‘Solid State’ an exhibit of sculptures made from found material that are then cast in bronze, by An Te Liu at the Toronto Sculpture Garden on King Street East. This is one of the Nuit Blanche installations that is still on view. It is co-produced by MOCCA (Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art) and the City of Toronto.
below: Three sculptures. From left to right are: 1. Meta-matic, 2. Tourist, and 3. Ascension
below: Vegetable, Mineral
below: Remains of the Day
Silent Knight by Ekow Nimako,
a sculpture of a barn owl using more than 50,000 pieces of LEGO,
on display in front of the Gardiner Museum as an extended Nuit Blanche exhibit
#snbTO
Two new additions to the statues in Legends Row outside the Air Canada Center showed up on this past weekend. Mats Sundin and Borje Salming have taken their place alongside Darryl Sittler, Ted Kennedy and Johnny Bower. Salming is cheering from behind the boards while Sundin is on the ice. I’d say that was Sundin was ready for action but he needs to get his stick on the ice first. Maybe the game is over and the Maple Leafs have something to celebrate?
below: Mats Sundin, born in Sweden in 1971. He joined the Maple Leafs in 1994 and played 13 seasons for them. He was captain for 11 of those years and with the exception of 2002-03, he led the team in scoring points every year. He was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2012.
below: Salming cheers while Darryl Sittler goes over the boards. Borje Salming, also born in Sweden, played defence for the Maple Leafs between 1973 and 1989. He played over 1000 games. He has been a member of the Hockey Hall of Fame since 1996.
The first three statues, Darryl Sittler, Ted Kennedy and Johnny Bower, were installed earlier this year.
Animals, people, and figures from his Inuit culture and tradition
carved and sculpted from bones, ivory and stones,
the work of Manasie Akapaliapik, Art Gallery of Ontario, until June 2015
The last block at the south end of Bay Street is closed to traffic at the moment because of the continuing, i.e. never ending, construction on Queens Quay. In that block there are now three pieces of public art. The most recent addition is a large photograph by Sarah Ann Johnson that covers a large portion of the west wall of the Westin Harbour Castle Conference Centre.
‘Best Beach’ is a welcome addition to the bunker-like structure of the Westin Hotel. It is part of this year’s CONTACT photography festival and it is scheduled to remain here until the end of December. StreetARToronto and Partners in ART also played a role in bringing this project to life.
UPDATED: There is now a youtube video on this installation, produced by the City of Toronto.
Two small sculptures are also on this block, one on the SW corner of Harbour and Bay and the other on the NW corner of Queens Quay and Bay. Both are difficult to take photos of!
First, ‘The Wave’ by Ivan Kostov
Second, ‘Nautilius’ by Judith Schwarz
Toronto has a habit of cluttering up its sidewalks and public art like this one tends to become just another part of the mess. There is no overall plan. Placement of public art might look great on paper but does anyone take into consideration all the other stuff? Stuff that doesn’t appear on architects’ drawings – the garbage bins, newspaper boxes, TTC signs, phone booths, no parking signs, hydro poles, and such things like that.
And lastly, I couldn’t resist this little guy who’s stuck on a Bell payphone.
Lineal Order
Part of an art installation by George Boileau, 1990,
on Simcoe St., between King and Wellington.
A bronze statue of a bare footed man wearing an overcoat.
Behind him on the wall is ‘his shadow’.
Not seen in this photo is another figurative sculpture. A small boy stands on the other side of the stairs. He too is bare foot and wearing a coat. He is looking toward the shadow on the wall.
Time Cone
by Brad Golden and Lynn Eichenberg, 1996.
With help from Christopher Dewdney, poet.
In front of 25 Sheppard Ave West on the SE corner of Sheppard and Beecroft.
A 15 cm stainless steel ribbon, supported by four steel beams, winds its way up to the cone at the top. Cut out of the steel are words that pertain to the geology of the area. ‘Precambrian’ is the bottom word. Other words include Pleistocene Glaciation, Gull River Limestone, Cenozic, Don, and Thorncliffe Till.
extra: In geology, ’till’ is unsorted unstratified material deposited directly by glacial ice.
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.
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?
The Ontario Fire Fighters Memorial is near the corner of Queens Park Crescent and Grosvenor Street.
The names of fallen fire fighters are engraved on black stone.
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as I walk Toronto 