Monthly Archives: April 2012

Frieze New York, here it comes!

Posted on April 30, 2012 by M-KOS| Leave a comment

Frieze enterprise co-founder Amanda Sharp was enquired a few of years ago by the press, with: “What distinguishes the Frieze from any other art fair?” her straight and simple answer said it all: “It’s Cutting-Edge, [stupid]”. The British born and bred art fair is this year already celebrating its 10th anniversary edition, starting in 2003 as an offspring of Frieze magazine, also published by Sharp and co-founder Matthew Slotover. The fair’s accelerated success briskly grew into one of the most important art events on the global calendar, contending with Art Basel and Armory. In less than a week’s time, the very first edition of Frieze New York (FNY) will cut its inaugural ribbon on Randall’s Island to roll in the four-day art extravaganza. Some news sources have so far depicted Frieze New York as another ‘British invasion’, a tale supported by Sharp and Slotover’s recent OBE (Officers of the Order of British Empire) appointment by the Queen, at the very start of 2012. The real question is: How will Frieze shake up New York’s existing art establishment?
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Posted in Art Fair, Digital Arts, Visual Arts

Tagged Frieze, New York

Transforming the Earthling – in conversation with
Janet Werner

Posted on April 23, 2012 by M-KOS| Leave a comment

Janet Werner in front of her painting “Crying Eyes” (2011). Photo by M-KOS

Montreal based painter Janet Werner is currently showing a new body of work within Parisian Laundry’s main space. Throughout her painting career, Werner has been engaged with the genre of portraiture, focusing primarily on female figures. She collages and transforms images from fashion magazines, popular culture and naïve painting, to invent altered personalities with these source materials, in addition to creating new narratives. Werner plays out a tension between fiction and reality to question notions of beauty, often by distorting and messing up the posing women. The resulting paintings not only astound by their sense of scale, composition and color, but also draw the viewer into the inner psyche of Werner’s counterfeit characters. Werner talks to M-KOS about her new exhibition, and of the ways she produced her latest body of work.

M-KOS [MKOS]: Can you tell us about your choice of title “Earthling” for this exhibition at Parisian Laundry?

Janet Werner [JW]: [laugh] The reason I’m laughing is because it was so hard for me to come up with a title, I really struggled. It was one of the first titles I thought of, but I kept looking and looking. Titles are extremely difficult for me. But in the end I went with it. What was your question, why did I use the title?

MKOS: Yes, does it have to do with the people in the paintings?

JW: Well, I feel like the work is existential in nature and when you take an existential position you usually think of it in terms of: I’m here right now, on earth, at this moment. But to call it Earthling is like taking a different perspective of that same experience. It was as if they were aliens but in fact, it’s us, if you looked at us as though we were aliens. I was just thinking of the beings who are cast here, in these paintings.
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Posted in Interview, Visual Arts

Tagged Janet Werner, Montréal, Painting, Parisian Laundry

Art Marathon: PAPIER 12

Posted on April 19, 2012 by M-KOS| Leave a comment

Shayne Dark’s sculptures, Critical Mass welcome the audience at the entrance of the fair.

PAPIER offers a refreshing aspect to the widening proliferation of art fairs by featuring works exclusively produced on paper, from drawings to prints as well as photography. This year the PAPIER fair hosted its fifth edition on 13–15 April, setting up its showroom tent at the heart of Montreal’s cultural quarter to accommodate 38 exhibitors from Montreal, Quebec, Toronto, Ottawa and Halifax. Many of these were already members of AGAC (Contemporary Art Galleries Association), which organized the event. Although PAPIER started as an internally guarded affair, servicing only a small circle of local galleries, its reputation has been progressively expanding. From last year, some of the best Toronto galleries such as Birch Libralato and Susan Hobbs also joined in. In this edition over 400 emerging to established artists were represented, to attract more than 10,000 visitors with a total sale of approximately CA$700,000. The slightly higher income over last year included purchases from returning corporate collectors such as Loto-Quebec, Hydro-Quebec, Cirque du Soleil and so on.
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Posted in Art Fair, Art Marathon, Visual Arts

Tagged Drawing, Montréal, Papier, Photography, Prints

Collapsing foundations – in conversation with Haig Aivazian

Posted on April 13, 2012 by M-KOS| Leave a comment

Haig Aivazian, Collapsing Foundations, 2010-Ongoing. Courtesy the artist and Parisian Laundry

Beirut-born, NY-based artist and curator Haig Aivazian is now showing his ongoing project at Parisian Laundry’s bunker space. “Collapsing Foundations” is a multi-part project comprised of written text, sculpture, drawing, video and a lecture performance, all of which seek to answer the following question: Can one erect a monument to an individual who has already erased the traces of his life’s work? Initiated from the CAD drawings of the artist’s late architect father, Aivazian here evaluates the potentials of languages and materiality, examines the notion of legacy and explores the relationships between private and public, through a wider body of research and various forms of presentations. M-KOS interviewed Aivazian during the opening of his exhibition.

M-KOS [MKOS]: How did “Collapsing Foundations” start off?

Haig Aivazian [HA]: I’ve been thinking about this project for several years now. Initially it was a fairly academic paper that I wrote. I had these drawings my father had done that I needed to do something with. I knew there was a potential in them but I wasn’t quite sure what to do with them. I wanted to explore the lines, explore them almost formally. I was thinking about drawing parallels between the collapse of a building and the collapse of a body, but mostly I was interested in the collapse of language in these moments: At the approach of death, what happens to language? What happens when we speak? What is our relationship to death as we speak? So I got interested in this idea of the very act of speaking, as an effort to ward off death. But the more we spoke, the more we are approaching death. So those are some of the ideas at the beginning point.
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Posted in Interview, Visual Arts

Tagged Haig Aivazian, Installation, Montréal, Parisian Laundry, Performance

What’s on: 2 – 15 April 2012

Posted on April 2, 2012 by M-KOS| Leave a comment

Biweekly global exhibitions Pick ‘N’ Mix from Montreal, Quebec City, Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver, New York, Ridgefield, Minneapolis, Santa Fe, Los Angeles, São Paulo, Caracas, Bogotá, London, Liverpool, Bexhill On Sea, Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Berlin, Cologne, Karlsruhe, Bonn, Vienna, Zürich, Milan, Rome, Florence, Málaga, Madrid, Reykjavik, Copenhagen, Malmö, Prague, Riga, Moscow, Sofia, Dubai, New Delhi, Seoul, Tokyo, Beijing, Guangzhou and Auckland. For Biennales + Triennales, see our previous post.

Montréal

Art Histories
at VOX, through 19 May 2012

Artists: Michael A. Robinson, Walter Benjamin, Bik Van der Pol, Gerard Byrne, Sorel Cohen, Guillaume Désanges, Mario Garcia Torres, Rodney Graham, Marina Gržinić / Aina Šmid, IRWIN, Laibach, Louise Lawler, Kazimir Malevich (Belgrade), Paul McCarthy, Ron Terada, Marcel Duchamp. Curated by Marie-Josée Jean

Gerard Byrne, A Thing is a Hole in a Thing it is Not, 2010. Courtesy the artist and VOX

Traffic: Conceptual Art in Canada 1965–1980
Part2: Halifax/Winnipeg/Calgary/Edmonton/The Arctic/Vancouver
at Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, through 28 April 2012

Artists: David Askevold, Gerald Ferguson, Dan Graham, Garry Neill Kennedy, Hans Haacke, Robert Morris, Lucy Lippard, NETCO, Lawrence Weiner, Clive Robertson, Paul Woodrow, Max Dean, Gordon Lebredt, Jeff Funnell, Michael de Courcy, Roy Kiyooka, Michael Morris, Vincent Trasov, Christos Dikeakos, Robert Kleyn, Ian Wallace. Curatorial Team: Jayne Wark (Halifax), Catherine Crowston (the Pariries + the Arctic) and Grant Arnold (Vancouver)

Theodore Wan, Bridine Scrub (For General Surgery), 1977, 10 silver gelatin prints. Vancouver Art Gallery Collection.