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
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.
Andrew Rucklidge
Most abstract expressionists are landscape painters, and this affiliation is not as restrictive or tricky as many of the former would have us believe. The Toronto artist Andrew Rucklidge embraces both designations.
Close to You: Crafty Pop Culture
Named after The Carpenters’ 1970 saccharine-sweet song of the same name, “Close to You” provides a survey of projects that translate pop culture icons into personalized and highly intimate craft objects in the domestic sphere.
Mnemonic Devices: The Persistence of Memory
Remembering is a decidedly melancholy activity in “Mnemonic Devices,” the current exhibition at Oakville Galleries in Gairloch Gardens. Still, the historical and personal content of its individual works makes for a deeply affecting—and memorable—show.
Kim Ondaatje: Factory and Fiction
Though created over 30 years ago, the works in “Kim Ondaatje: Paintings 1950–1975” still speak to current concerns. Moreover, shimmering alternately with the heat of summer and the chilling winter wind, they’re poignant documents of the Canadian landscape.
Yves Saint Laurent: An Art Made for the Body
Though it’s taken on an elegiac quality since Yves Saint Laurent’s unexpected passing, the YSL retrospective in Montreal feels enjoyable and emotional. After all, clothing is art made for the body, and this show surveys 40 years of the best.
Rebecca Belmore: Rising to the Occasion
In this review of Belmore's mid-career retrospective at the Vancouver Art Gallery from summer 2008, Gabrielle Moser highlights enduring themes in the Anishinaabe artist’s work
Not Quite How I Remember It: Rapid Memory Gloss
The need to examine the past—personal and otherwise—to make sense of the present is a strong, if not innate, human quality. This tendency gets a fair, though sometimes uneven, treatment in the Power Plant’s summer exhibition.