Flowers, a sign of spring. No real flowers outside yet and probably not for quite a while!
Instead we’ll have to settle for European pottery florals from the Gardiner Museum today.
below: Ewer and basin, Sèvres France, 1757, porcelain, attributed to Jean-Claude Duplessis. Pink ground with foilage-like edges.
below: Purple flowered mullein plate, from Derby botanicals, pattern 216, England, c1800.
Photographs of the Lodz Ghetto (Poland 1940-1945)
by Henryk Ross,
at the Art Gallery of Ontario until 14 June 2015
Ross was a Polish Jewish photographer and one of the official Lodz ghetto photographers under the Nazi regime.
In the autumn of 1944 as the Lodz ghetto was being shut down, Ross buried his 6000 negatives in jars. The Red Army liberated Lodz in January of 1945 after which Ross unearthed his negatives. Water damaged about half of them. Of the surviving 3000 negatives, about 200 form the ‘Memory Unearthed’ exhibit.
Some of the photos are ordinary pictures – portraits of people, children playing. Other photos look ordinary until you learn the context, what is really happening in the picture. Many photos document suffering and despair. They elicit a lot of uncomfortable emotions but as an historical record the collection is excellent as well as much needed.
Last Folio, A Living Monument to the Holocaust
An exhibit of photographs by Yuri Dojc,
at the Art Gallery of Ontario
Yuri Dojc was born in Slovakia but is now based in Toronto.
Starting in the 1990’s he has returned to Slovakia a number of times in search of traces of Jewish life from prior to WW2.
Details of one of the photographs in the exhibit.
There are only eight photographs in this exhibit but each one tells a story. Narratives of loss and of life interrupted.
But also stories of memory and remembrance.
More information about the Last Folio project.
Seen in the ‘Genizot: Repositories of Memory’ exhibit
by Bonnie Eisenstein,
at the Royal Ontario Museum until 8 February 2015
“Concentrate all your strength, and compel yourself to do the loftiest deed, to endure the most difficult trial, and to survive the most arduous struggle.”
from The Walk by Robert Walser, translated from the German, Der Spaziergang written in 1917.
Douglas Coupland: everywhere is anywhere is anything is everything
Royal Ontario Museum
until April 26, 2015
The 21st Century Condition
“I want to explore how it feels to be inside the 21st century brain as opposed to the 20th century brain”
Painted with dots. When they are hanging on the wall, they look abstract.
When they are shrunk down and viewed on a smartphone, the picture comes into focus.
update: Here is an interesting article that appeared in the Torontoist on 24th Feb about this exhibit.
Douglas Coupland’s
everywhere is anywhere is anything is everything
at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Queen St. West
until 19 April 2015
Secret Handshake
What makes Canadians Canadian?
What do we identify with that others don’t recognize?
One of the rooms of the exhibit features Coupland’s re-imagining of famous Canadian paintings, paintings by Tom Thomson and Lawren Harris of the Group of Seven to name a couple.
In the center of the room is a black metal structure that is supposed to represent a damaged hydro transmission tower reminiscent of the ones damaged by the eastern Canada ice storm of 1998.
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Growing up Utopian
below: Towers, 2014
An urban jungle of imaginative lego towers created from selected parts of towers that were “crowd-sourced” at building events at the Vancouver Art Gallery.
below: 345 Modern House, 2014
One hundred identical houses built from a kit that was first issued in 1969.
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An art exhibit in the Great Hall at Union Station, January 16 to January 23
I’m going to out on a limb a bit here and say like most contemporary or modern art, this exhibit was combination of some shoddily thrown together nonsense and some well executed and interesting pieces.
One of the things that caught my attention was how people reacted and/or interacted with the different parts of the exhibit. Union Station is not an art destination. It’s a space that people walk through on their way to somewhere else.
In the above photo, the women are using a computer monitor to learn about The Legacy of Joseph Wagenbach, an installation by Iris Haussler. In 2006 she turned a house on Robinson St. in Toronto into a ‘discovered’ home of a reclusive older man who had filled his house with over 100 sculptures that he had made. At that time there was some controversy when people learned that there was no real Joseph Wagenbach, that his story was fiction. There is a Joseph Wagenbach Foundation with its own website.
Some of the Joseph Wagenbach sculptures.
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‘Marbled Meanings’ by Navid Nuur.
top right: ‘Broken Diamond’ made of neon, broken glass, argon neon blue light.
center: ‘Threshold’ made of green florist foam blocks
With the above collection, I found that the light and shadows were more interesting than the green column. I don’t know whether or not this was an intentional part of the exhibit.
close up of ‘Broken Diamond’
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“I’m going to use the two hundred dollar artist fee from this project to pay my phone bill and with the money left over I’ll probably buy a pack of smokes and maybe order some Chinese food.”
Is this a statement about the value of art? Is this a f*ck you statement – if you, or society, don’t value art why should I (as the artist) care about my work?
Floating overhead and watching us with yellow eyes.
reflections
I know that art is subjective but I fail to see the appeal in large monochromatic pictures in an ugly shade of green. They aren’t profound; they’re not making a statement; they elicit no emotion.
The projector is playing a loop of blank screen to a garbled soundtrack.
I couldn’t help but chuckle at the juxtaposition of the arty porta-potty and the real trash container behind it. Someone tried to open the door of the potty but it was either locked or not real. Note to artist: Why?
Preparing for the Toronto Photowalks Exhibit
20 October – 2 November
Art Square Cafe & Gallery, 334 Dundas St. West (across from the AGO)
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Bau Xi Gallery on Dundas West, across the street from the AGO, is one of my favorite galleries. The artwork that they exhibit is always eclectic and usually interesting.
Two that caught my eye today were by Bratsa Bonifacho.
painting entitled “The Green Zone”
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close up of part of “Ad Rerendum”. The painting is about the size as the one above
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gallery website: www.bau-xi.com
Fourth Annual Art Spin Exhibition,
Tower Automotive Building, 158 Sterling Rd.,
Aug 29 – Sept 1, 2013
18 artists, one old vacant heritage industrial building.
Interesting lighting. Interesting use of the space. Interesting relationships between the installations and their surroundings.
I have not included photos of all the art in the exhibit. My apologies to the artists whose work I haven’t shown.
looking at ‘Sound the Alarm’ by Caroline Larsen’ with the video installation ‘I,I,I,I’ in the foreground
‘We Are Happy’ by Michael Toke. Like a visit to the dentist’s office.
The painting on the wall to the left is ‘Exit Enter’ by Celia Neubauer.
‘Sterling Caer Observer’ by Noel Middleton
‘Untitled’ by Jinny Yu. Three shaped pieces of metal by brick wall.
artist: Mary Grisey
‘Floating in the Eye of the Storm’ by Lois Schklar.
wire sculpture
‘Stillnessence Vivarium’ by John Oswald.
This installation lent itself to a many interpretations.
more information about Art Spin http://www.artspin.ca
The video installation ‘Melting Bricks’ was in small room where it was shown fairly high up on the wall. It was the only source of light in the room. I focused on the relationship between the room and the light when I was taking pictures of it. (my apologies to the artist as I seem to have forgotten his/her name).
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as I walk Toronto 