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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.
Full talks and tours schedule, Douglas Coupland conversation info, and magazine launch details posted for free day of activities
Applications due May 9 for $55,000 in prizes
Free art tours for high-school students to take place in April and May
New writers on contemporary art encouraged to apply by June 1
Dates already set for next year’s Toronto festival
Applications for this $7,000 student award are due April 6
Event to feature a conversation with Douglas Coupland, gallery tours, a magazine launch and more
Films on Shary Boyle, Elmgreen & Dragset, Michel de Broin and Jon Gnarr set to open the festival on March 22
Opening-night celebration and art-industry talks highlight fifth year of fair
Don’t miss the North American premieres of films on Candida Höfer and Thomas Struth, happening February 23
The 85-year-old artist Arnaud Maggs nudged out Fred Herzog and Alain Paiement as winner of the second annual Scotiabank Photography Award, announced last night in Toronto. This $50,000 win follows the opening of a major Maggs survey at the National Gallery of Canada.
As one of the primary exhibitions for Contact 2012, “Public: Collective Identity | Occupied Spaces” is ambitious. Charlene K. Lau observes that the two-venue show mirrors the fractures of contemporary life: public and private, visible and invisible, place and non-place.
In this review, writer and artist Joni Murphy considers Abbas Akhavan’s current solo show in Montreal, which activates a variety of themes—war and art, destruction and nation building, human and animal—with a distinctively light touch.
Melding William Morris-style ornamentation with more contemporary concerns, artist Luke Painter detours around dry academicism for something more vibrant and visceral. Mariam Nader reviews his current Toronto show at LE Gallery, finding depth in decoration.
Frieze opened its first New York edition last week with some surprising highlights: sculptures that were free for public viewing outside the big commercial tent. Canadian Art art director Barbara Solowan was there, and brought back this slideshow.
