Out Today: Karin Bubas Q&A and East End Gallery Hop

A couple of stories out from me in today's National Post.

First off is an email Q&A with Karin Bubas, whose pastel portraits of The Hills starlets got attention on the New York Times' blogs following mentions here and elsewhere. An excerpt:

Q Some people might say that art should focus on serious things, not superficial reality-TV characters. What would your response be?

A I'm surprised by the amount of discussion about the merits of my Hills pastels as subject matter for art. I didn't think that people would have such strong opinions or objections. Using celebrity as a study for art is nothing new. Whether it's Andy Warhol's silkscreens of Grace Kelly, or Jeff Koons' sculpture of Michael Jackson, or Elizabeth Peyton's painting of Jarvis Cocker, celebrity is a world that even artists are obsessed with.

I don't find popular culture to be superficial. I've often taken the position of voyeur, making an anthropological study into human behaviour and ways of life. Reality television is another form of this study. At the same time, I'm a big fan of reality TV. Survivor, The Amazing Race, Big Brother, bring it on! I also like critically acclaimed shows like Mad Men and Lost.

Also out in the Post's Toronto section is a survey of three enjoyable shows just east of downtown. An slice of that:

Goodwater Gallery
234 Queen St. E.
Some artists shy away from making bold statements, preferring subtle surprises. For his show at Goodwater, artist Andrew Reyes is decidedly bold. Reyes invades the central gallery space with two massive, criss-crossing diagonal columns. Then, in the rear of the gallery (you have to duck under Reyes’ mega tic-tac-toe to get there) one finds a single horizontal beam of drywall spanning the gallery from left to right at eye level. Appropriately titled Cryptique, Reyes’s artwork here gives no clues to its meaning beyond its own existence — no text, no explanation and no apologies. Those diagonal interventions conjure everything from the escalators of contemporary shopping malls to the signatures of pioneer-era illiterates, while the rear-gallery barrier could be a subtraction sign writ large or a high-jump beam gone obese. Though an enigmatic, noncommittal approach can sometimes kill works, Reyes’s piece survives it — because in the end, the sheer joy of seeing him change the space so dramatically and elegantly, like a 10-year-old with a prodigious gift for minimalist drywall, is almost guaranteed to produce the upturned arc of a smile. To Aug. 22.

Image of three of Bubas's The Hills portraits from the Charles H Scott Gallery

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