1. “Word Up?”: Ghost, Papermonster, Dixon, Omen, Scam and Case.
January 9th - Febuary 1st 2009
Le Gallery, Toronto

A work by Omen. Image: Omen514, Montreal/graffitti.org

LE Gallery and Simon Cole of Show & Tell Gallery are pleased to present this exhibition of work by some of the best - world renown - artists whose primary practice is street based.

For more info, please click HERE.

2. Max Dean
January 8 to 31, 2009
Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto

Reception for the artist: Thursday January 8, 6 to 8pm
Artist talk: 7pm
Saw Box performance: 6:30, 7:00 and 7:30 pm

Max Dean, Saw Box, 1973, wood, chainsaw, sound activated mechanism. Image: metiviergallery.com

This exhibition features work from 1971 to 2008. Dean uses boxes, tools and furniture as extensions of the body. Many of the works are interactive and respond to the participation of the viewer; some involve other senses such as sound and touch.

For gallery website, please click HERE.

3. Jean-Pierre Gauthier: Machines at Play
January 31 to May 18, 2009
The Art Gallery of Hamilton, Hamilton Ontario

Jean-Pierre Gauthier, Battements et Papillons, 2006. Image: jackshainman.com

Montreal artist Jean-Pierre Gauthier’s highly inventive kinetic installations have emerged from his exploration of the acoustic and metaphorical potential of the found object.

For the Art Gallery of Hamilton website, please click HERE.

4. Networks: Jen Hutton and Troy Ouellette
January 9 - February 12, 2009
Truck Gallery, Calgary

Image: truck.ca

Communication is deconstructed and explored in this two-person exhibition. Hutton explores vernacular forms of communications through language, materials and objects, while the barcode serves as the starting point for Ouellette’s aural/sculptural installation Echosystems.

More info HERE.

The exhibition WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution at the Vancouver Art Gallery presented quite an extensive survey of feminist art. According to the catalogue text, “in the space of a generation, feminism transformed social relations, personal identities, and institutional structures….the feminist revolution in art was no less radical and transformative than the social movement from which it drew strength.”

Hon, 1966, (monumentale sculptuur), Niki de Saint Phalle, Moderna Museet, Stockholm. Image: formartepura.fo.ohost.de

There were some excellent works on view. VoCA is a big fan of feminist art, which drew its political power from the backdrop of the patriarchy against which it was rebelling. In much the same way, African American art of the time raged against racism, and likewise ‘gay art’ against homophobia.

Some works in the show were reminiscent of other works. Suzy Lake’s A Genuine Simulation of…(1973-4) in which she applies whiteface before a full face of makeup, blush, eyeliner and shadow reminded us of Bruce Nauman’s video Art Make-up from 1967-68, in which he paints his torso and face white, then pink, green and black.

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We’ve been intrigued for a while now by the cuisine of Ferran Adria, the Spanish chef for whom food seems a material with which to create a kind of conceptual art experience.

Adria’s peach paper ‘tramontana’, 2005. Yes, it’s edible. Image: elbulli.com

In honour of all the food that surrounds the holidays, we’ve linked HERE back to art critic Jerry Saltz’s great review of his meal at Adria’s restaurant El Bulli.

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Iris Häussler: Honest Threads
January 22 - March 8, 2009
At Honest Ed’s
581 Bloor Street W, Toronto

Toronto’s Honest Ed’s Bargain Warehouse. Image: mac.com

VoCA loved Iris Häussler’s exhibition The Legacy of Joseph Wagenbach, in fact we wrote a feature story about it for Border Crossings magazine. See our post HERE.

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Notorious performance artist Istvan Kantor was arrested yesterday at the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, for causing a ruckus at the Joseph Beuys exhibition Die Revolution Sind Wir (We are the revolution).

Two images from Kantor’s performance with MACHINESEXACTIONGROUP at the Museum Of Contemporary Art, Toronto, 2004. Image: ccca.ca

Kantor’s piece, a response to the title of the Beuys show, was called Und Wir Auch (And we too). It was positioned as a tribute to Beuys’ idea of a revolutionary creation that extends art into all aspects of life.

Kantor arrived to the museum with a video crew and was going to proceed with a silent posing action in front of Beuys works but when he tried to unroll and hold up a sign that said: ‘UND WIR AUCH’ (and we too), he got immediately surrounded by guards and pulled out with force from the exhibition.

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Founded in 1993, Mammalian Diving Reflex is a “research-art atelier dedicated to investigating the social sphere, always on the lookout for contradictions to whip into aesthetically scintillating experiences, producing one-off events, theatre-based performance, theoretical texts and community happenings.”

According to their website , “It is our mission to bring people together, engage them, challenge them and get them talking, thinking and feeling.”

VoCA has been wondering for some time whether Mammalian artistic Darren O’Donnell is one of the most interesting and relevant artists in Canada. We sat down with him in Toronto to find out what his work is all about.

One of Mammalian Diving Reflex’s popular performances, “Haircuts by Children”. Image: torontolife.com

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After having seen the basement, first and second floors - see our post HERE - we returned last night to the AGO see the upper galleries.

We took the elevator up to the fifth floor, where the soaring ceilings made the rooms feel spacious. The only criticism we had, really was the inescapable feeling that the galleries were overcrowded.

A lot of large scale work demands large open space to make it feel proportionate, like Brian Jungen’s oversized totem poles, or the Mark Lewis (next year’s representative at the Venice Biennale) excellent video of Algonquin Park.

Mark Lewis, Algonquin Park, Early March, 2002. Image: marklewisstudio.com

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VoCA loved La Pocha Nostra!

In their Canadian premiere, Mexican American performance troupe La Pocha Nostra presented a one-night only performance of Divino Corpo: Temple of improbable and invisible causes at MOCCA in Toronto on Friday night.

Photo: Joshua Meles.

Four scenarios were set up, one against each wall of the museum’s main space in “living dioramas”, slowly moving and occasionally settling into tableaux vivants. Against the West wall the chief - in red feather headdress and long grey hair woven in a loose braid - held court, wearing one motorcycle boot and one black high heel shoe. He sat on a throne flanked by Tom Dean’s life sized bronze hounds. Over the course of the evening, he read a manifesto, gazed into a mirror, was seductively fed a banana by a minion, and threatened to cut a terrified-looking volunteer’s long blonde hair, until the crowd convinced him otherwise.

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Luis Jacob, A Dance for Those of Us Whose Hearts Have Turned to Ice, Based on the Choreography of Françoise Sullivan and the Sculpture of Barbara Hepworth (With Sign-Language Supplement), 2007. Image: flickr.com

Françoise Sullivan’s rather significant contribution to visual arts in Canada was re-acknowledged by artist Luis Jacob when he referenced her in his video installation A Dance for Those of Us Whose Hearts Have Turned to Ice, Based on the Choreography of Françoise Sullivan and the Sculpture of Barbara Hepworth (With Sign-Language Supplement) (2007) that was shown at last year’s highly regarded art exhibit Documenta 12, in Kassel Germany.

As a recipient of the 2008 Gershon Iskowitz Prize at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Sullivan will receive a $25,000 award and her work will be featured in a temporary exhibition at the AGO in 2009.

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Steeling the Gaze: Portraits by Aboriginal Artists

31 OCTOBER 2008 – 22 MARCH 2009

Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, Ottawa

Kent Monkman, Emergence of a Legend, series of 5 portraits of Miss Chief in various performance personas.
Image: pfoac.com

(Click image above to enlarge)

This group exhibition, drawn from the collections of the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography and the National Gallery of Canada, explores representations of Aboriginal people by Aboriginal artists.

Carl Beam, Einstein and Sitting Bull, ca. 1991. Image: archives.gov.on.ca

Artists include KC Adams, Carl Beam, Dana Claxton, Thirza Cuthand, Rosalie Favell, Kent Monkman, David Neel, Shelley Niro, Arthur Renwick, Greg Staats, Jeff Thomas and Bear Witness.

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