Max Dean: A Cutting Wit

Max Dean has practiced a long-running brand of art humour in his work and it's apparent in this 1971-to-2008 mini-survey in Toronto. Featuring works culled from the artist’s studio, it's a show full of hidden gems for viewers and collectors alike.

Gareth Moore: Uncertain Pilgrimage

Gareth Moore’s blurring of art and life continues in an enigmatic new solo show that bridges London and Amarillo, Florence and Old Schoolhouse Road. Using unplanned travels for inspiration, Moore transforms found objects into ingenious, resonant artworks.

Liz Magor: Speaking of Animals and Food

Over a long, successful career Liz Magor has explicated the uneasy truce between fact and representation. Her new show, a collaboration between Burnaby’s Simon Fraser University Gallery and Seattle’s Henry Art Gallery, alludes to the melding of memory and consumption.

James Carl: Inner Space

James Carl is having a bumper year with collaborative surveys at Cambridge Galleries, the Macdonald Stewart Art Centre and the University of Toronto’s Justina M. Barnicke Gallery. While these shows summarize Carl’s past work, an exhibit of new sculpture at Diaz Contemporary provides indications of its future.

Guido Molinari and Colour: Paintings 1954–1999

These days, it is hard to imagine hard-edge paintings causing much controversy in the contemporary art world. But history shows it can. Now, Montreal’s Galerie Simon Blais puts a Canadian twist on the legacy of abstract minimalism with a retrospective of the late Guido Molinari.

Allyson Mitchell Video: Interview with a Sasquatch

In this January 2009 studio visit, Toronto artist Allyson Mitchell speaks to Canadian Art editor Richard Rhodes about her upcoming exhibition at the McMaster Museum of Art in Hamilton. Melding feminist practice with fun fur, Mitchell’s savvy sculptures are bigger and better than ever.

by Canadian Art School

Here Now or Nowhere: Northern Lights

Festivals like Nuit Blanche and Luminato have amped public art festivals in Toronto and Montreal. Now—more out of necessity than novelty—northern Alberta kicks off its own version of the phenomenon, curated this year by artist Micah Lexier.

by Gabrielle Moser

Andrew Morrow: Oh, Happy Meat

The Toronto-based painter Andrew Morrow makes some of the most complex figurative paintings in contemporary art. His immersion of viewers into media mayhem is sharp, topical and impressively well rendered.

Graeme Patterson: Collecting the Collectors

Artist Graeme Patterson has a thing for miniatures. Best known for his replicas of a small prairie town, the artist now sets his skills on more cosmopolitan sights: eccentric urbanites, observant artists and a delicate web of Canadian collectors.

You Don’t Really Care For Music, Do You?: A Fresh Spin on Recorded Realities

Economic vitality may be flagging in the art world and elsewhere, but some new privately sponsored galleries are still opening. One such space, Toronto’s Red Bull 381 Projects, currently hosts an exhibition on music that includes some impressive Canadian artists.