Nicholas Mangan, Matter over mind, 2012. C-print on cotton paper. 69 x 103cm. Courtesy the artist and Hopkinson Cundy
Nicholas Mangan A World Undone
19 October – 17 November 2012
at Hopkinson Cundy, Auckland
Nicholas Mangan’s sculptural practice extends into film and photography. Aptly described as a “material storytellerâ€, Mangan draws from both recent history and deep time to tease out narratives of the rise and fall of civilizations – of ambition, construction, rupture and decay – and in an unquestionably concrete language. Continue reading “Nicholas Mangan “A World Undone” at Hopkinson Cundy, Auckland”
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”
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?
Michelle Deignan: Posing as a Subject Amongst Subjects
at Maria Stenfors, London
16 July – 29 October 2011
Michelle Deignan “Microphone” (2008) Unique lambda print. Courtesy of the artist and Maria Stenfors.
Michelle Deignan’s London solo exhibition at Maria Stenfors Gallery entitled “Posing as a Subject Amongst Subjects†incorporates video installation, 16 mm film projection and photography. The installation occupies most of the exhibition space, Journey to an Absolute Vantage Point (2011) fits a two-channel video work onto a double-sided screen projection, the back-to-back videos playing off each other in treatment and in form. One side proffers a black-and-white violin, cello and piano trio performing the soundtrack of Deignan’s installation, while the other projection presents a postcard-like color shot of Berlin’s Schloss Charlottenburg (Charlottenburg Palace) and its surroundings, the scene of the story unfolding herein. Continue reading “Review: Michelle Deignan- Journey to an absolute vantage point”
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 Chessâ€, 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 Chessâ€. 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!â€. 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”
With the Void
Stephen Andrews, Pierre Dorion, Dara Gellman
at Diaz Contemporary, Toronto
14 July – 27 August 2011
Dara Gellman “Reaching Out” Single channel video projection with stereo sound, 8mins loop, four MDF projection screens. Courtesy of the artist and Diaz Contemporary
“We wish to reassert the picture plane. We are for flat forms because they destroy illusion and reveal truth.†* This month Diaz Contemporary adorned its walls with works that, at first glance, echo ghostly epitaphs from the glorious manifestos of American abstract painters. On closer inspection the three-person show, made up of Stephen Andrews, Pierre Dorion and Dara Gellman, rises beyond the oppositions between figurative and non, into velvety sensory aesthetics. Similarly, when Color Field painters favored abstraction in the 1950’s, their focus, according to Clement Greenberg, was on illumination and openness: they elevated the potential of color to its apex via painterly techniques, large-scale formats, and thus rendered barren and featureless pictures to keep an open-ended subject matter. While clearly in continuation with this visual vocabulary, the works of With the Void journey to the limits of the representational tableau, and even reach out to confer with other media. Continue reading “Review: With the Void”
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””
“One Eye Open” (2011) three-channel video HD projection. Installation view at Galerie René Blouin. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie René Blouin.
Pascal Grandmaison’s latest exhibition “Projections†is currently on view at Galerie Réne Blouin, for the inauguration of his new space on 2020 William Street, Montréal with two recent video works. A soundless three-channel HD video projection, “One Eye Open†(2011) meticulously depicts a bouquet of plastic flowers illuminated in pseudo-natural beauty, and “The Neutrality Escape†(2008) looks into the history of cinema, with another, single-channel HD video. M-Kos interviews Grandmaison about these and other projects.
M-KOS: Can you tell us a little bit about “Projections†your latest exhibition at René Blouin?
Pascal Grandmaison: The work we are seeing today is a follow up to a succession of projects I’ve done around the concept of daylight, I worked on several projects this year, I was really trying to look at the diverse facets of how we receive sunlight, how we interact with light arriving as a physical phenomenon, how light travels in space, and how it may affect us day-to-day. Continue reading “Interview: Pascal Grandmaison”
Installation view. Courtesy of the artist and Pierre-François Ouellette Art Contemporain
“The Atelier†is Kent Monkman’s current exhibition at Pierre-François Ouellette Art Contemporain, transforming the entrance of the gallery into an open artist studio, furnished with antique décor including Récamier, wall paper and thick embroidered drape curtains partially covering a theatre window. Placed at the centre of this mise en scène (although exclusively for the pleasure of those at the private view) a winged male nude poses next to an easel, canvas and used paintbrushes, piles of drawings and etchings of reference materials cluttered on the adjacent wall. Mimicking the romantic ideal of a 19th Century European studio, Monkman invokes the artist as creative genius, bastardized with contemporary paraphernalia such as a Louis Vuitton handbag and photographs of Princes William and Harry. Monkman opens the studio door for his audience to take a quick tour of the creative process in his new series of fables. Continue reading “Review: Kent Monkman “The Atelier””
Currently on View: Montréal
Kent Monkman “My Treaty Is With The Crown” Leonard + Bina Ellen Art Gallery
4 March – 16 April 2011
Kent Monkman “Mary” (2011) High definition video. Courtesy Bailey Fine Arts, Toronto
Nearly two decades ago, I visited the National Museum of the American Indian in Harlem (It relocated in One Bowling Green, New York City in 1994). An art student at the time, I was curious to find links between my upbringing in Japanese Shinto religion and the Native American’s worship of nature. I vaguely remember the features of this space, but I did notice that only a handful of visitors were in the museum and, after settling in for a while, I could hear echoes of drumming in the hallways. When I followed the sound I found a man presumably in his early 30s, playing on a traditional animal skin drum, singing a song of folklore. He wasn’t dressed in any overstated ceremonial costume but simply festooned with ornaments on his long dark hair. Children and adults gathered around as the man continued his performance, in this space dimly lit to preserve the nearby artifacts stored behind glass cases. A split-second later, my eyes were blinded by a flash of light, coming from the camera of an elderly person standing next to me. The singing man sternly frowned, ceased playing. He spoke in the elderly person’s direction, in a firm yet polite manner: “Please don’t take my picture because I’m not an exhibition displayâ€. After a measured pause and palpable tension in the air, the man resumed his drumming with dignity.
Kent Monkman’s exhibition “My treaty with the crown†recalled in me this buried memory of the proud signing man, I may have completely forgotten otherwise. The exhibition proffers multilayered narratives and profound symbolism from Monkman’s work, together with other paintings, objects and ornaments from the collection of Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the McCord Museum of Canadian History.
