Akimblog
2007 Critics' Picks
posted by Akimblog Staff - December 27th, 2007.
What can you say about a year of big institutional gestures and anonymous online critiques, hyperrealist paintings and hot rod performances, budding internationalism and post-woodshedding surprises? The Canadian art scene in 2007 was all over the map and no attempt to sum it up would do justice to the variety of creative output put out over the last twelve months. Biennials in Alberta and Montreal introduced us to a slew of new artists. The VAG announced it was moving to bigger digs. In Toronto, Luminato upped the ante on citywide art events, while Nuit Blanche suffered through its sophomore slump. And from Halifax back to BC and on around the globe, noteworthy art appeared in attics, on the street, across the night sky, and in our favourite galleries, museums, and artist run centres. Akimblog’s far flung critics took note, keeping us abreast of what was not to be missed. The following is a selection of their standout memories this annum. Feel free to add your comments, voice your appreciation, or take us to task. And stay tuned for 2008 when we expand our local, national and international coverage and add some exciting new features.
Happy New Year,
Kim Fullerton & Terence Dick
Holly Ward – Vancouver
Sam Durant, Scenes from the Pilgrim Story: Natural History
1. Sam Durant’s exhibition at Catriona Jeffries, Scenes from the Pilgrim Story: Natural History, recontextualized dusty, dismembered mannequins from the now-defunct Plymouth National Wax Museum by mounting them on large white plinths in the gallery. The familiarity of these didactic sculptures inevitably evoked the experience of being a small child on a class field trip to learn about history through these crafted, theatrical displays. But in this case, they serve as a formative encounter with the uncanny and their entropic decline is an analogy for the decline of a particular version of history.
2. In the centre of the darkened Contemporary Art Gallery, a bank of seven 16 mm film projectors noisily throws images to the surrounding walls. Each image consists of a rectangle of rich sky blue, interrupted by the passing of a single wasp in slow motion. No longer a threatening pest, the wasp becomes elegant, graceful, even humorous. Their translucent wings flap in a one-two rhythm, creating a loose connection to the analog image of filmic projection. By balancing equal parts conceptual and technical sophistication with poetic resonance, Henrik Håkansson produced a work that resists complete understanding, inviting the viewer to revel in ambiguity, speculation and the pleasure of experience.
3. Artspeak closes its doors each August, but still offers installations in its street-level window space for the month. This year, Elizabeth Zvonar performed a subtle alteration on the window itself. A circular indentation into the surface of the glass was barely perceptible, save for its ability to create a faint, inverted reflection of its environment. Titled Parallel Dimension, it served as a metaphysical intervention into architectural order. The stable surface of the window seemed to waver; the ripple evidence of a hole in the fabric of time.
4. The restrained atmosphere of the Charles H. Scott Gallery, with its moderately sized monitors on industrial stands, black chairs and requisite headphones, served as a counterpoint to the heady discussions taking place in Gerard Byrne’s 1984 and Beyond. A three-channel video piece in which actors in sweater-vests and horn-rimmed glasses assume the roles of celebrated science-fiction writers from the 1960s and re-enact previously published interviews. They all exhibit a specific sentiment of modernism: that soon, anything will be possible and what will be produced from this realm of possibility will be freedom on an unprecedented scale. That their version of freedom remains within the stagnant doctrine of the educated, white middleclass male is perhaps the key to understanding how such a visionary moment failed.
5. The front parlour of a house shared by three local artists/curators (Miguel da Conceicao, Jonathan Middleton, and Aaron Carpenter) has become one of my favorite things about the Vancouver art scene. As a gallery space, The Bodgers and Kludgers Co-operative Art Parlour at 740 East Pender Street is intimate, casual and seemingly “community-oriented,” while also being smart, sophisticated and incredibly engaging. In a time of heightened anxiety surrounding art-world validation and real-estate, this feels like a restorative tonic.
Sarah Adams-Bacon - Calgary
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Mike Paget, Propcade, 2005
1. Since the birth of my daughter doesn’t qualify, my most favorite bit of art this year was Janet Cardiff’s Forty Part Motet at the Illingworth Kerr Gallery. The visual simplicity of the installation (technically, it was completely beyond me) paired with the incredibly divine sound made for one of the most immersive, moving pieces I’ve experienced in recent memory.
2. Suzanne Frank’s Smother at the Nickle Arts Museum completely dissipated any doubt in my mind that a mother can maintain a relevant contemporary art practice. Each piece was deftly executed and the exhaustive process entirely evident, illustrating patience that perhaps only a mother can know. In addition to these sentimental nuances, the work was quite funny. I especially appreciated this, as art that ventures into such territory has a tendency to get a bit mushy. We all have something to groan about when it comes to our mothers, but Frank groans at herself first, which saves us from wanting to, and instead we share a few laughs and chat about art.
3. Back to the Illingworth Kerr Gallery, my next pick is Barbara Sutherland’s Maybe All We have are Seconds to See Clearly featured in The Alberta College of Art and Design Graduating Show 07: Board of Governors Award Nominees. The installation achieved an extraordinary sense of grace due to its perfectly weighted fabrics, its softly twirling buttresses, and its mesmerizing quietness. Walking through it was downright dreamy.
4. Positively one of the best exhibits this year was Endgames at Truck Gallery, but I’m biased because I love video games, so maybe I was more enthusiastic about the concept of the show than the actual work. Still, Michael Coolidge’s Free Bowl, a bocce ball tournament held at various locations in the city, generated stories of competition that were a delight to listen to and I loved Mike Paget’s Propcade arcade games. I’ve dedicated embarrassing amounts of my life to beating video games and the fact that someone else out there loved them enough to replicate them into art pieces (successful art pieces) moves me to a slow-clap bravo.
5. Lastly but not leastly is Instant Coffee’s A Year of Perfect Days in the Illingworth Kerr Gallery’s group exhibit Common Threads (wow, Illingworth slammed this year!). A lovely little set up for anyone in the mood for knitting, chatting, or listening to the Ghostbusters theme song (among other hits of the 80s), the work made me wish that the members of Instant Coffee were my best friends forever.
Cliff Eyland - Winnipeg
Paul Butler’s recent Collage Party in Oakland
1. Guy Maddin's film My Winnipeg, winner of a big Toronto International Film Festival award, gets my number one spot this year. Maddin IS Winnipeg.
2. Paul Butler the artist, gallerist, and Collage Party inventor does everything his way, and why not? It has been a great year for him and for many of the artists associated with his art fair-oriented theothergallery.
3. I recently spent some serious time with Karel Funk's work at his Musee d'art Contemporain show in Montreal. Back in Winnipeg afterward, every second Gor-Tex clad kid looked like a Funk painting. Along with Tim Gardner, who recently had a solo show at London's National Gallery, and KC Adams, who had a large suite of her Hybrid Cyborgs purchased by the National Gallery, Funk is redefining what people think of as typical Winnipeg art (see #5 below).
4. With a new staff in director Anthony Kiendl and curator Steve Matijcio, exhibitions such as Scratching the Surface: The Post-Prairie Landscape, symposia such as the ARTTOMORROW forum on contemporary art institutions, and - get this - their plans for an alternative art school, Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art continues to consolidate its reign as the most ambitious gallery in town.
5. Curator Mary Reid's exhibition Royal Art Lodge - Where Is Here? at the Winnipeg Art Gallery gave these modest, dedicated artists (Michael Dumontier, Neil Farber and Marcel Dzama) a star turn in their home town. Art Lodge-like drawing is strongly associated with young Winnipeg artists, but (see #3 and #2) I'd argue that despite many Art Lodge imitators, there is no Winnipeg house style.
Terence Dick – Toronto
Luis Jacob, A dance for those of us whose hearts have turned to ice, based on the Choreography of Francois Sullivan and the Sculpture of Barbara Hepworth (with Sign-Language supplement), 2007, video installation
1. I first met Luis Jacob in a semiotics class at U of T almost twenty years ago. We’ve crossed paths a bunch since then and I was more than happy to see him hit his artistic stride in a year topped off by his participation in Documenta. By all reports, the mega art-bonspiel was a bit of a flop, but Jacob’s exposure (not to mention dancer Keith Cole’s) is definitely a good thing.
2. If only the Art Fag’s online musings (at www.artfag.ca, natch) appeared more often, Toronto’s art scene might be forced to develop some balls. His constructive evisceration of MOCCA and The Power Plant’s recent attempts to capture the city’s zeitgeist was a stellar example of art criticism that pulls no punches, foregoing politesse for high expectations and the hurtful truth. This is what criticism is supposed to look like.
3. We are blessed to have the Ydessa Hendeles Art Foundation in our area code and her most recent exhibition, Dead! Dead! Dead!, left me dizzy with delight, but rumours that she’s going to pull the plug on her King Street laboratory to concentrate on international curatorial projects just make me sad, sad, sad.
4. These were a few of my favourite things: Zin Taylor’s Put Your Eye in Your Mouth at YYZ, Sherry Hay's snowglobes at Christopher Cutts, Lynne Cohen's interiors at Olga Korper, Tony Romano's mixed bag at Diaz Contemporary, and MKG127's licorice allsorts group shows.
5. Though I might not feel so in the long run, I can’t help but admit that I was thoroughly impressed by Kent Monkman’s The Triumph of Mischief when I stumbled upon it at the Art Gallery of Hamilton. I’ve avoided dropping in on its current incarnation at MOCCA only because I don’t want that initial crush to fade.
Stacey DeWolfe – Montreal
Guy Ben-Ner, Treehouse Kit
1. The Musée d’art contemporain pulled off a curatorial coup in February with a group of shows that offered a glimpse into the wondrous possibility of everyday objects. Jérôme Fortin’s large-scale installations made from layers of folded paper (comic book pages, lottery tickets, road maps) affixed to the gallery walls were a pleasure to behold; Guy Ben-Ner’s Treehouse Kit, in which an Ikea-esque living space is reconstructed as a treehouse, was lighthearted on the surface but resonated within the socio-political context of its creation, and Jean-Pierre Gauthier’s sound investigations were magical and unique, teasing the viewer with their visual play and then assaulting us with the sudden meetings of their sometimes incompatible auditory surfaces.
2. I approached Ron Mueck’s show at the National Gallery in Ottawa last spring with a sense of apprehension. Wary of the hype and frustrated by the promise of a thirty-minute wait, I was delighted to discover that everything I had heard about the exhibit was true. Naked, exposed and inscrutable, Mueck’s figures appear brazenly before us with their puckered flesh and unwavering eyes. We want them to turn away, to cover themselves, but they are incapable of such actions, and so we must avert our eyes if we are not to be held accountable, complicit in the perpetuation of their at times haunting vulnerability.
3. I must confess to being a little underwhelmed by much of what I checked out during my first encounter with the Montréal Biennale, but the assembled personalities in town for the opening festivities made for a great week of conversation and conviviality. Roxanne Arsenault of La Centrale and a gaggle of local artists and musicians hosted a backyard barbecue for out-of-town guests including Peaches, Paper Rad, and the good folks of Pil & Galia’s Horticultural Ballet. And while some of my fellow commentators did not look too kindly on the offerings at the Parisian Laundry, I was moved by the quiet melancholy of Ignacio Itturia’s paintings and delighted by the charming absurdity of Graeme Patterson’s sculptural evocation of small town Saskatchewan.
4. Trine Søndergaard and Nicolai Howart’s mesmerizing How To Hunt at the Parisian Laundry made Mois de la Photo for me. Commenting on narrative and perspective in the dense layers of their photographic strata, the works depict the manifold moments of the hunt’s activities and, at the same time, seem to capture the entire history of this traditional practice. To top it off, they are simply gorgeous.
5. Discovering the work of my Hochelaga neighbors, Serigraphie Cinqunquatre, this past weekend has rounded off my year quite nicely. Jason Cantoro and Alice Jarry, whose silkscreens transcend any of my previously held notions about the emotional limitations of the printed medium, make art that is affordable and accessible. Their show at General 54 offered a commentary on both history and memory through their folk-art references and well-worn aesthetic.
Isa Tousignant – Montreal
Marc Quinn, Sphinx
1. My best, most memorable artistic experience of the year came courtesy of the ingenious Philomène Longpré, whose multimedia work Formica, exhibited in the cavernous, subterranean bunker of the Parisian Laundry, perfectly paired psychological power and mechanical invention. The eerie, blood-red figure that moved through the pitch black space in staccato reaction to the viewer’s position was, simply, amazing. No wonder this Montreal artist is taking the world by storm.
2. Max Wyse rocked my world with a beautiful, messy, sketchy series of paintings exhibited in a duo show with draughtsman Michel Herreria at Galerie Clark; an intelligent pairing by curator Sonia Pelletier that took the viewer into two very different and completely absorbing surrealist headspaces. Wyse’s incredibly tactile, dirty-pastel palette and universe peopled with defiled strongmen, anthropomorphic creations and Lilliputian gatherings somehow tapped into my inner being, because all I could think of was how I needed to buy all these paintings, now, in order to be surrounded by them every day.
3. The city’s bar-none, most enterprising arty gang is without a doubt ATSA, otherwise known as Action Terroriste Socialement Acceptable, who since 1997 has been organizing mobilization events and setting up massive installations pretty much out of the goodness of their hearts. The sorely underfunded non-profit group’s laudable mandate is to make artistic, humanitarian endeavors to help those who need it and raise awareness as to the essential nature of art. Their latest project, État d’urgence, a week-long, 24-hours-a-day arts fest aimed at combating poverty, brought visual arts, dance, circus, spoken word and so much more to the many homeless people (among others) who commune in the Parc Émilie-Gamelin.
4. The best festival of the year, in this city of festivals, goes to the Mois de la Photo. While others criticized it for being limited by its titular theme (Replaying Narrative) and for moving away from still photography toward the moving image, I loved it. As the Biennale de Montréal made sorely evident, too much breadth and a loose curatorial approach can sometimes be a wasteful, ineffective thing.
5. And finally, the year’s red carpet gets rolled out for the fabulous new kid on the block, the one we’re all vying to befriend so we can play with his shiny new He-Man figurine: the DHC/ART Foundation, whose inaugural exhibition of sculpture by Marc Quinn I’ve already praised till I was blue in the face. A sign of good things to come!
Sue Carter Flinn – Halifax
George Steeves, Entropy No. 11, (GS & AB), 1993, selenium-toned silver gelatin photograph
1. While last New Year’s glitter was still fresh on the ground, the mood in Halifax turned to grief when news of the murder of beloved New Orleans artist and animator Helen Hill spread through the city. Although Hill had not lived in Halifax for several years, her impact and that of her husband Paul on the arts community was incredibly meaningful. Many hastily organized teary brunches, memorials, film screenings and even a New Orleans-style parade became sad reminders of how wonderful it is to live in such a supportive arts community.
2. Graeme Patterson’s Woodrow at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia was a scale model, part real and part imagined, of a ghost town in ruin, a place of real family memories and retold mythology. Constructed out of painted foamcore and wood, each building holds a cast of characters and Patterson’s delightful stop-animated videos. While the miniature city may be inspired by sentimental emotions (which perhaps explains its popularity), Patterson’s work is thoughtful, not schlocky. There's a darkness in the crumbling buildings and the giant pothole filled with debris.
3. There was nothing sentimental about George Steeves’ Excavations at Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery last March. Less a retrospective than a coming-out party, Steeves’ technically masterful portraits of his friends and lovers make for uneasy gallery visits. The juxtaposition of domestic scenes with sexually posed un-Hollywood naked bodies, shot with operatic detail and layers of historical and mythological references, feels like a peek into your neighbour’s private fantasies. Steeves said that the series is about digging up personal truths and, in fact, the tone of many photos emerged from private conversations. The artist also appears, either alone or with others, naked, in silk stockings, lipstick smeared, reflected in mirrors - a cathartic response to his own life experiences.
4. One of my favourite experiences of the year began as I got on a school bus and headed out from Saint Mary’s University Art Gallery to Exhibition Park, about twenty minutes from downtown Halifax. Part of the gallery’s Burning Rubber exhibition, this performance of “rural car culture” drew connections between marks made by contemporary artists and rubber-burns etched on the road. Over 150 people, divided between art and car fans (how often does that happen?), delighted from the smoke, the noise, and the ridiculously awesome sight of blown-out tires and melted rubber.
5. Also last January, Saint Mary’s hosted Peter Dykhuis’ You Are Here, the artist and now Dalhousie Art Gallery director’s first solo show since 1997. Although I was aware of the fundamentals behind Dykhuis’s practice, it was truly a treat to spend time among his installations, drawings and encaustic paintings. His obsession with maps and place work on both a macro and micro level, and are beautifully brought together in the exhibition’s title piece. Dykhuis uses a grid of his own mail as the background for an encaustic painting of Halifax Harbour, essentially mapping out the stresses of modern life over his city.