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north and south, blue and green

Posted: July 20, 2016 in galleries
Tags: AGO, arctic, art, Art Gallery of Ontario, artists, blue, Caribbean, cold, greens, group of seven, Hurvic Anderson, ice, ice bergs, Jamaica, Lawren Harris, leaves, mountains, painters, people, snow, Trinidad, tropics, welcome

A comparison of sorts. Two painters from two different time periods. One looked north and the other looks south. The north with its barren cold and blue in comparison to the south and its lush greenness. A famous anglo Canadian painter who went searching for simplicity and a relatively new British painter with Jamaican roots who explores complexities.

Lawren Harris and Hurvin Anderson. You should know which is which!

I didn’t purposely set out to compare them. I saw the ‘The Idea of North’ exhibit that features the Steve Martin paintings of Lawren Harris first. As much as I like the Group of Seven, Harris’s minimalist snow and ice paintings have never been my favorite. Still, it was an interesting collection to see. After I finished there, I headed up to the contemporary art floors. The fifth floor is still closed (new installation opening later this week) but I discovered that the fourth floor is devoted to the works of Hurvin Anderson. As I walked around the Anderson installation I kept thinking of similarities and differences between him and Lawren Harris.

below: Mountains in Snow: Rocky Mountain Paintings VII, 1929. One of the many famous Lawren Harris snow and ice paintings. Light, reflected light, shadows, and contrasts. The elements reduced to their simplest form. The landscape itself is almost secondary. Or the landscape is the medium, not the message.

below: The large painting on the right is ‘Pic Island’ painted about 1924. Pic Island is an unpopulated island along the north shore of Lake Superior. Today the island is part of Neys Provincial Park.

below: Two of Hurvin Anderson’s paintings from his Caribbean landscape collection. On the left is ‘Beaded Curtain – Red Apples’, 2010.

below: ‘Constructed View’, 2010. Anderson’s Caribbean paintings have grilles incorporated into them. These are the security features prevalent on houses and businesses in the Caribbean (and elsewhere in the world), metal fixtures over windows and doors to keep out the unwanted. They contain what’s inside. They are a barrier. They intrude on the landscape and cut it up. Again, the landscape is almost secondary. The message, or emotion, is more important. [aside – There is a grille in the painting above (right) but it’s more subtle.]

Lawren Harris painted his famous mountain pictures in the late 1920’s. In 1930 he visited Baffin Island and a few paintings resulted from that trip. I learned that although I associate Harris with icebergs and arctic scenery, most of his snow and ice paintings were from the north shore of Lake Superior or from the mountains around Banff Alberta.

The repetoire of both painters is not limited to landscapes. Harris painted many houses and street scenes from downtown Toronto including houses and streets that were demolished years ago. The examples of Anderson’s non-landscape work were interiors. Both men used bold colours but Anderson tends to show more detail in his paintings.

below: ‘Welcome: Carib’ The Welcome sign of the bar in juxtaposition with the red metal work covering the window. The picture beckons to us but keeps us out.

below: One of the paintings from Anderson’s Barbershop collection, ‘Flat Top’ 2008.

below: A selection of colourful Toronto houses in winter painted by Harris in the 1920s.

In the 1930’s Lawren Harris’s personal life went awry. The words on the wall at the AGO says that he divorced, remarried and moved to the states. That’s a bit of spin. He didn’t divorce his wife because that would be messy, apparently. Instead in 1934 he just married the wife of an old friend. And of course that turned messy and the new couple left for the USA for a few years before eventually settling in Vancouver BC. Harris’s post-1934 work is very abstract and was never as successful as his earlier paintings.

below: You can see the influence of the mountain paintings in this, ‘Painting No. 4’, about 1939, painted when he was a member of the Transcendental Painting Group. This was a collective of artists in New Mexico that Harris help to found.

below: Since I have no idea where the art of Hurvin Anderson is headed, I will leave you with one more of his present paintings (I’m not sure those two ideas actually go together!). ‘Foska Foska’, the interior of a shop behind yellow bars and black mesh.

The Idea of North – until 18 September

Hurvin Anderson – until 21 August

#HarrisAGO | #HurvinAndersonAGO

Cutlines

Posted: May 20, 2016 in events, galleries
Tags: black and white, CONTACT, Globe and Mail, historic, old, people, photographs, photography festival, photos, Press Hall, projections

‘Cutlines’, an exhibit of old photographs from the Globe & Mail,
part of the CONTACT Photography Festival

below: A small sample of the 175 vintage black and white photos from the vast collection held by the Globe and Mail newspaper on display.

below: The exhibit is being held at the Press Hall on Wellington Street (near Spadina). This old building is slated for demolition in the near future as the Globe and Mail is in the midst of moving to a new home. Prints were in cabinets in the center of the room while other images were projected high on the walls.

The Globe & Mail has amassed a collection of about 750,000 photographs. As they transition from print to digital images, they are ‘cleaning house’ with respect to their photo archives. About 100,000 of the prints are going to be digitized and a portion of those donated to the new Canadian Photography Institute at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa.

below: Some of the pictures were covered with red, with what is known as a rubylith mask. When the images were printed, the portions covered in red remained as they were while the rest of the picture could be changed to suit the needs of the story of the day.

below: The woman with the two trophies, bottom left, is Marilyn Bell who swam across Lake Ontario. I know that the man beside her is from a story about a cowboy championship of some sort in Calgary and my apologies for not remembering more of the details.

On view at 425 Wellington St. West until 26 June 2016

#CONTACT16

Current Studies, Paper Planes

Posted: May 3, 2016 in events, galleries
Tags: allan lambert galleria, Brookfield Place, colour, CONTACT, current study, images, paper airplanes, photography festival, photos, Scotiabank CONTACT, Sjoerd Knibbeler

‘Current Studies’ and ‘Paper Planes’
Two different series of photographs by Sjoerd Knibbeler
Allan Lambert Galleria, Brookfield Place

At ground level there are six large freestanding ‘walls” arranged in line, three at each end of the atrium. Each ‘wall’ is covered by two images, one on either side. They are photographs that are the result of Knibbeler’s experiments to “ shape, encompass, and capture air currents.” This is the ‘Current Studies’ part of the installation.

Suspended from the ceiling are a set of photographs of paper airplanes, the ‘Paper Planes’ part of the installation. Knibbeler photographed paper airplanes that he made using information that he found online. He chose military planes that were never produced.

#CONTACT16

Aude Moreau, sky, city, and a bit of a rant.

Posted: April 29, 2016 in galleries, public art
Tags: art installation, Aude Moreau, conceptual, CONTACT, contemporary, gallery, helicopter, images, Los Angeles, night sky, outdoors, photography, power plant, Toronto, Toronto skyline, tree

I usually take a dim view of conceptual art largely because the importance given to the “words on the wall” has eclipsed the consideration given to the artwork itself. Mediocrity in technique or creativity hides behind big jargon words and convoluted language in the artist statement. Often the concept that the artist claims to be exploring is at odds with the end product.

When the art doesn’t live up to words that sound learned and meaningful then it degrades the work and makes the artist, and those curating the exhibit, seem pompous and out of touch.

For example, if you read that certain videos by an artist “cast a hitherto unexampled light on the conventional North American city”, what would you expect to see? Would you expect to see a video shot from a helicopter as it circled a city at night? A video that looks familiar to anyone who has flown over a city after dark. That’s what you get with Aude Moreau’s ‘The End in the Background of Hollywood 2015’ now showing at The Power Plant gallery. I don’t have a photo of it but I do have a picture of three of her other photographs also on display.

below: From left to right (discounting the small picture farthest from the camera): 1. ‘Untitled (Hollywood Sign)’ 2015, 2. ‘LAPD (Los Angeles Police Department)’ 2015. It’s a picture of a tiny helicopter in a large grey sky. and 3. ‘Waiting for Landing’, airplanes lined up as they approach LAX airport. Unfortunately, the words on the wall then go on to say, about these three images, “These demonstrate visual strategies that act upon the symbolic representation of the city and the spectacular dimension of the film industry.” Oh my.

And with that I left The Power Plant gallery. Growling silently to myself and shaking my head with a mix of disdain and and frustration. Imagine my surprise when once outside I encountered another of Moreau’s photographs. A very lovely one.

below: A picture of the Toronto skyline by Aude Moreau mounted on an exterior wall at The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery. A picture with visual impact.

below: You can play “spot the building” and test your knowledge of Toronto geography. You can line up the DBRS building, the Hilton Hotel and the Canada Life building on University Avenue along with the Sheraton Hotel on Queen street. The blue addition on the AGO is farther north on Dundas. Can you think of where the photo was taken? Apparently, it was taken from Toronto Fire Station 315 at College Street and Bellevue Avenue. It was taken just after sunset but when there was still enough light in the sky to reflect off the taller buildings. Moreau makes the city sparkle.

I must have seen this picture very shortly after it was installed. It is part of the CONTACT photography festival that starts this weekend but there was no accompanying sign, no words that attempted to a explain the image. Perhaps that was for the best. In fact, I now have the CONTACT catalogue with their description of the artwork but I think I won’t read them. I’d rather enjoy the picture just the way it is.

plutocrats and proletariats

Posted: April 25, 2016 in galleries
Tags: art, axe, bench, blue chip, distorted, gold, holes, mirrors, money, reflections, reflective, sculpture, symbols, torn, tree trunks, wealth

An art installation ‘Nest Egg’ by Brendan McNaughton
at the Corkin Gallery, Distillery District

The title of this blog post is taken from a description of McNaughton’s work on the Corkin gallery website, “The relationship between plutocrats and proletariats is central to his art practice.” A plutocrat is a person who is powerful because they are wealthy. Money equals power. Proletariat on the other hand is a class of people, the working class, a class without money and without power.

below: A gold axe. With its blade in a column, on a pedestal? That’s not a passive positioning of the axe, i.e. it’s not just lying around. Someone has swung it.
Axe as a symbol of the working class? Juxtapositioned with gold, a symbol of money?

below: A couple of the pieces were mirrors. But they were mirrors with a difference – slightly concave in shape, with a hint of gold, and marred by ragged shaped holes. The resulting reflections are distorted and flawed.

below: ‘Blue Chip’ a sculpture by Brendan McNaughton as viewed through one of his mirrors. The expression ‘blue chip’ has become synonymous with high quality stocks, usually ones from the New York Stock Exchange. Originally the expression meant stocks with higher prices because, if the story is correct, blue chips in poker are traditionally associated with the highest value.

below: The colour gold is very prevalent in this installation as are reflective surfaces.

below: Parts of three wrinkly gold panels. There are actually four of these reflective square panels. They are all the same size and colour but the surface patterns are slightly different. Once again, the reflections are distorted. Wealth distorts your view?

below: There was a group of what appeared to be photography students visiting the gallery at the same time that I was there. As I was standing beside this piece, looking for different and/or interesting angles and reflections, one of the students remarked on how he liked it when ordinary items were used in out of the ordinary ways. He then said that he wondered if it was …. and then he paused. I finished his sentence with the word ‘art’. He laughed and said yes, but that he was always afraid to say such things out loud. I gave him permission to ask “is it art?” as loud and as often as he wanted.

Installation ends May 1st

a community of wardrobes

Posted: April 1, 2016 in galleries
Tags: AGO, art, Art Gallery of Ontario, art installation, contemporary art, mirrors, reflections, Song Dong, Toronto, wardrobes

Wisdom of the Poor: Communal Courtyard,
an art installation by Chinese artist Song Dong,
Art Gallery of Ontario

This installation is made from parts of 100 old wardrobes collected from traditional Beijing neighbourhoods, or hutongs, like the one in which Song Dong grew up in. These neighbourhoods, and their communal way of life, are disappearing.

The pieces of the wardrobes are arranged with the backside towards the viewer. The arrangement is such that you can not see the front side of most of the wardrobes.

There are two circles of wardrobes that you can enter – where you can now stand in the courtyard so to speak. The wardrobes become stand-ins for the fronts of houses that once faced onto courtyards in the old hutongs of Beijing.

A wardrobe was one of the items that the Chinese government provide to all families. They are all similar yet different. All have mirrors. Most are made of the same colour wood and most have green curtains. They all have little legs and they are all about the same height.

Wardrobes are personal articles and former owners have left their marks on many of them…. a different fabric in the window or a picture glued onto the wood.
part of an art installation by Chinese artist Song Dong using vintage wooden wardrobe doors with mirrors and curtains, reflections, door handles, key holes and a curtain that is a blue and white plaid and has musical notes on it.

This installation also appeared in the Venice biennale in 2011 although the wardrobes were arranged differently. For the exhibit at the AGO, there are a number of items that appear within the ‘courtyards’ created by the wardrobes. For the viewer, these items can only be viewed through the windows of the wardrobes. One of the items, below, is a series of three paintings of the Canadian ballerina Karen Kain.

In another, bikes

part of an art installation by Chinese artist Song Dong using vintage wooden wardrobe doors with mirrors and curtains, reflections, through two of the windows there is a bike

This installation remains at the AGO until 17 July 2016

Toronto Marys

Posted: December 27, 2015 in galleries, general Toronto
Tags: AGO, Art Gallery of Ontario, baby, blue cloak, dormition, Gardiner museum, icons, Jesus, Mary, mother and child, Radio Maria, RC, religious, Roman Catholic, statues

Marys in Toronto
It has become one of the things I do – I look for ‘Marys’ when I travel. For one reason or another, I started seeing Marys in Toronto too. Perhaps it was because I spent more time in galleries and museums on those really cold days that we had last winter. There aren’t nearly as many Marys here as there are in Lima Peru or in Malta. Hence, finding them was a bit more difficult but that just made the hunt more interesting.

below: In the window of Sonic Boom on Spadina

below: a sculpture of Mary and Jesus, from the Gardiner Museum

below: ‘The Dormition of the Virgin’ by Esteban Marquez De Velasco (c.1655 – 1720, Spain).
This painting is in the Art Gallery of Ontario. It depicts the moment before Mary falls asleep and her soul leaves her body to join Him in heaven. The apostles surround Mary and kneel in prayer.

below: ‘Madonna and Child’ by Andrea Della Robbia (1435-1525, Florence Italy).
Glazed terracotta. On loan to the AGO from the family of Murray Frum.

below: In front of St. Clare Roman Catholic church on St. Clair Ave. West

below: In the window of Crows Nest barber shop, Kensington Market

below: Figurines for sale at Honest Ed’s

below: Holographic cards with images of Mary Jesus in a red plastic tub.
You can buy a card at Honest Ed’s for 69 cents.

below: Sagrada Familia, by the front door of a house in Little Portugal

below: Hiding amongst the drapery sits Mary and her child.

below: Another from the AGO, Virgin and Child from circa 1750, once in a chapel of a Montreal church.
Wood with traces of pigment.

below: Mount Pleasant cemetery

below: On an ofrenda at a Dia de Muertos celebration

below: Radio Maria, una voce cristiana nella tua casa, part of the Holy Mother World Networks.

below: With other members of the Nativity scene, for sale in a vintage store on Queen West.
I think that $20 buys you the contents of the box.

below: In a front yard in the Junction
I’ve put her at the end because I am not 100% sure that she is a Mary. The Virgin Mary is usually depicted with a light blue shawl draped over her shoulder or else holding a baby Jesus.

And here ends that game. This post represents almost a year’s worth of looking and while the hunt was interesting in the beginning it’s charm is starting to wear thin. I could probably find more Marys in churches and cemeteries but I think I will listen to words of wisdom and let it be.

food, food, glorious food

Posted: November 25, 2015 in galleries
Tags: Amanda White, Andree Wejsmann, Artport, broaches, brooches, Bruce Cochrane, ceramics, corn, Erin Riley, food, Forage, Harbourfront, hunters, Lana Filippone, leaves, lemons, Lisa Myers, Lynn Price, natural dyes, ode to a lemon, photographs, photography, rings, Sooyeong Lee, squash, Thea Haines, Victoria Piersig, video

Food is an important part of our lives and there is a lot that we take for granted about the food we eat. Food, and all that accompanies it, is the theme of a collection of art exhibits at Harbourfront’s Artport. On display is work by a number of artists who have been examining different food related issues. How we see food, it’s role in our lives, how healthy is it, it’s production, and how we obtain it, are just a few of the questions that are explored. We eat food but what about the parts we usually waste?

Below is a sample of what is on offer.

below: ‘Wearable Food – Hat’, 2014, by Sooyeong Lee, part of a series of photographs that displays food in atypical and unexpected ways. An acorn squash fascinator is precariously perched on her head.

below: ‘Frugivore Project’, 2011-ongoing, by Amanda White, an attempt to communicate biologically with tomato plants. White bought tomatoes from the grocery store and ate them. She harvested the seeds after they had passed through her digestive system and then planted them. After the plants bear fruit, it is eaten and the cycle continues.

below: ‘Foraged Palette’, 2015, Thea Haines, made with wool, silk, linen, hemp and cotton with natural dyes. The dyes are made from food waste such as carrot peels, onion skins, pomegranate skins and avocado pits.

below:‘Strain to Absorb, 2015, by Lisa Myers, three digital files running simultaneously. Blueberries contain the pigment anthocyanin which the artist produces from strained fruit.

below:‘Accidental Hunter’, 2014, by Erin Riley, hunting with a rifle received as a gift from her father and taking pictures of the event.

below: ‘Delicate merchandise!”, 2014, by Lynn Price, oil on paper. The title comes from a poem called ‘Ode to a Lemon’ by Pablo Neruda (see bottom of post)

below:Functional Ceramic Tableware, 2005-2015, by Bruce Cochrane

below: Trading Places, Victoria Piersig. A series of photographs from a journey spent onboard a ship transporting wheat from Thunder Bay to Montreal.

below: cookie cutter rings and brooches, by Andree Wejsmann

below: Teerex and Triceratops Corn Cob holders, 2012, by Lana Filippone

***

‘Ode to a Lemon’ by Pablo Neruda

Out of lemon flowers
loosed
on the moonlight, love’s
lashed and insatiable
essences,
sodden with fragrance,
the lemon tree’s yellow
emerges,
the lemons
move down
from the tree’s planetarium
Delicate merchandise!
The harbors are big with it –
bazaars
for the light and the
barbarous gold.

elegiac contemplation of the quotidian

Posted: November 10, 2015 in galleries
Tags: art, contemporary art, film, gallery, installation, invention, Mark Lewis, power plant, PPInvention, still photography, Toronto, winter

Invention, an installation at The Power Plant gallery, by Mark Lewis.

The main part of the exhibit consists of 3 short films shot in Toronto.
When I first saw it, I thought that the films were older, perhaps from the 60s or 70s.

below: A short film begins with a pan over part of downtown Toronto. It circles back to the Robarts Library and focuses on a woman standing in the window of one of the upper floors. After zooming in on the woman, the film “enters” the room she’s in and turns back to focus on what her view out the window looks like.

below: Another exhibit is a film comprised of segments filmed at a number of locations around City Hall this past winter. The image below is shot from the upper ramp at Nathan Phillips Square, looking south. Old City hall is on the left. There are no people in the picture. There are also no commercial images such as billboards or signs on the buildings. Slow moving, quiet.

It wasn’t until I looked more closely at the images that I realized that the films had to have been made recently… for example, the recently built stage area in Nathan Phillips Square. So I watched the films again looking for details.

A little perplexed, I tried to find out why Lewis made these films, and why they were considered to be “art”. It wasn’t easy; it was probably made more difficult by my love/hate relationship with contemporary art. The title of this post comes from a paragraph I found on The Power Plant website description of this installation: “Together, the elements that make up Mark Lewis’ films culminate in a body of work that is as astute as it is elegiac in its contemplation of the quotidian, offering an experience of the flux of time that is as elating in its duration as it is haunting for its sense of passing.” Well, um, okay.

It also wasn’t easy because of the scope of the questions that Lewis seems to be tackling. One of his interest lies in discovering what it might have felt like when film revolutionized they way we looked at ourselves and at the world around us. That’s a tough one. We are a society that is immersed in moving images of all kinds. Movies and TV have been part of our lives for many generations. Can anyone truly imagine what it might have been like to see a film for the first time?

As we all know, digital technology has put video production into the hands of anyone with a cellphone. Even my three year old granddaughter asks me to make videos of her and I’m sure it won’t be long before she’s producing them. And that leads to another question that Lewis is interested in examining – what are the implications of these technological changes? Not only can see video, we can be in control of making our own whenever we want.

But that’s not all. Lewis is also interested in architectural surfaces so walls, windows, pavements and reflective glass amongst others play a role in his films. Urban architecture; urban landscapes. Cinema made of the ordinary everyday life of living in the city and everyday life in the city is cinema. 24/7 movie making. You are part of the cast; you are the camera.

What I have presented here are just three pictures and I’m not sure the pictures do the films justice. If you want to see these films, they are at The Power Plant gallery until 3 Jan 2016.

#PPInvention

Mann masks

Posted: November 5, 2015 in galleries
Tags: art, car parts, creative, dog, Jeff Mann, masks, metal, painted, Queen Mother cafe, rusty, skull, weld, wrench

I happened to walk into the Queen Mother Cafe (on Queen West) this afternoon. They often have original artwork displayed on their walls and today was no exception. I found some intriguing and very creative masks.

They are the creation of Jeff Mann, a Kingston based artist.

According to his website, Mann makes the masks mostly from car parts and shovels. The ones here are only a sample of the collection I saw at the Queen Mother cafe. In addition, there are pictures of more masks on Mann’s website.

as I walk Toronto

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