In addition to running exhibitions on collaboration in art this season, the Power Plant also ran a symposium last weekend called "We, Ourselves and Us." My report on same was published today at canadianart.ca. It's pretty bare bones, but I'm expecting a lecture there this weekend by Prospect 1 curator Dan Cameron might cause some other ideas to gel.
Image of Maria Lind, Saara Liinamaa, and Janine Marchessault from canadianart.ca
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Symposium Report: We, Ourselves and Us
Review: Strip Mining for Creative Cities
Toronto has a love/hate relationship with Richard Florida. After all, he tells us we too can be a creative city, just like New York and London and all those "world class" places. He even moved here to prove it to us. But his theories haven't always been sensitive to the ways "creative cities" can ultimately push out the poor--artists among them. This month, politically oriented gallery Toronto Free opened a show on this tension, "Strip Mining for Creative Cities." Today NOW published my condensed review.
Terrarea by Janis Demkiw, Emily Hogg and Olia Mishchenko from NOW Toronto
Q&A: Julie Beugin on Indoor/Outdoor Painting
Julie Beugin is an emerging Montreal painter who drew me in this summer with her technicolour landscape "The sequence of doors we passed made me think of all of the rooms of my past and future," pictured above. Recently, because she had a show of more paintings in Toronto, I got a chance to chat with her on the phone about why so many Canadian painters of her era--think Martin Golland, Melanie Authier and Melanie Rocan, among others--are into exploding the walls between indoor and outdoor landscapes. Our condense Q&A is at the National Post and also after the jump. (Show @ Paul Petro to Feb 7)
Inserting home on to the range
Leah Sandals, National Post
Published: Wednesday, January 28, 2009
This week's throne speech emphasized uncertainty. But what if that uncertainty wasn't reflected just in fiscal policy, but in our homes and backyards? Such ideas come up when looking at artworks by Montreal painter Julie Beugin; in her topsy-turvy landscapes, instability is both stomach-churning and sumptuous. Now, with an exhibition at Paul Petro Gallery in Toronto, Beugin tells Leah Sandals about literary inspirations, '70s home décor and nouveau-Crusoe attitudes.
Q Recently, you've shifted from painting shoddy cardboard house models to creating technicolour meldings of inside and outside - meadows inserted into living rooms, swamps into kitchens. Why?
A Making cardboard models became a way to create a space that didn't exist - an imaginary space like Robinson Crusoe's hut, say. And I wanted to paint the models because photography would make it too actual for me. I also liked the way the cardboard was falling apart; it was a useful way to represent how imaginary spaces are unstable.
That shifted when I wanted to bring back colour and explore the drippy, liquid nature of paint as another metaphor for instability. I guess cutting open the walls of houses in more recent works reflects how landscape can become a projection of a mental state.
Q Books often appear in your paintings, whether stacked in huge shelves or open on tabletops. Why?
A Well, a lot of the paintings start from literary sources and stories. That was a way to make sure I didn't make the same images all the time. I'm a huge reader, with piles of books all over my apartment. When you're reading and you have images floating in your brain - that's a singular experience, but it's also something many others can experience through the book. Books also become a metaphor for mental clutter, I think.
Q Do certain books inspire you?
A Yes. But the images I get from the books are really subjective; some people who have read those books often say, "Wow, I didn't picture that at all."
I liked working with Paul Auster texts for a while, because he's interested in writers' desks and other spaces of creativity. Lately it's `. He was born in Japan and grew up in the U.S., so he's got this mix of pop cultures. And crazy things happen in his books that let me create spaces that have less logic to them. Novels are starting points for me to be more imaginative.
Q Where else do your source images come from?
A It's a mix. Sometimes it's found images; I have a big collection of interior décor books from the '70s that I found in thrift stores. There's this mix of nostalgia but also a bit of kitsch, a sincerity as well as a bit of irony. Old postcards can be good. I also use my own photos, and I always have my camera with me. I'm constantly digging through image sources.
Q Are any of these paintings inspired by places you've lived?
A Sometimes. I grew up in Calgary and my parents have a cabin in Invermere, B.C. So the whole cabin motif keeps coming back, and views of the Canadian landscape from hiking and camping. But it can also be inspired by places that I live now; I'll go take photos of Montreal and particular libraries and stuff like that. In future, I might explore making paintings of specific places rather than imaginary ones.
Q There are some other youngish Canadian painters working in this vein, combining interiors with exteriors - Martin Golland, Melanie Authier and Melanie Rocan come to mind. Why do you think this theme recurs for you and your peers?
A I think that landscape is inextricable from the Canadian imagination, how we see ourselves and construct our identity. So it is no surprise that so many young artists are engaged with it. But the challenge is to avoid perpetuating that idea of an untouched pristine wilderness, which was popularized by the Group of Seven and others. That idea of wilderness makes no sense within a context of deep environmental concern.
Though there are big differences between artists, I think a lot of young painters are approaching this concern by emphasizing ephemerality - using paint and brush marks to represent an unstable and transitory version of landscape. Some painters also represent a very personal mental landscape, one that is constructed through memory and imagination rather than an unquestioned, static idea of wilderness.
-Julie Beugin's paintings show to Feb. 7 at Paul Petro Gallery in Toronto. For more information, visit paulpetro.com.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Recommended: Jason McLean, Adrian Norvid & more
Some quick hits: I recommend the current show at Jessica Bradley. Montreal's Adrian Norvid provides more sad rock and roll references than you can shake a Helix LP at and Toronto's Jason McLean brings the colour with large-scale text and abstraction paintings. (His cardboard watches upstairs are also fun.) Tis indeed a no-brainer.
Also recommended: Julie Beugin & Gretchen Sankey at Paul Petro (impressionist mishmash in development and humorous ghost-inpired sculptures), Leopold Foulem at David Kaye (ceramic witticism to accompany a show at the Gardiner), Jon McCurley at Gallery TPW (anti-anti-urbanist performance, high-concept comedy, and low-concept silliness in sculpture), and Stripmining for Creative Cities at Toronto Free (a small but thoughtful look at gentrification, and prevention thereof).
Jason McLean, Hello Ruby in the Dust (top) Adrian Norvid, No Brainer (middle) from Jessica Bradley Art & Projects,
Monday, January 26, 2009
Vicariously Enjoyed: The Greater NYC Smudge Cleanse
So I went to the Power Plant's symposium "We, Ourselves and Us" on Saturday. Generally the day of talks was meant to address ideas of collaboration and community in artmaking, with the Nina Montmann-curated exhibition "If We Can't Get it Together" serving as a jumping-off point.
There was lots to digest during the day, and I may do a mini-report for Canadian Art Online later this week. But the main highlight for me was Emily Roysdon's talk. It focused a lot on her own personal artwork as well as her longer-term collaborative publication LTTR, which stands for "Lesbians Tend to Read," among other things. But one of the works she highlighted that I really enjoyed was from artist Jeanine Oleson, who spent 4 days in Fall 2008 performing "The Greater New York Smudge Cleanse" meant to wipe out "classism, heterosexism, imperialism, election anxiety, gentrification, eco-destruction and greed" around the city.
For those who don't know, a smudge is a Native American ritual that uses smoke from a bound stick of sage to cleanse bodies, spirits and spaces. It's a ritual that's long since been appropriated by new agey types and other non-natives for use in healing ceremonies. So Oleson and her helpers basically made the world's largest smudge stick--it looks about 10 feet long--and carried it to four locations--the site of an oil spill in Greenpoint, say, or of the Stonewall riots, or Wall Street financial meltdown.
The images of this massive smudge stick and its tie-dyed purveyors are priceless--just the right mix of sincerity and absurdity. It really resonates for me because of my own past participation in smudges from native to new-agey contexts (thank you Ghost River Rediscovery), and how this optimistic, fruity--and actually much-needed act of symbolic cleansing--constrasts with the typical mindset of urban environments.
Also, the pics are 200% awesome examples of sexing the city in a queer feminist way--including a "Tarot for Tomorrow" booth! Yes!
All images from http://www.nycsmudge.com/ongoing/photos/ Credits: Marina Ancona, Khaela Maricich
Friday, January 23, 2009
Q&A: Kees Van Dongen's North American Survey Premiere in MTL

Yesterday, the Montreal's Museum of Fine Arts opened the North American survey premiere of Kees Van Dongen, an oft-overlooked Fauvist painter. The paintings look luscious and intense--so why isn't this guy as well known as his contemporary, Matisse? I gave Anne Grace, associate curator of the show, a call to find out. The Q&A is in today's National Post, or you can read on after the jump for the text too.
Kees Van Dongen, The Manila Shawl, approx 1907, from the MMFA
A shocking fauve pas
Kees Van Dongen broke much the same aesthetic ground as Matisse, but found himself written out of the art history textbooks
National Post
Published: Friday, January 23, 2009
Brilliantly costumed dancers. Sultry cabaret singers. Red-light district ladies. And even a dolled-up wrestler or two. Such are the underworld figures populating early 20th-century painter Kees Van Dongen's luscious, vibrant, seductive canvases. With the first North American survey of Van Dongen's works opening yesterday at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, it's clear Picasso ain't the only word in painted perfection. Here Anne Grace, associate curator of the exhibition, tells Leah Sandals more about this oft-overlooked original.
Q Why this big, first North American solo show on Kees Van Dongen?
A Well, it's quite surprising that Van Dongen's art is so little known in North America. His painting is very strong, stunning and intense, and it occupies a critical place in the development of modern art. He was extremely well known in his lifetime during the 1920s and '30s, and he was an incredibly sought-after portrait painter.
There's also a local connection. Dealer Max Stern from Montreal's Dominion Gallery showed Van Dongen's art, and as a result there are a number of Quebec collectors who own his works. The Sterns were actually at an exhibition in Paris and followed Van Dongen to his studio, wrote down his address and began a correspondence that way.
Q Why don't we know Van Dongen's name as well as that of contemporaries like Picasso or Matisse?
A Well, there was a rivalry between Matisse and Van Dongen. One of the first books on Fauvism-- the style they both worked in-- was written by Matisse's brother-in-law. The publisher of the book had to convince him to even just include Van Dongen's name.
Q What about controversy over Van Dongen's trip to Nazi Germany in 1940? Didn't that severely damage his reputation?
A I think that explains it in part, but there are other artists, like Vlaminck and Derain, who participated in the same trip whose work is much better known. Basically, Van Dongen and other painters were invited by the official sculptor of the Third Reich to go. It was an ill-advised decision; definitely something the artist regretted.
Q On a more positive note, there are lots of great-looking paintings in your show, like The Wrestlers, which hasn't been exhibited publicly for 50 years. What's the story with that work?
A That wonderful painting was acquired by our exhibition partner, the National Museum of Monaco, directly from the family of the artist. In a way one can see it as Van Dongen's response to Picasso's Les Demoiselles D'Avignon. In 1906, he started to live in Paris's Montmartre district right beside Picasso, and they were close. So what we see here is a kind of separation between Van Dongen as a colourist and Picasso as a cubist. Also these are very strong women, defiantly looking at us; in a sense they become the archetypes of Van Dongen's women, who are very seductive but also very strong characters as well.
Q Were they really women wrestlers?
A Yes, they really were women wrestlers. It was this strange genre of burlesque and performance in its day. Van Dongen always loved to challenge standards of taste.
Q I wasn't sure if they were prostitutes, which the artist's contemporaries often painted. Did Van Dongen work in that vein too?
A Yes. He often painted the red light district in his native Rotterdam, and then when he went to Paris, he was again drawn to this demimonde. In fact, there's a famous series of drawings that he made for a periodical where he narrated the life of a prostitute. Interestingly, though, one of his most controversial paintings --Tableau, which has a full-frontal nude and was thrown out of an exhibition-- was based on his wife. Dealing with these themes, we have an essay in our catalogue on feminist ways of analyzing Van Dongen's work.
Q What contemporary artist do you think would fulfil Van Dongen's role today, of using portraits to talk of other things?
A I'm almost wondering whether Cindy Sherman might fit. She is always in disguise, and the surfaces really create the work. Overall, however, I don't really think it wouldn't do justice to Van Dogen to compare him to somebody else in this way.
Still, I do think there are links between abstract American painting and Van Dongen, particularly in how strong and palpable his paintings are. It's the same qualities we see later on in Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman, that primacy of colour that makes the artwork's meaning.
Van Dongen: Painting the Town Fauve runs to April 19 at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (mmfa. qc.ca).
Why Does Toronto Hate Haegue Yang?
So... I've noticed Toronto doesn't really seem to like Korean artist (and Venice Biennale 09er) Haegue Yang.
In her recent review in the Globe, Sarah Milroy described Yang's work, currently on display as part of a group show at the Power Plant, as "anemic, ... (Having dutifully digested the support material, I still found it pretentious and smelly.)"
And in his less recent review on Akimbo, Terence Dick described the exhibition as "frustrating and it often feels like the idea, instead of the art, is driving the curation."
In contrast, in my initial review of the show, posted the week of its opening back in December, I found I loved the show overall (excluding one or two serious missteps), but especially Yang's work. And I maintained this view in my Jan 15 review in NOW.
What's more, I really felt an emotional response to the works, not just a conceptual one. That emotion wouldn't seem compatible to me with an overreliance on supporting text or concept, rather than art, driving curation. To me it really felt right.
All this has made me think (yet again) about the differences between critics that drive differences in criticism, in likes and dislikes, in what works come off as successful or unsuccessful. A lot of it can be objective, but just as much if not more lies in the experiences we bring to the work, in what we see reflected there of our own troubles and triumphs.
[More after the jump...]
For instance, I know I related to the Yang work almost immediately for the way it spoke to a mental and physical state of migration and inbetweenness. I don't mean to get overly maudlin, but I'm a first-generation Canadian with parents from two other immigration-fuelled countries: The United States and New Zealand. I've lived in a few different parts of Canada, and immediate family is scattered a fair distance away in different cities, extended family further.
Of course, I'll be the first to admit that I've always enjoyed the life-smoothing privileges of being whiteish and middle-classish. My experience of migration is considerably less harsh than that of those who don't enjoy those societal perks. But nonetheless I find that the tidal-wave emotion of an "Inheritance of Loss" (as Kiran Desai put it) resonates with me. With every move, a migrant hopes for (and often gains) aspects of a better life; but the rootlessness that comes with such harvests also has its problems.
What I recognized/projected onto Yang's work (perhaps in mirror-neuron structure, as Sally McKay might put it) is very much that state of statelessness. And not only that, but an attempt to connect through the most elemental of means -- heat, air, odor -- those things that communicate/touch/affect in any place and any language.
And sure, I'm a brainy, anxious type who thinks a fair bit about these conditions in my life, about symbols; maybe Yang is too. I've also lived in enough crappy apartments to know those cheap weird universal venetian blinds she uses, those heating pads of marginal comfort, those standing in the street moments of not belonging to anyone or anything, just attempting to navigate how the good and the sad of life might reconcile. Not awful, not great, just thinking about the long stretches of in between. Being shocked out of it or into it by a physical sensation; the heat of the sun, the breeze on my clothing, some respite of immediacy from the future/past negotiation.
So even though Toronto doesn't seem to like Hague Yang, gosh darn it, I sure do. And as I've made clear, I have my reasons. I'm sure others do too. (It seems a lot of those globetrotting curators can sure as hell relate....)
Image of Haegue Yang's Blind Room 2006/2007 from eflux