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February 28, 2024

Judy Chicago: HERSTORY at the New Museum, NYC

In one of the pieces from her massive retrospective at the New Museum — covering sixty years of art making — Judy Chicago invites us to consider a simple question: What if Women Ruled the World? The responses are compiled in a sprawl of hopeful texts, manifest in needlework, that most feminine of forms.

“There would be no wars.” “The Earth would be saved by humanity instead of being destroyed by it.” “The first step would be to abolish gender norms and deconstruct the entire hetero-patriarchal, racist and classist system that surrounds us.” “Not one mass shooter in the US was female.” “There is no need for violence when we use our hearts.”

In anyone else’s hands this piece might come off as naive or reductive, but there is something about Judy Chicago’s method — what she refers to as “call and response” collaboration — through which she is able to harnass an outpouring of honesty from many participants. The result is that the artwork has a powerful impact. It is urgent and exciting.

Installation view of “What If Women Ruled the World” by Judy Chicago

Detail of “What if Women Ruled the World” by Judy Chicago

This is a big show, going all the way back to painted car hoods Judy Chicago produced in the mid sixties.

Installation view of Herstory by Judy Chicago

And then there were the wonderful smoke performances from the seventies.

But these early artworks are not the reason for Judy Chicago’s giant retrospective at the New Museum.

“Herstory” will showcase Chicago’s tremendous impact on American art and highlight her critical role as a cultural historian claiming space for women artists previously omitted from the canon.
New Museum description of Judy Chicago: Herstory

It is this role as a cultural historian which Judy Chicago fully inhabits in her artwork called “City of Ladies.” The piece is a show-within-a-show in which nearly ninety artworks by notable women from history are on display.

Installation view “The City of Ladies” by Judy Chicago

Hilma af Klint, *Group IX/UW, The dove, no.2* (1915) from “The City of Ladies”

Gluck (Hannah Gluckstein), *Portrait of Miss E.M. Craig* (1920) from “The City of Ladies”

In an interview about “The City of Ladies” Judy Chicago often mentions a certain “Christine.” It took me a while to figure out she meant Christine de Pizan, who wrote “The Book of the City of Ladies” in 1404. Christine de Pizan lived from 1365 to 1430 and is thought to be the author of some of the very first feminist pieces of literature.

From compendium of Christine de Pizan’s works.
Shows the author lecturing to a group of men. Created in her scriptorium in Paris in 1413.

A brochure provided by the New Museum is a compendium of the women included in the show, and contains a short but detailed biography of each: Hilma af Klint, Claude Cahun, Leonora Carrington, Elizabeth Catlett, Emily Dickinson, Artemisia Gentieschi, Zora Neale Hurston…among many others.

Wounded Deer, by Frida Kahlo (1946) from “The City of Ladies”

As Judy Chicago says: “If you bring Judy Chicago into the museum, you bring women’s history into the museum.”

“The International Honor Quilt,” another “call and response” project, is composed of 539 individual triangular quilts, produced by women from around the world. Each triangle celebrates a woman, a women’s group or a feminist issue, and together they create a joyful depiction of global female solidarity.

Installation view “The International Honor Quilt” by Judy Chicago

Detail of “The International Quilt of Honor” by Judy Chicago

Mostly global icons, like Queen Elizabeth II, are represented, but there are also lots of obscure women’s groups and a few mythological, religious, fictional women make the cut, for example: Deborah, Demeter, Eve, Isis, Nancy Drew, Persephone, Virgin Mary and, weirdly, the Loch Ness Monster.

Parts of the show seem too binary. Are all women good because they can give birth and all men are evil warmongers? That part of the show — despite the beauty of the massive collaborative tapestries — struck me as an illustration of the limits of second wave feminism.

I prefered looking at her most recent work, where she meditates on death and the climate crisis.

But wait, the big thing, the thing I heard about for decades, the thing that defines Judy Chicago — “The Dinner Party” — was not there. It was a ghostly presence throughout, constantly referenced, but absent.

I was obliged to journey to Brooklyn, change to the 2/3 at Hoyt, past Grand Army Plaza and The Botanic Gardens, onward, to Eastern Parkway and the stately Brooklyn Museum, where Judy Chicago’s famous work is permanently lodged.

Entrance to “The Dinner Party” by Judy Chicago at the Brookly Museum

Detail of “The Dinner Party” by Judy Chicago

It was a long trip, but it was worth it.

January 13, 2024

Ron Giii – “The Effect of Temperature”

at Paul Petro Contemporary Art

It’s mid-January and winter has arrived on Queen Street. As I round the corner from Ossington and walk east, the scene is windswept, bleak and grey. Not so, however, within Paul Petro Contemporary Art. Paintings and works on paper by Ron Giii are on display, and suddenly I am in an atmosphere suffused with life, heat and light.

Installation view “The Effect of Temperature” by Ron Giii

The title of the exhibition, “The Effect of Temperature,” points to the climate crisis which looms over us all. Many of the names of the small works — The Hot Sun, The Melting Greenland Glaciers, Somali Famine — overtly reference the global menace of our heating planet.

Here’s a quote about the climate threat, from the artist, which is posted on the gallery website:

This exhibit is humbly aware of a greater nature the laws of nature have, and climate change is the reality we have designated. My small paintings cannot cry at the dangers coming amidst the deluge.
Ron Giii

The small works on paper, which have a powerful intensity, make me think of those NASA photographs from the Webb Telescope, of distant suns, dying or being born. On the other hand, they are reminiscent of infinitesimally small things too. Cells for instance or pictures of mitochondria itself.

“Time is the Daughter of Space” by Ron Giii

A few of the small paintings on paper appear to have been ripped apart and put back together with strips of clear tape. According to Paul Petro these artworks “… were destroyed by the artist during a bipolar disorder episode last year following which the artist attempted to repair the works by puzzling them back together and taping the tears. In conversation, it was agreed that these works would be consolidated with archival tapes on the verso, with the assistance of a paper conservator, to stabilize them, and that these works would be shown in order to provide a level of transparency that would welcome his disability into the conversation. Giii has subsequently referenced the Japanese kintsugi concept of repair, and finding the beauty in the broken in this work. He has lived with the challenges posed by bipolar disorder, and an original misdiagnosis of schizophrenia, for most of his adult life.”

In talking about his work Ron Giii acknowledges the influence of various philosophers, of geometry, of his long term interest in quantum physics and, most recently, of the writings of the British evolutionary biochemist Nick Lane.

For Ron Giii, it was Nick Lane’s research into the origins of life and his descriptions of various electrochemical processes that directly inspired the striped paintings, which he calls parallel membranes, a phrase that turns up in Nick Lane’s book Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death.

Stripes are a thing for many artists. Here are just a few examples:

Danel Buren used colored stripes, in site-specific situations, as a way of relating art to its setting. As a Frenchman, he was comfortable with the classic French fabric motif.

Canadian artist, Guido Molinari, sought pure abstraction in his work. To that end he completely eliminated the horizontal from his canvases, and thus any suggestion of depth.

Frank Stella was also looking to eliminate by using stripes. In his case, it was emotion. The stripes did it. They got rid of all that messy action painting splatter and opened the door to minimalism.

“The Marriage of Reason and Squalor” by Frank Stella

And just upstairs from the Ron Giii is an exhibition of ink washes by Francesco De la Barra. Here, the artist deploys stripes as a unifying motif in this dreamy suite of sensuous, poolside imagery.

So far, Ron Giii’s stripes are my favourite.

January 4, 2024

Koffler Center of the Arts

The Synagogue at Babyn Yar: Turning the Nightmare of Evil into a Shared Dream of Good

Giant photographs by Edward Burtynsky — leafless trees arrayed on a snowy incline — cover the walls of the current exhibition at the Koffler Gallery and provide a backdrop to the main subject of the show.

Installation detail from “The Synagogue at Babyn Yar”

That subject is the Synagogue at Babyn Yar, an extraordinary and entirely unique Jewish temple, built on the edge of a ravine — presumably the ravine depicted in Edward Burtynsky’s photo murals — which was the site of the horrifying massacre of much of Kyiv’s Jewish population.

*An aerial photograph of the Babi Yar ravine taken by the German air force*

The slaughter took place on September 29, 1941. More than 33,000 men, women and children were murdered on that date.

Until the conclusion of the war, and then after 1945 under the Soviets, any memorializing of the events at Babyn Yar was suppressed. It wasn’t until 1991, when Ukraine became independent, that monuments were erected at the site. In the exhibition catalogue essay, by curator Robert Jan Van Pelt, The Synagogue at Babyn Yar is described as one of the more “playful interventions on the site, to be constructed over an extended period.” It was completed in 2021.

The Synagogue was designed by Swiss architect Manuel Herz. It is constructed of wood, specifically 100 year old oak from the regional forests. With brilliantly painted interiors, wood was the traditional material used to build synagogues in Eastern Europe (none of which survive) since the seventeenth century.

Handshouse Studio, Replica of the roof and bimah of the Gwoździec synagogue in the Polin Museum, Poland

In writing about this project Manuel Herz, explains that while starting from the idea of a book, his proposal was to create a sort of “pop-up version,” one that is opened or unfolded by a ritualized group effort.

If we conceptualize the synagogue as a building typology in its purest essence, we can consider it as a book. During the religious service, a congregation comes together, to collectively read a book – the Siddur (the book of prayers) or the Bible. The shared reading of the book opens a world of wisdom, morals, history and anecdotes to the congregation. It is this notion that informs the design of the new Babyn Yar Synagogue.
Manuel Herz, architect and designer of the Synagogue at Babyn Yar

When it is not being used the Synagogue is folded in on itself. Weathered grey in colour, the temple forms a tall, slim rectangle that appears to hover above the ground on a platform.

The Synagogue at Babyn Yar in its closed configuration.

The Synagogue in its pop-up state at Babyn Yar

The walls are covered with prayers and painted with images of animals and plants. The ceiling indicates the night sky on that date, depicting flowers as constellations.

The exhibition contains maps of the ravine, numerous photographs documenting the past and present at the site, a scale model of the Synagogue, writings and poetry describing the terrible events that took place, films discussing the construction process, and finally, an enclosed space where the visitor to the exhibition is able to view a simulation of the night sky at that date and time and place, and observe as it transforms into the decorated Synagogue ceiling.

Ceiling design, based on night sky September 29, 1941, over Kyiv

Detail of installation from The Synagogue at Babyn Yar

The show includes selections of poetry by Yevgeny Yevtushenko, a Russian poet born in Siberia in 1933.

Yevtushenko became known in Russia and internationally during the Khrushchev era, when his poem about Babyn Yar was published. “No monument stands over Babi Yar. A drop sheer as a crude gravestone. I am afraid,” is how the poem begins.

Here are a few key dates in the recent history of Ukraine:

1918 – Ukraine declares independence after Russian Revolution.

1921 – Soviet rule established as Russian Red Army conquers two-thirds of Ukraine.

1932 – At least seven million peasants perish in man-made famine during Stalin’s collectivisation campaign.

1941-44 – Ukraine suffers terrible wartime devastation during Nazis occupation.

1945 – Allied victory in Second World War leads to conclusive Soviet annexation of west Ukrainian lands.

1986 – A reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power station explodes, sending a radioactive plume across Europe.

1991 – As the Soviet Union heads towards dissolution, Ukraine declares independence.

2004 – Orange Revolution mass protests force pro-European change of government.

2014 February – Maidan Revolution ousts pro-Kremlin government over stalled European Union association deal. Russia subsequently seizes Crimean peninsula and launches insurgency to occupy parts of eastern Ukraine.

2022 February – Russia launches full-scale invasion of Ukraine., President Zelensky rallies resistance to the invasion. Russia initially takes large areas of eastern Ukraine as part of its attempt to overthrow the government.

A volunteer walked me through the exhibition at the Koffler Gallery. He was a nice guy and very informative.

“Have you visited Ukraine?” I asked him.

“No,” he said, “I would like to. But now is not a good time.”

October 19, 2023

Inter/Access:

Remember Tomorrow – A Telidon Story

There was a warm, fuzzy feeling at Inter/Access on the evening of October 19, 2023. The organization was celebrating 40 years as a center dedicated to expanding the cultural significance of art and technology.

Before that evening I did not know that Inter/Access was originally named Toronto Community Videotex or TCV, and that it was first set up as a non-profit, artist run corporation to provide tools for artists using Telidon.

Yes, Telidon. The Telidon program, a television-based information-sharing system that allowed users to browse computer databases, was developed by the long gone Canadian government department called the CRC (Communications Research Center.) The program began officially on August 15, 1978 and ended on March 31, 1985.

“Transmitting Information over Telephone Lines,” diagram from Inter/Access website.

Wandering around the show I got the feeling the Telidon developers were so close to something, groping around in the virtual landscape — blindly, unable to quite make it happen — but knowing, absolutely, they were there, at the beginning of something.

Telidon was a proto-type for the Internet. It was a 24/7 source for information. All you needed, as a user, was a Telidon terminal and a keypad. It was interactive! I think it was the interactivity part that really got the original Telidon artists hooked.

Detail of “She Seemed to be in Transit” by Johanne Daoust, produced using Telidon

The concept of simultaneity was another idea that was intoxicating to artists. Toronto gallerist Paul Petro, one of the original founders of TCV and an artist using Telidon, spoke during the evening about the excitement of hosting an art opening in three different cities, at the same time!

An early “selfie” created with Telidon by Paul Petro

The images created with Telidon have a blythe, cheerful, pop art look. They are rendered in time as layers load and intersect in a satisfying, somewhat hypnotic, display.

Installation view of “Remember Tomorrow – A Telidon Story” at Inter/Access

This exhibition explores the allure of Eighties hardware and, well, I guess you could call it lifestyle. Big television sets that look like credenzas, potted palms and wow, orange shag have been lovingly installed in the Inter/Access gallery.

Lots of obsolete hardware is on display. By lifting a telephone receiver and pressing “rewind” and then “play” on a tape deck the gallery visitor can listen to interviews with participating artists. (Unfortunately several of the taped interviews had been inadvertently erased during the exhibition because users were unaware of the lost art of “removing the tab” from a cassette tape to prevent just this type of mishap.)

The exhibition catalog, put together by curator Shauna Jean Doherty, contains the most endearing story about the Telidon artworks selected for the Venice Biennale of 1986. Created on a series of floppy disks and “playable only using specialized hardware” the artworks were indeed shipped to Italy for the big show, but because of technical difficulties they were never put on view, and instead sat in a cardboard box for four decades.

The whole show has a sort of elegiac feel to it. Maybe it’s about mourning the loss of innocence in regard to technology.

The past is but the beginning of a beginning, and all that is or has been is but the twilight of the dawn…”
Douglas Parkhill, one of the father’s of Telidon, quoting HG Wells in a report chronicling Telidon’s history, from the exhibition catalogue.

The developers definitely did have a romantic view of that brief, Telidon moment. There were some catchy words and phrases that picked up the “beginning of the beginning” vibe and quickly rose and fell: Whatever happened to “informatics,” “Instant World,” “Telematic Culture” or the “Information Paradigm?”

Detail of Installation view, “Tomorrow Remembered – A Telidon Story” at Inter/Access

But it hasn’t all disappeared. Thanks to John Durno, head of Library Systems at the University of Victoria, an operational Telidon decoder does exist and numerous Telidon artworks have been restored and are ready to be returned to Venice for a conference this year.

“Telidon Commercial,” Telidon image by Don Lindsay

1983..1983…1983…? To be honest, I can’t recall anything specific about that fateful year. Fortunately we now have the Internet to fill in the blanks:

In 1983:
The metric system of weights and measures was officially adopted by the Canadian federal government.
25 Red Brigades were sentenced to life for kidnapping and murdering Italian Christian Democrat politician Aldo Moro in 1978.
Singer and drummer of The Carpenters, Karen Carpenter, died from complications caused by eating disorder anorexia nervosa, age 32.
Though already available in Japan and Europe, Sony and Philips released their CD players in the US and Canada. Though a compact disc player costs over $1000, they prove to be extremely popular.
Michael Jackson’s Thriller went to number 1 in the US 200 Billboard album charts for 37 weeks, setting a world record for the amount of time an album stays at number 1.
Astronauts Peterson and Musgrave perform the first spacewalk of the shuttle program during NASA’s STS-6 mission. The spacewalk lasts over four hours.
Israel and Lebanon sign an agreement to take a step towards peace.
The Internet took a step towards its creation as ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) was moved to TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol).
Arcade game Mario Bros. was released in Japan. The arcade game, produced by Nintendo paved the way for future Mario games to become one of Nintendo’s greatest creations.

September 23, 2023

Erika DeFreitas at Doris McCarthy Gallery: “It’s because of the shimmer, the verge, and the yet.”

In her short remarks at the Doris McCarthy Gallery, Erika DeFreitas explained the title of her current exhibition. She mentioned that “the shimmer” refers to the spiritual; by “the verge” she means the beginning, and “the yet” for her, is the future.

I really like the idea of “the shimmer” in particular. It’s so vague and yet so evocative of something delicate, fleeting and gorgeous, and as I wandered through the show I found the “shimmer” discernable in many of the works on display. Erika DeFreitas explores what could be called the paranormal, with a light, but sure, touch.

For one thing, she communicates with the dead. In particular, she gets in touch with deceased female artists. During the pandemic lockdowns, Erika DeFreitas describes herself as “conversing” with Agnes Martin, by re-creating a series of approximations of Agnes Martin’s quintessential line drawings.

Picture of line drawing — Detail of art piece by Erika deFreitas titled “the responsibility of the response (in conversation with Agnes Martin)

Another long deceased presence in the show is that of Gertrude Stein, who died in 1946. Erika DeFreitas considers her ongoing series of sculptural works titled “(if you look closely she moves)” as a kind of response to the 1922 play by Gertrude Stein called Objects Lie on a Table.

…DeFreitas asked a psychic medium to request Stein’s permission to collaborate. The medium informed DeFreitas that Stein has been working with her all along.
List of works from the exhibition: description of (if you look closely she moves)

Assemblage by Erika DeFreitas titled *(if you closely she moves)*

Death is a recurrent subject for this artist.

I really liked looking at the piece she did using individual obituaries clipped from newspapers and preserved using beeswax.

Detail of art work by Erika DeFreitas titled *“In Lieu of”*

The tiny stacks, obsessively ordered, have a tombstone like quality. The viewer is compelled to read the text and gaze at the photos of long dead strangers, sort of like wandering through the Mount Pleasant Cemetery

Erika DeFreitas is a little more playful when she collaborates with her mother, Cita, or channels her deceased grandmother, Angela.

Picture of series of photographs showing decorated faces — Photo series by Erika DeFreitas titled *“The Impossible Speech Act”*

decorated face — Detail of “The Impossible Speech Act” by Erika DeFreitas

In the photo series above, Erika DeFreitas and her mother have created “death masks” using cake decorating techniques passed down from Angela. The icing sugar hardens but gradually melts against warm (living) flesh.

Apparently Erika DeFreitas’ grandmother, a Trinidadian, would adorn statues of Black Madonnas with jewelry and gorgeous fabrics. Her granddaughter has continued this practice with a contemporary twist.

Detail from *“The Black Madonna of Great Echoes”* by Erika DeFreitas

Another long deceased artist that interests Erika deFreitas is Jeanne Duval. (It’s a long story.) There’s a big, complicated piece in the show, featuring many large photographs, and its all about a painting by Gustave Courbet. The full title of this painting is: The Painter’s Studio: A real allegory summing up seven years of my artistic and moral life. It was painted in 1855 and currently is located in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, France.

Courbet was a leader of the Realist movement and a rebel against the prevailing cliched Romanticism of the day. Apparently, he was always in political trouble in France and ultimately had to disappear to Switzerland, where he died at the age of 58.

Erika deFreitas focuses on a portrait that is missing from this very famous and massive picture. (It was more than 19 feet wide.) She has done some careful research and found that Jeanne Duval was erased from the picture. Jeanne Duval was Baudelaire’s girlfriend. When they had a fight, the poet — Courbet’s champion — demanded her likeness be removed.

Detail of art work by Erika DeFreitas titled *“arriver savant moi, devant moi”*

Photographs of paintings and hands — Detail of art work by Erika DeFreitas titled *“arriver savant moi, devant moi”*

Erika DeFreitas gets deeply into this erasure. It holds a lot of meaning for her. The piece is like a detective’s notes revealing how the artist gets closer and closer to something. To me, although I liked looking at the images and thinking about how things were, this does strike me as art world gossip from about 170 years ago.

photo of Baudelaire and Jeanne Duval — Baudelaire and Jeanne Duval

It’s kind of great, however, that the painting, shown below, is still stirring people up, all these years later.

Painting by Gustave Courbet — “*The Painter’s Studio: A Real Allegory Summing up seven years of my artistic and moral life*” by Gustave Courbet

September 18, 2023

Liz Magor at MOCA: “The Separation”

What about all the forgotten items? What about the stacks of coffee lids, the candy wrappers, the plastic bags in soft pastels, the crenillated foil cups, and sparkly bits of paper stuffed in a gift bags, the trays — presenting so many things! — artfully coated in silver or gold? What about the big gulp holders — the really big ones — with plastic straws poking out the top? What about the hard — infuriating, practically unbreakable — plastic encasements for purchased items? What about the cigarette butts, the liquor bottles, the beer cans, the unwanted toys, empty bottles, scattered gravel, moldy cookies, moth eaten blankets, matted fake fur, dead animals, shells, gum, junk, garbage, trash?

We’re talking about the metier of Liz Magor, in her exhibition titled The Separation, on view at MOCA.

On entering the exhibition the viewer is faced with an expanse of shiny, hard mylar boxes. The boxes are brightly lit from above. They sparkle. They attract.

Installation view of “The Separation” by Liz Magor

The lighting fixtures are kind of hilarious and create a bit of a fun house atmosphere.

I wander through the box array, anticipating. I don’t know what exactly — but something — something that is going to be exciting, in some way. And that is where everything starts to slow down.

Detail of installation “The Separation” by Liz Magor

Liz Magor presents the material that slips by us moment to moment, all the stuff that we ignore. As she does that, we are obliged to consider a lot of things, but mostly transience and permanence, and, as strange as it may sound, the whole idea of time rushing by.

Many of her scupltures, protected in their big, clear boxes, are casts of the original objects they represent. They are facsimiles, removed from their original function, context and incidental narrative, to exist in another realm altogether. Maybe that’s what she is referring to in the exhibition title (“The Separation.”) She has removed these bits of our material lives and “separated” them from their predictable stream of existence.

There are a few structures on the pheriphery, — hammered together Ikea and antique, worn work tables — holding cast sculptures of stuffed (or sometimes just dead) animals, lying in sympathetic poses, insisting on our attention.

(In fact, I may have won this lion creature, above. It was some years ago, at the ex, prior to the pandemic. Yes, it was a shooting game! Oh god, look at him now.)

There are lots of video’s online featuring Liz Magor talking about her work. She has a very calm, amused presence, although she always seems to be talking about being a “worrier.”

Something I got from watching one of the videos is her connection to minimalism. She is drawing our attention to particular objects. Don’t start looking for some allegory, metaphor or moral. She’s not hectoring us about being consumers, urging us the Save the Whales, or read Wittgenstein. She’s all about: “What you see is what you see,” as Frank Stella famously said.

The videos are worthwhile. I definitely liked watching her make stuff and talk about her interest in death.

Liz Magor at Susan Hobbs: “Style”

More work by Liz Magor can be seen at Susan Hobbs. The show, titled “Style,” is really beautiful and concise, comprised mainly of clothes slightly eaten by moths. Found objects — mostly stuffed animals, also possibly moth eaten — attend the garments, embrace them and present them for our viewing.

Installation view of Liz Magor show “Style” at Susan Hobbs

The gallery has helpfully provided some instructions on dealing with moths. I know from experience this has been a problem over the past few years in my Toronto neighborhood.

Clean your closet, combine sunlight with vigorous brushing, heat-treat woollen items in an oven set to the lowest heat, freezing (but only if the change from warm to cold is abrupt) for at least 72 hours, hide the rest of your clothes in compression bags. In executing some of the solutions above, the garment is stripped of its function and tended to as an object that needs our intervention. Our attempt to fix the problem only adds to our conception that we hold control, but all things have a lifespan with and without us.
from Susanhobbs.com

The artwork of Liz Magor strikes me as so efficient! As in “The Separation” at MOCA, in viewing “Style” we are obliged to consider the limits of our possessions, the past and future of our prized wearable items, and so too of our own limits. Hmmmm.

April 26, 2023

Wolfgang Tillmans – To Look Without Fear

Wednesday nights, 6:00 to 9:00 PM, the Art Gallery of Ontario is free. I went to check out the big, new photography show of work by Wolfgang Tillmans.

The place was crowded, especially the 5th floor, where this show is located, and there is a definite “date night” vibe, as numerous young, stylish couples swan about, having intense conversations concerning “visual democracy” and the “amplification of social awareness,” two themes Wolfgang Tillmans identifies as central to his creative role.

When I Googled this artist’s name I was amazed at how much fawning press he gets. “It was a Monday, and Tillmans, dressed in blue Puma sweatpants, Adidas running shoes, and a navy-blue hooded sweatshirt, was standing next to a conference table, drinking a coffee, with several young employees gathered around him.” Navy-blue! This was in the New Yorker. It occured to me that a big part of the critical fascination with his work is on the level of personal charisma. It’s hard to separate him from the work.

The reason I started to work with images from the very beginnning was that I wanted to be involved with what was going on in the world
quote from Wolfgang Tillmans, exhibition guide to the “To look without fear” show at the AGO

He is of his time and he knows what’s going on. His attention wanders from subject to subject, always with a enviably casual air: his friends, abstraction, nightlife, architecture, plant life, his friends, technological change, sea and sky, mundane objects, his friends, clothing (on and off), astronomy, the military, abstraction, his friends and more, and more.

Installation shot of “To Look Without Fear” by Wolfgang Tillmans

“Venus Transit, edge” by Wolfgang Tillmans

Yes, most of us carry around hundreds of images on our phones, evidence of our passing interests, friends, vacations, ideas of beauty, irony, parrots possibly or today’s lunch, a dress I’m thinking of buying, all sorts of confusion. Every passing interest, even the briefest momentary focus that slips through our visual field, is documented and retained. We hoard images. Or, maybe we post them on Instagram and TikTok. Occasionally a few of our photographs are really good. Wow! They might equal or even surpass the work of Wolfgang Tillmans in how they define the moment — not just our moment — but The Moment.

Wolfgang Tillmans embodies all that, harvesting images and spewing them back. He is Everyman, his interests approximating those of his demographic cohort. (Except he is better, cooler, taller, much more interesting.) And his work is in museums around the world. And, he is the artist. He wants us all to look without fear and so, without judgement, and to really see the world. He is just a messenger, conveying something larger than himself.

In 2010 I saw a massive exhibition of the photographs of William Eggleston – prints from 1961 to 2008 — at the LA County Museum. In the catalogue from that show, Eggleston is called the “master of color photography, a poet of the mundane, and proponent of the democratic treatment of his subjects.” He definitely has something in common with Wolfgang Tillmans. (Do all photographers have this “democratic” impulse?)

William Eggleston’s daughter, Andra Eggleston, explains his appeal when she talks about growing up in Memphis, where her father’s career began, and how that city shaped his images. “It was a wonderful, magical, dark, rich, beautiful, ugly, complicated place,” she says. (I feel the same way about Winnipeg!) William Eggleston, got it all down, in colour. Wolfgang Tillmans gets it all down too, but nothing as specific as his hometown somewhere in Germany. He taps into his generation’s observations, through representing his restless, wandering attention.

Photograph by Wolfgang Tillmans (Love, hands in air)

This massive show is organized roughly chronilogically. Some of his earliest works are on display, sort of grimey, murky smears of grey made in a copy shop in Germany with a Canon-NP-9030 laser photocopier. (These were made back in the early 80s. He had the confidence to carefully preserve them. Now that is presience.)

Some of the prints are beautifully framed, most are unframed, taped to the walls or clipped and hung from pins. Some are ridiculously large, others snapshot size, some glossy, other matte, grouped or single, pulled out of magazines, laid on tabletops under glass.

“Ostgut Free Swimmer” by Wolfgang Tillmans

“I don’t want to get over you” by Wolfgang Tillmans

Sometimes he forgets and tumbles into cliche and naivety, for example, the grid of shots of the Concorde….

Detail of Installation by Wolfgang Tillmans

…or his piece from the Neue Welt (New World) series.

“young man, Jeddah” by Wolfgang Tillmans

But we forgive him, because he says: “the camera is like a tool for me to see and record much more than I can possibly understand in that moment” and we can all relate to that idea.

March 26, 2023

MOCA/NOT MOCCA

MOCA is the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto. It was, previously, the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (MOCCA), located for more than 12 years on once trendy (now pandemic battered) Queen Street West. Going back further, MOCCA was founded on the Art Gallery of North York, which originated in 1999. MOCCA went dormant from 2015 to 2018 after which time it emerged as MOCA, at 158 Sterling Road, in a former auto parts factory, and there, it identified itself with the globalized world of the 21st century.

MOCA, Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto

Remediation – Kapwani Kiwanga

Kapwani Kiwanga‘s exhibition at MOCA, (see above) titled “Remediation,” is original, playful, uplifting to visit and a breath of fresh air. (This is something we desperately need as spring is so far not arriving.)

Installation view of “Remediation” exhibition by Kapwani Kiwanga

The botanical world has a role in most of the pieces in this show. In fact, one definition of remediation is a way to cleanse soil of toxins, specifically using plant life.

The large, see-through, feather-light, air-filled shapes the artist created are also about plants. She calls them vivariums. I was informed that Kapwani Kiwanga is referencing vivariums in their historical role, as methods to transport life, particularly plant life, from one place to another. This could be a metaphor with all kinds of ominous connotations, but the thing about this artist’s work is that it’s not heavy-handed/didactic. The visitor can just enjoy looking at these strange and surprising objects amid the ponderous concrete pillars that dominate the second floor at MOCA.

Installation view of Vivarium by Kapwani Kiwanga. The variums are named as follows: Vivarium: Cytomixis, Vivarium: Adventitious, Vivarium: Apomixis. The names reference botanical anatomy.

Originally The Vivarium, I learned on Wikipedia, was the name for the enclosures where ancient Romans kept living things used in their entertainments. Various wild animals, mainly imported from Africa and the Middle East, like tigers, crocodiles, ostriches, elephants and aurochs waited in The Vivarium for their cue. Gladiators waited elsewhere.

“The Marias” installation view of work by Kapwani Kiwanga

This artist doesn’t flinch from using a range of materials in her work. These delicate paper flowers — the piece is called “The Marias” — are surrounded by dazzling yellow plinths and walls. They’re pretty enough, but the artist has created them because of their unique properties and historical function.

…the flower on show, native to Latin America, was known by the locals for its abortive powers. The chemicals in the flower were used by enslaved women to break the reproduction of servitude.
from “Remedition” exhibition booklet

On the main floor of MOCA Kapwani Kiwanga has produced a massive installation composed almost entirely of sisal. She has said that she “considers how various natural materials become witnesses to history. ” Sisal, for example, played a big economic role in Tanzania. When the prices plummeted because of synthetic immitations, the country suffered.

The material, in the form in which the artist uses it, has a fascinating colour, texture and the unique, undulating lightness which the artist uses to create artfully draped, other-worldly environments. It’s so hard to refrain from touching it!

Sisal recently rebounded on the world markets. The roll above is availabe at Canadian Tire for about $5.00

A video piece included in the show, was shot in Tanzania, where soil is a reddish colour and coats everything in the dry season. We see the artist cleaning the lush roadside vegetation in a gesture of maybe aesthetic intervention or perhaps its a symbolic, sishyphean act of appreciation.

Detail of “Vumbi” by Kapwani Kiwanga

I like the fact that this mesmerizing piece is open to interpretation.

I know so little about Tanzania: an East African country with vast wilderness areas. They include the plains of Serengeti National Park, a safari mecca populated by elephants, lions, leopards, buffalos, rhinos, and Kilimanjaro National Park, home to Africa’s highest mountain. Offshore lie the tropical islands of Zanzibar, with Arabic influences, and Mafia, with a marine park home to whale sharks and coral reefs

Giraffe in Lake Manyara National Park, Tanzania

Trade Show – Susan for Susan

Trade Show is another exhibition presently on display at MOCA. Susan for Susan is the name of the design collaboration between Kevin Watts and John Watts. (One of the MOCA volunteers at the show told me the mother of John and Kevin Watts is the Susan in question. Nice.)

How brutalist would it be to have a concrete table in your kitchen, hanging from the ceiling by thick chains? I did not realize it was something I always wanted. That would be a place to have some serious conversation, espcially with the right lighting, a battery of flourescents maybe.

Detail of “Trade Show” installation by Susan for Susan

Susan for Susan has created an installation that gestures toward the idea of an apartment, employing industrial materials in a coarse state. I think they are trying to get at a return to “truth to materials.”

Something called a gantry (which is a bridge-like overhead structure with a platform supporting equipment such as a crane) pulls the whole thing together. This gadget gives the installation an overarching absurdist twang which is very appealing.

The mirror has an amusing quality. It’s like one of those magnifying mirrors, sometimes screwed into the bathroom wall, except the”accordian” attachments are oversized which means the whole thing can be pulled out and adjusted as required to get the right view.

Detail of installation by Susan for Susan

My favourite is the vase, evidently created from a medical device used to set extreme fractures.

Ouch.

January 26, 2023

Conceptions of White

What is Whiteness anyway? This is the question posed by the current exhibition at the Art Museum University of Toronto.

We enter the show through the pristine “Portal”, created by Robert Morris in 1964. “Portal” is pure minimalist sculpture, ostensibly stripped of meaning, so neutral as to be almost invisible.

The piece encapsulates one of the ideas the show explores: how the concept of White, especially in the art world, is so natural and all-encompassing, it’s virtually unseen.

But wait. Hold on! Before we take that fateful stroll, we are invited to engage with the present — shut up, and check our privileges — through the augmented reality filters created by the “Famous New Media Artist” Jeremy Bailey.

Detail of “Whitesimple” by Jeremy Bailey

In the handout that accompanies the exhibition the curators declare their biracial status and indicate they are seeking a clearer understanding of their own relationship to Whiteness. (Full disclosure: Through Ancestry.ca I traced one of my family branches all the way to Viking marauders sweeping down on the Orkney Islands to commit mayhem. They went on to settle in Manitoba. Some things you don’t want to know.)

On the other hand, I like the way this show acknowledges history at every turn. I agree that the story of the present can only be told by starting from the past.

The exhibition contains a graphic display locating the invention of Whiteness right around the time colonial adventurism, also known as The Age of Discovery, was ramping up. Since colonial logic maintained that a place did not exist unless White Europeans had seen it, it was important to distinguish White from everyone else.

Detail of graphic in Conceptions of White exhibition

Deanna Bowen‘s installation, called “White Man’s Burden” takes a dive into Whiteness and the history of the Canadian cultural elite. Her ambitious and engrossing piece is made up of numerous items from various Canadian archival sources, some hung upside down and/or printed in a negative versions.

Installation view of “White Man’s Burden” by Deanna Bowen

Detail of Deanna Bowen installation, featuring MacKenzie King, and other cultural elites.

According to his biographers MacKenzie King was cold and tactless. During his long political lilfe leading the Liberal Party, King had several close female friends, including Joan Patteson, a married woman with whom he spent some of his leisure time.

There are many fascinating images and documents in Deanna Bowen’s work: the cover of the T.C. Douglas master’s thesis, for instance, titled “The Problems of the Subnormal Family” in which Douglas recommended several eugenic policies, including the sterilization of “mental defectives and those incurably diseased;” or, a newspaper clipping describing the “objects and purposes” of the Kanadian Klu Klux Klan, including a membership pitch.

Detail from “White Man’s Burden” by Deanna Bowen

There is a wonderful complexity to this artwork. Deanna Bowen leaves it up to the viewer to solve the puzzle of images, covering hundreds of years of violence, vanity, greed and hubris.

Conversely, the vinyl wall installation by Ken Gonzales-Day is simple, direct and deeply horrifying.

The piece is from a series titled Erased Lynchings in which Ken Gonzales-Day reproduced souvenir lynching postcards — a thing in certain southern states — after digitally removing the victims.

The video piece by Howardena Pindell, free white and 21, in which the artist — speaking to the camera in a frank, casual, somewhat bemused style — relates numerous incidents of routine rascist behaviour which she has personally experienced. The video is all the more disturbing because of her blase delivery .

You can watch the whole thing here:

Link to Howardena Pindell video, “free whitge and 21”

Both Nell Painter and Fred Wilson examine the tropes of art history to shed some light on White.

Detail of “Ancient Hair” by Nell Painter

It is as if Nell Painter cut up a Survey of Western Art textbook, scrawled some trenchant questions onto 81/2 by 11 sheets of bond, and pinned the whole thing to the nearest wall. I like the ad hoc feel of this piece. The idea is to just get the ideas out as quickly as possible and to hell with all the niceties of framing and smoothing, tweaking and hanging.

Installation view of “Ancient Hair” by Nell Painter

Fred Wilson puts objects together, transforming their meaning through proximity. In this case, milk glass, white porcelain and china, copies of “classic statuary,”– some broken and toppled — and kitschy items like the white nubian goddess and the black “mammy” cookie jar are arrayed. Looking at this collection of items, each charged with social, cultural and historical meaning, we wonder, which objects belong and which don’t? And why?

Detail from “Love and Loss in the Milky Way” by Fred Wilson

Installation view of “Love and Loss in the Milky Way” by Fred Wilson

I spent some time watching the The White Album, a video piece by Arthur Jafa. Composed largely of found footage, with an original soundtrack that has a chilling, dirgelike quality, this artwork is mesmerizing as it drills deep into the contemporary psyche and unearths a rich and sometimes terrifying vein of emotions.

Excerpt from The White Album by Arthur Jafa

Like the show’s curators, now is apparently a time for me to seek a clearer understanding of Whiteness.

Earlier this month I happened to take a tour of the McLeod Plantation, on James Island, on the outskirts of Charleston, South Carolina. Unlike previous trips to the American South, where I heard alot about French antiques and hoop skirts, the tour at the McLeod plantation was an unflinching description of rape, torture, brutality and exploitation that endured into the 1990s.

Spanish moss on the 100 year old oaks at the McLeod Plantation, James Island, South Carolina

Homes of the enslaved, at the McLeod Plantation, James Island, South Carolina

Spanish moss wafted in the beautiful old trees, and the fields — where sea island cotton was once grown — were green in mid-January.

December 28, 2022

The lingering effects of the Covid-19 pandemic have heightened anxiety over matters largely out of the control of the individual. It’s hard to even know what to believe these days. I have the sense I am being manipulated by propaganda coming from many directions. Here’s my latest mantra in trying to cope: STOP DOUG FORD!

Karine Giboulo at The Gardiner Museum

( FYI: The Gardiner Museum is open until 9:00 pm on Wednesday nights, and after 5:00 pm it’s Free!)

From March of 2020 to March of 2022 Covid-19 was in full control. Karine Giboulo spent those distressing years confronting the unfolding catastrophes she saw all around her. She did so by creating a sculptural approximation of her own living space and the mental minefield it contained. Her exhibition at The Gardiner Museum, titled Housewarming includes the layout of a typical North American home with a kitchen, living room, bedrooms and so on. It also contains over 500 individual clay sculptures, mostly figures of tiny, expressive humans.

We quickly get the sense Karine Giboulo can’t escape the misery just outside her door. Entering the kitchen, we see on the counter, a long, bedraggled line of hungry humans, waiting to retreive something to eat from the local food bank.

Detail of Housewarming by Karine Giboulo

At the other end of the counter, an open oven door displays a ghastly tableau of “death by global warming,” i.e. an animal carcass embedded in baked earth.

Want a sandwich? Looking around for a jar of mayonnaise in the fridge, we are reminded of the horrors of factory farming, via a scene tucked into one of the crisper drawers.

Details from Housewarming by Karine Giboulo

In the psyche of Karine Giboulo no aspect of our lives are free from suffering and attendant guilt. The top drawer of her innocuous pink dresser reveals a soul-destroying shift at H&M in Kolkata, or some other distant locale, where young women can be hired for the low wages that make fast fashion possible.

A pup tent in the backyard loses its innocence and becomes a grim reminder of the those who endure homelessness.

The elderly suffered the most during the pandemic. In the bedroom of the Housewarming installation, Karine Giboulo arranged numerous belljars on shelves, airless isolation chambers, each holding a solitary patient or caregiver.

Details from Housewarming by Karine Gibouli

Some of the dioramas are more ambiguous and I like those the best. Is this elderly knitter, encased in the Zenith portable, seeking revenge like a contemporary Madame Defarge, who, during the French Revolution, used “yarn to measure out the life of a man, and cut it to end it?”

Or the ominous clock diorama, presumably containing a self portrait of the artist herself, poring over her phone as sleep eludes her.

Details from Housewarming by Karine Giboulo

Wandering through this fictional house we encounter environmental degradation, threats to wildlife through the climate crisis and tourism, exploitation of the vulnerable, the lure of addictive technology, greed and idiocy among the captains of industry, in fact the whole trainwreck of current human blunders is on display.

Texts that accompany the exhibition introduce Karine Giboulo with an emphasis on the fact that she is a “self-taught” artist. This struck me as peculiar, almost like a slightly apologetic explanation for her earnest engagement with the huge social problems that impact us all. The “self-taught” moniker felt like a wink and a nudge indicating that this isn’t quite typical contemporary art. There is no layer of obsfucation for intellectual play and invention. Karine Giboulo doesn’t want to risk losing her audience in obscure, abstract or metaphysical currents, so she plays it straight and lays it out as she sees it.

Maybe this idea is also there to let the viewer know that Karine Giboulo is not a global superstar just hitching a ride on the pain of others.

Ai Weiwei, for example, was slammed for posing to replicate the death of a three-year-old Syrian refugee Aylan Kurdi who died on a European beach while attempting to flee the war with his family. The photograph shot around the world as a viral meme, but it wasn’t always received well.

Ai Weiwei’s controversial photograph that mimics the pose of a drowned Syrian refugee boy Aylan Kurdi

Opportunistic, careerist, callous, tasteless victim porn, crude, thoughtless and egotistical are some of the reactions to this piece by Ai Weiwei.

Of course, these artists — Ai Weiwei and Karine Giboulo — are different in so many ways it doesn’t make sense to compare except to note that Karine Giboulo approaches her subject matter with a sense of tenderness and humility and that is evident throughout the exhibition.

One of the workshops being held at the Gardiner, in connection with this show is called: Micro meets Macro: Taking Action on Food Insecurity and Housing Instability. The workshop will apparently explore a report by Daily Bread Food Bank “examining trends in food bank use and food insecurity in Toronto.”

It takes place on February 1, 2023.