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
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.
Francis Bacon
For the past half century, Francis Bacon has been the malevolent colossus of British painting: a maverick who never attended art school, yet created pictures that continue to both enchant and horrify viewers with their singular vision of a bleak humanity framed by violence, sexuality and isolation.
Matthew Eskuche in Review: Fast Food Aesthetics
In “Dollar Menu: A Fast Food Aesthetic,” Pittsburgh-based glass artist Matthew Eskuche elevates glasswork—a medium traditionally considered as craft—to a platform for consumerist critique.
Jin-me Yoon: Passages through Phantasmagoria
Where is home in an increasingly global world? Do we have to choose one home, or can there be many? Vancouver-based artist Jin-me Yoon investigates pressing questions of nationhood and belonging in her latest series of performance and video works at the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris.
Deborah Margo: Sweet Stuff
The results of the most recent RBC Painting Competition seem to signal a return to process painting, and particularly the kind associated with 1970s Post-Minimalism. Ottawa-based artist Deborah Margo’s work is among the more interesting branches of this vein, and her solo exhibition at Patrick Mikhail Gallery takes a provocative new direction.
Actions in Review: Re-Humanizing the City
With their current group show “Actions: What You Can Do With the City,” the Canadian Centre for Architecture shifts its focus from major building projects to architectural interventions on a human scale, exploring how ordinary people can reclaim their communities.
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster: Back to the Future, or A Cautionary Tale
Last week Tate announced that Polish sculptor Miroslaw Balka will be the next artist using the massive Turbine Hall. Whether he’ll be able to outdo the current, sci-fi flavoured installation by French artist Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster is an open question.
Lyndal Osborne: Delectable Decay
“Ornamenta” is Lyndal Osborne’s magnificent cross-Canada compost pile. Travelling this year to Penticton, Edmonton, Moose Jaw and Medicine Hat, Osborne’s vegetative installation is both playful and thought-provoking.
Thomas Demand: Mom, Apple Pie and the Oval Office
From JFK at his desk in Life Magazine to blog speculation over Barack Obama’s decorative tastes, there are few better representations of a conflicted sense of history, power and celebrity than the Oval Office. A new UK exhibition by German artist Thomas Demand deconstructs the meaning of this cultural monolith.