Image courtesy the artist and Tulips & Roses
Paul Sietsema
The Sentence
at Tulips & Roses
7 September – 27 October 2012
Continue reading “Paul Sietsema: The Sentence at Tulips & Roses, Brussels”
Transitioning: Between Line 02 by Tania Ursomarzo at MAI, Montréal
© Tania Ursomarzo
Tania Ursomarzo (New York/Toronto)
Transitioning: Between Line 02
at MAI (Montréal, Arts Interculturels), Montréal
15 September – 21 October 2012
Continue reading “Transitioning: Between Line 02 by Tania Ursomarzo at MAI, Montréal”
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”
Art Marathon: Art Souterrain 2012
Montreal is well known for its underground city. During the long Canadian winter, people get around the city’s downtown area, from one tunnel to another, without ever going out into the frosty air. Between 25 February through 11 March Montreal’s underground city was hosting the fourth edition of Art Souterrain (Subterranean Art, in French), a contemporary art event inaugurated in 2009 by Frédéric Loury, director of Galerie [SAS]. This year Art Souterrain showcased 140 art projects, including installations, photography, video, performance and permanent public art, all under the theme of “Passagewaysâ€. Art Souterrain has been expanding the number and volume of projects every year, to now in its fourth edition it covers over seven kilometers of underpass, with invited artists from as far as Paris and Calgary. Here are some works that caught our imagination.
Mathieu Grenier “Dans le Cube Blanc (O’Doherty) / Inside the White Cube”
Nathalie Quagliotto “Maturity Bend”
Continue reading “Art Marathon: Art Souterrain 2012”
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””
Review: Maurizio Cattelan – Puppet master pulling “All” the strings
Currently on view: New York
Maurizio Cattelan: All
at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
4 November 2011 – 22 January 2012
Maurizio Cattelan “All” (2011) Installation view. Photo by M-KOS
On the pay-what-you-wish evening we visited Guggenheim Museum, a long queue of people coiled around the block before flocking in to see Maurizio Cattelan’s current retrospective “Allâ€. Precisely 128 works were hung from a ring at the top of the central rotunda, ranging from veristic wax figures, taxidermy animals, witty photographs, paintings and sculptures, spanning the breadth of Cattelan’s productions over the last 20 years. Instead of a predictably chronological order, the works were randomly placed, in an untidy but well mastered balancing act. The Italian artist literally turned the notion of a museum exhibition on its head, bypassing the use of the institution’s cloistered display areas to transform his retrospective into an expansive site-specific installation.
Continue reading “Review: Maurizio Cattelan – Puppet master pulling “All” the strings”
Review: Shilpa Gupta – Will we ever be able to mark enough?
Currently on view: Montréal
Shilpa Gupta: Will we ever be able to mark enough?
at Darling Foundry
5 October – 4 December 2011 (extended)
Curator: Renée Baert
Shilpa Gupta “Will we ever be able to mark enough?” Installation view at Darling Foundry 2011. Courtesy of the artist and Darling Foundry. Photo credit: Guy L’Heureux
In a rapidly globalizing world, intensified human migrations have brought issues of identity, culture and homeland to the forefront of many’s political agenda, and with them the fears and insecurities of change. Shilpa Gupta’s exhibition Will we ever be able to mark enough? at Darling Foundry sharply addresses some of our most recurrent anxieties for the issues above, particularly regarding border security. The Mumbai artist worked in collaboration with Montreal curator Renée Baert to present her first Canadian solo show, a selection of recent pieces as well as pivotal new works, created specifically for this show.
Unfortunately unavailable to personally set up the exhibition, the artist however did invest much fervor in her selection of signature works. Before even entering the exhibition, a row of six color photographs greet us, hanging on a brick wall across the street from the Foundry. All one and a half meters in diameter, each square image captures the upper body movements of dark skinned figures, arms flailing and faces blurred by slow shutter photo effects. In stepping outside the institutional space of the gallery, Gupta continues her ongoing practice of confronting her images in public settings, usually reserved for advertising purposes. As opposed to the latter’s focus on instantaneous communications, Gupta draws a more complex worldview.
Continue reading “Review: Shilpa Gupta – Will we ever be able to mark enough?”
Review: Richard Serra “Junction/Cycle”
Currently on View: New York
Richard Serra “Junction/Cycle”
at Gagosian Gallery, W 24th Street
14 September – 26 November 2011
Richard Serra: Junction / Cycle. Installation view. Courtesy of Gagosian Gallery. Photo by Rob McKeever.
“I consider space to be a material. The articulation of space
has come to take precedence over other concerns. I attempt to
use sculptural form to make space distinct.”
– Richard Serra
Richard Serra has filled Gagosian’s 2500 square foot New York Gallery with two recent monumental works for his current show “Junction/Cycle”. Both “Junction” (2011) and “Cycle” (2010) are winding compositions of 13 foot tall curved and leaning slabs of weatherproof steel. Together, they transform the vast gallery into a maze of corridors, hidden clearings and unexpected exits.
Continue reading “Review: Richard Serra “Junction/Cycle””
Review: The Fox
The Fox
at G Gallery, Toronto
14 July – 20 August 2011
Artists: Oskar Hüber (Germany), Yam Lau (Canada), Sophie Nys (Belgium) and Kevin Rodgers (Canada). Organized by Kevin Rodgers
“The Fox” Installation view at G Gallery, Toronto 2011.
In 1924 began a romantic liaison between 35-year-old husband, father and Marburg University philosophy teacher Martin Heidegger, and Hannah Arendt, his 18 year-old student. By 1933, Heidegger had joined the Nazi Party and Arendt, a jew, fled to France to escape religious persecution. Utilizing these accounts and more as premise, G Gallery in Toronto exhibited last month the work of four artists. Oskar Hüber, Yam Lau, Sophie Nys and Kevin Rodgers sparsely filled the brightly lit white space of G Gallery with emblematic objects, videos and installation works.
Continue reading “Review: The Fox”
Review: Pierrick Sorin “Une vie bien remplie”
Currently on view: Montréal
Pierrick Sorin: Une vie bien remplie
at Great Hall, Darling Foundry
16 June – 28 August 2011
Pierrick Sorin “C’est mignon tout ça†(1993) short film 4 mins. Courtesy of the artist and Darling Foundry
Une Vie Bien Remplie is a collection of works by French videographer Pierrick Sorin, currently at the Darling Foundry. The six pieces on show form a comprehensive twenty-year overview of the artist’s career, spanning most of his thematic realm. Sorin reaches high levels of self-contemplation with each of his films and videos in order to subvert his own artistic relevance and project the buoyancy of his humor, which fluctuates between subtlety and satire.
With “C’est mignon tout ça†(1993) for example, Sorin films himself on all fours in garter belt, high heels and stockings, fondling a monitor inches from his face which is broadcasting a live feed of his own behind. The mise en scène is overdubbed and inter-spliced with a closely-shot interview of our self-portraitist, confessing his difficulties at overcoming shyness and creating meaningful relationships with others. If nothing else, this first piece illustrates the extent to which Sorin uses the versatility of video to comment on this medium of tele-presence that separates as much as unites its protagonists with the rest of the world.
Continue reading “Review: Pierrick Sorin “Une vie bien remplie””