The Power Plant reopened yesterday with a new lobby, new logo and--perhaps most importantly--new website. Oh yeah, it's got some new shows too! My reviews of same are now up at Posted Toronto, and will be out in the Toronto section of tomorrow's National Post. An excerpt:
Thomas Hirschhorn at the Power Plant
231 Queens Quay W., to May 29
Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn’s installation is both painful and powerful. At first glance, his array of lo-fi sculptural materials — lawn chairs, plush toys, papier mâché, styrofoam, packing tape, mannequins, etc. — overwhelms. But it’s the small photographs Hirschhorn affixes to these sculptures that stand out. They document instances of man’s inhumanity to man: people beating each other with sticks; grotesquely severed limbs and heads; and the bodies of innumerable babies, mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers lying dead and violated. Above it all, a massive eye — which provides the installation’s title, Das Auge (The Eye) — watches, with dozens of smaller ocular models scattered throughout. Two questions rise to the surface: What’s the good of being able to see if we block out everything that’s disturbing? Do we choose to look rather than participate because of spectatorship’s seeming safety? Granted, Hirschhorn throws much into the mix that complicates these questions and his perspective on them. His treatment of the seal hunt and fur trade makes it unclear whether he’s trying to critique these industries or the people who protest them. It’s also uncertain whether Hirschhorn’s in situ righteousness is matched by any non-art actions on his part. Ultimately, however, I felt grateful to the artist for making me aware of some of many atrocities I shut out daily. Though this exhibition is ostensibly about the opening of the eye, it is also, quite palpably, about the opening of the heart as well.
Read on here for some more pain and power--and a little (welcome) preciousness.
On an access front, I also noticed something interesting. The Power Plant has had free Wednesday-evening hours for a while, but those hours are now branded "BMO Free Wednesday Evenings." While the invasion of corporatespeak into daily life can be troubling, I'm glad for a continuation of the free hours, and I hope other institutions in town no longer use the excuse that "donors don't want to support free hours or access" when explaining lack of same.
And on the online access front, it's great to see the gallery putting videos of some of its lectures online, at last! scroll down to the "Switch On" section on the homepage to find them, or check out their Vimeo channel.
(Image of Thomas Hirschhorn's Das Auge (The Eye) at the Power Plant courtesy the Power Plant. Photo Steve Payne. Via the National Post)
Friday, March 11, 2011
New Power Plant Reviews: Hirschhorn, Manglano-Ovalle & More
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Ken Lum Q&A: Signs of Change
For 30 years, Vancouver's Ken Lum has plumbed relationships between the individual and the whole to create a singularly successful international art career. With his first large solo survey opened last month at the Vancouver Art Gallery, Lum chatted with me on the phone about his practice. The condensed and edited results are out in today's National Post. Some excerpts:
Q The way you've used signs in your art -from replacing yourself with a highway sign in 1978 to copying strip-mall signs today -often evokes how individuals are viewed by society. Why?
A What I'm interested in is the flattening of identity in the contemporary context. Advertising is largely premised on that, especially beer ads -there's a directive to young men to behave a certain way. There's also all these ideal domestic couples. You have these prescriptions laid out like templates and everyone is supposed to sacrifice their individuality, to be slotted into moulds. I'm interested in raising that problem through a kind of contradiction. On the one hand, you have this social economy, which flattens identity, and on the other hand there's the glimmer or residue or yearning of the individual to try and break out of that. We transcend signs, but how do we do it?
Q...one of your artworks is titled Mirror Maze with 12 Signs of Depression. How has depression affected your life?
A I have all kinds of subjects to my work and it doesn't mean I experience all of them. But I am interested in the theme of malaise, especially on a societal level, because I think the incapacity to express a full-throttled identity without some kind of compromise . well, I think that causes a lot of tension and a lot of anxiety and a lot of sadness. So I never suffered from depression. My brother did. My mother did. I never did. But I know about it.
Q You have a reputation for being quite critical. What are you most critical about in your own artwork? What's its greatest weakness?
A I don't think I have a reputation of being overly critical of other people. I would never try to hurt someone. If there's a weakness . because of the way I grew up and what I was exposed to, some might say, "That's a limitation, because so much of your work doesn't show your hand." Other people would say, "Your work is so dry." Others might say, "It's so deadly serious." And others might say, "There's no joy" or, "It's so alienating" and so on. They'd all be right, right? But that's me. There's all kinds of limits in my work. If I'd learnt how to paint better, I'm sure my work would be quite different.
You can read the rest of the interview here.
Many thanks again to Lum--who besides being incredibly busy workwise, has a new baby!--for taking time to speak with me.
(Image of one of my favourite Lum works--1990's We Are Sacred Blade--via Canadianart.ca Collection of the artist)
Nowruz Art Show Celebrates Community and Fresh Starts
Lots of the time when I look at or write about exhibitions, I'm looking at that exhibition like a kind of object, something that exists apart from other cultural experiences a reader might have.
But I'm also often interested in how art interacts with community building. This is what sparked my interest in an exhibition related to Nowruz, the Persian New Year, which happens March 21 and is celebrated by 300 million people worldwide. The exhibition is currently on at Queen Gallery in Toronto's Moss Park neighbourhood to March 26.
Here's an excerpt from my article on the Nowruz show, out in today's Toronto Star:
On March 21, 300 million people worldwide will celebrate Nowruz, the Persian New Year. Some members of Toronto’s Iranian community started gearing up last week with an artistic spin on the holiday — an exhibition at Moss Park’s Queen Gallery.
Organized by Queen Gallery director (and former Tehran architect) Mahrokh Ahankhah, the show features five Iranian artists who live in Toronto — Afsaneh Safari, Davood Mategh, Firoozeh Tangestanian, Sayeh Irankhah and Touka Neyestani. Although the exhibition’s works range widely, Nowruz’s theme of rebirth is mirrored in these artists’ lives as many try to make a fresh creative start in Canada.
Back in Tehran, Afsaneh Safari operated her own gallery and an underground life-drawing club.
“In my country, most university art students didn’t know how to draw the ear or the neck because the model usually had a scarf,” she explains. “I thought, we really need” a nude model. “But in the governmental art centres, they cannot do this. So one of my friends and I decided to have this privately.”
Soon, university professors were sending students over to Afsaneh’s gallery for the sessions. “It was quite a nice experience,” she says.
Safari and her husband now live in a Bayview Village apartment where she does freelance graphic design.
“It’s really hard to just live between canvases,” she says of her new, cramped, at-home studio space. But she also says she’s happy to be in Toronto, where “there’s lots of culture and lots of people live together peacefully.”
Researching this article was a real eye-opener for me, as I know (as readers can likely tell) very, very little about life in Iran. I appreciate Queen Gallery director Mahrokh Ahankhah taking time to chat with me, as well as artist Afsaneh Safari and art collector (who hopes soon to be a gallerist himself) Iraj Milanian.
Queen Gallery's upcoming Contact shows also look like a great opportunity to learn more about the politics of images in Iran, which I touch on at the end of the article.
(Painting by Sayeh Irankhah from Queen Gallery)
Monday, March 7, 2011
Black Ice: Q&A with David Blackwood out in Today's Post
Last month, as his first major museum retrospective opened at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, I had the pleasure of chatting in person with David Blackwood. Blackwood is known, of course, for his dramatic prints of Newfoundland. Today, the National Post published my condensed Q&A with him. An excerpt:
Q: You're known for beautiful homages to Newfoundland--but you live in Ontario. Why?
A: Well, I was born in Newfoundland. I grew up there, went to school, graduated knowing that there was such a place as the Ontario College of Art. This was before the time of community colleges--no art school in Newfoundland.
So it seemed logical I would come to Toronto. When I was in my first year at college, it was impressed on students that it was important to have a subject, so that there'd be some purpose in what you're doing. Of course, even as a child I was very interested in drawing and painting. And with a subject: the local landscape. There's some of my teenage works in this exhibition--portraits of people in the community. This was disrupted at the college for a time because you were doing still life, things typical of an art school. But in my graduating year I was given a big one-man show. It was all mummers and sealers.
Q: Today, Newfoundland's tourism image is colourful and bright. Your images are just as stunning, but they're very dark. Why?
A: To begin with: Northeast coast of Newfoundland. Very pleasant in the summer--beautiful, sublime. In the winter . [makes fearful expression]. November, December, January, February, March, April, May, June: winter. Really severe. Then you have a pleasant period, July and August. But you can't count on it. You might wait until September, October where you have incredible sun every day. But never ever--summer or winter--without wind. We had one book in the house, the Family Bible, illustrated in black and white by Gustave Doré. Very dramatic images of very dramatic stories. So there was an influence there. It was only when my father passed away and I inherited this bible that I really became aware of it. I'd grown up looking at these images: Christ walking on the sea of Galilee, the fall of Babylon and Jericho, the ark on top of Mount Ararat.
Q: Your work often conjures biblical themes, especially your famous Fire Down on the Labrador. What inspired it?
A: You know, initially I was thinking of the idea of schooners and the fear of fire. The only thing they were afraid of was fire. The wind, the ice, the tide -all seemed to be manageable. But you would never go to sleep at night until you'd made sure that there were no glowing embers in the stove. Consequently, there were only short periods in the galley where the cook was working you'd have short periods of comfort. The rest of the time it would be tremendously damp and cold. That image is open to all sorts of interpretation. I got a phone call from a student at the University of Texas. He was taking a class and the professor was using this image to convey some philosophy of humanity and makeup of the universe, which had to do with man, bird, beast, fish, water, fire, ice. Everything, according to this particular person, was in that one image.
Blackwood also had some great stories I couldn't manage to include, like there being a guy who would show up once a month in his hometown of Wesleyville with a black and white projector and the engine to run it. He would show everything from newsreels to Laurel and Hardy. He also says having a very dramatic Shakespeare teacher in school had a big impact on him.
On a more political/procedural curatorial front, Blackwood says he believes this show wouldn't have happened without the longtime interest and support of AGO print curator Katharine Lochnan. Even when Lochnan was a student she had an interest in Blackwood's work, and pointed out the possible Doré connection to him. He also told me that since he lives in Ontario, Newfoundland institutions didn't seem, from his perspective, all that interested in collecting his work. Though this show will travel to the Rooms in St. John's this summer, and I'm sure be well loved there, it's worth noting that Blackwood gifted hundreds of his prints to the AGO in 1999--not to any other institution.
(Image of David Blackwood's Fire Down the Labrador from the AGO)
Friday, February 25, 2011
Hogtown Heroics: Reviews of Luis Jacob, Davida Nemeroff and the Toronto Show up @ National Post
Luis Jacob at MOCCA
952 Queen St. W., to March 27
Queen West fixture Luis Jacob studied philosophy in university, not art, and it shows (to favourable effect) in the way he uses visual items to investigate perception and culture. This mid-career survey opens with Eclipse, a life-size glass eye. From there, the installation alternates between early abstract paintings and large versions of Jacob’s 2008 series They Sleep with One Eye Open — tie-dyed faces that waver between abstraction and figuration, between Rothko and radical hippie. It all leads up to the highlight, Album X, a wall-long assemblage of images that ricochet around the idea of the frame and its role in identifying something as “art.” Several images belong to big names including Michael Snow, Claude Cahun and Jeff Wall, but in one of those tidy rhetorical twists, Jacob, through his reframing, makes their reframings his own. There’s also a lot of self-reflexive moments as visitors gaze at pictures of people looking at art … as, erm, art. These themes are further refracted in Cabinet, a nice show of National Gallery works curated by Jacob in an adjoining gallery. Some might quibble with the hype Jacob currently enjoys, but one thing’s for certain — he sure is a whiz at discoursing with the discourse.
Read on for the Nemeroff and Toronto Show reviews here at Posted Toronto. I'll admit that I'm a self-reflexive gal, and those questions I pose about the Nemeroff could very well apply to me through that old and neat trick of projection.
Some other Toronto-related shows I haven't seen yet but that look promising and I want to check out: Sandy Plotnikoff @ Paul Petro and Dean Drever @ MKG127. The current student show at Xpace on the monochrome is also kinda interesting--what up with the new formalism, yo?
(Image of Luis Jacob's They Sleep with One Eye Open from MOCCA via the National Post)
March 4 Art Writing Workshop @ Hart House
The more I know about art writing, the less I understand. Therefore I'm grateful to be invited to participate in panels where others can shed light on this issue. For serious! There are so many paths to arriving at this somewhat unusual profession, and ultimately I really only know my own trajectory and activities best.
So... next opp on this for me (and maybe for you too) is "Careers in Art Writing," a panel at Hart House in Toronto on March 4. The event is open to the public as well as students, though RSVP is requested. Here's the details:
The Education and Outreach Sub-Committee of the Hart House Art Committee presents:
Careers in Art Writing
Date: Friday March 4th, 2011
Location: Meeting Room in Hart House, 7 Hart House Circle, Toronto
Time: 2-4pm
Join three writers from different backgrounds in art criticism to discuss how to begin writing professionally.
Presenters: Johnson Ngo (Akimblog contributor), Amish Morrell (editor of C Magazine), and Leah Sandals (professional freelance writer and editor)
Please RSVP to: hh.educationcommittee [at] gmail.com
(Cute Scrabble-letters image from the Hart House Art Committee)
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Beaux Arts for Belmore: Defense Fund Auction Article Out Today in Toronto Star
I didn't publish a year-end top 10 this year, but if I did, "court action" would be on it. Work agreements can be so nebulous in the art world--a situation often exacerbated by the predominance of oral, rather than written, contracts--that sometimes legal action is the only way to figure out what is right or wrong in an given situation. Of late, we've seen this lawyerish course of "clarification" taken by Michael Snow and AA Bronson, not to mention Rebecca Belmore.
While legal clarifications may be helpful to all parties concerned (I'm curious about the outcome of all these suits, no matter how they might end up falling) they aren't cheap. So on March 1, a fundraiser is being held for the Rebecca Belmore Defense Fund in Toronto.
More information about this fundraiser is available in my article out today in the Toronto Star. An excerpt:
Prominent Canadian artists have lined up in support of Rebecca Belmore, who is locked in a legal dispute with her former art dealer.
Douglas Coupland, Shary Boyle, Rodney Graham and others have donated works to be auctioned off at an event March 1 at Parts & Labour on Queen West. Event co-organizer Paul Bain, a Toronto lawyer, hopes it will raise $50,000 for the Rebecca Belmore Defence Fund, which is held in trust by his firm, Dickinson Wright.
Until now, the conflict between the OCAD-trained artist and local gallery owner Pari Nadimi has played out in Bay Street law offices, on Vancouver sidewalks and in national news headlines.
Belmore, who lives in Vancouver and represented Canada at the 2005 Venice Biennale, is being sued by Nadimi for breach of contract after trying to end her relationship with the gallery in 2006. Nadimi, whose Toronto gallery continues to operate at 254 Niagara St., is claiming $750,000 in damages, plus other costs. The statement of claim alleges Nadimi was negotiating nearly $1.1 million in sales connected to Belmore’s works.
The suit was brought to wider attention last September, when Belmore staged a related performance outside the Vancouver Art Gallery in which she sat cross-legged with a sign that read, “I am worth more than one million dollars to my people.”
Financially, says Bain, “it’s hard enough to be an artist in this country,” so when it comes to soured artist-dealer relationships, the challenges of meeting legal action can be significant.”
More information is available at the Star, and on the event's website.
(Image of a gavel -- favoured symbol of judges and auctioneers alike -- from Sara Marberry)
