Art Gallery of Ontario – annetteandquebec

February 21, 2025

The Culture: Hip Hop and Contemporary Art in the 21st Century, at the AGO

It is definitely fun to wander through the AGO’s big, bold show about Hip Hop. The organizers illuminate multiple forms of expression, trying to get at some central defining aspect of what is described as a “musical and pop cultural movement.”

Clearly, that central something is Black culture, and the overturning of Eurocentric ideas of what can be culturally significant.

Hip Hop, in all its manifestations, may now be global, digital and corporate (absorbed and marketed so heavily, it is, like the show’s title, The culture) and yet, some unique vitality, dynamically expressed by Black, Latine, and Afro-Caribbean youth, in 1970s Bronx, endures to this day. Hip Hop continues to transform, explode and multiply, even against the backdrop of today’s bizarre political denial.

The Culture is organized around six themes: Language, Brand,
Adornment, Tribute, Pose, and Ascension.

Language

Hip-hop is intrinsically an art-form about language: the visual
language of graffiti, a musical language that includes scratching
and sampling, and, of course, the written and spoken word.

— Extracts from exhibition text

Language, in this show, starts with the spoken word. “Call and-response chants, followed by rap rhymes and lyrics overlaid on tracks, are the foundations of hip-hop music.” (Quote from the exhibition text.)

Music is playing at a decent volume throughout the AGO’s fifth floor.

You can check out the AGO playlist below:

“The Culture” Playlist is available on Spotify

The shows is sprawling, and some of the objects are traditional museum fare.

The painting by Adam Pendleton (above) has an old school graffiti feel, as per language inscribed on the street. Weirdly, there is no mention of graffiti on the Pace website showcasing the work of Adam Pendleton. His visual art is included in prestigous collections around the world and often described as relating to “process and abstraction.”

“Six Bardos: Transmigration” by Julie Mehretu

More paintings in the show, like that of Julie Mehretu (above) don’t actually contain legible language, but here too, the debt to graffiti is clear. Julie Mehretu’s dealer is the Mariam Goodman Gallery and on the Mariam Goodman website we read about the artist’s “visual articulation of contemporary experience.”

I like the way this show schools us in how to look at certain art, particularly a contemporary painting like those above, i.e they are connected to graffiti.

The Brand, Adornment and Pose sections of the exhibition get a bit intertwined, in my view. They are all about how an individual uses technological communication to define themselves in the public sphere.

Hip Hop has been around for a long time! Snoop Dog was once the personification of the cool, west coast version of the genre. He went on to host a cooking show with Martha Stewart, and recently performed at Donald Trump’s inauguration.

It’s hard to even remember a time when baggy sweatpants and sneakers were not worn everywhere, by everyone.

In fact, you could walk through any shopping mall in North America and find an endless assortment of gear attributable to some Hip Hop connection. How about that hoodie I got on sale at Old Navy?

Cardi B, the reigning Queen of Rap, is the recipient of a vast number of accolades, awards, firsts, and mosts. In this photograph by Hassan Hajjaj she confronts the camera with supreme confidence, portrayed as the “international blend of music, fashion and consumer culture” that she is.

I liked the way the show approaches the matter of pose in the hip hop, particularly as it applies to the women in this arena. Endorsements are power for women, just like for their male counterparts.

And who can forget the iconic red jacket from Drake’s “Hotline Bling” video? Apparently, the inclusion of this so-called Maya Jacket, by Moncler, in the famous video, locked in the brand’s connection to hip hop culture.

I think I prefer the more unexpected, even daring items in the show, as opposed to the merely manufactured. The piece (below) by Lauren Halsey is a good example.

Composed of layers of synthetic hair, in brilliant shades, it has an intensity and power that strikes me as so of the moment and at the same time so reminiscent of some ancient adornment.

I found one piece in the adornment section shocking.

two men seated in room — “Nation” by Deana Lawson

man with dental decoration — Detail of “Nation” by Deana Lawson

This photograph by Deama Lawson contains an inset of George Washington’s false teeth, which were made from the teeth of enslaved Black people. The cheek retractor looks like a kind of torture object me, as repellant as the set of teeth. But that’s not how Deana Lawson sees it.

There is a nobility and majesty of a lot of gold that’s worn, and how it’s appropriated in hip-hop, and how I think hip-hop actually channels ancient kingdoms.

— Deana Lawson, exhibition notes

Ascension

And, of course, you can’t talk about Hip Hop without mentioning the deathiness that hovers on the sidelines and occasionally takes center stage.

“Street Shrine 1: A Notorious Story (Biggie)” by Robert Lugo

This funerary urn featuring a graphic depiction of the Rapper Notorious BIG captures the glamourization of violent death that has haunted the world of hip hop.

Biggie Smalls was murdered in 1997 at the age of 24. According to Wikipedia, Wallace’s funeral was held at the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel in Manhattan on March 18. There were more than 350 mourners at the funeral, including Lil’ Cease, Queen Latifah, Flavor Flav, Mary J. Blige, Lil’ Kim, Run-D.M.C., DJ Kool Herc, Busta Rhymes, Salt-N-Pepa, DJ Spinderella, Foxy Brown, and Sister Souljah. David Dinkins and Clive Davis also attended the funeral. After the funeral, his body was cremated at the Fresh Pond Crematory in Fresh Pond, Queens, and the ashes were given to his family.

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.

January 4, 2022

Robert Houle: Red Is Beautiful at the AGO

One of the many large, elegant paintings by Robert Houle, in his retrospective at the Art Gallery of Ontario, is particularly arresting. An Indigenous man sits alone on an outcropping of rock, contemplating the shoreline and beyond. He is beautiful and calm; tatooed and tranquil in a bucolic, parklike setting, with broad, green lawns. He is looking east, to Europe, and evidently, he knows what’s coming.

“O-ween du muh waun (We Were Told)” by Robert Houle

The image has a sorrowful quality, like an invented perfect childhood, or the idea of heaven, where a dead loved one might now reside.

It made me think of the video piece by New Zealand artist Lisa Reihana — which I was able to watch numerous times at the AGO. One could think of Lisa Reihana’s piece as a moment later in this perfect, imaginary time. The tranquil Indigenous are no longer alone. The British have landed, and they have disembarked.

Still from “In Pursuit of Venus (Infected) by Lisa Reihana

And I was also reminded of Robert Hughes and his book “The Fatal Shore” in which he reflects upon the shattering of perfection, as the British first sailed into Botany Bay.

“One may liken this moment to the breaking open of a capsule. Upon the harbor the ships were now entering, European history had left no mark at all. Until the swollen sails and curvetting bows of the British fleet round South Head, there were no dates. The Aborigines and fauna around them had possessed the landscape since time immemorial, and no other human eye had seen them. Now the protective glass of distance, broke, in an instant, never to be restored.”
The Fatal Shore, by Robert Hughes

But this is just one painting in an immense exhibition, covering many decades and using many different media, in a career spanning more than fifty years.

This is the kind of show you might want return to again and again. But that is not possible because the Gallery is now closed due to the Omicron variant.

Entrance to Robert Houle Exhibition “Red Is Beautiful” at the AGO

Robert Houle takes the viewer on a journey; often it’s personal. The painting shown below is entitled Sandy Bay and refers to a residential school in Manitoba attended by the artist. Photographs of the school building, an image of Robert Houle’s sister, and other photographs are included in the painting.

For me, the gorgeous formal aspects of this work exalts its intense emotional weight. It’s a very powerful piece.

Many of Robert Houle’s paintings explore the history of Indigenous struggles in Canada as they explore, with equal intensity, the sensuality of paint.

Detail of “Premises for Self Rule: Constitution Act, 1982” by Robert Houle

“Premises for Self Rule: Constitution Act, 1982” by Robert Houle

The painting above is part of a series which extracts texts from Canadian historical documents (The Royal Proclamation, 1763; the British North American Act, 1867; Treaty 1, 1871; and the Indian Act, 1876 and the Constitution Act of 1982) and combines it with a contemporary painting and historical photographs.

Robert Houle never loses sight of his subject matter — which in a way is the entire history of this country– but he does not take a didactic tone. It’s more like he is sharing information. We learn a lot.

The Ipperwash Crisis is commemorated, below, in a painting of jolting colour, embedded with meaning.

Painting appears to be a constant for Robert Houle but the show includes works in other media: prints, drawings, sculpture, video and large scale installations including one which features a big, beautiful, buttery yellow, antique Pontiac.

“I will stand in your path until dawn” by Robert Houle

The AGO provided a quote from Robert Houle in connection with the Pontiac piece.

Growing up in the ‘rez in Southern Manitoba in the 1960s, Pontiac was the family car we drove down to the lake. It was not until High School that I read about Pontiac, the Odawa chief who led a confederacy of eighteen nations against the British Army in the summer of 1763 (the year of the Royal Proclamation.)
Robert Houle

In the painting below, Robert Houle memorializes a troupe of dancers who visited Europe in the 1840s.

“Mississauga Portraits (Waubuddick, Maungwudaus, Hannah)” by Robert Houle

Detail from “Mississauga Portraits” by Robert Houle

I really like looking at the portraits of these confident, graceful, imperious performers. The artist has endowed these pictures with haughty vitality and vivid emotional content.

And occaisionally the artist strikes a light-hearted note and it’s just fun to see, like the video below.

Part of a multi media installation “Paris/Ojibwa” by Robert Houle

It was really great to wander through this expansive exhibition and feel colour and light washing over me. And it’s true that timing is everything! I was able to slip into the “Red Is Beautiful” exhibition the afternoon of January 4, just a few hours before the AGO and every other cultural institution in the city pulled the plug and shut their doors to the public. We are back in lockdown.

January 24, 2019

Mickalene Thomas: Femmes Noires

My attitude toward our southern neighbour swings wildly, from: “That hell hole,” to “We have so much to learn from the USA!” The work of Mickalene Thomas, and her show at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) titled Femmes Noires, makes me truly appreciate the USA and the driving, pure, singular force of innovation that springs up fairly frequently in that turbulent and mesmerizing country.

“Visibility, empowerment, celebration.” That is a quote from Mickalene Thomas, talking about what she wants people to take away from her AGO show. She succeeds. It is an exultant display, uplifting to visit. So many images of queenly, glittering, sumptuous women. I guess it takes a gay, black woman to shrug off deference to a male art world and let glitter and sequins reign.

The paintings shown in the Femmes Noires exhibition – collages of oil paint, photographs, and other materials – often refer to revered works by male artists from the past, like Picasso, Manet or Ingres. The women that emerge in these paintings have a deep sense of themselves: Their gaze is frank, self-contained, self-knowing and profoundly calm in the center of riotous color and pattern.

The painting titled “Shinique: Now I Know” references the Neo-classical touchstone “Une Odalisque.” This painting, by Ingres, above, was widely reviled when it was first shown. Critics pointed to the elongated curved creature in the painting as anatomically impossible. And yet this picture has endured, sits in the Louvre to this day, and is included in every Art History survey around the world. Apparently, it had more than anatomical correctness going on.

People respond deeply to Ingres’ painting. What is it that makes people decide to redo it, or use it in provocative sloganeering, as per the Gorilla Girls famous poster above. Maybe there is something essentially irritating about “Une Odalisque” itself, that paradigm of “Orientalism.”

The Femmes Noires show is big! There are two massive galleries where the visitor can lounge in a living room environment — with potted plants, comfortable chairs and cushions — browse novels or other works about the black experience, and watch media (some random snippets are included below:)

Video by Mikalene Thomas

It seemed like there was a bit of a disconnect from the present. We see Whitney, Eartha, Pam, Diana and so many other fabulous black women icons from the past but where are today’s powerful black women? In fact Mickalene Thomas has collaborated with Solange, Beyonce (The Queen!!!) and other contemporary black superstars but that work just doesn’t happen to be included in this exhibition.

portrait-of-solange-thinking-about-you-by-mickalene-thomas-2013-color-photograph-and-paper-collage-on-archival-board--2a4c1af070127b96

I was feeling pretty good about my former homeland by the time I left the Mickalene Thomas exhibition at the AGO. What an exciting place of invention and possibility! All the fraught recriminations and anger that characterize this contentious era in the USA don’t really come up at Femmes Noires. It’s like an invitation to a new world.

August 18, 2018

For me, there is a true sense of luxury in slipping into a museum for a short visit. The edifice – in this case the AGO – becomes like my local library. It’s no big deal. I’m merely popping in. Two wonderful shows were just waiting for me…

Jack and the Jack Paintings: Jack Goldstein and Ron Terada

Jack Goldstein and the CalArts Mafia is available for purchase on Amazon for CDN 52.94. Complete pages of the book, which was written by Jack Goldstein and a collaborator, are reproduced as large paintings; white text on black, in Ron Terada‘s show, Jack and the Jack Paintings, at the AGO.

Jack by Ron Terada

The paintings are fascinating. They contain so much: cringe worthy emotionalism, insight and aspiration, the personal/political dichotomy, and, most importantly, they are powerful objects, flickering between realms of subjective and objective meaning.

Photograph of Jack Goldstein

CalArts was the so-called “sister” school of NSCAD. Maybe Jack Goldstein was a visiting artist? I remember the name but… Was he dating a friend of mine in the eighties?

The viewer can’t escape the texts, which constitute the paintings. (I tried looking at them as white marks on black ground but I have not reached that level of enlightenment, yet.) And these texts are so dense with 80’s art world gossip – all the references to Robert, Cindy and Helene! All the resentment, whining and profound sadness. It’s all too much. Finally, the whole idea of the art world becomes something absurd, tainted and shameful.

Jack by Ron Terada

Included in the show is one of Jack Goldstein’s paintings. It is large, about 8 feet long, and solemn. It adds a lot to the exhibition: it is a calming force, dark and silent, judgement free, and, pain free.

Painting by Jack Goldstein

Joseph Beuys

On the AGO’s main floor, at the end of trek through the Ken Thompson knickknacks, is a small room filled with many drawing, and, two sculptures. These are early works (late 50s and early 60s) by Joseph Beuys; prior to the global fame precipitated by iconoclastic performance artworks such as I Like America And America Likes Me or How To Explain Pictures To A Dead Hare.

How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare – photograph of performance by Joseph Beuys

The exhibition notes state that the works on paper “revolve around the theme of death.” Renderings of the body: truncated, naked and anguished are displayed, images of sunken graves, darkness. They appear to be made hastily/compulsively, on cardboard, newsprint, office forms, file folders. Some of the drawings are partially obliterated with opaque black or terra cotta coloured paint, or decorated with the ubiquitous silver or fat substances that Joseph Beuys frequently employed.

To Saturn by Joseph Beuys

The lights are dim in the exhibition and the delicate, fragile works are framed with excruciating care. But despite the best attempts by museum preservationists there is a sense that they will not last. But maybe that’s as it should be, as per the quote from Joseph Beuys below:

That is why the nature of my sculpture is not fixed and finished. Processes continue in most of them: chemical reactions, fermentations, color changes, decay, drying up. Everything is in a state of change.

Two Women by Joseph Beuys

The sculptures – one: broken and shambolic, the other: mysterious intertwined totems – are displayed in large vitrines.

Hasengrab (Hare’s Grave) by Joseph Beuys

Sculpture by Joseph Beuys

During his life Joseph Beuys created the role of Shaman for himself; a figure of healing for modern society. He engaged in social, political and environmental matters and explored the trauma of his WWII plane crash, and subsequent rescue by nomadic Tartars. I was grateful to look at this work and to spend some time thinking about how Joseph Beuys might respond to our current social upheaval and environmental crisis.

February 14, 2016

Song Dong – Lori Nix

Art Gallery of Ontario – Song Dong

Wisdom of the Poor: Communal Courtyard is the name of the installation by Song Dong at the Art Gallery of Ontario. The piece has the strange effect of slowing down time and creating a consuming sense of melancholy. The viewer steps out of the moment and into a maze, composed of antique wardrobes, and, concurrently, into a bygone era.

Detail of installation by Song Dong

The wardrobes have been dismantled and roughly knocked together to create twisting, labyrinthine passageways. Bits of fabric, modest curtains, broken locks, faded posters and other sentimental items cling to the gutted furniture and add to the sense of forlorn domestic ruin.

Detail of installation by Song Dong

The art piece feels funereal, and there is the lingering presence of ghosts. Glimpses through openings may reveal another viewer wandering hesitantly, an abandoned bicycle or perhaps a rising tower (wait, its the AGO’s Sol Lewitt sculpture and elsewhere is the AGO’s Warhol portrait of Karen Kain.)

Detail of installation by Song Dong

China is famously changing at a breakneck pace despite an increasing public outcry against the demolition of historic neighbourhoods and a gathering preservationist movement. Song Dong taps into a powerful emotional yearning for an idyllic past that is felt apparently all over the world. The object of the loving backward gaze could be the narrow, crowded streets of bygone China or …… Mayberry. In North America this imagery can be baldly manipulative romanticism, covering for a suspect agenda, but what it is in China I do not know.

Mayberry set

Admittedly there are some very appealing aspects to the decades past. For example, long before the rise of Twitter and ISIS (forever linked in my mind) anyone could smoke and drink with abandon, even on airplanes. But is it my actual memories that view these activities fondly or is it the “Mad Men” portrayal of them that I like?

Smoking on airplanes through the eyes of the creator’s of “Mad Men”

Meanwhile the unrestrained development in China has not only resulted in the spectacular buildings we see in the media but some weirdly manufactured nostalgia, for example Thames Town, built to look like a charming Tudor town in the English countryside.

Thames Town, 19 miles from Shanghai

***

Bau-Xi Photo – Lori Nix

All over North America laundromat seating is the same. I may have known this as a fact before I saw the show of photographs by Lori Nix at Bau-Xi Photo, but to be honest I never really thought about it much. In Lori Nix’s photo of a post-apocalyptic laundromat (shown below) under dreadful fluorescent light, the seats are identical to those at the “Coin Wash” in the vicinity of Dundas and Keele. In fact everything is exactly right, except of course the obvious…

Laundromat at Night by Lori Nix

What I liked about looking at these photographs was noticing the detail and how exacting and precise it is. Lori Nix builds miniatures of scenes she comes across in her daily life and then she photographs them. (To learn how she does this click on the link.)

Lori Nix does not replicate reality. In all her photographs something is off, really off. Something has occurred. Things will never be the same.

Fountain by Lori Nix

What’s going on in Fountain, the art work shown above? A spectacular public space has been vandalized and then abandoned entirely. The bronze sculptures have deteriorated, maybe because of chemicals in the atmosphere, such as chlorine, sulfur, nitrogen oxides or maybe just rain. Vines have overtake graffiti and then all (hubris) is silenced by cold and ice.

Bar by Lori Nix

Could this be a bar in rural Ontario on any Sunday morning? It does look very familiar … except there is no hockey memorabilia.

Despite visions of catastrophe Lori Nix’s art work transmits a sense of enthusiasm for the places she creates. With meticulous patience she commits these mundane arenas of everyday life to a suspended state of timelessness.

December 5, 2014

Suzy Lake at the Art Gallery of Ontario

Walking up Beverley Street on the overcast, relatively mild December afternoon I saw the AGO in a whole new light. The big brilliant blue box was incandescent against stark black and white.

The exhibition I came to see – Introducing Suzy Lake – is on the fourth floor of the Gallery.

I’ve always associated Suzy Lake with Montreal: cool, remote, sophisticated, avant garde in a sort of unknowable way, so I was surprised to learn that she has been living right here in Toronto for the past more than thirty years.

Who is this woman with the magical name? Who is Suzy Lake?

At the AGO Suzy Lake is seen through the decades: the demure high school portraits altered with a sketched in older self; transforming, with hilarious effect, into local icons of the Montreal art scene; slathering on white face or makeup within a grid of images; adopting kittenish fashion poses of the era; homewrecker (with a sledge hammer); domestic drudge; aging Lothario; puppet, matron in haute couture…. On and on, Suzy Lake presents Suzy Lake, as art. That is the core of her work: the female persona that just happens to be her.

Detail of 16 over 28

Suzy Lake as Francois Sullivan

A Genuine Simulation of...

Suzy Lake creates a fascinating tension between the notion of Everywoman and her unique individual self. We see her again and again and again but we don’t get inside her head.

Peonies and the Lido #7

The coherence of this body of work, and the way it unfolds in the context of the exhibition, is truly impressive. Throughout it has a consistency and unwavering direction, no side trips or blind alleys here. She understands media – print, tv, film, music – and turns it back on itself through her own filter.

Choreographed Puppet

The name Travis Bickle will ring a bell with anyone who lived through the seventies. The protagonist of the Martin Scorsese film Taxi Driver famously asked “Are you talking to me?” in the 1976 movie view of a dystopic New York City. Suzy Lake spoke these words in a state of agitated confrontation and this massive photographic piece, recently recreated, documents the performance. In the movie Robert DeNiro was crazy; a Vietnam vet whose alienation led him to violence. To me Suzy Lake seems to speak about a different kind of alienation and frustration, that of the objectified woman who has had enough.

“Are You Talking to Me?”

One of my favourite pieces in the exhibition is Suzy Lake decked out in a Rei Kawakubo outfit. This work is powerful and playful at the same time. She looks directly at the viewer with startling confrontation daring them to insinuate that her getup is just verging on absurdity.

Performing Haute Couture

A film “Suzy Lake: Playing with Time”, by Annette Mangaard, was visible near the end of the exhibition. It provided a great deal of background about Suzy Lake’s life and influences. I was not prepared for the joyless tone taken in this movie. For example Lisa Steele and Martha Wilson, both extraordinary artists with histories rich in community and accomplishment, spoke with grim faces about loneliness and struggle in their early careers. Surely it must have been exhilarating, even fun, to take on the male dominated art world, push forward and thrive? Something about her expression in the Performing Haute Couture piece tells me that Suzy Lake is definitely enjoying the game.

October 18, 2014

This week I put the commercial galleries on hold and decided to check out what’s happening in the institutional realm.

Art Gallery of Ontario

What could I possibly say about Alex Colville that has not already been said?

The galleries were packed. The crowds seemed very familiar and knowledgeable about the work and its context. The pop-up gift shop was humming

Revolver Necklace for $32 Available online from shopAGO

As I wandered through the show (for the second time!) I tried to figure out what draws people to this artist. Alex Colville’s life was shaped by the Depression, WWII and a marriage lasting seventy years. He lived in a small town. Those few facts constitute a set of experiences shared by few people living today. And yet the crowds seemed to identify and recognize something personal.

In fact, in August, when I dragged a visiting Australian relative to the AGO – a guy who was unimpressed by Niagara Falls and expressed disdain for art in general – he was transfixed by Alex Colville’s paintings. They seemed to speak directly to him. He even purchased a reproduction of Pacific, an elegantly composed painting all about dispair.

Niagara Falls

Pacific

Exacting, taut, restrained, subtle, precise: these words can all be used to describe the paintings. But within those muted tones and careful, painstaking surfaces Alex Colville planted content. Graceful young athletes and middle class pleasures are there but so too are fear, decay and death.

Horse and Train

Three Crows

In his rendering of the revolvers, bolting terrified horses, crows and his own bleak gaze at the relentless unfolding of life these paintings are not so much about any particular external crisis as they are about an individual’s efforts to endure. Alex Colville addressed the human condition and his public responded.

V-Tape

I accidently came upon an artist’s talk, by Lisa Birke, at V-Tape.

When I was in art school visiting artists gave talks almost on a daily basis. Food and beer were provided for all, so they were well attended events. The talks broke down into two basic categories: first, the vague, rambling, sometimes painfully awkward sessions where the speaker might say something like: “…and then I got interested in triangles…” To me, that type of presentation was very honest and accurately reflected the artistic process, which is mostly unsure, groping and testing, interspersed with periods of incomprehensible clarity and assurance. The other type of talk had a bit more of a sales pitch tone. In those cases the artist forgot about the lonely, intuitive struggle to make art and just lined up a list of ideas that could be applied to the work after the fact, i.e. “…here the Hegelian Dialectic is represented as a triangle.”

I respected Lisa Birke for the dignified tone of her talk. She gave a nod to Kant and Burke and the sublime, but she was clearly in the intuitive, groping camp. She talked about how she made the piece: failing and trying again and being cold and frostbitten and alone in the dark early morning; being embarrassed and unsure and continuing to try and figure something out.

The result is her video entitled Red Carpet. The piece is lovely to look at, capturing some gorgeous extremes of the Canadian landscape experience. It also constitutes an interesting response to the Celebrity Gossip culture that seems to be taking over the world, i.e. she is in solidarity with not just the consumers but also the producers of the endless painful parade of distraction. The red carpet leads the protagonist under water and to obliteration. She can’t stop. We can’t look away.

Art Gallery of York University

I went back to the AGYU to have a closer look at the Is Toronto Burning? show.

Once I crossed the 401 there were thickets of Ford Nation signs everywhere and it rained hard. I prayed for God to save Toronto.

View out the bus window

It was luxurious to have this trove of artefacts to myself as almost no one was around.

Some of the artists are so vividly represented. I’m still not quite sure what to make of the question “Is Toronto Burning?” but David Buchan, for example, was definitely on fire during those years.

He was so rakish and arch as a rat pack Lothario or Bond man or lounge act. There are numerous videotapes of David Buchan lip-synching. I watched him perform “Bread and Butter” (which was originally recorded by the Newbeats in 1964). It is unforgettable.

I watched tough girl Elizabeth Chitty furiously shrugging her shoulders and whipping out her Polaroid like a lethal weapon.

And I looked around a little more carefully. Somehow at the show’s opening I missed the piece by Carol Conde and Karl Beverage in which they approximate poses from China’s Cultural Revolution ballet to spell out Art is Political. I really like the ambition in this artwork.

Art is Political

Here is an image from a Chinese Ballet which was hosted by the Kennedy Center in Washington in 2011. The caption reads: A landlord from the ballet cowers as one of the revolutionary woman soldiers hardens her face and strikes a pose with her pistol.

But most of the time I spent watching Colin Campbell’s delightful videotapes. One scene featured Colin with Ron Gabe, Tim Guest, David Buchan and Stephen Davey. It seemed like yesterday.