On Now >> Matt Donovan and Hallie Siegel @ Olga Korper Gallery
by Heather White
Words are tricky to do originally. They’re a public resource. Like celebrities, they belong to the world. Like cities, they’re an infrastructure allowing hordes of people to co-exist. With words, myriad strangers are perpetually explaining, questioning, or fighting; reading novels, directions, advertisements; writing lists, letters, texts; hearing songs, secrets, broadcasts. At the level of material, writers are like graffiti artists (who, in fact, call themselves writers, because they express themselves through written language). They transform something that was never theirs, and the component parts are always getting reclaimed.
On Now >> Red Sky at Night @ Mercer Union
by Heather White
I love the term ‘close’ for the kind of weather Toronto’s having these days. It’s been extremely humid here, and ‘close’ gets at how that feels: like the very atmosphere has encroached as a tangible presence. Hovering doggedly all day. That you have to keep moving through to get to anything else. This weather makes visceral the way weather always is, fundamentally: inescapable, intimate. Close. We experience it on a basic and immediate level.
On Now: Concrete Island @ Jessica Bradley Projects
by Heather White
Concrete Island – Jed Lind’s current exhibit, at Jessica Bradley Projects – is named for a J.G. Ballard novel that chronicles a man stranded with his Jaguar on an L.A. traffic island, forced to take the decadent vehicle apart to fashion tools to survive. The novel’s urban and automative themes inform the show: sculptures are cast from car parts; photographic collages mix mechanical motifs with imagery of exotic flora that’s overtaken L.A. infrastructure.
On Now >> Road Shots @ O’Born Contemporary
by Heather White
The first image of Road Shots is framed by two pairs of men’s turned backs. Their anonymous forms usher us into the show: a series of altered photographs that is largely about human legacy and that only uses figures here, as introduction. We’re led in and then left alone with the remaining scenes.
Noticed >> Fuzzy Figures
by Heather White
There’s something uncannily similar in these human-shaped, beastly-textured forms, which all appeared (two, in fact, are still appearing) on the walls of Toronto galleries in recent months. Doubtless, the visual resonance has something important to say about the zeitgeist: all this concealing must reveal something of the way we feel about bodies – and how contemporary artists feel about depicting them.
On Now >> God Loves Japan @ MOCCA
by Heather White
Daisuke Takeya’s new installation, God Loves Japan, reaches to MoCCA’s ceiling: the approximate height, in some residential areas, of the tsunami that dominoed the devastation of the artist’s country of birth last spring. The catastrophic connotation of the scale is deliberate but inexact (the average crest was actually much taller); Takeya is not so didactic. The installation is not so sinister. It is not sublime; it doesn’t overwhelm with horror. Instead, it takes the shape of a devastating force, and makes it accessible.
On Now >> Tasman Richardson, Peter Doig, Tim Gardner, Sarah Anne Johnson, and Daisuke Takeya at the MOCCA
By Kate Fane
The MOCCA reopens with otherworldly exhibits from Tasman Richardson, Peter Doig, Tim Gardner, Sarah Anne Johnson, and Daisuke Takeya.
Anticipated >> The Week in Art February 20-27
By Kate Fane
Give the kids some culture at the AGO, Go see The Artist is Present with the artist present, and take a bus tour of contemporary galleries outside the downtown core.
Anticipated >> The Week in Art February 6 – 13
By Kate Fane
Stay in and visit the Gagosian at the VIP Art Fair, find the perfect gift for your slightly unhinged aunt at the Erotic Arts Fair, and put the scene in perspective at the Power Plant speaker series
Pondered >> Alexander Irving & Anders Oinonen: The Inverted Portrait
By Kate Fane
Are we Flatmen or People People? Local artists Alexander Irving and Anders Oinonen take on the viewer response to the portrait.
On Now >> The Tie-Break @ Neubacher Schor Contemporary
by Heather White
The Tie-Break is incredible. The main axis of the exhibit, now at Neubacher Shor Contemporary, is a video work comprising footage from Tibi Tibi Neuspiel and Geoffrey Pugen’s October 2011 Nuit Blanche performance of the same name. That night, for twelve hours, the duo posed as rivals, try and trying again to recreate the famous 1980 tennis match of Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe — stroke for stroke, outburst for outburst.
Anticipated >> The Week in Art January 30-February 5
By Kate Fane
This week: Hear some Thoughtz on Art from Hennessy Youngman, recreate your favourite scene from Titantic with OCAD’s drop-in life drawing sessions, and explore the divine at the Loop Gallery.
Unearthed >> Embellished Reality at the ROM
by Beatrice Paez
The Year of India in Canada may be over, but the ROM has dug up an old collection that mixes established painting styles and photography.
Anticipated >> The Week in Art January 22-29
by Kate Fane
The Toronto art scene can be frightening. These are your best bets in the week ahead.
On Now >> Arthur Desmarteaux and Allison Moore at Open Studio
by Kate Fane
With Micropolis 2.0, Desmarteaux and Moore can’t decide whether they want to instill wonder, awe, or disgust. Granted, all three of these emotions are felt when strolling down King Street on a Saturday night.
Pondered >> Examining “Fridamania”
by Kate Fane
What is it that makes Frida Kahlo – the subject of an upcoming AGO exhibition – so continually popular?
Did you Read it? >> Art and the City
by Lori Starr
Lori Starr isn’t just an ArtSync TV host; she’s an art historian, a museum educator, an arts executive, and a voracious reader. Click through for the reads she’s recommended recently!
[Image at left: Rick Oginz, CN Tower Looking Eastward, 2007].
Pondered >> Elitism vs. Populism : Interactive art
by Kate Fane
Is the recent popularity of interactive art signalling a move towards more accesible, community-oriented works? Or will it end up devaluing art entirely?
Postmortem >> Edith Dakovic
by Barbara Isherwood
Sculptor Edith Dakovic’s exhibition The Sameness of Differences is a classic example of a “you had to be there” show. The works, which she describes as “wall skins”, play with the relativity of colour using models inspired by Bauhaus colour theorists Johannes Itten and Josef Albers.
Postmortem >> Fausta Facciponte
by Barbara Isherwood
My first interview for ArtSyncTV went well, thanks to my fabulous guest, Fausta Facciponte, and interviewing tips from ArtSyncTV host Mike Hansen: “Make it a conversation.”
On Now >> Bogdan Luca @ LE Gallery
by Heather White
From the edge of one of Bogdan Luca’s new paintings, it’s hard to say where you are. Structures intersect impossibly and figures group incongruously, like in dreams. But the brushstrokes are too angular and the compositions too stringent for dreamscape.
Pondered >> Deer Art
by Heather White
Two fake deer watched Mike Hansen interview Robert Hengeveld at the opening of the artist’s Natural Revision. One was perched atop a cliff of cardboard, wood, and astroturf; the other was nestled further down the synthetic escarpment that Hengeveld has installed at Mercer Union. Both were framed by artificial evergreens; a tinsel-based waterfall ran between them.
Noticed >> Monochromes
by Heather White
Monochromes are back! The proof is in the pudding: three concurrent Toronto shows that consider their conceptual, political, and formal implications, respectively.
