Your Cultural Concierge! VoCA offers critical commentary on the Canadian art scene, with a focus on Toronto. Featuring exhibition previews, critics picks, interviews and in-depth articles on art in Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Ottawa and Halifax.
June 3rd, 2008 — Artists, Exhibitions, Loved & Loathed, Sculpture/Installation
VoCA went to the opening of collector Harald Falckenberg’s newly renovated private museum in Hamburg last week. The space opened with an exhibition of works – a retrospective – of the late American artist Paul Thek. The exhibition, titled Paul Thek in the Context of Today’s Contemporary Art, is on view at the Sammlung Falckenberg from 31 May to 14 September 2008.
Paul Thek, by Peter Hujar. Image: denniscooper-theweakerlings.blogspot.com
“Paul who?” you ask.
April 29th, 2008 — Artists, First Nations/Inuit, Loved & Loathed, Montreal, Sculpture/Installation
…although we think this sculpture - below - looks more like ‘playing hockey’ than ‘watching Northern Lights’, and so is an appropriate homage to les Canadiens in the playoffs.
Mattiusi Iyaituk, Watching Northern Lights. Image: spiritwrestler.com
We think the time is right for First Nations art to attract renewed interest - there’s a lot of new and excellent sculpture and drawing around - for instance the Sobey Art Prize-winner Annie Pootoogook.
You can find great Inuit art at Feheley Fine Arts in Toronto: Click HERE.
April 14th, 2008 — Artists, Events/Talks, Loved & Loathed, Toronto
Has the AGO done it? Is Massive Party Toronto’s best contemporary art fundraiser?
Image: coachella.com
April 1st, 2008 — Artists, Exhibitions, Loved & Loathed
LOVED:
-CAI GUO QIANG AT THE GUGGENHEIM. What was not to love about this exhibition? The large atrium of Frank Lloyd Wright’s most beautiful building was filled top to bottom with eight white non-descript Chryslers spouting flashing, mulitcoloured tubes of light. Inopportune: Stage One, 2004 was meant to simulate a car bombing, the installation instead came off as celebratory. In the dark of the late afternoon, it felt like an art-disco.
The view from the top. Image: Courtesy viewoncanadianart.com
January 17th, 2008 — Loved & Loathed, Winnipeg
When in Winnipeg this week, VoCA toured a few galleries. We met loads of people, we caught up with others, we loved, and we loathed.
LOVED:
-Christi Belcourt, Off the Map: Perspectives of Land, Water and Metis People at Urban Shaman
January 18 – 1 March, 2008
Christi Belcourt, Coat for Harry, 2005-06. Image: chrstibelcourt.com
November 27th, 2007 — Loved & Loathed
VoCA went on a tour of some Toronto galleries this weekend.
Much of what we saw was forgettable, but the show Dead! Dead! Dead!, currently on at Ydessa Hendeles Art Foundation, was excellent as usual. While we preferred Predators and Prey downstairs with its Nazi porcelain and Gucci heels, Ms. Hendeles did create a few masterstrokes in the Punch and Judy-themed show, including Joan Crawford’s fascinating charm bracelets and the potent Thomas Schutte sculpture spotlit in the back room.
Punch and Judy. Image: asymptotia.com
For more info on Punch and Judy, please click HERE.
LOVED: Monica Tap: New Paintings Wynick Tuck Gallery
November 24 - December 22, 2007 and January 8-12, 2008
It was refreshing to see such well considered Canadian painting. Landscape meets new media and good use of colour in a series of 15 paintings of a single second of video taken from a train passing through upstate New York. The work sits in a tradition of new media in painting whose precedents include Gerhard Richter, Luc Tuymans and Peter Doig among others.
October 23rd, 2007 — Loved & Loathed
LOVED: The excellent craftsmanship of Quebec artist collective BGL at Diaz Contemporary.
Their sculptures are amusing and quite wonderful at challenging our expectations – especially the large format photograph (the same type that VoCA ‘Loathed’ several weeks ago) that literally falls off the wall every so often with a loud crash, before being pulled back to into position.
Click HERE to see images from the works on view.
The group says: “We like to put the work of art somewhere else than where people expect it. If we think about the photographs the viewer walks in and thinks, ‘Ah, what do we have here?’ But for us, the photos are not what is important. We don’t care. For us, the work of art is the piece falling.â€
The show runs from October 20 – 17 November 2007.
October 1st, 2007 — Articles, Loved & Loathed
1. LOVED & LOATHED:
VoCA LOVES creative installations like this one of Marcel Van Eeden’s work at Clint Roenisch Gallery, Toronto.
Marcel Van Eeden at Clint Roenisch Gallery
Marcel Van Eeden at Clint Roenisch Gallery
The exhibition runs to October 28th, 2007.
August 24th, 2007 — Architecture, Loved & Loathed
Bruce Mau. Image: guardian.co.uk
Designer Bruce Mau on CBC Radio’s This I Believe:
“It is art that sings to us and opens up our hearts to one another. It is art that gives meaning to things that would otherwise go unnoticed. It is art that connects us to our past. It is art that cracks a smile and laughs at our limitations, that speaks to us of the darkness we cannot say out loud. It is art that proves our worth, that demonstrates our capacity as inventors and lovers and wild untamed beings. And in the end it is art that allows us to understand and express science.
July 22nd, 2007 — Loved & Loathed
LOVED:
The best artwork that VoCA has seen since Gregor Scheider’s Weisse Folter at Dusseldorf ’s K21 last month (see previous post below) is Andrea Fraser’s video Official Welcome, 2001 in the Power Plant exhibition Auto Emotion: Autobiography, emotion and self-fashioning, on through August 19 in Toronto.
Andrea Fraser, Official Welcome, 2001. Image: muhka.be
It’s free all summer and worth the trip down just for this one piece.
Andrea Carson writes on contemporary art, architecture and design...Read full bio
