MONDOmagazine

Public Realm
Curated by Christopher Hume
Featuring work by Ian Amell, Broken City Lab, Eric Cheung + Sean Martindale, Desire, Rocky Dobey, Tina Edan, Christine Elson, Doug Geldart, Helena Grdadolnik + David Colussi, Josh Hite, Tyler Hodgins, Stuart Keeler, Mark Krawczynski, Marissa Largo + Sean Bennell + Daniel Pierre, Frances Patella, Allison Rowe, Kevin Scanlon, Laura St. Pierre
January 20-31 @ Propeller Centre for the Visual Arts

Review and photographs by Tina Chu
(MONDO does not hold the rights to the original images.)

What first drew me to The Propeller’s latest exhibit was an image of Eric Cheung and Sean Martindale’s Poster Pocket Plants. The last time I’d encountered these plants was around the corner from Bathurst and Harbord. Seeing the works in a new context required a follow-up.

Curated by Christopher Hume, Public Realm turned out to be a noteworthy exhibition of interventions into, meditations on and proposals for public space. Read the rest of this entry »

A detail from Angela Joosse and Shana MacDonald's work on Leona Drive.

Review and photos by Tina Chu

As a longtime resident of the suburbs, I always feel a sense of hesitation and guilt when revealing my address to those from the city, which is why the Leona Drive Project, with its focus on and situation in the suburbs, piqued my curiosity.

Curated by Janine Marchessault, the Canada Research Chair in Art, Digital Media and Globalization at York University, and Michael Prokopow, current faculty member at OCAD, the project re-purposes a series of vacant bungalows facing demolition in Willowdale to create a site-specific exhibition that characterizes its own fate — the shift from old suburbia to the new. Read the rest of this entry »

Tall, blonde, ladies. Check.

Presented in association with FADO Performance Art Centre
Part of Buddies in Bad Times’ Hysteria 2009
Festival runs until October 31 @ Buddies in Bad Times

By Daina Valiulis

Tall Blonde Ladies, composed of Anna Berndtson and Irina Runge from Sweden and Germany, is a collaborative performance project that “inverts female stereotypes through the composition of absurd and unexpected performance gestures, incorporating a range of accoutrement from high-end fashion to sports gear”, according to the show’s press release. “Their works present diametrically opposed concepts; beauty and grace are juxtaposed and diminished through brute action and athleticism, tacitly disrupting and challenging gender-based categorizations.”

Well, that’s a fancy explanation for two tall blonde ladies wearing corsets and cleats, sitting or marching in right angles in the middle of the room. They don’t interact, they don’t change the rhythm and they do this for an hour. Frankly, to tack on this much meaning to something so ridiculous is lazy and obnoxious. Read the rest of this entry »

Staceyann Chin: girl's got pipes.

Live: Staceyann Chin

and

Gaggle
Created and performed by The Humberlights
Directed by Karin Randoja

Both part of Buddies in Bad Times’ Hysteria 2009
Festival runs until October 31 @ Buddies in Bad Times

By Kerry Freek

First up on Friday night of Buddies’ Hysteria Festival was Staceyann Chin. In pre-show research mode, I had my doubts: poetry slams run deep in her bio. However, this poet (and author and performer and activist) is well-deserving of a second look. About halfway through her show, I learned an important lesson: you can’t always judge a girl by her web presence (nor by her involvement in poetry slams).

First, Chin warmed up the audience with a couple of racially and sexuality-driven (yet good-humoured) jokes, doing her best to make the PC contingent squirm in their seats. Then, easing us into her content, she read a few funny stories from her memoir, The Other Side of Paradise, including frightfully embarrassing, juicy stuff from the pages of cologne-scented letters sent to her by a hormonal boy named Randall in her early teen years, and the story of discovering her “cocoabread” and subsequently ending up inside of an outhouse toilet. Read the rest of this entry »

Tony Oursler’s Public Art Installation

Runs for the duration of Luminato in Grange Park and Young Gallery

Review and Photos by Helen Fylactou

Based out of New York, internationally-renowned Tony Oursler has been generating buzz since the 1970s. Abstracting the ways we look at desires, obsessions, technology, and phobias, he creates installation pieces consisting of video, spoken word, and sculpted objects. Needless to say, I was excited to see his work. So my friend and I started our trek to Grange Park, where two of his three installation pieces are currently being exhibited.

The first installation was a glass house. A glass house filled with garbage. Although it was somewhat amusing checking out the encapsulated treasures, I could have just walked around the park looking at the garbage and basically gotten the same feeling of discomfort that the piece tried to evoke. Inside the glass house, flatscreen televisions with moving images of people and a stream-of-consciousness, never-ending conversation played from speakers. The conversation reflected the notion of hoarding, and the installation helped the viewer fulfill some sort of secret desire of voyeurism.

The next installation piece was located next to the AGO, and was very similar to the first — minus the garbage. It was a glass house with hanging video screen. In lieu of the garbage, Oursler opted to fill this house with neon-coloured sheets of  hanging plastic. The flatscreen television and coloured sheets became the interior bricks of the house and changed the interior space of the 3D installation.  The house was visually pleasing, but didn’t hold my attention for very long.  The soundtrack for this house was reflective of the kind of substance abuse that’s socially accepted, but the longer the audience interacts with the installation, the more liminal the space becomes.

In a surprising twist, the third installation (in the Young Gallery) was strangely beautiful. Tony Oursler is a master at creating anthropomorphic art. By projecting video of an eye, Oursler animates a white sphere placed in the corner of the room. Shifting from right to left, and from blinking to a stare, I found myself in awe of the eye and stuck in a bizarre, ghostly staredown. In the same room, Oursler placed a sculpture of half a house. And in this house was a projection of a blue person frantically almost-pacing around one room. The disembodied voices and the eerie echo of the voice made the room feel like a bad/awesome ’70s horror film, helping to break down the idea and structure and igniting a fear of losing stability.

Worth checking out if you’re interested in video installation art.

Young Centre for the Performing Arts presents
The New Waves Festival
Runs June 6-7 and June 12-14 (opening and closing weekends of LuminaTO)

By Daina Valiulis

If you do decide to go to the New Waves Festival, remember to take people with you to keep you company while you wait. And be prepared to explore.

As part of this year’s LuminaTO festivities, this event stands out. This weekend (and next), the two-storey, multiple-stage Young Centre was home to hundreds of emerging and established Canadian artists presenting various works. Each performance is fifteen minutes long and different acts shared various rooms with the schedule posted outside the door. The idea is that the audience feels free to wander, explore, and uncover treasures lurking in all corners of the building.

It was this exploration that was frustrating. Even with the schedules, it was never clear what was playing where (and when), and sometimes people waited in queues outside various rooms for up to twenty minutes. The most unfortunate part is that, in an attempt to maximize your time, you may end up missing what you originally hoped to see. An itinerary may have helped. Even so, I ventured into several excellent and/or intriguing performances.

“Virtuosic Toronto” was a series of dance/music compositions inspired by various workers in Toronto: a jambe drum maker, a tow truck driver, and a chef making noodles were represented on a giant screen, and accompanied by a musician and dancer. The dancer representing the chef pounding the dough slapped the counter with his fluid, powerful movements and was most interesting to watch.

Next, the Tarragon Theatre’s Youth group showcased the second half of a play written by a fourteen-year-old author. While the script about teen relationships was kind of cute, these kids have a lot to learn. However, it was wonderful to see young artists represented and given the opportunity to perform.

Having forfeited seeing the “Bedtime Stories” performance in favor of a piece called “Divination Duets,” I was pleasantly surprised. Inspired by the music of The Tragically Hip’s frontman Gordon Downie, two dancers performed three of eleven prepared dances (chosen by the audience) set to different songs. Even thought I’m not a fan of Downie or The Hip, I still loved this performance. The dancers were light, airy, and unbelievably agile. The most impressive piece of the three was called “Trick Rider,” in which they performed various acrobatics in “trust game” style, balancing on each other. Their movements expressed the sensuality and joy of discovering a lover for the first time. It was truly breathtaking, and a great way to end my New Waves adventure.

While the whole event’s organization could have been better finessed, it was a wonderful representation and celebration of what Toronto has to offer. Meant for all ages and all different artistic tastes, the New Waves Festival is a good place to visit if you have a free day and would like to see as many performances as possible.

Discover OCAD+
94th Annual Graduate Exhibition

By Kerry Freek

Like Matt did last year, I found the prospect of six floors of art daunting. Later, my weary legs and old-woman knees found it worse. However, this year’s OCAD grad show didn’t disappoint.

Ok, well, yes it did. In exploring six floors of student art, you’re bound to have to sift through a ton of crap to get to the good stuff. But the shiny scraps in this magpie’s collection of style, form and media were definitely not fool’s gold. And I can’t believe I just wrote that sentence. Amidst all of the (very talented, don’t mistake me) Juxtapoz wannabees, three artists stuck with me, and a few others stayed close, too.

#1: Jesi the Elder’s Satan in the Sonar installation

Sparkles, blow-up killer whales, dollar-store tealights, and religious paraphernalia came together in one mega-threatening exhibit. Surrounded by groupings of altars (of the table and wall-sconce variety), a projector screened a crudely animated mélange that garnered mixed reactions. For instance, when two whales jumped out of the water and crashed into each other, exploding into bits of flesh and floods of blood, the room LOL’d. But when two girls stabbed each other down their throats, blurting guffaws turned to nervous tittering.

#2: Stephen Shaddick’s videos

Clearly, as a 2009 Medal Winner, this Integrated Media student was a show favourite, but he deserved it. Shaddick’s study of time and patience challenged viewers with banal yet infuriating video clips with zero reward (except maybe introspection). One video focused on a pot being brought to boil; another showed repetitious footage of a young man attempting (and failing) to walk across a slippery gate. The best clip, however, was the computer screen restarting ad infinitum. The work prompted laughter (of course), but also caused viewers to become conscious of how they get from one minute to the next, and of how frequently they waste their time and on what.

#3: Chris Kim’s illustrations

Kim’s stylized drawings are characterized by a great command of lines (what patience!), a good sense of humour, and a fair helping of social commentary. Decreased brain activity depicts a family gathered ’round ye olde teevee, except their heads have empty spaces through which the magic box’s light shines. In Lack of true communication, a big mouth blabs over the phone to person standing in front of him/her, but the chatterbox is blinded by the telephone cord that’s wrapped around his/her head. Body shame’s naked body becomes the inside of a closet, hiding behind a rack of clothing attached to its neck-rack. While the messages are somewhat simple, the cheekiness of the images work in Kim’s favour, and the technical achievement (again, those lines) is enough to make anyone stop and take notice.

Honourable Mentions

• Liam Crockard’s angst-ridden Teenage Workshop installation.
• Ryan Lake’s beautifully coloured, imaginative illustrations.
• The person whose name I didn’t catch who did the amazing video-remix-slash-sound-collage of evangelical and sex phone line commercial footage.

This is the final article in a series about this year’s [FAT], Toronto’s Alternative Arts and Fashion Week.

Photo by Arline Malakian

By Helen Fylactou

“Let your inner light shine. We can’t help being beautiful. Beauty is contagious” – Arline Malakian

Arline Malakian has made an indelible impact on the face of photography. While breaking conventions, Malakian creates relationships with her audiences and moves past aesthetics to provokes ideas and feeling. In addition to her photography, Malakian has become a presence in mainstream fashion. She’s looking for a way to empower people by having them explore their inner core.

Appearing on the third day of Toronto Alternative Arts and Fashion Week, Malakian’s Black and Black photo series, inspired by Lucian Matis’ Black Collection, was a “test in photographic technique.” Malakian shot black dresses on black models against a black background; a touch of red appears in each photo, creating tension.  A visually stunning series of photographs, Black on Black shows Malakian’s love for the photographic arts. In Malakian’s words, the series offers “a delicate balance between the darkness, lightness, the silhouette and the garments.”  Malakian’s success in shooting black on black on black in chromatic repetition demonstrates her brilliance.

Duality is an apparent theme that is explored throughout Malakian’s work. She told me, “Our life here is not everything; it’s not the whole story. There is a bigger picture.”  A belief that we must learn to live in a world that is filled with dualities.  A world that can not be described with one word, Malakian adds: “It is the profane and the spiritual, the male and female, the generous and the insecure.”  A striking impression was left by the series, emphasizing the pleasure of photography in addition to fashion.

In both her editorial and commercial photos, Malakian juxtaposes feminine fragility with inner strength.  Creating images that transcend identity, Malakian educates her audiences on looking past the surface.  The models are often captured with a  serene, soft facial expression, but styles in either haute couture hats or larger-than-life dresses contrast the soft with the hard. Malakian wishes for us to “co-create, [so] that the audience would ask about it. That way the art does not stay as art, it becomes an emotion.”  While viewing her collection, I felt both swayed by the emotion and inspired to reflect on the personal meanings that I brought to the viewing.  After seeing her work, I now understand how Malakian’s photos reiterate her personal philosophy that “if we do not respect who we are at the core than we are not really seeing our souls.”

The Toronto-based photographer has captured the hearts and minds of many.  The W Network recently produced a Beauty Quest documentary involving Malakian in the Dove, Real Beauty photo exhibit. Photography and a personal journal helped Malakian transition from photographer to author for her book Be a Woman, a collaboration with Kim MacGregor. The work focuses on Malakian’s personal philosophy of respecting your inner core and allows for beauty to exist in everything.

We asked three MONDO writers to review their Nuit Blanche experiences. Here’s part three.

By Matt McGeachy

The third annual Scotiabank Nuit Blanche lit up the night from sunset to sunrise on Saturday, and from the throngs of people on the street, it would seem that it was a resounding success. By most estimates, over a million people were downtown to participated in the event; the bars were full until the wee hours, people were enjoying themselves, and no unsavoury incidents were reported. For a night, public space was abundant and the citizens of the GTA ruled the streets. This year’s Nuit Blanche was a civic triumph. Unfortunately, it was also an artistic failure.

According to Toronto Star urban affairs columnist Christopher Hume, “That tired old question – Is it art? – no longer matters.” (Toronto Star October 6, 2008) For Hume and other Nuit Blanche sympathizers, this seems to be a primary virtue of the event; or, perhaps they assume that no matter what goes up must be art. After all, it is an institution now, isn’t it?

But for many people that fundamental question — Is it art? — is part of the function of art-making and art viewing. By committing to an object as a work of art, we invest it with value and view it as something different from a mere object. By insisting on an object as a work of art, we help to create one. (Readers who wish to pursue this idea in-depth will find Arthur Danto’s writings invaluable.)

The displays at Nuit Blanche absolutely demanded that we, the viewers, ask these questions. Unfortunately for these objects, ordinary viewers are not as stupid as some artists would like to hope. For those who take the time to answer these questions, the results will be quite disappointing.

At their best, the displays from Nuit Blanche were clever and effective; at their worst, they were downright patronizing. Waterfall, at the Toronto Hydro Building, was extremely photogenic but exceptionally disappointing up close. It may be defended on aesthetic grounds — while trivial and conceptually weak, it was pleasant to look at (in photos). Ultimately, however, I would contend that Waterfall is banal: so much so that I can’t say much more about it!

I’m willing to go out on a limb and defend the dropped ceiling in the alleyway at Massey Hall, though it thoroughly irritated most people. It wasn’t genius, it wasn’t beautiful, but it accomplished something by forcing you to view space in a different way. By confining you with the garbage, it allowed you to absorb your surroundings, which you could have otherwise completely ignored. Though many found it patronizing, I found it effective (though this is admittedly a weak defense of art).

Perhaps the best example of patronizing work was that damn inflated cone at the Eaton Centre, Into the Blue. I came upon it from the second floor, and looked down to find a throng of confused people staring up at the inverted cone. At the inside of the cone. And taking pictures. Perhaps artist Fujiwara Takahiro had a big joke in mind, at the viewers’ expense. In any event, a reliance on viewer ignorance is patronizing and alienating. Is it any wonder that the Conservatives are claiming that ordinary people just don’t care much about art?

Needless to say, it doesn’t have to be this way. Much of the art I see in galleries these days takes its responsibility to the viewer seriously. Of course, institutions tend to dislike raising questions, and there is little doubt that Nuit Blanche has become a Toronto institution. But if it’s going to be about art, perhaps next year the curators should take more care to realize that it’s the viewers who make the art.

Of course, if all we want is a big party, that’s fine in a general way. But let’s drop the pretense of art until the objects show us a little respect.

We asked three MONDO writers to review their Nuit Blanche experiences. Here’s part one.

By Santiago Melo

What is art? In my opinion, the best answer is that it’s a way for the observer to feel sensations they wouldn’t be able to do so otherwise. During my first Nuit Blanche, I was chased down the street by a zombie, saw a boy riding a shadow horse, met a lost fairy, and learned that plants also make nice dresses. I knew the zombies were people in costumes, but that didn’t stop me from keeping as far from them as I could; I understood that the boy and the horse were created as an illusion using light, but I still felt that he was the luckiest boy I had seen in a long time. In short, Nuit Blanche managed to make me feel things that I wouldn’t have otherwise felt.

It was a great experience. People took over the streets, going places they hadn’t been before. For me, it was more a way to discover Toronto than to discover art. Everyone carried a little guide, following the maps to the next dot or square symbolizing an installation. Yet most of the time, these people were more entertained by the works that weren’t in the guide: a cowboy statue so perfect you wanted to see if it actually breathed, a man drawing a sidewalk comic along Queen Street West (who smiled after I took his picture), a restaurant that decided to take advantage of Nuit Blanche to promote itself by holding its own version of Nuit Blanche, using a couple of DVDs and a flat screen. Everywhere I looked, it seemed that Toronto had become alive. No street was empty, and while there were some people who weren’t interested in the art (I’m looking at you Richmond Street clubbers), for one night, Toronto became a friendlier place.

One thing hampered the experience: many of the works looking for audience participation didn’t truly motivate the audience. Take the 15 seconds of fame installation. The artist pointed a light at unexpected bystanders for 15 seconds, giving each person the chance to do whatever they felt like doing. Sadly, most elected bystanders ignored him, nullifying any sense of purpose the work might’ve had. It was made even more evident when a man dressed in a gorilla suit strode by and garnered all the attention he wanted — without needing a spotlight.

Despite that, at the end of the day (or early next morning, whatever you call the hours way after your bedtime), I was tired but happy. Nuit Blanche was a great way to see Toronto, even if I had revisited some of the same places I go to every week. It was also a reminder that winter is coming and soon enough the sight of masses walking the streets will be nothing but a memory.

We asked three MONDO writers to review their Nuit Blanche experiences. Here’s part one.

By Amy Sarah

One of the most interesting aspects of Nuit Blanche is the invitation to go inside – both figuratively (to interpret and discover each installation) as well as physically (to explore normally closed-up, pay-entrance-only buildings such as Massey Hall, Casa Loma, or Maple Leaf Gardens).

My friends and I started out after midnight, biking through the dark trails at Queen’s Park, and came across a group of people singing and chanting. The dark vastness of the park and huge congregation of people listening and playing along created a sinister, enchanting atmosphere. We then biked over to OCAD, where we found an intriguing invitation to ride a bike which had been set up to create a shadow-play of riding a horse—the speed of the biker determined the speed of the horse galloping along the wall. We also found long lineups at most of the installations we tried to visit. Since we didn’t want to wait in line all night, we asked random people what they thought and mostly, everyone seemed disappointed or discouraged—so we decided to go to Maple Leaf Gardens. Even if the video installation is disappointing, we thought, at least we can see the interior of a building that’s been closed to the public for years.

The Gardens were incredibly beautiful with their haunting lighting and decrepit seating. The video installation was intriguing after all—authoritative voices spoke over top something like a visual of stomach-churning. But mostly we found ourselves drawn to the idea of seeing more of the Gardens—we wanted to go through the box seats; one friend had a long-standing obsession with getting onto the roof. The stairwells were blockaded by white fences, and after trying to jimmy a few, we gave up and started for the exit. But when we looked back at the hallway, we saw two guys sneaking out from behind the fence. So, of course, we found ourselves sneaking in.

We figured within minutes we’d be told to leave since security would probably be patrolling the whole building, but nobody disturbed us. Instead we walked through unlocked doorways, offices strewn with papers, broken lamps and phones with the receiver off the hook, and a room with only one lonely television in the middle of the floor, still plugged in. We even found a small room which led to the Maple Leaf Gardens safe, gigantic and unlocked. Then: new rooms, hallways, stairwells into new spaces. We wanted to find an entrance to the roof but gave up and started to leave. We turned down a dark hallway, and one friend shined a bike-light at the wall. Attached to the wall was a metal ladder which led, high up, to a metal door. So we climbed. And after pushing open the metal door, we found ourselves at the lowest roof of the Gardens, which then led to another, higher roof. We climbed a long, slippery, metal ladder which curved along the white dome of the Gardens, onto the very top of the roof.

We looked out over the city at 4 a.m. People watched us through the windows at the hotels and apartments that surround the Gardens. We stayed on the roof for almost an hour, looking out over the city and feeling like teenagers, before we decided to walk back through the hallways, the rooms, getting lost, finding our way out. We passed directly in front of about five police officers while exiting; no one noticed.

Overwhelmed, we got our bikes and looked through the guide for other installations we could visit but none seemed like they’d top the climb to the roof. So we settled on pancakes at Fran’s and, half-asleep, talked about the rooms and roofs of the Gardens.

By Matt McGeachy

The 9^th annual Toronto International Art Fair, Art Toronto 2008, took over the Metro Toronto Convention Centre this past weekend, with over 100 galleries from 14 countries displaying their wares and, no doubt, racking up millions of dollars in sales.

Wandering around the sprawling grounds of the convention centre, I was struck with a sense of the excesses of the art market: I watched one well-coiffed couple from Miami drop $25,000 on an exceptional piece by painter Paul Beliveau at the Gallerie de Bellefeuille booth; they placed it on their credit card. With one swipe, they spent my net worth on a fantastic painting. I nearly fainted spending $150 on a print by Melinda Josie. So what, exactly, is it that separates a $25,000 piece from a $150 one? What separates me from them?

My means, it seems. More and more the price of playing the art game is rising, at absurd rates. Works by the Group of Seven are now fetching millions at auction. In fact, I heard one dealer appraise a work by comparing it to a Tom Thomson, but affordable. Or affordable for now, anyway, at the easy price of $7,000.

It seems that the two separate planes on which money and art have existed are rapidly colliding, and I can’t say it thrills me. So for example, Beliveau’s breathtaking paintings of book spines exist in a separate realm of value from the money paid for them. The exchange of one user-created value (money) for another (artwork) is what the art market is all about. Increasingly, however, as evidenced by the record-setting auctions and huge art fairs such as TIAF, there seems to be confusion about their interchangeability. How else can we justify the expense of a year’s salary (for some people) on a painting, or photograph? If we accept that money can, indeed, be exchanged for the value of a work of art, then the only thing separating me from Beliveau (or Robert Polidori, or John Hartmann, or James Lahey) is not my appreciation of the work, but the appreciation of my stock portfolio. TIAF taught me that for now, art markets are rich men’s games.

So what’s a poor art lover to do? Sit back, relax, and dream.

Matt’s #1 pick from TIAF:

Fred Herzog’s My Room, Harwood Street 1950 nearly brought me to tears. The dull light of the photograph serves to lift the quotidian image of his toiletries on the windowsill to the level of the transcendent sublime. The rain on the window and the autumnal colours evoked a sense of isolation: safely confined in the room, but lonely and gazing outside. Such emotion captured in one photograph is overwhelming and overwhelmingly beautiful.