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A guide to the best exhibitions and events in the visual arts
The exhibition “An Invitation to an Infiltration” grew out of my interest in interventions by artists and institutional critique, and how perverse it is that the relationship between galleries and artists making this kind of work has turned into a cozy, comfortable arrangement. I wanted to see if the original antagonistic impulse behind this work could be recovered through artificial means, through a group show of interventions—this was inspired by Andrea Fraser’s insights about the natural tension inherent in group exhibitions as well as by the theme of competition offered by the context of the Vancouver Olympics.
Eric Fredericksen is a freelance writer and curator and the director of Western Bridge art space in Seattle. He is the curator of “An Invitation to an Infiltration,” on view at the Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver from Jan. 22 to Feb. 28, 555 Nelson St.
For The End, my collaborator, Davíd Thór Jónsson, and I performed a mainly instrumental country-and-western piece of our own composition on guitars, piano, bass and drums in different outdoor locations in Banff, Alberta, in the middle of winter. It became a five-screen video installation, with the different scenes spread around the room, surrounding the viewer. The work was intended to be like an acoustic experiment: a combination of the three-dimensional sound of the German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen and country music, set in the epic, romantic landscapes of the Rocky Mountains. When this piece was shown last summer at Iceland’s pavilion at the Venice Biennale, I thought it was good that people could pop in and be immersed in these vast, cold landscapes in the midst of the claustrophobic heat of the Italian summer.
Ragnar Kjartansson is an Icelandic artist. His video installation The End opens at the Banff Centre’s Walter Phillips Gallery on Jan. 23.
This exhibition reads like a hot novel filled with alter-ego self-portraits: the works show a nurse, a trial, a stewardess and a banquet. It’s about history and theatre, the artist and the muse. I work very much like a playwright or a theatre director since I invent characters. Even characters from my past keep knocking at my door, saying, “You got a job for me?” It’s constantly unfinished business but it’s always a bigger social picture that interests me.
Natalka Husar is a Toronto artist. Her show “Burden of Innocence” runs to Jan. 17 at the McMaster Museum of Art, 1280 Main St. W., Hamilton, and opens Feb. 3 at the Macdonald Stewart Art Centre, 358 Gordon St., Guelph.
Krista Buecking’s drawings of architectural icons in ruin formed the starting point for a 2007 group show at the gallery about the state of “seeming to be” something. LOVE SONG FOR A FUTURE GENERATION continues this theme of the relic with paired drawings of historical “fragments” that suggest a collapse of time, of progress and of the status of objects. Her work has a meticulous quality that reminds me of Colette Whiten or Robert Wiens, and her architectural references echo Robin Collyer, Didier Courbot and Scott Lyall.
Susan Hobbs is the director of Susan Hobbs Gallery. Krista Buecking’s solo exhibition runs Dec. 17 to Jan. 30, 137 Tecumseth St.
I fell in love with Eija-Liisa Ahtila’s art in 1999, when I saw a work called Consolation Service, about a couple in the throes of divorce. In one scene, we see a baby handed from mother to counsellor and then to father during a therapy session as the parents literally bark at one another in a violent, primal and ultimately cathartic exchange. Eija-Liisa is an awesome, serious and occasionally comically absurd filmmaker who coldly dramatizes powerful emotions, plunging us deep inside psychological states— loss, madness, adolescent sexuality— while scrambling our perception of events in space and time in ways that make us think about how images and words unfold in narrative.
John Zeppetelli is Curator at DHC/ART Foundation for Contemporary Art in Montreal. Eija-Liisa Ahtila’s solo show opens there on Jan. 29, 451/465, rue St-Jean.
Evan Lee’s Flashers works are painting/photo hybrids that explore the dynamics at play in the new world of Internet-based boudoir photography while making ref- erence to the medium’s technological history. Lee’s work joins that of Hye Rim Lee, Larry Clark, Alison Yip, Douglas Coupland and others in a group exhibition surveying how artists have addressed voyeurism and the sexualized body. Jan. 14 to Feb. 14. Monte Clark Gallery, 2339 Granville St., Vancouver.
The acclaimed duo’s largest sound installation to date, The Murder of Crows, a three-part work that references a 1799 Goya etching, makes its North American debut alongside Storm Room, a new piece created for the opening of the recently renovated Art Gallery of Alberta. From Jan. 31. 2 Sir Winston Churchill Sq., Edmonton.
Remote seaside towns in Ireland and Newfoundland inspire six artists’ evocative works in sound and photography. From Feb. 25. Sir Wilfred Grenfell College Art Gallery, University Dr., Corner Brook, NL.
The quirky personal collection of Nova Scotia’s one-time Lieutenant-Governor, George Ramsay, reflects his considerable influence on 19th-century art in Canada. Jan. 15 to March 7. Dalhousie Art Gallery, 6101 University Ave., Halifax, NS.
The curator Roald Nasgaard shines fresh light on the abstract techniques and anti-establishment thinking of Montreal’s Automatiste painters with 60 key works by Borduas, Riopelle and others. To Feb. 28. Varley Art Gallery, 216 Main St., Unionville.
“Tut mania” swept across Canada in 1979 thanks to a monumental exhibition of objects and artifacts from the Egyptian pharaoh’s era that appeared at the Art Gallery of Ontario. The fever returns to Toronto this winter with an updated and expanded version of that show, featuring more than 100 ancient treasures dating from 2600 BC to 600 BC. Until Apr. 18. Art Gallery of Ontario, 317 Dundas St. W. Please note this article has been updated and corrected.
Large-scale sculptures and paintings reinterpret monumentality. Jan. 14 to Feb. 20. Parisian Laundry, 3550, rue St-Antoine O., Montreal.
One of Canada’s most accomplished painters, Koop is perhaps best known for her dreamy and spare imaginary landscapes. A heretofore unexplored dimension of her practice comes into view in a new exhibition, “Face to Face,” which gathers portraits and figurative works spanning 25 years and establishes Koop’s interest in representing otherness via imagery drawn from Chinese culture and robotics. To Jan. 10. Richmond Art Gallery, 7700 Minoru Gate.
In a pair of textile installations, Wells wittily questions how humans portray the natural world, noting that our representations of animals tend to occupy an uncertain status somewhere between toy and scientific specimen. To Jan. 8. Le Petit Trianon Gallery, 104–5th St. S., Lethbridge.
The well-known pinhole photographer has incorporated painted elements into a set of new works based on imagery gathered during her travels within Canada and abroad. Through Jan. 16. Newzones Gallery, 730–11th Ave. S.W., Calgary.
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
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.
Canadian Art launched its much-anticipated winter issue at Leo Kamen Gallery in Toronto on Wednesday, December 16, 2009.
The spring issue of Canadian Art hits newsstands and computer screens across the country this week, offering many must-read articles. Web extras on cover artist Althea Thauberger and the 2010 Governor General’s Awards also excite.
In his latest solo show, Adrian Norvid mashes up art-world fundraiser antics with exquisite-corpse techniques. Add in DIY flair and painstaking attention to detail, and you’ve got another wild voyage into Norvid’s wacky parallel universe.
Libraries of books have been written on abstraction in painting. But it’s abstraction in photography that gets the focus with “Photogenic,” a Vancouver show that features 1920s work by László Moholy-Nagy alongside contemporary artists’ prints.
Hamilton is the only Canadian stop for a new exhibition, curated by NYU photo chair Deborah Willis, that interrogates notions of beauty and blackness. As reviewer Sally Frater observes, Willis’ approach provides antidotes to some longstanding art conundrums.
David Merritt is having a trio of related exhibitions in southern Ontario this year. In his review of the project’s first iteration, “shim,” Sky Glabush marvels at Merritt’s ability to meander between objective clarity and deferred, slippery potential.
