Art Auction Picks for Social 2018

I’ve been trying to quit smoking, but when I look at Brenda Draney’s Smoke Break I want to cave. Draney’s clever, minimalist vignettes appeal to my upbringing in the prairies, my affection for literature (in particular its ambiguities) and my dependence on and obsession with sleep and the life of dreams. In this work, Draney basically explains why I love smoking so much: it fosters wicked intimacy in one-on-one relations, particularly among femmes and queers, who are wont to gossip and process as they claim space through cloudy, mingling exhales.—David Balzer, Editor-in-Chief and Co-Publisher, Canadian Art

Change. A compelling statement for our contemporary times. Sandra Meigs’s Elevator (22) was chosen by the auction committee for both its striking composition and its political brevity. This work on paper transitions between playful gestures and symbols to those of protest, like a placard carried among the masses. At her 2017 Iskowitz Prize exhibition “Room For Mystics” at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Meigs transformed the gallery into a colourful, positively charged space, creating the feeling of entering another dimension. I like to think that this artwork can take us back into that exhibition, where we march behind a trio of brass musicians cheering for change.—Stefan Hancherow, Curator and Social 2018 Art Advisory Committee Co-Chair

Marie-Michelle Deschamps’s practice is, at times, one that references language, its structure, and the spectrum of its possibilities—as well as the complexities of its usage. In the case of Je dirai comme toi, the artist plays with our understanding of a white sheet of paper as something that conveys meaning, and also an opportunity for potentiality. The ingenuity of her practice lies in a sculptural approach that references the seemingly practical nature of design, as well as the specificity of craftsmanship and object-making, as part of a result as much as a process. In Deschamps’s vocabulary, enamelled surfaces act as a metaphor for language, the same way language acts as a translative structure for referencing objects.—Daisy Desrosiers, Inaugural Program Director of the Lunder Institute at Colby College, Maine, Social 2018 Art Advisory Committee Member

“Life in pieces” is a phrase that may conjure the humorous breakdowns depicted in the eponymous TV series rather than Margaux Williamson’s images. Yet in Williamson’s work, life lived and popular culture are both experienced in fragments that congeal to form a whole. As an internationally known writer and filmmaker, as well as a talented painter, Williamson cuts a path through the day-to-day, moving from flux to the still moment and its unlikely detail, focusing on the ordinary rather than the epic, on the moment in the story that is remarkable. In this painting, which is a donation from the estate of the exceptional curator Ben Portis, Williamson presents a moment of childhood daydreaming, the kind experienced in the warmth and security of home while looking out the window on a rainy day. The scene beyond the window remains inaccessible to the viewer, like the many possible scenes in the child’s mind. But who cannot remember the sweetness of such a stolen moment of reverie?—Jessica Bradley, Curator and Collections Advisor, Social 2018 Art Advisory Committee Co-Chair

I first encountered Glenn Lewis’s incredible ceramic pots alongside his photographs last year in “Vancouver Special” at the Vancouver Art Gallery. Special indeed. I am woefully late to this important artist’s work, which has spanned decades, across mediums. I am equally enthralled with this particular pot and this particular photograph. Together, they speak to me of delicacy and solidity, cultivation and spontaneity, whimsy and wisdom and ultimately of balance. I could happily contemplate this Japanese garden and rough-hewn, lidded pot for eternity.—Pamela Meredith, Independent Curator and Advisor, Social 2018 Art Advisory Committee Member

I am biased toward this piece—I had a hand, albeit small, in the undertaking of its production. Over Labour Day weekend 2017, artist Aude Moreau gathered a crew of volunteers and cultural workers, of which I was one, to endeavour the creation of this spectacle. Less is More Or was always intended to exist as documentation of the intervention. The “event” of the live display was purposefully not well advertised. But when I look at this image, I recall the excitement of running around the TD towers at 4 a.m., straining my neck to see if the words were clear enough, or if more windows needed to be darkened or better lit. It was a privilege to be there while it was all happening, 223 metres high, but I never saw it as clear as it is in this image, in its entirety. It really is amazing.

The experience of this project was only made richer because the concept informing the intervention is so smart and delightfully, darkly, satirical. The renowned German American architect and designer of the iconic TD Centre, Mies van der Rohe, is often associated the term “less is more” in relation to modernist design ideals. By adding “or” to the phrase, Aude complicates the axiom, pivoting the meaning in different directions and toward various considerations: Is more or less? Is less more or? Add to that the nature of the various businesses in the towers, where more is more and less is mostly just bad business, and you get a deep and poignantly articulated critique.—Vanessa Runions, Associate Art Curator, TD Bank, Social 2018 Art Advisory Committee Member

The serial image was a cornerstone of Arnaud Maggs’s practice. Whether in his early career portraits of students, colleagues or influential artists, such as Joseph Beuys, or later photo series of archival ephemera—early 20th-century child-worker tags, a ledger from the Klondike Gold Rush, pages from the appointment book of photographer Eugène Atget—Maggs consistently found resonant meaning in repeated form. This image is the second in a sequence of 12 self-portrait headshots (the complete work is currently featured at the National Gallery of Canada) that capture Maggs in full profile. As he turns 360 degrees in front of the camera, a kind of cumulative intensity resolves across the images—each a close conceptual analysis of the artist as both subject and object, a finite measure of infinite proportions. This is essential Maggs.—Bryne McLaughlin, Senior Editor, Canadian Art

This work entices me to marvel at the steady flourishes of the brush in Robert Fones’s hand, the complexity of the alphabet, and how every day we use these symbols that silently communicate sound, words, meaning. Here, an enlarged and fragmented historical script from another era exists as pure gesture, reading as decorative incident on a paper shopping bag. Fones’s work reveals the richness of embedded histories in our everyday encounters with the material world—in this case, the writing on a package of a storied brand of German biscuits. There it is: simple, beautiful, common and replete with meaning. There is so much to look at and decipher, again and again.—Jessica Bradley, Curator and Collections Advisor, Social 2018 Art Advisory Committee Co-Chair

Social 2018 takes place September 27 at Evergreen Brick Works, and includes a live auction led by Stephen Ranger and an art environment created by Sandra Meigs. To see all of the artworks and experiences up for auction at Social 2018, visit canadianart.ca/social2018.