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.
May 9th, 2008 — Architecture, Artists, Exhibitions, Painting, Video/New Media
Between Observation and Intervention: The Painted Photographs of Melvin Charney
The Americas Society, New York
May 1 - July 31, 2008
Melvin Charney, Cities on the Move… The Swinging Burbs…, 2003-06, oil pastel and acrylic.
Image: metiviergallery.com
VoCA was quite taken with the exhibition of Melvin Charney’s architectural, city-inspired paintings at Toronto’s Metivier Gallery in April 2006. Now a major exhibition of the artist’s work has opened at the Amercias Society in New York.
May 6th, 2008 — Artists, Exhibitions, Halifax, Montreal, Sculpture/Installation, Video/New Media
HALIFAX:
Kelly Mark: Stupid Heaven at MSVU art gallery
Continuing through 1 June 2008
Kelly Mark, I Really Should…(Neon) - 2001. Image: kellymark.com
Kelly Mark is a VoCA favorite, and this exhibition, which originally showed at Toronto’s Hart House gallery, is now touring. We have seen it and it is great. Mark makes funny, whimsical pieces that say a lot about human nature and the way that societal constructs shape our behaviour. She uses her cat, and often her television to create her multilayered pieces.
April 17th, 2008 — Artists, Events/Talks, Toronto, Video/New Media
VoCA recommends General Idea: Art, AIDS and the fin de siecle, a fantastic new film by Annette Mangaard, screening at Toronto’s Hotdocs festival on April 20 and 26, 2008.
General Idea. Image: aabronson.com
It’s a wonderful look at the history of the Canadian artist collective General Idea. Group members Felix Partz, Jorge Zontal and A.A. Bronson were active from 1969 to 1994. After Partz and Zontal died of AIDS, Bronson reinvented himself as A.A. Bronson: Healer.
March 28th, 2008 — Artists, Exhibitions, Painting, Sculpture/Installation, Video/New Media
Javier Téllez, Production still from Letter on the Blind For the Use of Those Who See, 2007.
Image: whitney.org
1. THE WHITNEY BIENNALE - VoCA says – thank god for Javier Tellez! His video Letter on the Blind For the Use of Those Who See (2007), which premieres at this year’s Whitney, showed a group of blind people experiencing an elephant through touch. It was an incredibly moving piece that injected much-needed reality into a show that – let’s be honest - had a few too many LA-inspired modernist junk sculptures.
March 21st, 2008 — Artists, Underrated Canadian Artists, Video/New Media
Norman White. Image: wikimedia.org
“I have little interest in artistic creation which expresses things about me or the world that I had previously known. I have turned to computers for this work because they give me ample possibility for eluding my own contrivance.” – Norman White
Born in Texas and raised in Boston, Norman White has been based in Toronto since 1967. He taught himself electronics in the late 1960s and has since been recognized for his pioneering work in kinetic electronics.
March 16th, 2008 — Artists, Exhibitions, Toronto, Video/New Media
Lisa Klapstock, Picture 9-Toronto, 2008. Image: jessicabradleyartprojects.com
March 13th, 2008 — Artists, Photography, Sculpture/Installation, Toronto, Video/New Media
Kristan Horton is a prolific artist – and his work is strikingly well constructed. Horton doesn’t seem to do anything in half measures.
Just look at this piece, Cig2Coke2Tin2Coff2Milk from 2006. The six minute stop motion animation shows how a package of Canadian cigarettes transforms - as if by magic – into a can of Coke.
Kristan Horton, Cig2Coke2Tin2Coff2Milk, 2006. Image: kristanhorton.com
Kristan Horton, Cig2Coke2Tin2Coff2Milk, 2006. Image: kristanhorton.com
This work begs the question: What is the difference between the can of coke and the simulated can of coke? You might say, the experience of “the real thing”.
Artists like (VoCA favorite) Gregor Schneider, Christoph Buchel and Mike Nelson have been re-creating reality as art for a while now, and with this work, Horton seems to be suggesting that the approach works on a smaller scale too.
March 4th, 2008 — Exhibitions, Montreal, Painting, Toronto, Vancouver, Video/New Media
1. David Rokeby: Plots Against Time at Pari Nadimi Gallery, Toronto
March 1 – 26 April, 2008
David Rokeby, Machine for Taking Time (Boul. Saint-Laurent), 2007. Image: courtesy the artist
New media artist (and VoCA favorite) David Rokeby is showing new work at Pari Nadimi Gallery, Toronto.
February 22nd, 2008 — Artists, Interviews, Video/New Media
David McCallum is a Toronto based media artist and musician. His is characterized by a playful appropriation of everyday technology towards idiosyncratic and often performative ends. He has a background in physics and Music and received a Masters in Art and Technology from Chalmers University of Technology in Göteborg, Sweden.
His Warbike project was featured as one half of Sound Cycles and Mobile City a show held at Interaccess Electronic Media Arts Centre in Toronto this past fall.
David McCallum, Warbike , modified bicycle, 2005-2007
February 13th, 2008 — Articles, News: International, Video/New Media
Pixel power: Virtual art online commands high prices in the real world
An MFA graduate exhibition in Second Life. Image: www.deanterry.com
Second Life, the virtual world that mimics the real world, has held art auctions fetching big prices. And curiously “real world” galleries have sold artworks based on online creations — capturing the image, enhancing it and transferring it to canvas. (Those pieces reportedly sold for $10,000 each.)
Read the full article HERE
Andrea Carson writes on contemporary art, architecture and design...Read full bio