Posted on

Collapsing foundations – in conversation with Haig Aivazian


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.
Continue reading “Collapsing foundations – in conversation with Haig Aivazian”

Posted on

Interview: Jean-François Bélisle – Feeding ammunition to Montréal’s art scene


Jean-François Bélisle

Arsenal officially opened its vast new exhibition space last weekend in Montréal’s Griffintown district, celebrating with three evenings of festivities. The brainchild of collector and entrepreneur Pierre Trahan, Arsenal was launched via the exhibition Travers – The Art of Collecting which includes more than a dozen collections from Québécois patrons, such as François Odermatt, Alain Tremblay and Paryse Taillefer. The show continues until 25 May to mix and match a wide variety of works on the walls, including those from Anselm Kiefer, Jannis Kounelis, Irene F. Whittome and Marc Séguin, to also offer a nod towards Collecting, another Montreal exhibition themed around the passion for collecting, presented by Access Culture. A few hours before Saturday’s third and final evening of celebration, director Jean-François Bélisle shares a few thoughts with M_KOS about his ambitions for Arsenal.

M-KOS [MKOS]: Could you tell us your relationship with Pierre Trahan and the initiators of Arsenal? Were you involved with this project from the very beginning?

Jean-François Bélisle [JFB]: I was there very early in the process, Pierre Trahan had this vision several years ago already, and I was working at the time as director for the Association of Contemporary Art Galleries (AGAC), for the past three years. I joined the Arsenal team in an informal way, to help the project move forward about a year and a half ago. Then I became full-time director of the Arsenal in May last year, right at the beginning of the construction works.
Continue reading “Interview: Jean-François Bélisle – Feeding ammunition to Montréal’s art scene”

Posted on

In conversation with Althea Thauberger


Althea Thauberger, Zivildienst ≠ Kunstprojekt, 2007. Production still. Courtesy of the artist and MACM © Althea Thauberger

Vancouver based artist Althea Thauberger‘s video “Zivildienst ≠ Kunstprojekt (Social Service ≠ Art Project)” has recently been showed at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Montreal, an eighteen-minutes black and white film produced with the collaboration of eight young Germans who devoted part of their civil service to this project. Prior to Zivildienst ≠ Kunstprojekt, Thauberger has been working together with varied and often enclaved groups of people or communities such as young Canadian female singer/songwriters, U.S. military wives, Canadian tree planters and Vancouver-based reserve soldiers. Through diverse media such as performances, films, video, audio recordings and photography, and within the process of the production, Thauberger and her amateur performers co-develop and co-create the narratives through their spontaneous and imaginative self-expression. The resulting works consistently pose pointed questions about self-identification and social belonging.

M-KOS [MKOS]: “Zivildienst ≠ Kunstprojekt” was made in 2007. Have you shown this work in different places before?

Althea Thauberger [AT]: Yes. I’ve shown this work in a number of places prior to Montreal. It was first shown in Berlin where it was made and the production of the video was actually presented as a public exhibition. So the public was more or less able to come and observe the filming of the work and as well participate in the discussions that we were having, in terms of the development of the work. And then the first time the video was shown in its entirety was in Utrecht in the Netherlands in early 2007. Since then this work has been shown in New York, Vancouver, London and Guangzhou in China.

MKOS: So, is this work a result of your residency in Berlin?

AT: Yes. It’s a result of a yearlong residency. It’s the one probably many Canadians [artists] know about because it’s one many Canadians have done since it started in maybe 2004. It’s run through the Canada Council and also through Künstlerhaus Bethanien, an international residency organization and art space in Berlin.
Continue reading “In conversation with Althea Thauberger”

Posted on

Conversation on “Sediment”

Sediment
13 January – 26 February 2012
at G Gallery, Toronto


Sediment, Installation view, 2012. Courtesy G Gallery

From 13 January to 26 February 2012, Toronto’s G Gallery presents the group exhibition entitled Sediment. Affiliated with Guelph University, G Gallery’s reputation for supporting experimental shows was substantiated by this latest exhibition, with an arrangement of works that deviate from standard exhibition models. Sediment originated from a call out submission written by Shane Krepakevich, one of the show’s present curators. At the project level, its topic was generally assumed to be about artist books, their ‘support structures’ and the way these operate between the status of document and self-contained artwork. But when incarnated in its physical manifestation, the exhibition grew beyond its original concept and became something more. Sediment is now best described as a show connecting the gaps between art and its many peripherals, or even, as the artists mention, a composite work of art in its own right. The following conversation was conducted between participating artist Yam Lau as well as curators Shane Krepakevich and Michelle McGeean.
 

Conversation on Sediment – an exhibition of artist’s bookwork and book support or an exercise in exhibition arrangement?
 

Yam Lau [YL]: I would like to begin by giving some context for this interview on the exhibition at G Gallery, Toronto entitled, Sediment. I’m Yam Lau, one of the artists in the exhibition and I’m sitting in the gallery with Shane Krepakevich and Michelle McGeean, the two curators of the exhibition.

Because I spent a few days setting up my piece in the exhibition, I saw how the exhibition was put together, how the whole thing unfolds. For this reason I think I have a different perspective from the other artists who only discovered the show and in particular the way their work was treated at the opening. The first thing that struck me about this exhibition is that it’s very unusual. That’s the reason I like it. Rather than an exhibition of discreet art objects, the whole thing reads as one work, one gesture. All the elements, the work, the support of the work, partitions and gallery furniture are interconnected by a kind of flow, or energy.

Maybe you can speak a little bit about this peculiar character of the exhibition. I don’t think it was how the other artists envisioned it when they were invited to participate in an artist’s book and book support project.

Shane Krepakevich [SK]: You mean that people might not have had a sense of what it [exhibition] would be based on that call for submissions? Sure, at that point I didn’t have an intention of making the exhibition as a piece (of work). That was something that came out through developing the exhibition.
Continue reading “Conversation on “Sediment””

Pages: 1 2 3
Posted on

Highlighting the overlooked – In conversation with Valérie Blass


Photo by Nat Gorry

Montréal artist Valérie Blass is currently showing her solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Montréal, featuring new works as well as more from the past four years. Blass produces hybrid objects by employing various sculptural techniques – casting, carving, modelling, assemblage and more. Her creative point of departure is always about the materials, which range from the hand-made to the industrially fabricated. In exploring the aesthetic connections between techniques and style, her work deals with confrontations of forms and negotiates with multiple sources of meanings. As a result, her art is playful, humorous and idiosyncratic yet often evokes disturbed, sinister and cynical connotations. M-KOS interviews Blass during the opening of her exhibition.

MKOS: Valérie Blass, this is your first solo museum exhibition, how long have you been preparing for that?

Valérie Blass [VB]: For about a year I’ve been working on new pieces, I’m also showing a few older works from the past three or four years. This show was hard work because some of my recent pieces went to art fairs and sold immediately, and I never saw them again. It was hard to produce so many works that could amalgamate together and be consistent. [Curator] Lesley Johnstone helped me to put the show together but I still found it difficult because I never did this before, to create affinities between my recent and not so recent work.
Continue reading “Highlighting the overlooked – In conversation with Valérie Blass”

Posted on

Interview with David Liss: Putting Contemporary Canadian Art On The Map

David Liss is the artistic director and chief curator of MOCCA, the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art in Toronto. During Toronto’s International Art Fair, Liss talked to M-KOS about the current landscape of the Canadian art scene, in an insightful and refreshingly outspoken manner.

M-KOS [MK]: Could you introduce our readers to MOCCA and how you started getting involved in this art centre ?

David Liss [DS]: MOCCA started in 1999, it was reformed from the Art Gallery of North York, in the north part of Toronto. At the time it was a privately run gallery space, showcasing Canadian art. But for reasons that were well covered by the media back in those days, that enterprise went bankrupt. It was a big theatre complex, a performing arts centre with a small gallery inside it. That entity collapsed and the gallery was set to close but the art community of Toronto lobbied the city to keep the gallery open. So they did keep it open but the budget was greatly reduced, and the director and staff left. I started there at the end of 2000, coming from Montréal to figure out what to do next with this, the newly named, Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art. One of the first things in my discussions with the hiring committee was, given the name of the institution, that I didn’t think it was relevant in the 21st century to have a parochial or nationalistic view of contemporary art. So I restructured the mandate and the mission of MOCCA to include Canadian and non-Canadian artists.
Continue reading “Interview with David Liss: Putting Contemporary Canadian Art On The Map”

Posted on

Interview: Raster, accelerator of contemporary art and culture from Warsaw


Michal Kaczynsk (left) and Łukasz Gorczyca (right) at Raster’s booth at Frieze Art Fair 2011

Raster is an independent art space based in Warsaw, Poland, founded by art critics Łukasz Gorczyca and Michal Kaczynsk. Originally started as a magazine, Raster has since evolved into a gallery space and is generally seen as a provider of contemporary art culture, not only for the local Warsaw scene in Poland, but also internationally. Their project “Villa Raster” for example, provides an innovative platform for sharing cultural experiences and exchanging ideas. M-KOS interviewed Gorczyca and Kaczynsk at this year’s Frieze Art Fair.

M-KOS [MK]: How did you start Raster?

Raster [R]: The name Raster originally came from the magazine, a kind of informal magazine we used to publish when we were art history students at University of Warsaw. The idea of the magazine was to promote young generations of artists and writers. So we started doing the magazine to understand how the contemporary art scene works and how to promote new generations and new ways of understanding art in Poland. So the magazine was pretty much focusing on the questions of language, how we could develop the language of criticism to be understandable for the wider and younger audience.
Continue reading “Interview: Raster, accelerator of contemporary art and culture from Warsaw”

Posted on

Interview: Karl England & Ben Street, the duo behind Sluice art fair


Karl England (left) and Ben Street (right) in front of a painting by Chris Baker presented by George + Jorgen at Sluice. Photo: M-KOS

Sluice Art Fair is a new initiative organized jointly by artist Karl England and Ben Street, curator and art historian. Inaugurated this year in London and launched on the same week as Frieze, M-KOS interviewed England and Street about their project, proposed as an alternative to the alternative art fair.

M-KOS [MK]: How did Sluice come about originally?

Ben Street [BS]: Karl and I met through Twitter. Social networking has been very useful for us. We started just having conversations about art and networking people. Then, last year I was curating an exhibition for an old chapel in the cemetery of North West London. I looked at Karl’s recent work online, I liked it so much I went strait to his studio and decided to put his work in my show. We stayed in touch. Then much later Karl contacted me and said there was a space he was able to use where he had already shown before, and asked me if I was interested in collaborating on something with him during Frieze. The space is only 15 minutes away from the art fair, where so many people come to see art.

Karl England [KE]: Also, we had this space in Mayfair for only three days, that was perfect timing for an art fair but it’s too short for organizing an exhibition.

MK: How did you decide to name it Sluice?

BS: Sluice is a reference to an underground river, called the Tyburn, that runs beneath both Sluice and – coincidentally – Frieze.
Continue reading “Interview: Karl England & Ben Street, the duo behind Sluice art fair”

Posted on

Interview: Rinko Kawauchi – Capturing moments in a constant present


“Untitled” (2009) from the series “Illuminance”. Courtesy of the artist © Rinko Kawauchi

Rinko Kawauchi (b. Shiga, Japan, 1972) was one of 25 artists showing at Le Mois de la Photo in Montreal in September 2011, this year themed around Lucidity – Inward Views. Kawauchi is renowned for the glowing translucence of her photography, often taken in soft focus and subtly tinted colours to draw us in a state of waking dream.

From a corner of the vast opening reception, Kawauchi stood aloof with her tripod and camera, documenting curious and mesmerised audiences as they were feasting on her first exhibition in Montréal. Guest curator Anne-Marie Ninacs temporarily partitioned the “Arsenal”, Le Mois de la Photo’s main venue, to provide a separate room for each of the eight artists showing in its grand hall. Ninacs designed every artist space differently, and for Kawauchi she fashioned a small cornering area so people could experience her work more intimately. “It is just about the size of my darkroom” explained the Japanese photographer, on how she found it comfortable and familiar.
Continue reading “Interview: Rinko Kawauchi – Capturing moments in a constant present”

Posted on

Interview: Marcel Dzama

Marcel Dzama “A Game of Chess” (2011) official trailer. Courtesy of David Zwirner, NY. © 2011 Marcel Dzama

Last week’s 2011 edition of ArtPop – the visual arts wing of the annual music festival Pop Montreal – showcased Marcel Dzama’s recent films “A Game of Chess” (2011) and “Death Disco Dance” (2011). The former was premiered in his solo exhibition “Behind Every Curtain” at David Zwirner Gallery in New York earlier this year. This black and white film reveals Dzama’s inspiration and nostalgia of Bauhaus, Duchamp and yet retains a strong story telling sense, in a very personal aesthetic that resonates with contemporary life. An offshoot of “A Game of Chess”, the four-minutes colour film “Death Disco Dance” is more spontaneous and upbeat, and found a world premier at ArtPop. M-KOS interviewed Dzama during his Montreal pop-over.

M-KOS: Is this your first time back in Montreal since your retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Montreal in 2010?

Marcel Dzama: Yes. This is the first time since then. It is very nice to be here in fall instead of winter.

MK: Yes, less snow…

Dzama: Well, it’s beautiful in winter as well but it’s much nicer now.

MK: You are here for POP Festival?

Dzama: Yes. I’m showing two films – one is a short film called “Death Disco Dance”, almost like a little music video or an art film, with a Post punk soundtrack which I played with the special guest band with a live sound system.

The other one is called “A Game of Chess”. It’s a 15 minutes film that was shot in Guadalajara, in Mexico. I had a friend who had a ceramic foundry there. I was making ceramic sculptures. Originally I had the idea of shooting film at my studio in New York but my friend at the foundry said “shoot it here, I have all the connections of people here!”. So I had the ballet company of Guadalajara perform in the film and I made these papier maché costumes there which was a lot of fun to be in Mexico instead of being in my studio making them. And a lot of people were helping me as well in making them.
Continue reading “Interview: Marcel Dzama”