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
Roger Ballen: Raw Power
There are few contemporary image-makers who capture the essentially chaotic beauty of human existence as well as the Johannesburg-based photographer Roger Ballen. A tight overview of work at the OCAD Professional Gallery clarifies his practice.
NeoHooDoo: Meet Me in Miami
It’s not uncommon, when visiting the Miami area during March Break, to run into fellow Canadians on the beach. But it is a surprise to run into familiar names like Brian Jungen and Rebecca Belmore at Florida’s major art museum. The context—a strong travelling exhibition called “NeoHooDoo”—makes the encounter extra-fortuitous.
Ingres and the Moderns: Harems, Hijacked
Cindy Sherman, Francis Bacon and Robert Mapplethorpe. “Ingres and the Moderns” in Quebec City sets out to celebrate the Turkish Bath master while tracing his influence across contemporary art.
Lucy Hogg: Mastering the Old Masters
For her third show in her adopted city of Washington, the former Vancouver artist Lucy Hogg has lined two parallel walls in a narrow gallery with oval canvases painted in odd monochromes—muted plums and raspberries, olive-lime, bruised grey, brick, teal, tamped scarlet and dulled turquoise.
Gakona: Art Goes Electric in Paris
It seems fitting that intrigue, rumours and conjecture should accompany the art in “Gakona,” a group show inspired by a small town in Alaska where, reportedly, secretive experiments with electricity are carried out by the American government.
David Mabb: William Morris and Constructivism Meet the Marketplace
For close to a decade, London-based artist David Mabb has been doing mash-ups of William Morris, combining his designs with the utopian projects of Russian Constructivists such as Malevich, Rodchenko and Lissitzky.
Elmgreen & Dragset
A neon-pink sign that reads “The Mirror” twitches promisingly above the exterior door to the gallery on a rainy, grey London day. “ADMISSION OVER 18 ONLY” warns a steely plaque on the door. The gallery entrance looks foreign; once inside, I realize that the shelter from the rain only generates a deeper depression.
Lisa Lipton
The hills are alive with the sound of global warming in Lisa Lipton’s multimedia installation High on a Hill, in which two alpine yodellers find their mountaintop love affair aborted when the snowy peaks are overtaken by tropical plants.
Erwin Wurm
Erwin Wurm’s art combines a deadpan delivery with mischief, often pushing the limits of absurdity while maintaining an ostensibly solemn tone. Wurm has an extensive international exhibition history, but “Désespéré” (“Desperate”), presented by the curator Patrice Duhamel at Galerie de l’UQAM, is his first solo exhibition in Canada.
Métamorphosis
Istanbul has undergone enormous socio-political and demographic change in recent years, which makes “Métamorphosis” a fitting theme for an exhibition there. The nine Canadian artists assembled by the Montreal curator Louise Déry around this fertile word shed light on these extraordinary shifts via two specific axes: the transformation of nature and landscape and the mutation of the human figure.