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A guide to the best exhibitions and events in the visual arts
This year’s theme for CONTACT, “Pervasive Influence,” explores the authority of photography in a society devoted to the image. It asks: what are the illusions that images create, and are they preferable to reality? And how does that relationship transform human behaviour? Art practices today increasingly utilize the codes of advertising, the force of propaganda, the stylization of marketing campaigns—and vice versa. Marshall McLuhan’s theories offer a perfect frame for the theme. His ideas question the social effects of images, mass media and technology, as well as the way one medium of communication relates to, and may ultimately replace, another.
Bonnie Rubenstein is the Artistic Director of CONTACT. The photo festival runs from May 1 to 31 at venues in downtown Toronto.
In “StomeAche,” the Russian-born artist Olga Chagaoutdinova takes a heartbreaking journey into self-discovery. Tragedy, suffering and triumph: it’s all here. In two videos, she addresses the pain that’s settled through generations of preglasnost relatives. Evoking a modern-day Anna Magnani in Roberto Rossellini’s classic 1945 film Roma, città aperta, Chagaoutdinova endures an endless onslaught of crashing waves, emerging from each one open-eyed and hopeful. For those of us searching for our own happy ending, her performance is both magical and inspiring. Patrick Mikhail is the director of Patrick Mikhail Gallery. Olga Chagaoutdinova’s exhibition “Stome-Ache” is on view at the gallery until Apr. 10, 2401 Bank St., Ottawa.
Two intertwining threads run through “Magnetic Norths”: the North as a conceptual fantasy and also as a real space that is the site of colonialism, military enterprise and industrial exploration. On the one hand, there are archival objects like American military blueprints and photos of Alaskan oil fields from the Center for Land Use Interpretation. On the other, the show includes Michael Snow’s La Région Centrale, which frames the northern Quebec landscape as a lunar surface, and Kevin Schmidt’s recreation of Close Encounters of the Third Kind in the Yukon. It’s a diverse collection that revels in fantasy but is also critical of certain real histories.
Charles Stankievech is an artist and curator. He is the organizer of “Magnetic Norths,” which runs to Apr. 17 at the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, 1400, boul. de Maisonneuve O., Montreal.
This exhibition by Gerald Ferguson came out of his desire to continue to paint landscapes, but this time from his car, a technique he called plein air en voiture. He was keen to see what would come out of using a paintbrush again after about 40 years of avoiding it. His enthusiasm was infectious: Jerry would hold up the dirtiest painting in the studio and wait to see your reaction—he loved to see you grapple with it. This was the artist’s last prepared exhibition for the gallery before his death in 2009. It’s difficult to guess what Jerry would have wanted, but as the work is complete and waiting in crates in his studio, showing it now seems like the right thing to do.
Victoria Strange is the co-owner and co-director of Gallery Page and Strange. Gerald Ferguson’s solo exhibition “Landscapes 2008–09” is on view there between March 12 and April 2, 1869 Granville St., Halifax, NS.
Liz Pead, Liss Platt and Leah Modigliani work to shatter the class and gender stereotypes associated with our national pastime in this travelling exhibition prepared by the MacLaren Art Centre. From Apr. 29 to June 19. Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba, 710 Rosser Ave., Brandon, MB.
Saint John, now part of the U.S. Virgin Islands and largely a nature preserve, is home to 400 wild donkeys originally brought to the island by Danish colonials in the 18th century for use on the sugar plantations. They struck me as interesting characters for thinking about this colonial past, something about which Danes today have little awareness. The video piece Looking for Donkeys, like the other works in this show, is about going abroad and returning home to familiar surroundings, and also about moving back and forth in time to consider history and how it intersects with ongoing debates about national self-understanding.
Nanna Debois Buhl is a Danish artist. Her solo show “Looking for Donkeys” is on view March 13 to April 25 at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery, 324–5th Ave. S., Lethbridge.
The explosive drama of international headline news informs a sequence of meticulously staged large-scale photographic tableaux by the Montreal duo. From Apr. 29 to May 22. Nicholas Metivier Gallery, 451 King St. W.
Ordinary materials like concrete, fabric, cardboard, plastic, foam and tape are the starting points for an array of “anti-monuments” in an exhibition of sculptures by the B.C. artists Elspeth Pratt and Lynda Gammon and the Beacon, New York, artist Matt Harle, curated by Micah Lexier. Until May 30. Oakville Galleries, 120 Navy St.
More than 60 drawings, sculptures and dioramas by the Winnipeg-born, NY–based artist make up a mid-career survey that attests to the lasting appeal of Dzama’s unclassifiable, elusive art. To Apr. 25. Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, 185, rue Ste-Catherine O.
Horror-film tropes meet DIY aesthetics in the Saskatchewan-based multidisciplinary artist’s solo exhibition “In Search of Desire,” which features photo and video installations that employ humour and notions of the spectacular to explore issues of nihilism and emotional frustration. Opening May 20. Gallery Connexion, 470 York St., Fredericton, NB.
International notables such as Sam Taylor-Wood, Matthew Barney and Catherine Opie interrogate the issues of gender, spectacle and identity embedded in jock culture in a show subtitled ”Artists Consider Masculinity in Sports.” Opens Apr. 30. Art Gallery of Calgary, 117–8th Ave. S.W.
Aquin uncovers poetic beauty in the midst of China’s ongoing industrial boom in his award-winning photo series “Chinese Dust Bowl.” Until Apr. 10. Stephen Bulger Gallery, 1026 Queen St. W.
From the dynamism of Parisian street scenes to poetic views of the French countryside, this survey show of more than 100 images from the National Gallery of Canada’s permanent collection pays homage to the pioneering vision of French photographers such as Nadar, Eugène Atget, Maxime Du Camp, Édouard Baldus, Gustave Le Gray and Auguste Salzmann, among others. Until May 16. 380 Sussex Dr., Ottawa.
Domesticity and isolation are awkwardly counterposed in a series of photos that profile residents of a queer campground in Quebec through exterior views of their tents, cabins and summer homes. To Apr. 13. Les Territoires, 527–372, rue Ste-Catherine O., Montreal.
Professional musicians are joined by mothers and children to give collective voice to fraught family relationships in this collaborative sound and video installation co-presented by the Art Gallery of Mississauga. Continuing to May 2. Dunlop Art Gallery, 2311–12th Ave., Regina, SK.
Eleven films, two shorts, a public performance and two workshops to take place at the Alberta College of Art + Design
Hear a bestselling author lecture about the Group of Seven, and his related book, on March 25
On February 24, art-world glitterati came out to Koerner Hall in Toronto for the highly anticipated Canadian premiere of Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child. Sold-out screenings were a hallmark of RAFF 2010.
Walker Art Center curator to visit Toronto from May 26 to 28
Panel, book launch, gallery tours and reception to take place Saturday, May 29
Straight from the Sundance Film Festival, Tamra Davis' moving documentary Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child pays homage to her friend, the legendary artist, in his own words
Two top documentaries on Swiss art will be followed by a special Q and A with Beyeler Foundation head Samuel Keller!
Whimsical, fascinating film to premiere at the Reel Artists Film Festival
World, North American and Canadian premieres to be introduced by specially invited artists, authors, curators and directors, including Susan Vogel, Joanne Tod and Barbara Fischer.
This fall, Canadian Art’s young patron group visited the home and studio of Jason McLean, where they toured the artist’s personal collection.
Co-curated by acclaimed artist Robert Gober, “Heat Waves in a Swamp: The Paintings of Charles Burchfield” received high praise during an LA stop last fall. Now, with the show on at Buffalo’s Burchfield Penney Art Center, critic Ashley Johnson talks with Gober about regionalism, realism and reinvention.
In her first solo show at a major North American institution, the Nairobi-born, New York–based artist Wangechi Mutu presents arresting videos and visceral, large-scale collage works. Here, Gabrielle Moser notes the impressive tensions in Mutu’s art.
Light and luminosity have long been top concerns for Montreal artist Marie-Claire Blais. But as Bryne McLaughlin notes, Blais’ latest show of works—created using an auto-industry spray gun—reaches towards a sense of the cosmic as well.
Myfanwy MacLeod is known for forays into modernism’s iconic moments as well as for delving into the vernacular. Here, National Gallery curator Josée Drouin-Brisebois reviews MacLeod’s latest show with an eye to her “high” and “low” influences.
This week, the 28th edition of the Festival International du Film sur l’Art gets underway in Montreal with screenings of 230 films from 23 countries. Here’s Canadian Art’s top FIFA picks for contemporary-art fans.
