Reviews
On Charles Campbell and the Underrepresentation of Caribbean Art in Canada
The Jamaica-born, Victoria-based artist has shown at the Brooklyn Museum and Pérez Art Museum Miami—but only recently had his first Vancouver solo show
On Charles Campbell and the Underrepresentation of Caribbean Art in Canada
The Jamaica-born, Victoria-based artist has shown at the Brooklyn Museum and Pérez Art Museum Miami—but only recently had his first Vancouver solo show
The 1930s: The Making of “The New Man”
The 1930s: The Making of ‘The New Man’” is a stark reminder of how easily huge numbers of human beings can be convinced to slaughter and maim one another, how weak and hateful we can be, how susceptible to promises of salvation and self-aggrandizement, how quick to forget atrocities.
Jamie Tolagson
Jamie Tolagson’s exhibition at Jeffrey Boone Gallery in Vancouver’s Gastown came as something of a surprise.
Laurel Smith
Laurel Smith’s paintings question excess, finding parallels between our contemporary society of overabundance and the 18th-century rococo style.
theanyspacewhatever: Collapsing Institutional Spaces, or Having Fun Trying
Relational aesthetics is an ever-more-popular aspect of art festivals and shows across Canada. Now the trend is given international perspective in “theanyspacewhatever,” a wacky assemblage of sculpture, installation and video at New York’s Guggenheim.
Jean-Paul Jérôme in Review: Hard-Edge Heaven
Montrealer Jean-Paul Jérôme was a reclusive, solitary artist, often overshadowed on the scene by his brasher, younger counterparts. But as a recent exhibition showed, his mastery of shape and colour deserves renewed recognition.
James Lahey in Review: Imperfect History
James Lahey's skull paintings offer a meditation on life and death, but may also draw the viewer into an obsessive questioning. At his spring 2008 show in London, phrases inscribed into steel reinforced the philosophical effect.
The Big Gift in Review: Homefront Helpfulness
Jeff Spalding has kickstarted an art-appreciation movement in Calgary with “The Big Gift” and its display of hundreds of recent donations. At a time when the federal government has axed millions of dollars from the arts, it’s a great example of homefront support.
Sorel Cohen
Sorel Cohen’s recent exhibition returns to a subject she explored in her 2003 show at the Centre culturel canadien in Paris: the psychoanalyst’s couch.
everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler
The only thing the curator Juan Gaitán asked of the artists contributing to “everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler” was not to consider the gallery “insufficient.”
Québec Triennial
The new Québec Triennial occupies the entire Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal and reaches across differences in medium, language, age and gender to get at the strongest aesthetic currents in the province. And currently, as a province, we look rather like Duchamp on crack.