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A guide to the best exhibitions and events in the visual arts
Damian Moppett’s exhibition “The Sculptor’s Studio is a Painting” follows the artist’s recent six-month residency in London. The title is poignant; the exhibition will be an installation of interwoven relationships between media, where paintings collapsing off the wall take on a sculptural entanglement. Plaster and paint merge to form his well-known Caryatid figure, yet now we will view it severed, lacquered to black and suspended from a sculptural scaffold of a cage. Damian’s new work continues to explore the artist’s insertion into art history while complicating that trajectory.
Catriona Jeffries is the owner and director of Catriona Jeffries Gallery in Vancouver. Damian Moppett’s latest work is on view there through June 26, 274 E. 1st Ave.
Jeff Wall co-curates an overview of paintings by one of the pre-eminent chroniclers of 20th-century African-American life and history. To Jan. 3. Vancouver Art Gallery, 750 Hornby St.
Non-linear and disjunctive narrative modes are foregrounded in a group show of newmedia art. To July 11. Presentation House Gallery, 333 Chesterfield Ave., N. Vancouver.
Works by an all-star cast of Canadian and international artists form the first of a trio of exhibitions arguing for the continuing relevance of the traditional academic genres. Through Aug. 22. Contemporary Art Gallery, 555 Nelson St., Vancouver.
“At the Far Edge of Words,” a survey show of works in numerous media spanning more than three decades, testifies to the Ontario artist’s particular genius for creating ”political art expressed poetically.” June 18 through Aug. 22. Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, 1825 Main Mall, Vancouver.
The exhibition “Breathless Days 1959–1960” is a radiographic analysis of an extraordinary cultural and political moment: people worldwide were trying to make sense of the Cuban Revolution and the Nixon-Khrushchev Kitchen Debate, and Abstract Expressionism was at its apogee, but under pressure as countercultural literary and musical currents were beginning to exert influence within visual art. The show casts a wide geographic net and includes, for example, Brazilian concrete poetry, a painting by Roy Kiyooka, collage books and work from the Bay Area that demonstrates how the jazz and Beat aesthetics were becoming powerful forces in the cultural mainstream.
John O’Brian is Professor of Art History, Visual Art and Theory at the University of British Columbia. He is the co-organizer of a conference to be held in conjunction with the exhibition “Breathless Days 1959–1960: A Chronotopic Experiment,” on view at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery from April 15 to June 6, 1825 Main Mall, Vancouver.
The veteran Vancouver-based artist known for combining mythological subject matter, Northwest Coast design elements and a barbed political sensibility makes a splash with a pair of spring exhibitions: Buschlen Mowatt Gallery hosts a new set of the largescale paintings Yuxweluptun is best known for, while a series of hybrid figurative/ovoid portrait studies on paper appear alongside a new sculpture at the Contemporary Art Gallery. To March 30/March 18 to May 16. 1445 W. Georgia St./555 Nelson St., Vancouver.
Works by Walead Beshty, Mark Soo, James Welling and others join photo pieces by the Bauhaus pioneer László Moholy-Nagy to measure contemporary artists’ continuing interest in the abstract and formalist potential of the photographic medium. On view through Apr. 4. Blanket Contemporary Art, 235 Alexander St., Vancouver.
The ultimate Renaissance man, Leonardo da Vinci spent a lifetime fruitfully combining his artistic genius and his interest in science and the human body in particular. In the exhibition ”The Mechanics of Man,” Leonardo’s Anatomical Manuscript A, a suite of extraordinarily detailed, accurate and artful anatomical drawings dating from 1510, is on view in its entirety for the first time ever in a oncein-a-lifetime presentation lent by no less a personage than Queen Elizabeth II. To May 2. Vancouver Art Gallery, 750 Hornby St.
Dramatic installation works by seven notable Indian practitioners (including Sudarshan Shetty’s Taj-Mahal, a room-sized construction made of hundreds of miniature replicas of the storied architectural monument) form a group response to both India’s historical legacy and its latter-day emergence as a pre-eminent cultural and economic power. Apr. 26 to June 13. Richmond Art Gallery, 7700 Minoru Gate, Richmond.
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.
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.
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.
The post-Murakami face of Japanese contemporary art comes to light in this exhibition of work by six emerging and mid-career artists who engage with the realities of globalism while reconnecting with tradition and lived (i.e. non-digital) experience. Opens Jan. 29. Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, 1040 Moss St.
A trio of wall-mounted installations by Kydd are composed of numerous video “vignettes” that blur the lines between photography and film, resulting in a set of meditative, thoughtfully observed, not-quite-still-life portraits of the outskirts of Vancouver and L.A. and the inhabitants of these marginal areas. To Jan. 3. Vancouver Art Gallery, 750 Hornby St., Vancouver.
Talk to take place January 26 at the Art Gallery of Ontario
Canadian premiere of new Marina Abramović documentary to be fêted February 22 at the TIFF Bell Lightbox
All our best wishes for the new year to come
Talks by Dan Cameron and Annie Cohen-Solal, free gallery programs among highlights of 2011
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Free exhibition at the Power Plant highlights our nation’s emerging painting stars
Award in Portrait Photography category recognizes Donald Weber's artist project in the Fall 2010 issue
More than 300 GTA teens enjoy free downtown-Toronto gallery talks during this fall’s School Hop
In 2010, at the age of 35, Toronto artist/DJ/promoter/activist Will Munro succumbed to brain cancer. Here, David Balzer reviews the first big survey of Munro’s work, which makes apparent how talented, prolific and perceptive this creator was.
The Dulwich Picture Gallery’s recent Group of Seven show was one of the UK museum’s biggest hits ever, drawing 41,000 visitors. The attention was deserved, writes Sarah Milroy, as the exhibition offered new insights even to seasoned Canadian-art observers.
The Occupy movement has galvanized the way we think about haves and have-nots. But where do artists fit in? As Joseph R. Wolin observes in this review of David Altmejd’s show at the Brant Foundation, context can be as powerful as content in determining the split.
What happens to identity when our relationship to land and language is disrupted? This is a key question raised in “A Stake in the Ground,” an exhibition of works by 25 First Nations artists, curated by Nadia Myre, that’s currently at Montreal gallery Art Mûr.
Our education and careers site has just posted more stories and tips to help students achieve a great winter term. Highlights include a profile of internationally renowned fashion designer Jeremy Laing, a Q&A on grad schools and more.
