Painting – annetteandquebec

January 26, 2023

Conceptions of White

What is Whiteness anyway? This is the question posed by the current exhibition at the Art Museum University of Toronto.

We enter the show through the pristine “Portal”, created by Robert Morris in 1964. “Portal” is pure minimalist sculpture, ostensibly stripped of meaning, so neutral as to be almost invisible. “What you see is what you see,” Frank Stella famously said, wrapping up minimalism.

The piece encapsulates one of the ideas the show explores: how the concept of White, especially in the art world, is so natural and all-encompassing, it’s virtually unseen.

But wait. Hold on! Before we take that fateful stroll, we are invited to engage with the present — shut up, and check our privileges — through the augmented reality filters created by the “Famous New Media Artist” Jeremy Bailey.

Detail of “Whitesimple” by Jeremy Bailey

In the handout that accompanies the exhibition the curators declare their biracial status and indicate they are seeking a clearer understanding of their own relationship to Whiteness. (Full disclosure: Through Ancestry.ca I traced one of my family branches all the way to Viking marauders sweeping down on the Orkney Islands to commit mayhem. They went on to settle in Manitoba. Some things you don’t want to know.)

On the other hand, I like the way this show acknowledges history at every turn. I agree that the story of the present can only be told by starting from the past.

The exhibition contains a graphic display locating the invention of Whiteness right around the time colonial adventurism, also known as The Age of Discovery, was ramping up. Since colonial logic maintained that a place did not exist unless White Europeans had seen it, it was important to distinguish White from everyone else.

Detail of graphic in Conceptions of White exhibition

Deanna Bowen‘s installation, called “White Man’s Burden” takes a dive into Whiteness and the history of the Canadian cultural elite. Her ambitious and engrossing piece is made up of numerous items from various Canadian archival sources, some hung upside down and/or printed in a negative versions.

Installation view of “White Man’s Burden” by Deanna Bowen

Detail of Deanna Bowen installation, featuring MacKenzie King, and other cultural elites.

According to his biographers MacKenzie King was cold and tactless. During his long political lilfe leading the Liberal Party, King had several close female friends, including Joan Patteson, a married woman with whom he spent some of his leisure time.

There are many fascinating images and documents in Deanna Bowen’s work: the cover of the T.C. Douglas master’s thesis, for instance, titled “The Problems of the Subnormal Family” in which Douglas recommended several eugenic policies, including the sterilization of “mental defectives and those incurably diseased;” or, a newspaper clipping describing the “objects and purposes” of the Kanadian Klu Klux Klan, including a membership pitch.

Detail from “White Man’s Burden” by Deanna Bowen

There is a wonderful complexity to this artwork. Deanna Bowen leaves it up to the viewer to solve the puzzle of images, covering hundreds of years of violence, vanity, greed and hubris.

Conversely, the vinyl wall installation by Ken Gonzales-Day is simple, direct and deeply horrifying.

The piece is from a series titled Erased Lynchings in which Ken Gonzales-Day reproduced souvenir lynching postcards — a thing in certain southern states — after digitally removing the victims.

The video piece by Howardena Pindell, free white and 21, in which the artist — speaking to the camera in a frank, casual, somewhat bemused style — relates numerous incidents of routine rascist behaviour which she has personally experienced. The video is all the more disturbing because of her blase delivery .

You can watch the whole thing here:

Link to Howardena Pindell video, “free whitge and 21”

Both Nell Painter and Fred Wilson examine the tropes of art history to shed some light on White.

Detail of “Ancient Hair” by Nell Painter

It is as if Nell Painter cut up a Survey of Western Art textbook, scrawled some trenchant questions onto 81/2 by 11 sheets of bond, and pinned the whole thing to the nearest wall. I like the ad hoc feel of this piece. The idea is to just get the ideas out as quickly as possible and to hell with all the niceties of framing and smoothing, tweaking and hanging.

Installation view of “Ancient Hair” by Nell Painter

Fred Wilson puts objects together, transforming their meaning through proximity. In this case, milk glass, white porcelain and china, copies of “classic statuary,”– some broken and toppled — and kitschy items like the white nubian goddess and the black “mammy” cookie jar are arrayed. Looking at this collection of items, each charged with social, cultural and historical meaning, we wonder, which objects belong and which don’t? And why?

Detail from “Love and Loss in the Milky Way” by Fred Wilson

Installation view of “Love and Loss in the Milky Way” by Fred Wilson

I spent some time watching the The White Album, a video piece by Arthur Jafa. Composed largely of found footage, with an original soundtrack that has a chilling, dirgelike quality, this artwork is mesmerizing as it drills deep into the contemporary psyche and unearths a rich and sometimes terrifying vein of emotions.

Excerpt from The White Album by Arthur Jafa

Like the show’s curators, now is apparently a time for me to seek a clearer understanding of Whiteness.

Earlier this month I happened to take a tour of the McLeod Plantation, on James Island, on the outskirts of Charleston, South Carolina. Unlike previous trips to the American South, where I heard alot about French antiques and hoop skirts, the tour at the McLeod plantation was an unflinching description of rape, torture, brutality and exploitation that endured into the 1990s.

Spanish moss on the 100 year old oaks at the McLeod Plantation, James Island, South Carolina

Homes of the enslaved, at the McLeod Plantation, James Island, South Carolina

Spanish moss wafted in the beautiful old trees, and the fields — where sea island cotton was once grown — were green in mid-January.

June 21, 2022

So many of the people I encountered in New York last week had an edge of resentment and anxiety. The desperate days of the pandemic barely receding, the present dominated by spiraling inflation and violence at home and abroad, and the future — the future — looming as a terrifying mix of extremist, political mayhem and climate meltdown.

It made sense to visit the dark, deathy 911 Memorial, with its relentless flow of tumbling water into the black pit of eternity. What did that terrible event — now so distant — foreshadow?

Quiet As It’s Kept – The Whitney Biennial

(I don’t quite get the title? “Quiet As It’s Kept” is referred to, in the materials about the show, as an expression, but it’s one I had not heard before.)

At the 2022 Whitney Biennial — the eightieth edition — that same feeling of future dread that was conjured by the 911 Memorial was in evidence. A mix of trauma, fear and pain was defnitely one of the thematic strands running through the massive exhibition.

The work of Daniel Joseph Martinez, for instance, made me think of the Flagellants of the middle ages, who “demonstrated their religious fervor and sought atonement for their sins by vigorously whipping themselves in public displays of penance.”

Below is the Post-Human Manifesto presented by Daniel Joseph Martinez:

Daniel Joseph Martinez is an artist who works in many different media, including modifying his own body in monstrous ways. So much loathing, rage and frustration seems to be contained in this work. He describes his piece at the Whitney as a:

“radical performative experiment of becoming post-human and the evolution of a new species.”
Daniel Jospeh Martinez

Detail of Photograph by Daniel Joseph Martinez

Similarly, a video installation by Andrew Roberts called The Horde, displays creatures that are him, but not him. They are horrible — undead things — that he identifies with “as a Latino and queer person confronted by a crossfire geopolitical war where bodies and identities similar to mine are treated as disposable.”

The Horde by Andrew Roberts

A sculpture by Canada’s own Rebecca Belmore, of a human figure or maybe a sort of grim reaper wrapped in a sleeping bag, fleeing or hiding or in mourning, had a powerful feeling of despair. It was surrounded by a glittering array of gold coloured bullet casings and stood in the murky light of a gallery with walls painted black.

“I’m hoping that the work contains some positive aspects of this idea that we need to try to deal with violence,” is a quote from Belmore in the Biennial notes.

Photographs by Buck Ellison confront violence from a circuitous distance. For me, the result was a lurid fascination.

“Rain in Rifle Season, Distributions from Split-Interest Trusts, Price Includes Uniform, Never Hit Soft, 2003” by Buck Ellison

Buck Ellison hires models and builds sets for his photographs, attempting to recreate particular moments in the lives of the very rich and priviledged. Here, Eric Prince is depicted, at his ranch in 2003, just before he received notoriety and billions of dollars for his role as the founder of Blackwater, the military contractor which figured so prominently in the war in Iraq.

Buck Ellison has stated that he tries to change the predictable narrative and force the viewer to confront their own emphathy or curiousity. (It kind of works … and then there is the fact that the model bears an uncanny resemblance to a close relative of mine.)

This show has many moments of emotional power but one of the most dramatic was by artist Coco Fusco. It was a riveting experience, watching her 12 minute video essay, recorded in the waters around Hart Island, home to the largest mass grave in the United States, where New York’s unclaimed victims of COVID-19 have been buried.

Still from “Your Eyes will be an Empty Word” by Coco Fusco

Yes, there was painting.

In fact, it seemed like there is a resurgence of abstract painting. It is definitely great to look. The huge, somehow claustrophic paintings by Denyse Thomasos, another Canadian woman, are hectic, compulsive, bristling with energy.

Detail of “Displaced Burial” by Denyse Thomasos

Denyse Thomasos, who died in 2012, stated that her paintings “refer to the violent systems and structures that shape our world,” and that “…the paintings are deeply personal.”

The painting below is by Awilda Sterling-Duprey and it’s called “…blindfolded” because … well … watch the video.

“…blindfolded” by Awilda Sterling-Duprey

video of Awilda Sterling-Duprey performing at the Whitney Biennale 2022

I was really happy to see the paintings by Jane Dickson, one of the artists I remember from the East Village Art Scene of the early eighties. Her canvases looked so lush and rich in form and content.

63 artists and collectives are participating in the eightieth Whitney Biennial. This is just a handful of the items that caught my eye on that sultry afternoon.

Often, there is some sort of controversey roiling the bi-annual exhibition at this particular museum, but this year there was none, that I could discern … yet.

2019 – boycotted by a group of artists, in protest of the museum’s vice chairman, Warren Kanders. Warrren Kanders’ companies sell military supplies (teargas and bullets) via Safariland.
2017 – In response to the exhibition a painting by Dana Schutz, depicting Emmet Till in an open casket, African-American artist Parker Bright began to silently protest it by standing in front of the painting wearing a T-shirt with “Black Death Spectacle” on the back.
2014 – The YAMS Collective, or HOWDOYOUSAYYAMINAFRICAN?, a collective of 38 mostly black and queer artists, writers, composers, academics, filmmakers and performers participated and withdrew from the 2014 Biennial as a protest of the Whitney Museum’s policies including a lack of diversity.
1987 – the show was protested by the Guerrilla Girls for its alleged sexism and racism.
1976 – artists protested what was viewed as blatant economic pandering because the Biennial’s 1976 theme revolved around bodybuilding as art and featured California’s future governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

March 4, 2022

Shary Boyle at The Gardiner Museum

Shary Boyle is an exceptionally accomplished artist. Her show at the Gardiner Museum, called Outside the Palace of Me, is a tour de force of skill and imagination. And the subject of the show — the idea of identity and how we create our “selves” — is an utterly timely and fertile one.

The image above, by Shary Boyle, is titled “Cephalorphoric Saint.” The word cephalophoric means a saint who is carrying their own severed head. In Christian art, this generally means that a saint has been martyred by beheading. I’m not sure if Shary Boyle sees the artist as a matyr, or a saint, but it is an interesting idea about how the artist functions in contemporary society. In some of her images of artists, the subjects are devoid of any legitimate head, instead, blindly and thoughtlessly — without any conciousness at all — they are engaged in self-representation, groping to create an outward, public manifestation of their limited identity.

Ours is society consumed with self-image. The decorated visage is everywhere and each seemingly innocent Instagram post a plea for validation. Do we even exist if we aren’t “liked?” Shary Boyle explores that contemporary affliction with an absorbing collection of objects and images.

Fame, status, and our hunger for validation drive cultures of excess. Tweeted Tik Tok Selfie influencers. Fate, addiction, glamour, celebrity, greed, the Fool. We are all the centre of the universe.
Shary Boyle, handout at exhibition “Outside the Palace of Me”

*Julia Fox Deletes All Kanye West Photos From Instagram – XXL*

The arrangement of the show references theatre. The visitor gingerly enters from a darkened hallway to pass three muses (“Focus,” “Lens” and “Pupils”), which are visible in a two-way mirror. Emerging onto a bright proscenium lined with ten, glass-encased, ceramic sculptures — each exqusitely rendered and fascinating to look at — the visitor is then obliged to consider their own participation in the show.

At center stage is the coin-operated star!:

“Centering” by Shary Boyle

Shary Boyle weaves an old timey sense of performance into her up-to-the-minute observations: traditional hucksters, wax museums, vanity cases, Punch and Judy performers, ventriloquists, vaudeville, carny folk, puppet masters and manipulators of all stripes are represented in the exhibition. She creates a slightly seamy, corrupt, down-market vibe, like a stroll around Clifton Hill after checking out Niagara Falls.

Walking to the Gardiner Museum along Bloor street I encountered a protest march. About a dozen people took part. One held a sign that read “Fuck Trudeau!,” while the leader shouted “Jesus Loves You” through a bullhorn. The Bloor Street shoppers, still masked and tentative, glanced with mild irritation at the noisy interlopers. I could really relate to Shary Boyle’s piece called “The Procession” and her quote:

One person’s parade is another’s riot.
Shary Boyle, handout at exhibition “Outside the Palace of Me”

“The Procession| by Shary Boyle

And then there is “The White Elephant.” I imagined this freakish creature striding around, blithly wrecking the place, leaving a path of misery and destruction wherever she goes, like a preppy white Godzilla in a twinset.

September 26, 2021

The end of September is one of those perfect times in the year; the honey-coloured light, the tension between perfection and decay, new clothes and sharpened pencils, and suddenly, Gallery Weekend!

Everything feels tentative after this long period of fear, isolation and lockdown. I enter cautiously: masked, distanced, with proof of a second dose ready on my phone.

Will this city ever feel carefree again?

Maybe next year.

Bill Burns at MKG127

Installation of view of Bill Burns show at MKG127 titled “The Salt, The Oil, The Milk”

At MKG127 Bill Burns is into the third year of his slow performance, described below:

Bill began his slow performance called variously The Great Trade or The Great Donkey Walk in Amden Switzerland in 2018. With the help of two Donkeys, Bill carried salt from the local salt mine up some gentle slopes in the Swiss Alps and so this project began. Goat milking, donkey walking, sheep shearing, honey rendering, cheese making and occasionally country singing are Bill’s modes. This exhibition includes several dozen drawings that Bill refers to as “pre-documents”, pictures that depict events that have yet to occur, as well as “documents”, pictures of events that have already occurred.
MKG127 handout

The numerous drawings — which are small, pale, delicate watercolours, featuring text, which is sometimes descriptive and sometimes not — were apparently ripped from Bill Burns’ notebooks and then meticulously framed and hung in tight grids.

Installation view of drawings by Bill Burns

It’s such a liberating concept of what art could be: slow, thoughtful, lots of unexpected twists, delightful objects that spin off the activities and make sense in terms of the internal logic of the piece, big questions to mull over.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is 4-2000x567-1.jpg — Pennants by Bill Burns

I have yet to witness a Bill Burns performance but I am excited to report that I will attend one October 8th, at the Oculus on the Humber River Trail.

In the meantime, I appreciate the meandering, round about, surprising way this artwork touches on so many aspects of our present day world: Where does all the stuff that we have come from? How do things get done, made, traded, shipped, bought and sold? What is our connection to farms, to animals? What kind of hierarchies govern our lives? Our we wasting our time rushing around, getting, and spending? What does time even mean now?

Bill Burns walking a Donkey in Amden, Switzerland in 2018. This was the start of the slow performance.

I really like the way Bill Burns uniquely speculates, slows down and simplifies contemporary life, teases it apart and offers it to us — with a light and playful touch — for consideration.

And what about Donkeys? They are so appealing. I learned the following on The Donkey Sanctuary of Canada website:

Donkeys have been a cornerstone in human existence and they still prop up entire communities today, ferrying water, food and crops.

*****

Marcel Van Eeden at Clint Roenisch

Marcel Van Eeden is a major Dutch artist. I learned this from the many publications available at the Client Roenisch gallery, on the occasion of this exhibition, titled “Stolen Pictures.”

Drawing from the Rijks Museum series by Marcel Van Eeden

According to Client Roenisch, there is a key to this artist’s obsessive rendering of imagery which existed prior to his own birth. Marcel Van Eeden came into this world on November 22, 1963. Yes, that was the day JFK was murdered in Dallas! Even as a child Marcel Van Eeden saw the coincidence of the assassination of JFK and the beginning of his own life as an almost mystical nexus.

Marcel Van Eeden’s creative production has been to draw everything – “the light, the architecture, the travel, the people, the cities, the familiar, the foreign, the intrigue, the art, the violence, literally everything” — from the period including the start of photography and concluding at the moment of his own birth.

The drawings in the main gallery at Clint Roenisch — which all reference a distant art theft, including text and locale — are huge, powerful, intensely black (rendered in charcoal), and extremely elegant. They have a certain reckless vitality that also manages to be very precise.

There are also some small paintings, some in colour, also referencing the past, which is moving further and further away from Marcel Van Eeden.

Video about Marcel Van Eeden

I found this video on You Tube. It goes deep into the practice of this fascinating artist, his relentless drawing and his obsessions. There is very little talking in the video, although at one point the artist does explain his underlying motivations and what he’s getting at and why and just what its all about and so on… but then, of course, I don’t speak Dutch.

*****

Rae Johnson at Christopher Cutts Gallery

At the Christopher Cutts Gallery Rae Johnson’s paintings are on display. Sweeping vistas and low horizons, serene and majestic, filled with awe and reverence, these paintings express a deep and joyful love of nature and an acknowledge of the stark indifference we are all faced with — in our brief, frantic lives — as we look out, in a moment of calm, on this astonishing world.

**STORM FRONT BREAKING, 1989, painting by Rae Johnson**

The show is called “Of Light and Dark” Water, Land and Sky Paintings: 1989-2009.

**SELKIRK/GROUND SHADOWS, 2008,** painting by Rae Johnson

In many of her paintings, not shown here, Rae Johnson has depicted archetypes of depravity and redemption, populated by lonely, dreamlike sylphs in dimly lit nighttime haunts, or caught in painful scenes under a harsh fluorescent glare. This exhibition is another side of Rae Johnson’s work. Here, she is enthralled by the elements: air, light and colour

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is untitled-5.jpg — **STORM FRONT WINNIPEG MANITOBA, 1998, painting by Rae Johnson**

**GREEN SKY, 1989, painting by Rae Johnson**

I wanted to bring the sublime into people’s existence.
Rae Johnson

It’s so uplifting to wander around the Chris Cutts Gallery, look at Rae’s paintings and realize that yes, she definitely succeeded in her goal.

*****

January 24, 2019

Mickalene Thomas: Femmes Noires

My attitude toward our southern neighbour swings wildly, from: “That hell hole,” to “We have so much to learn from the USA!” The work of Mickalene Thomas, and her show at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) titled Femmes Noires, makes me truly appreciate the USA and the driving, pure, singular force of innovation that springs up fairly frequently in that turbulent and mesmerizing country.

“Visibility, empowerment, celebration.” That is a quote from Mickalene Thomas, talking about what she wants people to take away from her AGO show. She succeeds. It is an exultant display, uplifting to visit. So many images of queenly, glittering, sumptuous women. I guess it takes a gay, black woman to shrug off deference to a male art world and let glitter and sequins reign.

The paintings shown in the Femmes Noires exhibition – collages of oil paint, photographs, and other materials – often refer to revered works by male artists from the past, like Picasso, Manet or Ingres. The women that emerge in these paintings have a deep sense of themselves: Their gaze is frank, self-contained, self-knowing and profoundly calm in the center of riotous color and pattern.

The painting titled “Shinique: Now I Know” references the Neo-classical touchstone “Une Odalisque.” This painting, by Ingres, above, was widely reviled when it was first shown. Critics pointed to the elongated curved creature in the painting as anatomically impossible. And yet this picture has endured, sits in the Louvre to this day, and is included in every Art History survey around the world. Apparently, it had more than anatomical correctness going on.

People respond deeply to Ingres’ painting. What is it that makes people decide to redo it, or use it in provocative sloganeering, as per the Gorilla Girls famous poster above. Maybe there is something essentially irritating about “Une Odalisque” itself, that paradigm of “Orientalism.”

The Femmes Noires show is big! There are two massive galleries where the visitor can lounge in a living room environment — with potted plants, comfortable chairs and cushions — browse novels or other works about the black experience, and watch media (some random snippets are included below:)

Video by Mikalene Thomas

It seemed like there was a bit of a disconnect from the present. We see Whitney, Eartha, Pam, Diana and so many other fabulous black women icons from the past but where are today’s powerful black women? In fact Mickalene Thomas has collaborated with Solange, Beyonce (The Queen!!!) and other contemporary black superstars but that work just doesn’t happen to be included in this exhibition.

portrait-of-solange-thinking-about-you-by-mickalene-thomas-2013-color-photograph-and-paper-collage-on-archival-board--2a4c1af070127b96

I was feeling pretty good about my former homeland by the time I left the Mickalene Thomas exhibition at the AGO. What an exciting place of invention and possibility! All the fraught recriminations and anger that characterize this contentious era in the USA don’t really come up at Femmes Noires. It’s like an invitation to a new world.

May 14, 2016

I was wandering by the Piri Piri Churrasqueira Grillhouse at the corner of Dupont and Campbell and took some time to check out the neighbourhood. Just a few steps north there is a cluster of no-nonsense, newish buildings. They look like the kind of place you might go to pick up parts for, say, a malfunctioning Moccamaster or maybe confer with an insurance broker. But no, in fact, here is a chance to look at art in Toronto.

Richard Rhodes Dupont Projects – David Clarkson

Speleogenesis, I have just learned, means the origin and development of caves. In the exhibition of paintings by David Clarkson, called Remotes, caves function as formal device, content and metaphor.

Here’s another word you don’t hear often: trippy.

On entering David Clarkson’s show there is a painting by the door. It depicts a rabbit hole, yes, the pathway that Alice took into the discombobulating environment that made no sense. In this painting bunnies, giant gems and a perfect oval looking-glass are bathed in a dreamy blue light. For me this painting set up the whole show with a feeling of philosophical nonchalance. The viewer is free to descend into a labyrinth of ethereal vistas and subconscious triggers without any kind of didactic price to pay.

Detail of Rabbits and Mirrors by David Clarkson

The cave imagery is a constant in the show. Such a potent symbol could be heavy handed but David Clarkson creates unpredictable, droll and imaginative art work that never stumbles into cliche.

Cascade and Curtain by David Clarkson

Looking at Cascade and Curtain the viewer is in utterly unknown territory, gazing outward through the pictorial plane to glimpse what lies beyond the shimmering veil of liquid. Which way is the sinuous sluice spilling? Into the frame or out of it?

The inclusion 0f photographic elements, pop art fragments and tiny renderings of hallucinatory creatures combine to form an otherworldly tableau. But it is the striking formal aspect – the yawning mouth of the cave – that creates such a powerful image.

Moth and Frog by David Clarkson

A sense of claustrophobia dominates the painting above as ice and mist frame a route to open air but no, it is another cave that confronts the viewer, like a maddening hall of mirrors. Life is delicate but relentless in this harsh environment. And consciousness is brutally linked to physical realities.

Statues and Fog by David Clarkson

In Statues and Fog surrealist tropes litter a grim trail to the void. Here the cave is the tough slog of life itself.

Ahem…there is only one way out.

Erin Stump Projects (ESP) – Elise Rasmussen

Around the corner on Dupont there is an exhibition by Elise Rasmussen called Fragments of an Imagined Place. (…am I detecting a theme…?)

As part of the artwork Elise Rasmussen declares that the myth of Atlantis “serves as a metaphor for the artistic practice.” Within this context she presents some fascinating fragments of a Robert Smithson piece that was never created.

Detail of Fragments of an Imagined Place by Elise Rasmussen

People had a very different appearance in 1970 than they do today. Within the selection of xeroxed newspaper clippings, cartoons, letters, pamphlets and snapshots is a picture of Robert Smithson posed as a rugged outlaw. Truly, this artist was onto something new, big and bold and he looks the part.

Robert Smithson circa 1970

The planned Earthwork was called “Glass Island” and it was to be constructed off the British Columbia coast near Nanaimo. One hundred tons of broken glass were held at the border and finally sent back to Los Angeles. Environmentalists opposed the project.

Installation view of Robert Smithson’s “Map of Broken Glass (Atlantis),” 1969

Included in this sort of scrapbook-like array are copies of the Robert Smithson drawings for other Earthworks. It was so startling and refreshing to see these humble drawings on graph paper, efficiently packed with ideas and potential.

Detail of Fragments of an Imagined Place by Elise Rasmussen

I really liked observing the connection Elise Rasmussen created with Robert Smithson and his beautiful idea of a glass island. She also produced a video in connection to the unmade piece. Dancers in white stretchy pants and pastel t-shirts gingerly hold shards of coloured glass move and about in a serious though desultory way.

Still from Video Fragments of an Imagined Place by Elise Rasmussen

https://player.vimeo.com/video/163575629“>Click here to see a section of the video

I wonder what Robert Smithson would make of the art world today?

January 20, 2016

Report from New York

Following an afternoon in NYC and 9 days in British Virgin Islands (BVI) it is clear there is virtually no art in BVI. New York, on the other hand, is stuffed with art. It kind of makes sense if you simply look out the window.

Shown above is the view out the window in BVI.

Shown above is the view out the window in New York.

In New York the radiators hiss and clang and strange cries rise from Second Avenue, four floors below. It is a John Cage symphony here in this overheated loft and time to rush downstairs into the brittle cold and take a walk.

There are two Lehmann Maupin galleries. I dropped into the one on Chrystie Street.

Lehmann Maupin – Catherine Opie

It turns out Elizabeth Taylor was one of those women who exists with a tiny, precious dog on her lap. She was very close to her white, beribboned, silky, toy-like Maltese called Sugar. Elizabeth Taylor’s affections, for animals, people and things are sumptuously revealed in an exhibition of photographs by Catherine Opie at the Lehmann Maupin .

The exhibition is called 700 Nimes Road, which was Elizabeth Taylor’s address in the glamorous Los Angeles neighbourhood known as Bel-Air.

Above: Installation shot of 700 Nimes Road exhibition by Catherine Opie

The photographs have the ability to transport us to this hushed, rarefied retreat where the iconic actress spent her last years in violet tinted luxury. Catherine Obie had access to the home and belongings of Elizabeth Taylor. Despite the fact that she never actually met Elizabeth Taylor the images and the “indirect portrait” they create are filled with tenderness and respectful reverence.

Below, an array of perfect sling back heels in assorted pastels, about size six, stand ready for the return of their owner as Fang strolls by.

“Fang and Chanel” by Catherine Opie

“The Shoe Closet” by Catherine Opie

“The Quest for Japanese Beef” by Catherine Opie

The jewels are photographed as transcendent objects: sometimes glowing, floating, as if glimpsed in a dream-like, delirious haze. Or as above, precious trinkets lovingly arranged.

Photograph by Catherine Opie

Luxurious bags, luggage, sunglasses are maintained in impeccable order, ready for their owner to cast a lovely violet-eyed glance their way. But sadly, Elizabeth Taylor, never returned to 700 Nimes Road. When Catherine Opie began her project in 2010 Elizabeth Taylor was hospitalized and died before it was completed.

Elizabeth Taylor, February 27, 1932 – March 23, 2011

The New Museum – Cheryl Donegan

Cheryl Donegan is carrying out a four-month residency at the New Museum. To fill up this immense period of time Cheryl Donegan started a newspaper, opened a store filled with objects she has made and/or repurposed, created an online retail operation of sorts, is planning a fashion show for the Museum in April and continually carries out performances, videos and create more objects. Simultaneously, a selection of her paintings, other works on paper, objects and videos work together to create a more conventional exhibition of the work of this artist at the Museum.

The exhibition is called Scenes and Commercials.

Looking at this work gives me the sense that Cheryl Donegan does not have much interest in tradition and yet the paintings are successful in a traditional sense. They are fun and surprising to look at and create a hectic feeling of rushing and recklessness.

Paintings by Cheryl Donegan

Cheryl Donegan is like the girl next door. She is down-to-earth, hard working and a straight shooter. She uses plaid, Kelly green and cardboard. She is earnest and curious about marketing and commerce.

Details from Concept Store by Cheryl Donegan

The idea of compression is one that Cheryl Donegan frequently references. This concept apparently has an idiosyncratic significance as she observed the gradual flattening of consumer electronics and extends its as a metaphor for society. She speaks about a hovering space of thin layers. Maybe its about the way objects and ideas are quickly used up and disposed of in our mediated world. Since nothing has any depth or substance, we need to only glance at it and move on. Social media, retail items, relationships, events and disasters around the world, beliefs, emotions are all equally shallow, feckless, consumable.

What I really liked about Cheryl Donegan’s work is that she doesn’t let all this diminishment of all things get her down. She seems to embrace the frantic pace of now and injects a joyful absurdity into it. Below is a still from a videotaped performance by Cheryl Donegan in which she paints her ass green and creates shamrock prints.

Still from video by Cheryl Donegan

80WSE – Language of the Birds: Occult and Art

Magic, Alchemy, Astrology, Kabbalah, Spirituality, spells, Divination, extra sensory perception, trance, Wicca, tarot cards, Kenneth Anger: this exhibition covers the range occult practice and imagery. The title, Language of the Birds, refers to a particular mode of communication available to the initiated.

The exhibition coincides with The Occult Humanities Conference 2016:
Contemporary Art and Scholarship on the Esoteric Traditions.

Although I do occasionally check my horoscope in the newspaper the occult is something I know nothing about. I was looking for some context but it was not there. Is there a current rising interest in these themes? What’s the connection between the paranormal and the normal? Why now? It’s not really clear.

The curator, Pam Grossman, a teacher of magical practice and history, has divided the numerous works into rooms titled Cosmos, Spirits, Practitioner, Alter, Spells. Many phantasmagorical things and images are displayed.

Sirens by Kiki Smith

Touch by Valerie Hammond

Astrological Ouroboros by Paul Laffoley

Could be its all about plumbing the depths of puny human understanding or misunderstanding?

Pomba-gira Maria Mulambo – Grande Circulo de Pontos Riscado [Whirling Dove Maria Mulambo – Great Circle of Scratched Points] by Barry William Hale

I could almost smell the incense burning.

January 7, 2016

These days looking at art means traversing the city and facing down the sea of red tail lights in every west bound artery. Is all this frantic activity due to the mild winter and El Nino? No! It was explained to me that the reason it is so hard to get around by car in Toronto these days is because the streets are clogged with swarms of UberX drivers. Endlessly cruising up and down Queen Street, they will not go home. They need the money.

Birch Contemporary – Sexish

The subject of ‘sex and women’ is fraught with a legion of competing agendas, all the time and everywhere. It’s kind of comforting to know that in a world where women can be stoned to death for sexual transgression, in this country artists (men and women) are free to explore pretty much any sexual subject matter they can come up with. One option is the light touch and the glance of the coquette. Sexish, the title of the (all female) group show at Birch Contemporary largely takes this approach, and like many of the artworks in the exhibition, the title is a bit, well, coy.

Images of tightly crossed knees by Maryanne Casasanta or flouncy skirts by Cathy Daley read as girlish, coltish, kittenish. Sex seems a long way off…although there are hints.

Artwork by Maryanne Casasanta

Two artworks by Cathy Daley

Using hand stitched embroidery on lovely found fabrics Orly Cogan depicts the eroticized domestic realm where home is a place to relax and get high.

“Saturday” by Orly Cogan

“Mirror Mirror” by Orly Cogan

Other artists in the show take on S&M imagery. Fresh, original paintings by Ilona Szalay have a very contemporary feel, although they reference what seems to be a reenactment of Victorian prurience.

“Girl and Graffiti” by Ilona Szalay

Janet Werner‘s painting of the back of woman’s head transmits a subtle shock. First we examine the voluptuous coiffure and then the freakishly attenuated neck and damaged ear. What happened here?

“Jo” by Janet Werner

Ceramic pieces by Julie Moon have a way of getting to the core of female attributes in a primal way. I liked the sense of ambiguity in this artist’s work. Hovering between nightmare and goddess the piece shown below holds a potent sexual charge.

“Flesh Pile (Side Pony)” by Julie Moon

In another ceramic piece with Surrealist antecedents, Julie Moon creates fascinating tension as delicate limbs emerge from a glutinous heap. Ruffles and a tender blue colour add to the horrifying sense of femininity caught in a grotesque trap.

“Bloomers” by Julie Moon

As the Sexish exhibition notes attest ideas about women and sexuality are “continuously evolving and unresolved.” Here the clamorous sex/women issues dominating the headlines are sidestepped or ignored and it makes for a refreshing change.

Taylor Swift’s Girl Squad

University of Oregon protest

Caitlyn Jenner in LA

November 13, 2014

In a modest residential neighbourhood, only a few steps from the Bloor Value Village, lie more western outposts of sophisticated art. Clint Roenisch Gallery and Daniel Faria Gallery both have spacious storefronts on Saint Helens Avenue. Client Roenisch arrived in July and Daniel Faria has been there for three years. Tucked around the corner in an alley off Dublin Street, is the mysterious Scrap Metal Gallery, unfortunately closed on the day I visited.

It was grey and cold and sleet was present.

Harold Klunder at Clint Roenisch Gallery

In the foyer of the RBC Center on Simcoe and Wellington, near the Starbucks, is a large Harold Klunder, which I passed daily, for about three years, on my way to the elevator banks. The artwork has an eighties neo-expressionist or so-called “bad painting” look. As I recall, the paint is thick, chunky impasto of yellow, orange, browns and blacks with a certain gnarled chockablock geometry that I identify with the artist. I had assumed I would see variations of this work at the new gallery on Saint Helens Avenue.

In this show, however, titled Live by the Sun, Love by the Moon, Harold Klunder’s work has moved away from the static heaviness of the RBC painting into a realm of light, air and expansiveness that was very exciting to see.

Green Abstraction

There is some explanatory text on the gallery wall which mentions Harold Klunder’s Dutch heritage and his connection to the Dutch artists of the past. I liked looking for these links. The bewitching light of Vermeer is successfully evident, particularly in a painting called Airmail Blue #1. (As someone with a European parent this painting had an emotional component too, recalling childhood in which the exquisitely thin blue airmails from abroad connoted a distant and romantic world.)

Airmail Blue #1

There is a massive triptych on display titled Flemish Proverb which made me think of Dutch tapestries (such as the Hunt of the Unicorn which hangs in the New York Cloisters) because of the scale, complexity, and ambition of the work and the way it reads as an illustration of some arcane narrative. Each panel is painted with a unique palette and iconography yet they are unified by a sense of cascading from light to dark vertically, as horizontally a tale unfolds.

Flemish Proverb and detail of the same painting

A large painting called This Length of Muddy Road seems to shift its identity from map to narrative to landscape and it somehow manages to be filled with light and air despite the grey background.

This Length of Muddy Road

In some of the paintings the use of color is truly startling. I was fortunate to attend the Willem De Kooning retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art a few years ago and I can see why the exhibition notes cite that artist as one of Harold Klunder’s (Dutch) influences, particularly because of his use of color.

Milk of the Sun

The show is put together in an interesting and unusual way in that a selection of the artist’s source material is exhibited with the paintings.

The collage of paint dabbed news clippings and magazine scraps is really fun to look at. A grouping of vivid water colors hint at the artist’s process regarding color.

Also included in the exhibition is a welded metal sculpture (borrowed from the collection of Harold Klunder) created by a now deceased French-Canadian nun called Soeur Marie-Anastasie.

At first I thought it was influenced by Picasso.

But no…it looks more like a Harold Klunder.

Daniel Faria Gallery – Kristine Moran, Wayne Ngan

At first sight Kristine Moran’s paintings made me think of Melanie Authier’s work (written about on this blog in the October 12 post) because of the way a mass of abstract iconography is piled up in the middle of the canvas while the corners remain relatively empty, and because of a similar palette both women use.

But soon the distinctive and exuberant aesthetic of Kristine Moran, who has shown her work with Daniel Faria for six years, comes into focus. Whereas she too explores the manufacture of deep space on canvas her gestural marks are raw and gritty and sometimes combine with explosive force in this show, called Affairs and Ceremonies.

Funeral Procession

Formerly a figurative painter Kristine Moran has developed a personal language of various mysterious forms which appear repeatedly as she creates an expressive whole from layers of jumbled narrative.

She can’t quite leave figurative painting behind however: vestiges of arms and legs, martini glasses, armour or shields, odd items like tank tops, candles, flowers, open books; all find their way into her paintings.

Flashe

Seance

I liked the fact that Kristine Moran is not afraid to attach Cosmo type titles to her paintings (Gossip or Affair for instance) and for some reason I thought of lingerie colours – pink, black and champagne – when trying to get a read on her paintings. Is this a woman who is using the trappings of the female life as she seeks to understand and evolve through art?

On the afternoon I dropped into the gallery there was an opening party scheduled for later that same day.

The spectacle of all that beer in such close proximity to a collection of new works by Wayne Gnan gave me an uneasy feeling. I sincerely hoped there would be no regrettable incidences as the opening played out.

These beautiful objects are arrayed precisely on a tabletop and lit with drama.

The installation works as a whole. The strong, weighty forms, soft, natural colors and perfectly subtle sheen are entirely harmonious. It is also rewarding to spend time looking at the inventive sculptural integrity of each individual piece.

October 1, 2014

Today, on Spadina Avenue, I experienced the future!

Behold, the airy interior of a new TTC streetcar.

The wide, bike-friendly, double doors opened (automatically) and I exited (in complete safely) at Queen Street and crossed southeast to Richmond, back in the present…sort of. The building at 401 Richmond Street, which has a seventies feel, was actually erected around 1900, for industrial purposes. It currently has so many culturally productive tenants that the management publishes its own in-house gallery guide.

There are numerous permanent art installations scattered around the wide, creaky hallways.

For example, near the main entrance are a group of photographs by Peter McCallum. Below is a detail of one of the photographs, which document studios, workshops and infrastructure of the 401 Richmond site.

This artist has so much skill and sophistication. Grounded in an uncanny ability to discern and compose a nuanced, insightful view of a particular moment and place, and with superb technical skill, the photographs by Peter MacCallum are always instantly recognizable and a pleasure to view.

The Abbozzo Gallery

The Abbozzo Gallery presents drawings by Olexander Wlasenko. I was flipping through the decades. Suddenly it was 1965. These works in charcoal, unframed and velvety, conjure up a time when people dressed up for air travel and sashayed across the tarmac in kitten heels.

Drawings by Olexander Wlasenko

Are these stills from Pierrot le Fou, Bande a Parte, La Chinoise or some other gorgeous Jean Luc Goddard New Wave film from the sixties? Is that Anna Karina adjusting her makeup in a Paris boite? These drawings have a cold intensity, like an old school martini, shaken but not stirred.

YYZ Artists’ Outlet

At the YYZ Artists’ Outlet the paintings of Andrew Rucklidge are on display. The show is called “You and I are Shifters” and it is accompanied by an essay by Terence Dick, which raises all sorts of interesting ideas about post-photoshop, digital sampling and quantum physics. This artist clearly enjoys pushing paint around canvas and appears to be painting about painting. He has a dazzling repertoire of effects and techniques and he applies them to various riffs on a geometric diamond-like object.

Painting by Andrew Rucklidge

Reading about the Scotiabank Nuit Blanche, which is coming up in a few days, I noticed how many of the performances and/or installations involve interaction and/or something called immersion on the part of the audience. This is a trend that does not appeal to me, in fact, it strikes me as totalitarian in nature. Despite the multiple and fascinating directions art continues to take there is something really satisfying about just looking passively at a painting by Andrew Rucklidge or any painting and accepting it as is.

Gallery 44 Center for Contemporary Photography

At Gallery 44 I came across an exhibition about wood called “Standardizing Nature: Trees, Wood and Lumber” by Susana Reisman. Yes, trees grow only to end up as a pile of lumber.

Photographs by Susana Reisman

Whereas the photographs were competent, even impressive, the show had the tone of a science textbook. I was looking for the art part. I did find it in the secondary room, which consisted of a sculpture composed of numerous lengths of wood, some partially painted or decorated and simply leaning against a wall.

Artwork by Susana Reisman

There is something quirky and anthropomorphic in this sculpture. It’s so simple and yet it delivers something complex…and it smells really good.

Red Head Gallery

I wandered into the Red Head Gallery and found a show called “Insomnia Salon Soiree”, set up in connection to the Scotiabank Nuit Blanche event. The numerous pieces in the show were not labelled and will only be on display for five days, to be dismantled once the hoopla over Nuit Blanche dies down. A couple of paintings caught my eye:

(At post time I don’t have the names of the artists who produced these works but I’m hoping the Red Head Gallery can provide me that information shortly.)

A Space Gallery

I read on the A Space website that this Gallery was founded in 1971. That is a long time to be alternative.

The current show is called “Welcome to Tkaronto” and among others, features work by Meryl McMaster:

Photographs by Meryl McMaster

McMaster’s use of popping color and strange other-worldly costumes in stark northern landscapes spoke vividly to me about the rich culture of the Indigenous that is all around us in Ontario (and Canada) and yet hidden.

V-Tape

The V-Tape people think a lot about how to exhibit video…and there is a lot to choose from

I was invited into a comfortable, otherwise empty screening room, which could accommodate maybe thirty people. The lights were turned down and I watched the feature presentation.

Su Rynard‘s piece “As Soon as Weather Will Permit” is currently on exhibit at V-Tape. It tells a story about an uncle who was a US World War II pilot. Uncle Vern found himself endlessly training out the war in the luridly colorful desert vistas around Los Alamos…waiting…waiting for just the right moment. Eventually, of course, the weather aligns with the military and political imperatives of the moment. The protagonist participated in the bombing of Hiroshima. To paraphrase the narration: they dropped the bomb and they left.

Stills from video by Su Rynard

Su Rynard uses a split screen to mix home movies and archival footage; glowing dream-like sequences of bubbling atoms and frothing energy, radar screens, hand-written texts and folksy, matter-of-fact narrative to create a riveting piece. Although there is a brief mushroom cloud burst the artist uses restraint very effectively. For me, the controlled, dispassionate story and the undeniably voluptuous imagery combine to pack a potent message into this short, powerful piece.

Nicholas Metivier Gallery

After looking at only a sampling of the art on display at 401 Richmond I needed some air and took a walk along King Street to see the John Scott exhibition at Nicholas Metivier Gallery.

John Scott’s paintings are all about men’s business: motorcycles, spiraling jets, prize fighters, disasters, hulking cars, and always the ominous “Dark Commander,” the ultimate, critical, punishing father figure.

Paintings by John Scott

The bunny figures, another of John Scott’s consistent characters, tend to be sympathetic, even endearing, although they sometimes get up on their hind legs and become, for example, “Imperious Bunny” which is also included in the show. But its the “Dark Commander” that the viewer has to reckon with. Who is this guy?

I kept thinking about opera when I was looking at this show. In fact, the Commendatore is the name of the terrifying character in Don Giovanni who knocks on the door in the last act and in the horrible bass voice reminds Don Giovanni that “he invited him to dine..” Then the vengeful creature exacts his bargain and drags Giovanni down to hell with him.

Maybe John Scott is exploring his feminine side with the inclusion of a couple of flower paintings in the show.

Dollarama Flowers by John Scott

They are clearly labelled as “Dollarama Flowers,’ supposedly just the kind of disposable plastic trash we would expect a real guy would pick up. They do add another dimension of emotional content to the show, like observing a biker at the supermarket: there he is, in full biker regalia, comparing cake mixes.