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.
July 16th, 2008 — Artists, Exhibitions, Photography, Sculpture/Installation, Toronto, Video/New Media
Iain Baxter& Landscape with Sea Boats, 1999, (from the series Television Works).
Image: corkingallery.com
Over the years, we’ve loved the AGO (the Yoko Ono exhibition in 2002, the acquisition of David Almejd’s 2007 Venice pavilion installation, the Henry Moore sculpture gallery with the Julian Opie pole dancers, Swing Space) and we’ve loathed them (Nuit Blanche 2006, their lack of innovative curatorial thinking, the institution’s low energy and measly acquisition budget…)
July 7th, 2008 — Artists, Interviews, Photography
Courtesy of Designboom, we have found an interview with German photographer Barbara Probst, whose work is represented by Jessica Bradley Art & Projects in Toronto.
Read the full article HERE
Barbara Probst, Exposure #27, N.Y.C. 249 W. 34th Street, 05.25.04, 9:27p.m., 2004. Image: themorningnews.org
July 1st, 2008 — Artists, Exhibitions, Montreal, Painting, Photography, Sculpture/Installation, Video/New Media
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
June 30th, 2008 — Artists, Events/Talks, Exhibitions, Montreal, Painting, Photography
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:
June 26th, 2008 — Architecture, Artists, Exhibitions, Photography, Sculpture/Installation, Toronto
In addition to the Power Plant’s summer exhibition, Not Quite How I Remember It, featuring work by Gerald Byrne, Diane Borsato and Nestor Kruger, VoCA recommends Object Factory at the Gardiner Museum, which features ceramics by the likes of VoCA favorites Cindy Sherman and the late, great Ettore Sottsass (see previous post HERE.)
Cindy Sherman, Madame de Pompadour (née Poisson) Soup Tureen, 1990. Image: mintwiki.pbwiki.com
For the Power Plant, please click HERE and for the Gardiner museum, click HERE.
We also recommend checking out one of Toronto’s best new galleries, MKG 127.
June 24th, 2008 — Artists, Exhibitions, Montreal, Painting, Photography, Toronto, Vancouver, Video/New Media
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.
June 18th, 2008 — Artists, Exhibitions, First Nations/Inuit, Halifax, Photography, Sculpture/Installation, Vancouver, Video/New Media
1. DONIGAN CUMMINGS: EX VOTOS
MSVU Art Gallery, Halifax
21 June-10 August 2008
One of Donigan Cumming’s collages. Image: canada-culture.org
Montreal-based artist Donigan Cumming is known for his staged portraits of the aging, ill and socially assisted poor, in the form of photographs, videos and, best of all, his photographic collages.
Cumming’s work deliberately attacks the objectivity claimed by traditional documentary media. His disturbingly intimate images have been influenced by Artaud’s “theatre of cruelty,” Surrealism and cinema verite, among other historical art forms.
June 16th, 2008 — Articles by Andrea Carson, Artists, Exhibitions, Montreal, Photography, Toronto
Montreal photo-manipulator Nicolas Baier is one of the hottest names on the Quebec art scene. Check out my review of his recent exhibition at Jessica Bradley Art & Projects, in Toronto:
(Click on thumbnail to enlarge)
For more info, visit the artist’s website HERE
Baier is represented in Toronto by Jessica Bradley. Click HERE.
June 11th, 2008 — Artists, Books, Exhibitions, Ottawa, Photography, Sculpture/Installation
1. Geoffrey James at the National Gallery, Ottawa, May 30 – 19 October, 2008.
VoCA was at the National Gallery in Ottawa this weekend, where we took in the photographs of Canadian photographer Geoffrey James.
Geoffrey James, St. Cloud, 1989. Image: trepanierbaer.com
The best works were in the first room, miniature snapshots of Italianate gardens, presented as panoramas against wide black mats. These are precious objects – views dictated by the artist, of course, but when an artist has such a fine eye, you feel that you have been given a gift.
May 27th, 2008 — Exhibitions, Painting, Photography, Sculpture/Installation
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.
Andrea Carson writes on contemporary art, architecture and design...Read full bio
