Photography – annetteandquebec

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.”

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.

July 18, 2018

Report from Montreal

Life in graceful Montreal moves at a sauntering pace. The sidewalks feel broad and unhurried. There is always a table to be had, even at peak time. The movie is never sold out. In the hot, white glare of an afternoon in mid-July downtown Montreal feels nearly deserted and the saunter slows to a languid drift.

I am drawn to the churches: hushed, dark, cool, grandly capacious and filled with exquisite objects. Mary, Queen of the World Cathedral is my favourite.

Narthex of “Mary, Queen of the World Cathedral” in Montreal

The role of the non-cloistered female orders and their leaders, particularly Saint Marguerite Bourgeoys, are exalted in this edifice. There are a number of depictions of her, always looking beatific, in the Cathedral.

Saint Marguerite Bourgeoys teaching her indigenous pupils in 1694 on ground belonging to the Sulpicians. Work by Georges Delfosse.

Portrait of Saint Marguerite Bourgeoys

I was thinking way too much about faith, charity, devotion and, becoming hypnotized by the candles burning in the dim light. It was time to buy a Mother Theresa medal and move on to the Museum.

The Museum of Contemporary Art

Richard Ibghy and Marilou Lemmons piece titled The Prophets creates the absorbing core to a group exhibition of the same name. Spread about on high tables, Ibghy and Lemmons’ delicate, petite sculptures relate in a playful, irreverent way to the conceptual and/or formalist artworks, by renowned artists, on the surrounding walls.

Detail of “The Prophets” by Richard Ibghy and Marilou Lemmons

The succinct transmission of information in charts, graphs and process maps is slightly subverted here. Drole captions hint at meaning but these are gestural data depictions, not literal. They use the familiar forms of the financial pages but have more in common with Russian Constructivist graphics. Their connection to, for example, the Sol Lewitt prints in the same room is definite but updated. Whereas the early conceptual artists, like Sol Lewitt, were obliged to create text instructions accompanying their visual production — the formal texts sounding rather like logic statements or algorithms — Richard Ibghy and Marilou Lemmons experience no such constraints. They just go for it.

It seems to be a very popular show. Visitors linger and are compelled to take numerous photographs, intently focused, peering into their smart phones and leaning over the tables of sculptures they wile away the summer afternoon.

Museum goer photographing art work by Richard Ibghy and Marilou Lemmons, while standing in front of a painting by Jack Bush

Also at the Museum of Contemporary Art is a massive exhibition of the work of Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. The show is called Unstable Presence.

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer is interested in human interaction with systems, benign and otherwise. Sometimes the work manifests as big, flashy public-type display, something you might see at Nuit Blanche. For example: A sensor detects a human heartbeat and ignites a dazzling display of glittering bulbs in the museum rotunda. I guess the “unstable” is the human participant.

Pulse Spiral by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer

Other works — for example Zoom Pavilion – suggest sinister forms of control: non-stop surveillance, facial recognition technology, drones, heat-seeking threats and menaces, remote body scans and all the other oppressive technologies the techie geeks have come up with. In fact, this phone I carry around with me everywhere is a tracking device! But if I don’t have it…. how am I going to know where the nearest Starbucks is? I guess its a trade off.

Installation shots from Zoom by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer

Walking into the Zoom Pavilion installation is highly unsettling. Multiple camera immediately focus on the viewer’s face, enlarge the image, then analyze, compare and store it. There is a strangely disturbing soundtrack of zip lines, clicks, whirs and hums. The walls are covered with real-time images of the audience, as they tentatively observe. The museum goer becomes a passive participant in a ghostly, black and white world. A sense of being tracked or hunted is pervasive and the worst kind of corporate/government malfeasance is evoked.

In fact many of the works by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer create a sense of stepping into a reality much bigger than ours. We can participate but only minimally. A sinister power that lies elsewhere is amplified and our actions and interactions become trivial.

Video of works by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer in “Unstable Presence”

And there was more. The Museum showed art works by some of my favourite artists … so it was a great day in sultry Montreal.

“Earthling (Red Sweater)” by Janet Werner

“Zombie Dance” by Sarah Anne Johnson

July 8, 2018

The Toronto Outdoor Art Fair

2018 constitutes the 57th edition of the Toronto Outdoor Art Fair. Rain or shine, since 1961, Toronto artists have been hauling their work down to City Hall. The idea is to connect with a member of the public and make a sale!

TOAF is juried. 750 applicants were whittled down to 360 participants. Fees are low: $50 per application. Artists get to keep 100% of sales receipts.

TOAF is intent on getting people in the buying mood. For example: The organizers set up an apartment tableau so that prospective buyers could test a painting over a generic couch/lamp/coffee table setup and get a sense of how it might look at home.

“Quite good. I’ll take it.”

Established artists rarely talk about the connection between money and art. In art school, the topic of how to make a living as an artist is frequently dismissed with a shrug. That’s not the case at the TOAF. This is a place to openly market artwork, figure out a price point that works and be prepared to make change.

Art work by Ezio Molinari

The global art market grew 12% in 2017, to total $63.7 billion, according to Art Basel. Market share is largely located in the US (over 40%) with China a distant second, followed by the UK. Because Donald Trump is in power the US figures are expected to rise again this year. Why? Art sales apparently escalate as income inequality increases. (…) Changes to US tax law are also favourable to buyers of pricey art. Note, however, that the recent rise in the art market is confined to the high end galleries and auction houses. Galleries with more modest prices did less well. (TOAF does not allow prints or multiples, which interestingly are the one bright spot on the lower end market, according to Bloomberg.)

But the buying habits of the 1% are not really relevant here on this stretch of hot cement. The TOAF is bootstrap capitalism: refreshing, raw and often surprising.

I was happy to see this big, pink foam thing, made by Michelle Cieloszczyk. She said it doesn’t really need to be suspended. It can be shown leaning against a wall or just laying down on the floor or somewhere. I like the way this piece flips between a kind of fuzzy feeling, like flannelette, and then suddenly evokes hanging meat or something equally ghastly.

Michelle Cieloszczyk with her sculpture Flat Can

I saw ceramics at the TOAF that were inspired, fresh and beautiful. Water jugs by Jordan Scott appear so effortless and loose. Joon Hee Kim creates complex narratives, bizarrely detailed and imaginative, using fired clay.

Ceramics by Jordan Scott

Ceramics by Joon Hee Kim

There were hand printed scarves, home decor and lots of jewelry but the bulk of the TOAF is painting and photography. It was a lot of fun wander through the blazing heat and peak into a unique sensibility created within each 10 x 10 foot white tent.

Beverley Hawksley created a glamorous, business girl mood.

Parveen Dhatt dressed appropriately.

Clare Allin came up with a sixties counter-culture vibe.

I came home with a pocket full of festive business cards, reminding me to shell out and buy some original art.

March 11, 2018

“Take My Breath Away”

Danh Vo at the Guggenheim Museum

A Dane, a gay man, a refugee from the Vietnam War, a child raised in the Catholic faith, an artist who lives in Mexico and Berlin: these are some of the unique qualifiers that can be applied to Danh Vo, whose current exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum is entirely original and beautifully expansive. I mean “expansive” in a particular sense: Danh Vo has a way of offering a succinct starting point with his work and assigning nuanced speculation and circuitous trails of thought to the viewer. It is such a lovely and uplifting intellectual exchange.

Installation view “Take My Breath Away” by Danh Vo

The chandelier, depicted above, already loaded with cultural, economic, sentimental and literary meaning, has been installed in a startling fashion. It barely skims the surface of the glossy Guggenheim ramp. It is described on a nearby label as having a particularly disquieting provenance. This, and two other chandeliers which Danh Vo was able to purchase and which are also in the Museum in different “states,” hung in the Hotel Majestic in Paris. The Hotel was the site of the signing of the Paris Peace Accords in 1973, which ostensibly ended the Vietnam conflict but also marked the beginning of a period of violence, betrayal and humiliation on both sides of that war.

Lot 20. Two Kennedy Administration Cabinet Room Chairs by Danh Vo

What appears to be an abstract sculpture, above, is defined by the artist as leather upholstery from two chairs. The chairs were purchased at Sotheby’s at an auction of items belonging to Robert McNamara. McNamara was the defense secretary for both Kennedy and Johnson during the period of Vietnam War escalation. They were given to McNamara by Jacqueline Kennedy after President Kennedy’s death.

Danh Vo deconstructed the chairs. Parts of them are scattered around the exhibition. The frames here. The springs and stuffing there. To me the dismemberment of these potent objects manifests as rage. But then (…) I was 21 in 1973 and I remember the end of the war. What do these objects and the wordy labels mean to someone in their 20s now?

I really like the way Danh Vo allows meaning to change, to evolve and to flicker in and out of objects.

Robert McNamara – US Secretary of Defense, 1961-1968

There are other objects in the show that a similar proximity to notorious events: Ted Kaczynski’s manual typewriter for example. (Which somehow I did not see. Only read about! But even in pictures, it seems to hold barely restrained malevolence within its banality. But of course that is my projection. Not long ago I watched Manhunt: Unabomber on Netflix. All eight episodes!)

Theodore Kaczynski’s Smith Corona Portable Typewriter, by Danh Vo

It should be pointed out that although many of the objects in the show are accompanied by rather lengthy texts the work does not rely on labels. I concluded this because of the following: I was in NY for just a few days. I went all the way up to 90th Street and Park to see this show on Thursday. The Guggenheim is closed on Thursday. Pressed for time and overly committed I went back on Friday. At one point wandering up the ramp I got irritated waiting, in back of an overly witty couple, to read the descriptive cards. I struck off, ignored the texts and was swept up in the pure visual power of the show.

Massive Black Hole in the Dark Heart of our Milky Way by Danh Vo

The piece by Danh Vo entitled “We The People” is an extreme undertaking. I didn’t quite understand that I was looking at a dismembered replica of the Statue of Liberty, constructed of copper at full scale, until I was on the subway going back downtown reading the exhibition notes. This extraordinary artwork will never be exhibited in one place as it is gradually being dispersed to various cultural institutions around the world.

We The People by Danh Vo

To see Danh Vo talk (in Danish with subtitles) about the creation of We The People, click here:

The inclusion of Catholic imagery, especially the medieval sculpture, adds gravitas and grace to the exhibition.

Artwork by Danh Vo

The piece above is an example of the artist’s joining of objects from different era: damaged medieval wooden sculpture is fused to fragments of Roman marble statuary. Elsewhere naturalistic tangles of branches have grafted to them tiny, finely wrought medieval countenances.

Christmas (Rome) by Danh Vo

The artwork above is made of velvet fabric which was used as backing for an exhibition of objects in the Vatican Museum. (Just thinking about how Danh Vo came to get his hands on this particular velvet has so much narrative potential.)

One of my favourite pieces in this show are the letters from Henry Kissinger to New York Post theater critic Leonard Lyons:

In another letter, dated May 20, 1970, Kissinger writes the following:

“Dear Leonard, I would choose your ballet over contemplation of Cambodia any day — if only I were given the choice. Keep tempting me; one day perhaps I will succumb.”

At the time, Kissinger was helping to orchestrate the so-called Cambodian Incursion.

August 6, 2016

The McMichael Art Collection – Sarah Anne Johnson

In terms of the perpetuation of the species and the human life span, the period between 15 and 25 is the really crucial one. This is the period of maximum fertility and all its attendant characteristics: the fierce courage, idealism and passion that belong only to the young; and of course, on the dark side, the selfishness, fecklessness and brutality that hopefully dissipates with maturity. Looking back to this era in one’s own lifetime can produce feelings of awe and possibly an overriding sense of good fortune that we even survived at all. Sometimes we barely recognize our former selves and are obliged to murmur, almost inaudibly: “Was that idiot me?”

Sarah Anne Johnson wanders into this territory of youthful enthusiasm and misadventure in her exhibition called Field Trip, at the McMichael Collection.

Yellow Dinosaur by Sarah Anne Johnson

The “trip” Sarah Anne Johnson takes the viewer on is deep and quixotic, at times hilarious, contemplative and hopeful, and then suddenly frightening and grim. I really liked looking at this show. For me the dazzling images conjure up a sense of how perception is shared, how my own perceptions conform to contemporary custom and how they change.

Zombie Dance by Sarah Anne Johnson

I’ve been reading a book by Jenny Diski called The Sixties. She writes: “We were …a bunch of dissolute, hedonistic druggies. We lay around and got stoned, had sex, listened to music that exalted lying around, getting stoned, having sex, and hymned our good times.” It seems that fifty years later this is the same crowd that Sarah Anne Johnson has photographed. In her book Jenny Diski goes on to chronicle how the sixties became the Reagan years and turned into ” that beast: the Me generation.” Time will tell.

Chillin’ at the Void by Sarah Anne Johnson

Detail of Chillin’ at the Void by Sarah Anne Johnson

Sarah Anne Johnson intertwines so many interesting threads of thinking. The detail of Chillin’ at the Void depicts a new crop of “dissolute, hedonistic druggies.” It makes me think of a different kind of chill: a cold and dreadful chill, of how marketing and propaganda ease each generation through its own very special, unique and individual journey.

Group Portrait by Sarah Anne Johnson

In the piece entitled “Group Portrait” Sarah Anne Johnson captures the joy and satisfaction of belonging, so critical for the young. The individuals are obliterated with dopey masks and transformed in an instant to exotic creatures that have banded together. We will always be together!! We celebrate our originality! We defend our tribe!! It’s such a brief sentiment. Maybe only an afternoon or two. That weekend at Bird’s Hill Park.

Sarah Anne Johnson’s trip includes some dark alleys, strewn with garbage, seriously dangerous drugs and stoners slipping over the edge.

Blob by Sarah Anne Johnson

The lurid, day-glow monsters of nightmare and death are observed with nonchalance. This is an ability of the very young and very stoned, and a feature of their passage into the humdrum adult world….if all goes well.

Glitter Bomb by Sarah Anne Johnson

May 26, 2016

Here’s something you may or may not know: say your laptop gets wet, due to an unfortunate incident. You dry it out for a day or two and suddenly it comes back to life. All is well! These things happen, after all. Six months later it won’t turn on and when you take it back to Best Buy you learn it is filled with rust and useless. You have to buy a new one.

Alison Milne Gallery – Dean West

The Alison Milne Gallery, tucked away on Osler Street above Bloor, is a cool, stylish oasis in the urban summer and the current show, part of the city-wide CONTACT Photography Festival, brings a note of self-possessed LA glamour to the Junction.

I couldn’t help wondering if Dean West is a made up name. Maybe its because the photographs are all about surface, artifice and style. In this exhibition, titled The Painted Photograph, people and objects populate hyper-art directed environments.

There is not a trace of the messiness of life in these sumptuous art works.

St. Pete Beach by Dean West

This vista is so pristine it does appear to be kicked up a notch on the realness scale and hence painted. Possibly there is an Instagram filter that creates such a vivid blue. Maybe X-Pro II or…Mayfair?

Some colours are owned by certain artists. I guess David Hockney lays claim to this particular shade of aqua, so much so that Dean West placed him poolside, in the photo shown below, looking relaxed, enjoying a smoke and the view.

Palm Springs #2 by Dean West

My favourite piece in this show has to be the domestic interior: the red and white, the fireplace, the bizarre presence of a reindeer, the oppressive tension, the eerily disconnected couple, all these elements work together to create a updated Surrealist Christmas card for the moment.

Palm Springs #1 by Dean West

Imagine hanging out with these two, in this sterile room, with a low ceiling. I like the way Dean West takes a fashion shoot type concept it makes it suffocating and ghastly.

Detail of Orient Point Ferry by Dean West

When is a celebrity not a celebrity? I think in this Dean West photograph the celebrity is used more as a signifier of artifice than for any typical celebrity points. (Of course this guy does not present like a standard celebrity. He has a somewhat clownish demeanor. He is overweight and he wears a pained expression rarely seen on a celebrity.) And whereas normally celebrities in art are tiresome in this case it really works. The idea of cast of characters is pumped up to constitute another element along with the colours, the angles of gaze, the perfect light and the flawless sea.

Our culture is so saturated with these larger than life figures that seeing one used in this context was refreshing. But … generally I’m tired of celebrities and their feckless antics and I was happy to read the recent article in the New York Times defending Gawker and their “opposition to the triumph of celebrity culture.” Down with the mono-culture! Long live Gawker!

May 9, 2015

….More Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival

There are CONTACT exhibitions everywhere in Toronto this month; a coffee shop around the corner from me on Dundas West, the local organic supermarket even! Hard to get a good look at them through the vegetable misters, but they are there.

Bau-Xi Photo – Chris Shepherd

Kennedy Station Platform by Chris Shepherd

Is the essential character of a city reflected in its transportation systems or do the systems help to create the character? Think of the glamour of Montreal’s metro; its bold graphic styling and silently approaching trains, or the romance of New York’s subway, permanently embedded like its famous black and white, art deco tiles. Relatively, Toronto’s underground transportation has seemed somewhat mundane, workaday and all about function.

Pape Exit by Chris Shepherd

Chris Shepherd gets at the heart of the form and function connection in his exhibition at Bau Xi Photo. (I am actually the owner of some subway shots Chris Shepherd and I think it is because of looking at these photographs that I began to appreciate the aesthetic of Toronto’s subway.) Sadly, it is not glamour or romance that is at the core of Toronto; it is work. And the Toronto subway is in total harmony. The photographs of Chris Shepherd show us the modest pathways to our daily grind and reveal their perfection.

From BlogTO I learned the following:

The colours were chosen to discourage rowdy behaviour and loitering rather than for aesthetic reasons. Consequently, they have that institutional quality of hospital or penitentiary walls. For many years, Torontonians grumbled that their subway stations looked like public washrooms. But now, decades later, the remaining designs have become Modernist classics.

There has been a recent flurry of TTC projects to improve and concurrently embellish the existing underground system. It’s exciting to see a little civic preening going on in this city so focused on dogged achievement.

At Dufferin Station, Winnipeg artists Eduardo Aquino and Karen Shaski (of spmb) add blooms of pure colour, and big pixilated images to transform one of the most heavily used and rundown station of the Bloor line. Chris Shepherd documents this unrestrained use of colour so well. We can only hope it does not lead to loitering or rowdiness.

Dufferin Station by Chris Shepherd

And finally the hoardings have come down at Union Station. Big, messy, sketchbook style line drawings by Stuart Reid are revealed. The drawings, depicting TTC riders, have been blown up and transposed onto glass panels. They are fresh, unexpected, thoughtful, sensitive and kind of a shock relative to the relentless TTC grids and tiles.

Union Station panels by Stuart Reid

My current work address is near the Ferry terminal at the bottom of Bay Street. Wandering around the area at lunch time gives me the feeling the plastic wrap is coming off. Everything is shiny, clean and has that new car smell.

Across the street from me, draping the exterior of the Westin Harbour Castle Conference Center at 11 Bay Street is a public installation (also part of the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival) titled Best Beach by Sarah Anne Johnson. The piece is particularly stunning when seen from within the Waterpark food court at mid-day. At that time the whole place is flooded with light and Sarah Anne Johnson’s piece looms over the oblivious diners, glowing and shimmering in the daylight.

Views of Sarah Anne Johnson’s piece Best Beach from the Waterpark food court at 10 Bay Street

It is a huge photograph and it sweeps across the entire end of the food court’s massive plane of windows like some giant playground graffiti, messy, dripping, flourescent and joyful.

Best Beach by Sarah Anne Johnson

MOCCA – Part Picture

The exhibition at MOCCA, called Part Picture, is also associated with the Scotiabank CONTACT event. On entering the show there is a statement clarifying the curatorial rationale for the pieces included. The artists in this exhibition, declares the statement, must be:

young
reacting against digital photography, and,
combining photographs with another creative medium, like painting or sculpture

Why Jan Groover is included I do not know? She was born in 1943 and became well known in the 1970s for close up, vaguely feminist, domestic interiors. Maybe its because they are truly painterly and reminiscent of a Braque still life in purples, greens and reds? In any case I appreciated seeing these beautiful photos.

Untitled by Jan Groover

Painterly too are the photos by James Welling. It’s interesting that James Welling has worked for Brioni (the Italian fashion conglomerate) because these prints resemble nothing so much as pretty dress fabric.

14Y by James Welling

Works by Ryan Foerster are more in line with the stated intentions of the show and truly take photography into another realm. Eschewing the tradition of pristine craftsmanship in a dust free darkroom, Ryan Foerester uses mangled photo plates, chance and accidents of light, dirt and debris to create wonderfully expressionist pieces with a particular Petri-dish gore appeal that reads as post apocalyptic.

Artwork by Ryan Foerster

Ellen Carey’s Mourning Wall is composed of spent Polaroid plates. They have a dreary, grey, funerary look and are arranged in the finest tradition of minimalist sculpture. This piece made me think about the brief flowering of unique technologies. (How exciting Polaroid once was! Why did I throw my Commodore 64 in the trash?!) Ellen Carey extends the metaphor of obsolescence, death and decay with the Rust Belt aesthetic of this work.

Mourning Wall by Ellen Carey

Slick reams of photo paper tumble in heaps; snapshots sprout cables or have little blanket covers attached; but more typically, in this show, photographs take on a more painterly look, moving away from documentation, the traditional province of photography, and closer to objecthood, and marketability.

68 by Mariah Robertson