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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Today, I went to the media preview of Haute Culture, the retrospective of famed Canadian artist collective General Idea, which opens this Friday with a FREE party at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto.

AIDS (Gold) 1987, acrylic and gold leaf on canvas. Katharina Faerber Collection, Geneva Image: VoCA

I had a few minutes to chat with AA Bronson, who reminded me of his upcoming solo exhibition at Esther Schipper Gallery in Berlin, in which he will be showing large self portraits with diamonds. Not the Warhol-style diamond dust, mind you….but actual diamonds. Though based in New York, AA currently shows only with commercial galleries in Europe, now that his New York gallery John Connelly Presents has closed. And in Canada, it seems our market is just not able to support him. He’s never been particularly well embraced in Canada, he says. Hopefully the retrospective will go some way toward changing that. It was supported by some of the city’s well-known collectors.

Incidentally, some in the Toronto art world will find it interesting that the retrospective was a project begun by former AGO curator of contemporary art David Moos, when he was still at the AGO.

The GI retrospective comes from La Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris, where it was apparently a big success. Curator Frederic Bonnet explained that it is arranged thematically, rather than chronologically, which in the case of GI, is helpful. The themes are, according to Bonnet: Glamour as tool of creation; Mass cultures; Architecture/Archaeology; Sexuality/Ambiguity and the AIDS project.

FILE Magazine, 1972-1989, one set of magazines – 26 issues. Image courtesy the Estate of General Idea; © Pierre Antoine, Muse?e d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris / ARC, 2011.

The group famously used the mass media as a vehicle for art, putting art on television and printing a magazine FILE. They employed an impressive range of materials, from work in plaster, taxidermy, gold leaf, fluorescent tube…there is even straw on the floor of one fantastic installation, making the gallery smell like a barn. In it, the poodles (the artists) are contemplating the Canis Major constellation in the Milky Way. It’s quite funny.

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Although I don’t blog about public art in Toronto, since it could create a conflict with my position on the City of Toronto Public Art Commission, that doesn’t stop me from blogging about public art elsewhere.

The entrance to the new Sofitel Hotel in Vienna. Image: VoCA/Scott Barker

I was in Vienna, Austria recently and saw the most fantastic use of art in Jean Nouvel‘s new Sofitel hotel. Surprisingly unremarkable from the outside, there was an artwork by Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist that greeted us at the hotel entrance and really wowed us on the rooftop restaurant. I’m not sure if they have a percent for art program there, which we have in many cities across North America (it gives one percent of project costs over to public artworks in newly built properties) but the hotel owners really gave an impressively enormous amount of space and visibility over to the artwork.

The awning over the hotel’s entrance was lit up from underneath with an image that has viewers peering into Pipilotti’s magical ‘heaven’. You literally see up her nostrils. Then, you enter the very black elevator up to the roof top lounge and restaurant.

The restaurant ceiling. Image: VoCA/Scott Barker

The entire restaurant – from the chairs to the carpet, walls and bar is covered in matte, dark grey. The only colour exists in a spectacular ceiling mural by the artist that covers the ENTIRE ceiling, which is also punctured with small circular video screens. Through the screens you can see Pipilotti cavorting around, sticking her fingers down to pull you up into the ceiling.

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Toronto design collective Public Displays of Affection is bringing the ‘eat local’ concept of community supported agriculture to design. Their brand of community engaged design involves their members – mostly young furniture designers and artists including the up-and-coming Brothers Dressler, Dennis Lin (whose studio I visited last year) and MADE – working with local organizations and communities to build furniture and design interiors.

For Edmond Place, Henry Salonen and Adriana Romano’s chair of reclaimed wood shipping pallets with cushion crafted from pre-loved jeans.

PDA was founded by Jeremy Vandermeij, Katherine Ngui and Parimal Gosai, who met at Ryerson University while studying interior design, and Adam Harris, who had studied graphic design at George Brown College. I sat down with Jeremy, Katherine and Adam on a rainy afternoon at the Gladstone Hotel:

VoCA: I’m interested in this idea of very local, community engaged design. How did you come up with the concept for PDA?

PDA: It came from our interest in filling this need we saw of trying to bring contemporary design into communities that didn’t have it. It was the idea of getting people involved in their own projects that made sense in a wholistic way.

When we started, we wanted to do workshops in design in the community, simple projects for those people who didn’t think they were practicing design. We would show them that they were, in fact practicing design all the time.

We were wanting to find a way of practicing design outside of the industry. That idea brought us to the Edmond Place project, our first project. That kind of engagement made sense. It’s important to avoid the psychology of a handout. Being involved makes it more meaningful to the people we are doing it for.

That was on the clients mind before we approached them. It’s do-it-yourself, or rather educating, taking action, rehabilitation through the work. We were looking for a place to do that kind of thing.

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I’m happy to report that VoCA is featured in this month’s issue of ELLE Canada. The article on art collecting, subtitled ‘How to turn your living room into un petit Louvre’, is by Katie Addleman.

The March issue of ELLE Canada. Image: hotmags.net

In the article, she says: “A better bet is to spend on the established by still young: Though out of reach to some, they remain accessible to many others. Carson’s blog, the indefatigable art-world guide View on Canadian Art, vibrates with the names and news of such types. Among her favorites are Sarah Anne Johnson, whose photographs figure in permanent collections at the National Gallery of Canada and the Guggenheim Museum in New York; multidisciplinary artist and recent Grange Prize-winner Kristan Horton; and Shary Boyle, for whom the Art Gallery of Ontario cleared out four rooms’ worth of European art last fall, the better to accomodate her dynamic solo show.”

Full article after the jump…

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It’s design week in Toronto. Tonight, I just got back from the Gladstone Hotel’s ‘alternative design event,’ Come up to my Room, or CUTMR.

Founded by the fabulous Pamila Matharu and the Gladstone’s Christina Zeidler, CUTMR works because the rooms are small, and the artist/designers can literally take their idea and run with it. It’s refreshing to see such unfettered creativity.

Co-curator Jeremy Vandermeij being interviewed by Artsync TV. All images: VoCA

Last year was exceptional – I blogged about that HERE and this year was almost as good. The first installation I saw, and the best by far – to my eye, anyway – was by Dennis Lin. Last year, I had visited Lin’s studio and seen all the delicate metal mobiles and translucent wooden lighting fixtures for which he is known.

Dennis Lin’s fantastic installation.

For the Gladstone, Lin, inspired by having recently moved his studio, arranged a large number of studio works inside a cube made up of steel shelving units, wrapping the entire thing in cellophane. It was marvelous, like an enormous box of jewels. It was like the opposite of minimalism…a sort of self-contained maximalism. Brilliant.

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Regular readers will know I’m a big fan of the late American artist Paul Thek. Recently, we stopped off in New York over the holidays to see the exhibition of work by the late, great American artist at the Whitney (on the last day of the show.)

Paul Thek – shown in Andy Warhol’s Screen Test. Image: accessibleartny.com

I’ve long been aware of Thek’s work through some collector friends who had some early, 60s pieces and in 2008, I traveled to Hamburg for the opening of the first Thek retrospective at the Falckenburg Foundation. That invitation came – kindly – from AA Bronson (see blog post below), whose work with General Idea was also part of the exhibition.

Paul Thek, Untitled, 1966 from the series Technological Reliquaries. image: linea-journal.com

I blogged about that show HERE But the Whitney show, the first American retrospective of Thek’s work, was different, and in some ways, better. The curators included some significant pieces from the Falckenburg collection, but they introduced some contextual pieces that gave the viewer a greater sense of Thek, the man. I discovered that he was the subject of one of Andy Warhol’s famous ‘screen test’ films, and more importantly, that his famous Technological Reliquary works, in which glistening, life-like wax sculptures of human limbs are encased in a super-modern, often fluorescent Perspex boxes, were an attempt to inject ‘humanity’ into the prevailing Minimalism of the day.

Artist Paul Thek, with his effigy, “Tomb”. Image: stevekasher.com

And, that his ‘Headboxes’, which often involved chairs with shoulder mounts, were created to further this approach by allowing the head of the wearer to occupy the space of the ‘art’. Fascinating, when you consider how seriously and successfully he was in pursuing the advancement of art.

Paul Thek, Untitled (Diver), 1969-70

The show is named ‘Diver’ in reference to the Diver figure in a slab from the Tomb of the Diver in Paestum, Italy, which he knew about when living in Rome, and identified strongly with it as an artist diving into the great unknown, trying to find his way.

Perhaps most impressive about Thek is that, in 1967 he created The Tomb, an effigy of himself inside a ziggurat, which he displayed and then re-displayed in different form many times. The piece became known by critics as the Death of the Hippie. Fro Thek, showing the piece was like burying himself, and it showed many times.

Paul Thek, Unititled (Self-portrait), 1966-67 from the series Technological Reliquaries. Image: bjws.com

I think that many young artists are resistant to getting this close to their art, or perhaps I should say that the current trend seems to be for artists to distance themselves from their art. But I think art is much more successful when it is brave, unafraid, unrestrained…almost dangerous. Plus, I really admire Thek’s willingness to be subservient to the art – to place the importance of his art over his own.

The exhibition catalogue has some excellent essays. I recommend it – you can buy it HERE.

Over the past few years, I’ve often mentioned, and championed, regional art galleries in Ontario and Canada.

Artist Luke Painter and one of his works. Image: blogto.com

CAFKA (Contemporary Art Forum, Kitchener and Area) is a regional not-for-profit arts organization whose mission it is to “present innovative art within a public space.” It has evolved from a small, regional festival in 1996 to an organization that offers year-round programming, featuring international and national artists.

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I went out to Oakville for the opening of Un-home-ly, director Matthew Hyland’s first major exhibition with the gallery.

Paulette Phillips, Homewrecker, 2004. All images: VoCA

I am told that Matthew’s background is in feminist studies, so it seems fitting that his curatorial career at the gallery should begin with a show of feminist work. The show is the first in a series of exhibitions about contemporary feminist art, the next to be in 2012, which will explore feminist gestures towards utopia.

Jin-me Yoon, Intersection6, 2010.

Jin-me Yoon, Intersection6, 2010.

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Last night we went to a performance by Guillermo Gómez-Peña, who we had seen a few years ago at MOCCA and blogged about HERE, this time together with the American First Nations artist James Luna.

Guillermo Gomez-Pena with curator Philip Monk. Image: VoCA

La Nostalgia Remix is the last in a series of projects called The Shame-man meets El Mexican’t, “in which they challenge assumptions and lazy thinking about ethnicity and culture in our society with a strong dose of melancholic humour and sharp-edged conceptualism.”

Remix is a series of live performances that explore the cultural, symbolic and iconographic dimensions of nostalgia both on the Native American “rez” and in the Chicano “barrio.”

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