Today, crazy interdisciplinary arts fest Luminato released its visual art highlights for 2010. Here's what I will be looking forward to come June:
1. Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller. The famed duo is bringing a salvaged Chinese junk boat titled Ship O’ Fools to Trinity Bellwoods Park. Cardiff and Bures Miller impress more often than not -- and I've never seen their work in a public space, so I really look forward to this.
2. Mark Fast. Okay, this one's more fashion than art, but I'm darn intrigued. Canadian-born, London-based designer Fast has become known for his spiderweb-like knitwear, which I damn well appreciate him showing on models who are not totally stick-thin. According to Luminato's release, Fast will create a knitted sculpture/installation at Brookfield Place.
3. FriendswithYou. Another art/design mashup, the Miami-based FriendswithYou will create a colourful installation at Queen's Park. (Apparently they've done similar stuff at Art Basel Miami and in Berlin.)
Image of Cardiff and Bures Miller's Ghost Machine from their website; image of Mark Fast's fall 2010 fashion show from his website; and image of FriendsWithYou's contribution to the Art Basel Miami 2006 parade from Aesthetic Grounds
Monday, March 15, 2010
Luminato Announces Vis-Arts Picks for 2010
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Rounding up Arts News: A Highbrow Herding of Canadian Cats
I think it's been a couple weeks since my last news roundup, so here goes:
Re: Venice The Post's Shinan Govani, as usual, gives great gossip, this time on Canadians in Venice. Most cogent observation: "Like in so many instances, when [we Canadians are] harder on ourselves than outsiders are, I found others in thrall of both [Mark] Lewis and us." The Star's Peter Goddard also dishes Venice gossip, as in the Canadian delegation's luggage going missing and the planned party for the Rialto fish market being nixed by Venice officials at the last minute. (I have to say I was less impressed by Goddard's statement in a later article that "Feminists will likely be cheered by a Biennale "special mention" going to the late Brazilian artist Lygia Pape, whose lengthy, beam-like structures tilting up from a darkened floor in a pitch black room suggest spotlights displayed over top of a city." Right... because only feminists would care for Pape's work or something? It reminds me of when I saw him do a public chat with Judy Chicago and he implied that only lesbians would care for feminist work. What-ever.) Goddard's colleague Murray Whyte did a better job on Reverse Pedagogy, a hipster-party-riffic Canuck-canoe art project in Venice. My sorta-boss Richard Rhodes also did an interesting report on the Punta della Dogana for Canadianart.ca. The pictures I helped put up there are society-y but fun too, I think. And one Venice aspect that was way underreported: three smaller Canuck art mags, C Magazine, Fuse and Hunter & Cook, teamed up to do a launch in Venice—a first, or the first in a long time, for all three. Good on ya.
Re: Luminato Though hopes were high for Tony Oursler's work for Luminato, it seems to have been a bust both technically and aesthetically, at least according to the Globe's Sarah Milroy and Torontoist's Amanda Happé. Milroy also points out in a separate review that she admired Luminato art by David Rokeby but not that by Germaine Koh. It seems Sarah Lazarovic's Tweets-as-handpainted-art, a one-day show, got a better reception as evinced by shout-outs from Murray Whyte and the Post's Adam McDowell. Kurt Perschke's RedBall project seemed to have a warm reception, as indicated by this Spacing post. In fact, it seems that low-tech was the better way to go for Luminato art installations, as the Globe's James Bradshaw rounded up a few projects nixed at the last minute due to technical concerns. (Artist/curator/critic Sally McKay also expressed annoyance with the fest's aggressive social media schmoozing.) The Post's Ampersand blog has being doing daily updates on the fest and has helpful recommendations for enjoying its final day today. My verdict: Luminato is getting better at vis-arts programming than in its past couple of years—but still no cigar, given the cancellation of so many projects at the last minute. Proper curatorial planning would have prevented these snafus.
Re: Koffler controversy Murray Whyte rounds up the artist-rebellion fallout surrounding the Koffler's abrupt termination of its Reena Katz project. Torontoist's Jonathan Goldsbie also wonders about the situation from a perspective of Jewish identity and community politics.
Re: Video revelations Twitter has proved a great source of nice art-related video links of late. Toronto gallerist and DJ @Vaneska pointed me in the fun direction of Artstars TV, a project by TO writer Nadja Sayej and TO artist Jeremy Bailey that documents the cattier side of Toronto artworld events. Hogtown media critic Marc Weisblott (@scroll) pointed out Ryeberg.com, a forum for curating online video which counts Sheila Heti and Mary Gaitskill amongst its contributors. The site is the brainchild of writer Erik Rutherford. On Facebook, Vernissage.tv's Heinrich Schmidt also led me to an interesting video interview with Pharrell Williams regarding his$2-mil Takashi Murakami collaboration in Basel.
Re: Miscellaneous Somehow, even though it ditched its most art-centric director in less than a year, the Glenbow scooped "Best of Calgary's" art gallery category. Vancouver artist David Wisdom teamed up with old pals like Rodney Graham for a new exhibition. Critic Amy Fung continues to argue that a lot is wrong with Edmonton's art scene. Maritime-associated artists including Emily Vey Duke discussed environmental issues in art with The Coast. Coast critic Sue Carter Flinn also previewed the bathhouse art show there. TO Blogger Jennifer McMackon/Simpleposie, who tirelessly follows parliamentary and political debates of cultural import, promises a paper version s0on. BlogTO shows that Worn Fashion Journal's museum show and funder auction of pimped out Keds looked pretty damn great. And how the hell did I not read this article on NY artist Swoon and her rafts sooner? (Not Canadian but definitely a competitor to Reverse Pedagogy's canoes, as was the Russian art sub.)
Ok, that's all I got! Now to the sun and a few galleries.
Image from mediabistro.com
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Tony Oursler dishes on art changes old and new
Toronto’s Luminato festival, launched in 2007, has often been met with skepticism in the contemporary art community. But this year the fest has tried to up its aesthetic credibility with the participation of prominent New York artist Tony Oursler. While the artist was setting up his public installations near Grange Park this week, I got to chat with him about last-minute and long-term changes in his projects. Here's an excerpt from the full chat published today at Canadianart.ca:
LS: A lot of your past work can be read as making private traumas semi-public in a gallery setting. Is moving into full-fledged public art an expansion of that practice?
TO: Well this is a voyeuristic situation so in a way it’s highlighted. It will become obvious at a certain point that this is an installation, but it’s also a private space that has a memory, and goes out into the public space. I like the idea that people have a kind of membrane that they have to choose to pierce in one way or another. That voyeuristic dynamic is important; to look in the window is to join into the piece. We’ll see how it works. It’s a new thing for me.
LS: What part is new to you?
TO: Well, there’s a lot. First of all, this house has a mosaic of flatscreens inside. So it’s not projected. It’s also completely three-dimensional too, where a lot of my previous stuff is more frontal or 180-degrees or whatever.
When I had a flatscreen TV around the studio I was thinking of how amazing they are, because they become almost architectural. Whereas TVs are more like furniture, flatscreens to me are almost like tile or bricks or something. They’re also about redesigning and redefining interior space.
So I kind of wanted to play with that. You look into the space and it becomes like a memory palace of things that have happened or that are happening in the space. We edit the characters from screen to screen so they can move around from side to side, and occasionally the whole house becomes one character. Then it breaks back up into other characters.
Image of Tony Oursler with his in-progress installation near Toronto's Grange Park from canadianart.ca
Q&A: RedBall artist Kurt Perschke
New York artist Kurt Perschke looked at the world's public spaces a few years back. And did he see the need for a bench? No. A public washroom? No. Maybe some planters or bike racks? Nah.
What Perschke identified was lacking in public spaces worldwide was this -- a massive inflatable red ball. Yep, he's shown it from Chicago to Barcelona to Busan, and now it's hitting Toronto as part of the Luminato festival.
To be honest, from the online videos, it does look like this work is pretty fun. And a far cry from good ol' bronze "plop art." So it was enjoyable to chat with Perschke by phone about the project. Today, the National Post published the condensed Q&A. Here's an excerpt:
Q Online videos do show that viewers have a lot of fun with this piece -- running into it, touching it, playing with it. But most of the time we see art in museums, where it has an aura of "do not touch" seriousness. Can something ever be too fun to be art?
A Well, actually, I make lots of the kind of "serious" work that you are describing for museums and galleries. And I think to do something funny, and in public, is much harder. It's a very different environment. When you walk into a gallery or museum you know you're supposed to be looking at art. But if you are looking at art in public space, you don't have any of the crutches one has in a museum. Out on the street you're dealing with people's innate imaginations. I think the hardest thing is to get anyone to break out of their daily routine and get them to imagine, and this piece deliberately uses a moment of whimsy to make that happen. So the work is playful -- but it's playful in a very serious way.
Image for Perschke's Red Ball project in Portland, OR from Redballproject.com
