Piotr Uklanski, Jeppe Hein and Jim Lambie are among the artists who will create art works for the public to interact with, at a new IKEA store in Moscow.

Jim Lambie’s floor at MoMA. Image: apartmenttherapy.com

The art is part of a mixed-use plan for IKEA, where new developments will “fuse culture, commerce and leisure.” Plans for the site includes shops, restaurants, an ice-rink, as well as an Ikea flat-pack furniture store.

Could this idea be the start of something big for the Swedish retailer?  And if so, what impact, if any will it have on the art market?

Jeppe Hein’s Moving Neon Cube. Image: euroassistance.com

Read the full article from the Art Newspaper, HERE

VoCA loves our GG.  She understands the value of arts and culture.  Last week in Montreal, Governor General Michaëlle Jean gave this statement: “Culture must be able to express itself everywhere and always, and be accessible to as many people as possible, for it bears within it our choices, our hopes, our memory and our imagination.”

I See What You Mean, the Big Blue Bear at the Colorado Convention Center. Image: denvergov.org

On the evening of March 1, culture-minded Torontonians gathered at a Town Hall meeting to protest the City Council’s rejection of BeautifulCity.com’s initiative to have taxes from advertising billboards going toward arts and culture.

Check out past blog posts on that topic HERE and HERE.

It might not seem like a big deal, but it points to the fact that the arts community must keep fighting for recognition of the importance of art in Toronto. It’s the most obvious difference between Toronto and cities like Chicago and Montreal.

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Well.  Last night I did a “Face the Critic” at the Drake, with Leah Sandals and Richard Vaughn and it was…interesting, to say the least. I didn’t feel able to properly articulate my views - there were some big personalities in the room. But I learned a lot, and it’s always good to have your foundations shaken a little.

Brendan Flanagan, Reflective Pool. Image: brendanflanagan.ca.

The idea was that each critic would bring two works – one we ‘love’ and one we ‘loathe.’

Richard began by pointing out that he doesn’t subscribe to the idea of ‘loving’ or ‘loathing’, which is fair enough. Then he went on to talk at length, and very interestingly, about how much he loved an Allyson Mitchell work – one of her large, fun-fur covered Sasquatch sculptures.

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In the midst of promoting the Canadian Art Reel Artists Film Festival, which opens this Wednesday night, Feb 24th with a big gala screening and then to the public from Friday Feb 26th to Sunday 28th in Toronto, there are three under-the-radar highlights that you should know about:

A wallhanging by El Anatsui at the Venice Biennale. Image: artradarasia.com

1. Fold, Crumple, Crush: The Art of El Anatsui is the world premiere of a film on the amazing African artist whose wondrous metal wallhangings took the Venice biennale by storm several years ago. He will also have the world premiere of a retrospective of his work at the ROM in Toronto coming up later this year.

Click HERE for more info on the film.

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From the Toronto Star, Murray Whyte writes about the bicycle art of the late, great artist Greg Curnoe:

“On the wall at Cherry Bomb Coffee on Roncesvalles Ave., a slight, royal-blue CCM track bike with curled handlebars dangles from the wall, held at a sharp angle by a slim cable…”

Greg Curnoe, Mariposa T.T., 1978-9. Image: artnet.com

“As an artist, (Curnoe) had achieved a particular kind of celebrity. His work, like his life, was disarmingly vibrant, all filled with bright colour and fuelled by his various passions – cycling, for one, and a cheeky political activism. By the time he died, at age 55, he had carved a uniquely prominent position for himself in Canadian art...”

One of Curnoe’s bikes, at Cherry Bomb, in Roncesvalles, Toronto. Image: rene johnston/torontostar.com

Read the full article HERE.

This weekend, VoCA paid a visit to the studio of Toronto artist Dennis Lin.

The installation, no. 1 – 60, currently on view at 47 Gallery. Image: forty-seven.ca/Derek Flack

Another view of no. 1 – 60, Image: VoCA

Lin, who works mostly with wood, creates huge installations, many commissioned by the likes of design firm Yabu Pushelberg for their hotel and condo interiors around the world. He is just back from installing a piece in Quebec City, and another in China.

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There’s recently been a brou-ha-ha brewing in Ottawa, over the decision by Marc Mayer, director of the National Gallery, to put a sculpture by the 43-year-old New York artist Roxy Paine on Nepean Point, the area nearby to the National Gallery.

A sculpture by Roxy Paine. Image: linka-me.com

Nepean Point is, more precisely, a hill in Ottawa overlooking the Ottawa River, Parliament, the Museum of Civilization, and other features of downtown Ottawa and Gatineau. It is located between the National Gallery of Canada and Alexandra Bridge.

At the peak of the hill is a statue of French explorer Samuel de Champlain holding his famous astrolabe upsidedown. And the proposed sculpture, Called One Hundred Foot Line, evokes a tree without branches.

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“To build this house is to build my soul.” – Herman Wallace

Herman Wallace. Image: blacktalkradio.com

Last night we went to hear Jackie Sumell talk at Prefix ICA. Introduced by Kenneth Montague of Wedge Curatorial Projects, Sumell spoke about her fascinating art project, The House that Herman Built. For a number of years, Sumell, a Brooklyn-born, New Orleans-based artist has been corresponding with Herman Wallace, an inmate – in solitary confinement – in the Louisiana State Penitentiary for over 36 years.

Solitary confinement at the prison consists of spending a minimum of 23 hours a day in a six-foot-by-nine-foot cell.

Herman Wallace is one of the Angola Three, along with Robert King and Albert Woodfox, members of the Black Panther Party who organized a prison chapter of the party in order to desegregate the prison, and organized strikes for improved conditions.

Artist and activist Jackie Sumell. Image: grassroots.org

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Great curatorial minds think alike, it seems.

After what seems like an interminably long period of preciousness with Toronto’s starchitect-designed art spaces at the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Royal Ontario Museum, the gloves are off.

Both institutions have invited artists to literally destroy gallery walls.

The gorgeous, Frank Gehry-designed AGO. Image: seanjohn.com

At the AGO, the glorious collages and installations of Kenyan-American artist Wangechi Mutu will, for her first major solo exhibition, include a haunting series of drawings mounted on a ‘pockmarked’ gallery wall, which will be punctured and torn to reflect the post-colonial themes at the core of Mutu’s work.

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You may remember the British artist Michael Landy from his piece Break Down, in which he destroyed all of his 7, 226 belongings, including his passport.

Michael Landy’s Break Down, 2001. Image: artcornwall.org

It was a project for Artangel and took place in a vacant shop on Oxford Street, in central London. Needless to say, it was a pretty controversial – but fascinating – piece.

Michael Landy, Art Bin, 2010. Image: saatchi-gallery.co.uk.

Art Bin, Landy’s new show that is on from January 29 to 14 March, 2010 at the South London Gallery, is a bit different. Landy has constructed an enormous garbage bin that takes us almost the entire gallery. He is offering to trash your art, so to speak. But not just anyone can come to dispose of their art. Landy is the ‘curator’ if you can call it that, of the bin.

Read what the BBC had to say, and watch their video, HERE.

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