“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 last week for the Canadian premiere of The Artist Is Present, a documentary on her work, which screened at the Reel Artists Film Festival. Click HERE to read part one of the interview.

Photo: Marco Anelli. Courtesy Show of Force.

VoCA: I asked people for some questions to ask you on Facebook, and one person wanted to know about your performance scars.  How do you feel about them today?  They mark a time in your life. Are you proud, indifferent, nostalgic?

You know I don’t even think about them. Each scar was a part of a performance. I have scars here (shows one on her wrist), but you know I never look back. Always forward. You know the only time I really feel old is when I make a book, and I have to look back at all the documentation and I say ‘Oh my god…’ I really don’t have nostalgia. It’s all about the now.

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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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Last night was Toronto’s annual ‘All Night Contemporary Art Thing’, Nuit Blanche. Now in its sixth incarnation, the event has gone from inspiring wonder in audiences to inspiring complex plans on how best to navigate the crowds. Many people start out at 7 pm and go until 12 or 1, which makes sense but creates a frustrating logjam of people at every installation.

AES+F, The Feast of Trimalchio. Image: vvork.com

While it will always be a challenge to bring universally pleasing, high impact, accessible art into public areas that lasts from 7 pm to 7 am, I felt that this year was more successful than past years, in part because there were fewer works that involved lining up, and in part because, well, I had a plan.

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Cindy Sherman, the American artist known for her Untitled Film Stills, 1977–1980 and subsequent self-portraits in which she transforms herself, through hair, makeup, prosthetics and costume, into various female characters from the seductive to the grotesque, is all about disguise.

Cindy Sherman for MAC Cosmetics. Image: heartymagazine.com

She’s been working this way for decades and is one of America’s best-known artists. In fact, she now holds the record for highest price paid for a photograph at auction when her work Untitled #96 was sold for $3.8 million at Christie’s in May.

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As the summer gallery season gets underway, here are my picks for the country’s best blockbuster exhibitions:

THE COLOUR OF MY DREAMS: THE SURREALIST REVOLUTION IN ART
Vancouver Art Gallery
Through September 25, 2011

Man Ray, close up of The Kiss, 1930. Image: ultraorange.net

The VAG has organized the most comprehensive survey of Surrealist art ever to be shown in Canada. With 350 works by all the masters (Man Ray, Rene Magritte, Dali and Andre Breton, author of the Surrealist Manifesto), it also will “reveal the Surrealists’ passionate interest in indigenous art of the Pacific Northwest.” Given that the exhibition will include works from the Guggenheim, the Metropolitan, the MoMA, the Reina Sophia, the Georges Pompidou and the Tate, it should be pretty good.

Shary Boyle, Lovers, 2009. Image: canadianart.ca

Is Surrealism having a ‘moment’? The work of much celebrated Canadian artist Shary Boyle comes to mind, as does the work of several of this year’s Sobey Prize shortlisters (hello, Zeke Moores and the excellent Manon de Pauw)

Manon de Pauw, L’atelier d’écriture, a video and sound installation, and performance from 2006-7.

From de Pauw’s website: “In (this) video series, groups of artists are gathered in silence around a table, and given basic choreographic instructions. Throughout the session, the act of writing is transformed into line, drawing, collage, and audible rhythm.”
Check out the VAG’s website, HERE

CARAVAGGIO!
Caravaggio and his followers in Rome
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
17 June – 11 September 2011

John the Baptist, by Caravaggio (1571-1610). Image: wikimedia.org

Canada’s first exhibition devoted to the work of the truly brilliant Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio is a little late – after numerous shows of the artsts work circulated in Europe over the past few decades he has rightfully become the hottest, and arguably the most modern of the Old Masters.

But better late than never, and it’s always a joy to see these dramatic works, in this case juxtaposed against works by painters whom he inspired, including Peter Paul Rubens and Orazio Gentileschi. If you haven’t seen Caravaggio’s works in person (and even if you have), this will surely be a must-see show!

Click HERE for the gallery’s website.

ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONIST NEW YORK
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto
Through September 4, 2011

Franz Kline, Cardinal, 1950. Image: friendsofart.net

This show, coming from MoMA to Toronto features over 100 works by major American masters including Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko (a play about whom, incidentally, is coming to Canstage soon after having rave reviews in NYC) and, from what I hear, some fantastic Franz Klines. Of course, it’s always nice to see de Kooning’s work, though I also hear there aren’t as many as have been reported in this show.

A scene from John Logan’s play, RED about artist Mark Rothko. Image: artknowledgenews.com

These are works by artists who are, to put it mildly, darlings at auction. Pollock’s No. 5, 1948 de Koonings Woman III went for the second highest price, $137.5 million a few days later.

As the AGO notes, this is “a generation of artists who catapulted New York to the centre of the international art world in the 1950s,” reason enough to see the show.

Click HERE for more info.

Yesterday, a group of about 100 people from the Toronto art community gathered outside the Chinese consulate in Toronto, in support of the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, who has been detained by Chinese authorities.

The event was organized by a group of local artists and art writers, and was part of 1001 Chairs that took place in Manhattan and in cities around the world.

It was an unqualified success, but it’s not over:

“We call on our Prime Minister and our Minister of Foreign Affairs to express concern over the treatment of Ai Weiwei. Leaders of the Guggenheim Museum, the Tate, the Museum of Modern Art, the Los Angeles Country Museum have called for his release. So far, the only Canadian art institution to do the same has been the Vancouver Art Gallery. We call on Canada’s art museums, institutions and artist-run centres including the AGO, the National Gallery, the ROM, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art to condemn the imprisonment of Ai Weiwei and call for his release.”

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I was fascinated by yesterday’s Slutwalk that took place in Toronto, and sorry that I wasn’t able to attend.

Slutwalk in Toronto yesterday. Image: scathinglywrongrightwingnutz.com

The walk attracted around 1,000 people and was arranged in part as a protest against comments by police Constable Michael Sanguninetti who, while speaking to students at York Unviersity, said “Women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized.”

Women were outraged, and rightly so. It is an outrageous suggestion that women should bear the full responsibility in a case where sexual assault occurs. Even if she is dressing ‘like a slut’, surely the man must take responsibility for his own actions. I mean it’s hard to believe that Sanguinetti was actually serious.

More, and the Quebec art collective Les Fermieres Obsedees, after the jump:

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Although I stopped going to art fairs a while ago, after having been to many over the years both as a ‘gallerina’ and as a critic including Art Basel, Basel Miami, Art Chicago and Frieze, they remain popular venues for collectors, curators and, of course dealers and artists to hang out and do business.

Kristine Moran, Sidestep. Image: modto.com

New York’s Armory Show is one of the most prestigious and it takes place from March 3 – 6 in Manhattan.

Canada’s Art Dealers Association is – as per usual – organizing some programming around Canadians participating in the fair, but this year they are celebrating Canadian expat artists in New York with a series of discussions and tours of the show.

It’s a pretty good list of artists that I thought I’d share with you.

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