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
Jeremy Hof
In his 2009 exhibition at Blanket Contemporary Art, his first after winning the 2008 RBC Canadian Painting Competition, Jeremy Hof introduces recognizably Minimalist forms into his painting, sculpture and monochromes.
Diabolique
“Diabolique” is an ambitious two-part exhibition filled with images ranging from bombs to corpses and from fighter jets to, of course, penises. If the symbols seem all too familiar, that is in part the point of the show, which is as much about violence and war as about the iconographies and processes of their representation.
Rhonda Weppler and Trevor Mahovsky
It is rare to find a creative practice that harmonizes critical thinking and positive momentum. The Vancouver-based artists Rhonda Weppler and Trevor Mahovsky, however, seem to have mastered this delicate balancing act.
2Fik
The French-Moroccan Montrealer 2Fik is a gender-bending activist and self-taught photographer who considers his debut exhibition, held at Galerie [sas], to be his coming-out as a visual artist.
Cave Painting
There is not much paleolithic-looking work in this grouping of 27 artists, but what the show might have in common with those early stabs at the medium of painting is an exploration of what abstraction can represent.
Allan Kaprow
In 1961, Allan Kaprow, the putative father of both performance art and installation, filled the back garden at Martha Jackson Gallery in New York with hundreds of old tires, covering the sculptures that normally resided there with tarpaper and rope.
Mircea Cantor
In “Preventative kiss for suspicious war,” the Romanian artist Mircea Cantor uses a stripped-down approach to address conflict, policing and subjugation. Such situations always contain more than one voice or mode of interpretation, and thus contradictory perspectives are incorporated into Cantor’s work.
Selwyn Pullan: West Coast Wonder
As the Olympic torch relay ramps up visibility for Vancouver, it’s worth noting those who first popularized West Coast style and its successes. One of these was Selwyn Pullan, a postwar architectural photographer honoured with a survey earlier this year.
CAFKA 2009: Truth and Consequences
September saw the seventh edition of the CAFKA art and performance festival in southwestern Ontario. As John Armstrong observes, the festival, growing in scope at each outing, bests Nuit Blanche and other big-city fests on some points.
Michel de Broin: From Mad Scientist to Pied Piper
Michel de Broin is known for his experimental take on art tropes. As Shannon Anderson observes at his current Winnipeg show, de Broin’s latest efforts attract groups of innocent-seeming children as well as sophisticated art viewers.