This weekend, there's been much to-do over a Toronto gallery's surprising decision to renege on an artist's contract due to the artist's views on Israel. The gallery, the Koffler, is part of a Jewish cultural centre and the artist, Reena Katz, who is Jewish, was part of the Koffler's scheduled programming for May and June. Katz has been associated with Israel Apartheid Week, a group which questions Israel's actions in Palestine.
On Friday, the Koffler issued a statement dissociating themselves from Katz. Facebook uproar and articles in the local media (here and here) have since followed.
In my opinion, this is quite a bad move for the gallery. The Koffler has in recent years tried to open and hip-ify their image by doing more downtown programming (their actual gallery is located in the suburbs). Katz was to be part of that initiative. This decision goes right against that kind of open and flexible image.
Further, it's almost certain that artists who've exhibited at the gallery in the past--like BGL and Blue Republic--are not Zionist in identification.
So what's the problem here? It's that the artist is open about their non-Zionist views? That the information regarding same is available on her Facebook page?
Also, if the political views of artists was so important to the Koffler in the first place, they should have scoped all this out beforehand--before months of press material and hype have gone out on their part.
Photo of Reena Katz from the Star
Monday, May 11, 2009
Update: Toronto Artist's Contract Ended due to View on Israel
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Photo Gallery Hop & Libby Hague Review
With National Gallery of Canada director Marc Mayer arguing that there was no need for Canada to have a stand-alone photography museum, and the Contact Photography Festival on in full force, there's lots of prompts to think about photo as art form. My gallery column published in today's National Post looks at three exhibits that use photo in different ways.Here's an excerpt:
For several years, Toronto photographer Scott Johnston has directed his camera towards different parts of Hogtown. The results, a selection of which show at Arta to May 14, aren’t always high art, but they are often compelling. The draw of Johnston’s images comes from the fact that they lift a mirror to familiar scenes and settings, allowing us the time and space to consider what usually just flies past car windows or is glimpsed out of the corner of an eye during errands. Take, for example, Johnston’s standout wide-angle photograph spanning Union Station’s railway tracks, the Air Canada Centre and a condo contruction site. It’s a swath often divided into discrete categories by maps and minds, but here possesses the feel of a geological cross-section — a system, however erratic, in process.
Also, an exhibition by Libby Hague closes tomorrow at the Art Gallery of Mississauga. Yesterday, Torontoist published my review.
Image of Shai Kremer's work from the National Post
Friday, May 8, 2009
Hot Topic: Identity Politics (Yes, Still)
For the last week or so I've been pondering approaches to identity in art. These thoughts were prompted by a couple of recent reviews in Toronto media that expressed exasperation with identity politics in certain exhibitions. The reviews I'm thinking of are Sarah Milroy's review of Remix in the Globe and David Balzer's review of South-South in Eye Weekly.
As Milroy put it:
Is it still possible these days to make a viable, themed exhibition about contemporary aboriginal art that doesn't feel stillborn? And what happens when works of art are gathered around ideas such as cultural hybridity and racial identity? In an era in which Inuit filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk is winning prizes at Cannes and Northwest Coast artist Brian Jungen is showing at the Witte de With in Rotterdam and the Tate Modern in London, aren't these kinds of initiatives anachronistic and weirdly protectionist?
The current exhibition Remix: New Modernities in a Post-Indian World (at the Art Gallery of Ontario until Aug. 23) makes you think so.
And for his part, Balzer wrote:
Everywhere you look in contemporary art, binaries are being defined and then deconstructed. This is unsurprising given the grasp post-structuralism has had on most artists’ educations (which are, in turn, almost uniformly post-secondary and/or graduate), though it’s hard to imagine who, among their viewers, still needs the lesson. It must appeal equally to an artist’s sense of conviction and vanity: that is, to base an entire career on exploding the neat-yet-evil pairs of boxes our culture supposedly puts us in (male/female, west/east, light/dark, straight/gay and so on) — and, specifically, to be the one to proclaim that no person, especially an interesting and intelligent one, fits into them.
Where would identity-politics art be without this approach? Justina M. Barnicke Gallery’s new show, “South-South: Interruptions and Encounters,” suggests it would cease to exist — either that, or it would become a lot better, as other recent shows at this very gallery (notably 2007’s “Rightfully Yours”) have proven.
I respect both of these colleagues, and appreciate them putting forth honest reactions to the shows, thereby raising tough issues. But I'm still niggled, a bit, by what makes these issues tough.
To me, as long as people are treated differently--be it economically, socially, physically or otherwise--on the basis of their outward identity, we will have, quite reasonably, identity politics at work both in art and in life. To me, it's a totally valid field to work in. Necessary, even.
At the same time, I understand the need for critics to point out deficiencies in artistic or curatorial merit. After all, it's our job. I myself have done this in reviews, namely for Black Creek Projects and Queer Here Queer Now.
However, I did see both these shows--Remix and South-South--and I didn't have nearly the same degree of negative reaction that Milroy and Balzer did. I agree not all the work at the AGO is what we might call "museum-quality"--that is to say, adequately thought through or at a strong skill level. And at South-South there is some work that is also not as strong, or that seems more self-involved to the detriment, rather than the benefit, of the art. But both exhibitions did introduce me to a few artists new to me, who I doubt had shown works in Toronto before, and whose works I really enjoyed. That's a function of these types of themed exhibitions that I think remains important--would artists who are women or artists who are queer be anywhere near as accepted in the art mainstream without similar group shows created on those themes the past?
I'm open to any comments. Basically I'm uncertain on how to approach all this and am wondering what others have to say.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Recommended: Shai Kremer, Maura Doyle, Larissa Fassler
A few shows I've seen of late and recommend taking in:
Shai Kremer at the newish Julie M Gallery is a great show. Kremer's an Israeli-born, New York-based artist who here presents very strong photographs of the Golan Heights area. The images really effectively show the legacy of conflict and war woven into the landscape, a pretty horrible mix of beauty and tragedy. Struck me at first as Burtynskyish, but for human conflicts rather than environmental ones.
Maura Doyle at Paul Petro is a gas. (I feel like I'm 80 using that description, but whatever.) Doyle's show "New Age Beaver" is themed on--you got it--beavers. Not only did the beaver happy face drawing on the wall crack me up, but so did Doyle's replicas of beaver-created objects previously described in books and field guides. Bizarre and fun.
Larissa Fassler at Interaccess is also worth a look. Born in Vancouver, Fassler trained at Concordia and lives in Berlin. Fassler's got a sculpture showing alongside a video work by Richard Schutz, but it's really Fassler's work that's the draw. It's a miniature replica of all the tunnels and hallways in a U-Bahn subway station. It looks kind of like a weird spaceship and I really liked the way it brought the underground up, revealing the invisible architectures of cities.
Finally, Sylvie Boisseau & Frank Westermeyer's Chinese is a Plus at V-Tape provides an interesting look at migration and culture. Boisseau and Westermeyer are from France and Germany, respectively. The video itself is a bit dry and subtle, consisting simply of German students of Chinese language in conversation. One group of students is of Chinese descent, and talks a lot about cultural preservation and pride, while the other group, of German descent, talks more haltingly about an interest in Chinese food and cities. (Commerce more clearly drives the interests of this latter group, and culture the former.) There's something in all this that's a great portrait of cultural gaps, changes and stillnesses in a super-migratory world.
Image of one of Maura Doyle's beaver-sculpture replicas from Paul Petro
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Currently Enjoying: Apprentice to the Flower Poet Z.
As a follow-up to my previous post on fiction that tells the truth about art, I'd like to share the book I'm currently enjoying: Apprentice to the Flower Poet Z by Debra Weinstein. Reviewers called this 2005 tome Devil Wears Prada for the poetry set, and they were spot on. Its opening lines: "This is the story of how I came to momentary prominence in the world of poetry, and, through a series of misunderstandings, destroyed my good name and became a nobody. It was fall, my junior year." Nice
From the Department of Corrections
Sometimes the Stones miss you, sometimes you miss the Stones. Such was the case this weekend, when an editorial process introduced an unfortunate error into the review of Communism of Forms that I wrote for the Globe. The published review implied that the White Album was created by the Rolling Stones. Not! I was just as confused as anyone to see this info. Apologies to the artist, Brady Cranfield, whose work The White Album and Sticky Fingers shows him listening to each of the titular albums--the former by the Beatles and the latter by the Rolling Stones. Mick.. Paul... I hope there's no hard feelings.
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Music Vid Show Review Out Today
You don't have to be Moses Znaimer to know the music video industry is in serious flux. At his former pop empire MuchMusic, RapCity has been usurped by Lil Wayne downloads, and Electric Circus has given way to Gossip Girl. Now, an international group of curators has produced an exhibition on the music video as changing art form. The show, The Communism of Forms, premiered in Sao Paolo a couple of years ago and is now taking place at two Toronto venues: academic site the Art Gallery of York University and corporate-sponsored-marketing zone Red Bull 381 Projects. My brief review of the exhibit appears in today's Globe. If it had been longer, I would have made sure to mention Peaches' "My Dumps" (embedded above) a hilarious DIY parody of both Fergie and Alanis Morrisette's My Humps. Beware--it's dangerous combo of catchy and gross.
