. It’s as if they were in awe of their subject, and I guess they were. Today technology allows us to dominate nature – you can see it everywhere in contemporary art. I wonder what the effects of this will be. What would McLuhan say?

In any case, this should certainly be a show worth seeing. More information is HERE.

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.

The Work Ahead of Us
The Québec Triennial 2011 at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal
7 October 2011 – 3 January 2012

This review is by Kingston, Ontario-based VoCA contributor Catherine Toews.

Claudie Gagnon, Tableaux (To Beauty) (video still), 2011. Vidéogramme, son, environ 20 min. Collection de l’artiste.
Image: macm.org

I had the good fortune of visiting and writing about the inaugural Québec Triennial in 2008. At the time, I described it as “a huge curatorial effort, handled with a great deal of care, consideration and innovation,” requiring “time and patience on behalf of the viewer.” It was “fresh, exciting, and eager to please,” with many artists employing a “strange sense of humour” that rendered the first Triennial “so immensely likeable.” I am pleased to say, after spending an epic Saturday afternoon exploring the second incarnation of the Triennial, that it more than lives up to the sense of great promise created by the first, while possessing some significant differences that came as a pleasant surprise.

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