Jean-Pierre Gauthier, Nul/Flirting with the Puck 2008. Image: canadianart.ca

1. Kinetic works by the former Sobey Art Prize winner Jean-Pierre Gauthier at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia from December 18, 2009 to March 15, 2010.

A drawing by Dan Perjovschi. Image: romanianculturalcentre.org.uk

2. The curators at the ROM finally see the light and bring in Romanian artist Dan Perjovschi to graffiti the walls of Libeskind’s precious crystal. The artist will work on the walls ‘live’ during gallery hours from February 13 to 22, and the show continues to next summer.

A portrait piece of Janusz Dukszta by Evan Penny. Image courtesy UTAC.

3. From 19 January to 13 March 2010, collector Janusz Dukszta is the subject of a new show at the University of Toronto Arts Centre. It’s curated by Gordon Hatt and should be an interesting comment on the artist/patron relationship.

Nothing to Declare: Current Sculpture from Canada
PLUS
Recent Snow: Projected Works by Michael Snow
11 December, 2009 – 7 March, 2010
The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto

Michael Snow, still from SSHTOORRTY, 2005. Image: Arttorrents.com

We went to the Power Plant’s opening last night of two exhibitions. The first, a fairly simple display of new sculpture, gave us a mix of things, including two wonderful works by Victoria’s Luanne Martineau, whose work we love for its tactility and drama.  It looks like art history put through a blender but rendered in the ‘feminine’ technique of felting. It’s bold, strong and intriguing.

More images and thoughts on what we didn’t like in the show, below..

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Tibi Tibi Neuspiel, Lincoln / Booth. Image: beautifuldecay.com

For those of you who are interested in the ‘what is art criticism’ debate, there’s recently been a lively discussion among my fellow Canadian bloggers, sparked by THIS post that VoCA wrote a few weeks ago.

Check out Gabby Moser’s blog HERE for her thoughts, Jennifer McMackon’s blog Simpleposie HERE, for another discussion, and Leah Sandals, who shares her thoughts on her great blog, Unedit My Heart, right HERE.

Today is World Aids Day.

Scott Treleaven, Heartworms, 2004. Image: artnet.com

In light of this, there’s an exhibition we want you to know about in New York City, that runs from January 8 - 10, 2010 called Postcards from the Edge.

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What is it about the increasingly popular art that brings together illustration, graphic design, graffiti and cartoons? It’s a huge trend that you might say was begun, in its most recent form, by the American painter Philip Guston in the 1970s, when he abruptly dropped Abstract Expressionism for his own style that he’s now most famous for.

Philip Guston, Story, 1978. Image: artnet.com

Marc Bell, Spore Spredder. Image: comicsreporter.com

Guston made the change because he was looking for an art with more meaning. Speaking of his feelings in the late 1960s when America was at war, he said “I was feeling split, schizophrenic. (I thought) what kind of man am 1, sitting at home, reading magazines, going into a frustrated fury about everything - and then going into my studio to adjust a red to a blue. [..] I wanted to be complete again, as I was when I was a kid…. Wanted to be whole between what I thought and what I felt.”

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There’s an interesting exhibition on up at the Glenhyrst Art Gallery in Brantford, Ontario from 29 November 2009 – 22 January 2010. It’s only about an hour’s drive from Toronto and VIA Rail goes there, too.

Bonnie Devine, Reclamation Project, 1995. Image: ccca.ca

The show, organized in collaboration with Toronto’s SAVAC, brings together work by First Nations artists with work by South Asian artists, in a reflection of the two communitieis who live side by side in the area.

The artists are Roy Caussy, Bonnie Devine, Ali Kazimi, Afshin Matlabi, Yudi Sewraj, Greg Staats, Ehren Bear Witness Thomas and Jeff Thomas.

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Presentation House Gallery
Vancouver, British Columbia
The Malcolmson Collection
October 1, 2009 to December 20, 2009

Gustave Le Gray, The Great Wave, Sete, 1857. Image: canadianart.ca

Do not miss seeing these extraordinary vintage photographs from the collection of friends-of-VoCA Harry and Ann Malcolmson.

Over the past twenty-five years, the Malcolmsons have assembled a rare collection of vintage and historic photographs that span the history of the medium. Highlights include nineteenth and twentieth-century classics by famous photographers Eugene Atget, Julia Margaret Cameron, Charles Marville, Tina Modotti, Man Ray, Paul Strand, Edward Weston, Margaret Bourke-White, among others.

For more images and information on a number of artist tours and events, please click HERE.

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Here are some things I suggest checking out, if you can.

Montreal art duo Maryse Larivière and Robin Simpson of Pavilion Projects regularly host art-plus-dinner series, and in a few weeks they will bring the series to Toronto with a screening by the artist Rosa Barba’s 2007 film Outwardly from Earth’s Centre.

Rosa Barba, a still from Outwardly from Earth’s Center. Image: carliergebauer.com

The film tells the story of a fictitious society founded on an unstable piece of land in danger of disappearing, and the dinner will be held at the very arty Oddfellows restaurant.

The evening includes a presentation by curator Catherine Dean followed by a prix fixe three-course menu for $45 involving shredded duck confit, pan roasted sea bream and Pork loin with whiskey maple baby carrots.

Mmmm.

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Dear VoCA readers,

Should VoCA be more critical?

I’m starting to feel (again) that Toronto is one big artistic love-in, when the fact is that a lot of art being made today is just not very good. (Thank you Jerry Saltz for backing me up on this.) The danger is that really good work is being sidelined at the expense of ‘hip’, ‘young’ ‘witty’ conceptual work that is neither important nor well-executed.

I went to Sitting Pretty, the new show at Red Bull Projects in Toronto last night.

Some oil paintings by Stephen Appleby Barr. Image: narwhalartprojects.com

There was work by Stephen Appleby-Barr, Paul Butler, The Collecting Collective, Tibi Tibi Neuspiel, and Kara Uzelman. I think Nicholas Brown is a talented curator, but the work left me cold. Sure, it was neat to see pieces of moldy toast made from beeswax with images of everyone from Hitler to Mother Teresa (seriously) burned into them. But is this work that really matters? Did the artist Tibi Tibi Neuspiel make the work with any kind of emotional involvement? If so, there was none left by the time it went on display.

The photograph by Vancouver’s Collecting Collective was far less interesting than the wall label, which described the collective as consisting of a number of Vancouver-based artists (including Cedric Bomford and Arabella Campbell) and the Toronto-based artist Mark Dudiak, “who also perform the roles of collector-patrons, financing projects and building a private collection of work by other artists, while maintaining a corporate-minded approach to the means of production and expression.” I realize that that’s the point, but then why have the photograph there at all?

Thank goodness for Stephen Appleby-Barr’s small, intricately painted Royal Art Lodge-esque oils, which were a welcome relief.

VoCA believes in the importance of criticism and tries to recommend the best (and only the best) work being made in Canada. We must all learn to support the art scene while celebrating the best, and exposing the worst. That’s a critic’s job.  Of course, that’s only possible if you have confidence in what is good and what’s not.

For more info on the exhibition, which opened last night and runs until 5 December, please click HERE.

Sadly, the Leona Drive Project is over. On from October 22 - 31, it was a very well curated project on a suburban street in Toronto that commissioned several artist projects for a site specific exhibition in a series of six vacant bungalows slated for demolition.

All photos courtesy Scott Barker.

We went at night, and instead on focusing on what artist made which piece, we chose to enjoy the work for itself. We think we recognized the squatter’s paradise by one of our favorite collectives The Arbour Lake Sghool and a work by Jennifer Marman and Daniel Borins – a car had rammed into the front of a house, where it lay smoking, wheels spinning.

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