The RBC Canadian Painting Competition, a barometer of emerging painters from across the country, has announced this year’s shortlist.

Eli Bornowsky, Untitled 2008. Image: front.bc.ca

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6. MASSIMO GUERRERA: DARBORAL

26 juin au 31 août, 2008

Quartier Ephemere/Fonderie Darling

“Darboral s’articule autour de plates-formes artistiques et spirituelles, qui invitent le visiteur à prendre part à différents rituels. Partages de nourriture à l’occasion de repas et suçage de noyaux, ateliers de créativité lors de moulages corporels et adaptation de prothèses, prise de conscience des modes d’ouverture physique et psychique, méditation, donnent lieu à une série d’éléments dont les traces de passage composent Darboral.”

It’s a work that concentrates on the rhythms of the creative experience, and shares these processes with others. It’s a contemplative space that gives back to art it’s original function, in the service of the ritual.

The Massimo Guerrera installation at Quartier Ephemere. Image: VoCA

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The Quebec art scene is ON FIRE.

La Belle Province is home to the country’s most exciting artists, many of which are included in the excellent Quebec Triennale at the MAC in Montreal.

Montreal also hosted the recent IKT (International Association of Curators of Contemporary Art) congress in May, which brought international curatorial eyes to the city thanks to Chantal Pontbriand of Parachute.

One of Canada’s best new galleries, the DHC Art Foundation, continues to make waves with their programming –Feist is playing the opening of Sophie Calle’s solo exhibition later this week.

Canadian chanteuse Leslie Feist. Image: rcrdlbl.com

The MMFA has co-organized the superb YSL retrospective and with the always excellent Canadian Centre for Architecture and the city’s many galleries, there is no doubt that Quebec and Montreal in particular, is the hottest place in contemporary Canadian art right now.

Here are a few of VoCA’s discoveries:

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…plus c’est la meme chose.

From Reuters: A Monet water-lily painting sold for 41 million pounds ($80.5 million) Tuesday, doubling the previous auction record for the artist and ensuring London’s key art market season got off to a flying start.

Claude Monet, Le Bassin aux Nympheas, 1899. Image: intermonet.com

“Le Bassin aux Nympheas” had been expected to fetch 18-24 million pounds, but after an intense bidding battle it smashed the previous Monet auction record of $41.5 million set in May…

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1. MALE: WORK FROM THE COLLECTION OF VINCE ALETTI
ATTILA RICHARD LUKACS / POLAROIDS / MICHAEL MORRIS
Presentation House Gallery, Vancouver
June 28 to August 3, 2008

Bruce Bellas [Bruce of LA], “Untitled,” c. 1960. Image: presentationhousegall.com/vince aletti

Male is an exhibition of portrait works drawn from the personal collection of curator, writer and The New Yorker photography critic Vince Aletti. It features more than 100 photographs as well as drawings, sculptures, and paintings, juxtaposing works by celebrated figures with works by emerging artists, alongside anonymously authored images and flea market finds.

Attila Richard Lukacs / Polaroids / Michael Morris showcases over 600 Polaroid photographs by Vancouver painter Attila Richard Lukacs produced over the past twenty years as referents for paintings, assembled and collaged by Vancouver Island artist Michael Morris. Utilizing the unique characteristics of the Polaroid medium, Lukacs’ painter’s sensibility is evident in the photograph’s rich hues, deep chiaroscuro, romantic sensuality and graphic immediacy.

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Greg Curnoe, Self-Portrait #4, 1992. Image: ccca.ca

New York and London are the twin centres of today’s international art world, but what about less-visible, off-the-map places, like Hamburg, Chicago or Winnipeg, the almost unbelievably creative geographical heart of this country?

(We saw Guy Maddin narrate his acclaimed, celebratory, idiosyncratic film, My Winnipeg, live last night in Toronto – click HERE to watch the trailer)

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From James Adams in yesterday’s Globe and Mail:

“When its September, 2007, online sale resulted in gross revenues of about $600,000 on 156 lots, (Heffel Fine Art Auction House) started to think seriously about going with a separate live auction (for post-war and contemporary art) and “concentrate more on this growing component of the market,” noted Nina Kim, Heffel’s director of postwar and contemporary art…”

For the rest of the article, please click HERE.

Tom Thomson, View from a Height, Algonquin Park, Fall, 1916.
Auction Estimate: $800,000-1,200,000
Price Realized: $1,207,500

While the Canadian auction ’scene’ may seem laughable next to the inflated numbers bandied about in the U.S and the U.K these days, we are finally seeing increased interest in Canadian art since 1945, which is great because it has, for so long been terribly undervalued.

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1. NEWS: CALGARY

Dennis Oppenheim’s sculpture, Device to Root out Evil moves to Calgary from Vancouver.

Dennis Oppenheim, Device to Root out Evil. Image: metamedia.stanford.edu

Originally celebrated by the Vancouver Sculpture Biennale and arguably the most valuable piece of public art in Vancouver, Oppenheim’s compelling 22-foot glass, steel and aluminum structure became more than the Vancouver Public Parks Committee could handle.

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VoCA was in Hamburg for a few days – a truly beautiful city. We didn’t want to leave!

Mark Rothko, Red, Orange, Tan, and Purple, 1949. Image: abstract-art.com

We took in the Mark Rothko retrospective at the Kunsthalle – click HERE – that did for us what the Barnett Newman retrospective at the Tate and the Jasper Johns retrospective in Basel both did several years ago.

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VoCA - a huge fan of German art galleries - went to the Hamburger Bahnhof today, a contemporary art museum housed in a former train station.

The spaces are large and white, perfect for all the enormous Anselm Kiefer works, including the lead fighter plane in the middle of the space and the large scale library of lead books, which seemed to be embedded with seeds of some kind. In the middle of this semi-enclosed library was a glass polyhedron with what looked like analogue film strips inside.

Anselm Kiefer, Volkszählung, 1991. Image: ncf.ca

Nearby, the curators had hung an engraving of Melancholia, by Albrecht Durer. Turns out that Kiefer has been inspired by the figure of Melancholia, and the polyhedron sculpture was taken from one in Durer’s image.

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