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.

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St. Catharines and the Niagara region is home to a good number of excellent artists and art-related spaces. Cram, the NAC and Brock University’s Rodman Hall Art Gallery (see links below) all have strong programming.

Perhaps the best-kept secret in the St. Catharines art community is the Teutloff Collection of Sculpture that exists across Brock’s campus. In 1988, then president Terry White reached an agreement with German art collector Lutz Teutloff to display his large-scale sculptures on campus. The collection includes work by Fabrizio Plessi, Ilan Averbuch, Reinhard Reitzenstein and Bucky Schwartz.

Ilan Averbuch, The Bleeding Harp. Image: collegepublisher.com

Please click HERE for more info.

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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.

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“What separates true artistic development from mere rehashing?” asks Artforum’s Brian Sholis in his review of Canadian art star Brian Jungen’s new show at Casey Kaplan in New York.

Artist Brian Jungen. Image: voyage5capefarewell.com

“Some artists focus exclusively upon a narrow set of concerns but manage to find nuanced and varied expressions of them. Jungen, though formally creative, seems to be on intellectual autopilot.”

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Following on from VoCA’s diatribe on the monumental last week – see posting HERE, we’ve found a little clip of Swiss artist (and VoCA favorite) Thomas Hirschhorn expounding on what he believes art to be.

Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn. Image: unipublic.unizh.ch

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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.

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…is in need of a revamp, writes Richard White in the Calgary Herald.

Jeff De Boer, When Aviation was Young – Tower 1, 2002, Calgary International Airport. Image: jeffdeboer.com

He spoke with Tom Tittemore, chair of the Calgary Public Art Board (CPAB) who has a plan.

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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 went to the opening of collector Harald Falckenberg’s newly renovated private museum in Hamburg last week. The space opened with an exhibition of works – a retrospective – of the late American artist Paul Thek. The exhibition, titled Paul Thek in the Context of Today’s Contemporary Art, is on view at the Sammlung Falckenberg from 31 May to 14 September 2008.

Paul Thek, by Peter Hujar. Image: denniscooper-theweakerlings.blogspot.com

“Paul who?” you ask.

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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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