Ravi Shukla/ aka Bill Beso

(This image is probably the size of a penny... )

My very good friend Lisa Kehler, who now lives with her family on the East coast, curated an exhibition of Ravi Shukla's illustrations in Winnipeg at the Semai Gallery (run by Takashi Iwasaki who is represented at Le Gallery).

Titled "Bombs & Wombs," Lisa had installed Ravi Shukla's (also known as Bill Beso) very fine, detailed illustrations along the long and skinny hallway which makes up Semai, meaning 'narrow' in Japanese. A perfect space for exhibiting these teensy drawings made up of tiny, metamorphic creatures.

From the exhibition statement: His creations vary from the simplest of figures to the most mystical and fantastic beast-like forms. It is Shukla's use of space within the border of each surface, perhaps best described by Semai Gallery Director Takashi Iwasaki as the "anti-gravitational aspect" that reinforces each drawing's ability to urge the viewer to recall those youthful memories of awesome possibilities. We are unable to decipher the exact orientation of who is climbing and who is falling; or even what is what is up and what is down.

These hybrid, grotesque little beasts are closely related to ideas of transmorphism and are nearly illustrative versions of Odilon Redon's strange beings. One of my past profs had been researching transmorphism in relation to the spiritual. She seamed together these brilliant links between Redon, Galle- namely his tadpole vase and other French symbolists. This, of course, made me love these drawings even more and now I have a wonderful shadowbox installed in my living room!

Love you Mom & Dad

Neil Farber, Winnipeg, Manitoba, 2009, 12 x 16", acrylic on panel; as seen the website for Richard Heller Gallery, which is in California... is there anything better than thinking of a Californian buying this from a dealer? Mmm no.

I miss the prairies sometimes

Flash Forward Pick- Numero 3

Peter Ainsworth, Trying to Photograph a Ball so that it is at the Centre of a Picture, after John Baldessari, 1972-73, 2007

Peter Ainsworth was also included in the Paper, Rock, Scissors show at FF. After a quick google search to find out more about him, I learned that he was shortlisted for the Converse/Dazed (as in Digital) 2010 Emerging Artist award. He was interviewed for the site, and was nothing short of eloquent with each answer and actually rather bohemian- for instance, in response to a question about his family, Ainsworth said: My dad was an exhibition designer and has a fantastically light and fluid drawing style, so I have been aware of the production of art since a very early age. My mum is very scholarly and interested in a wide range of subjects. She taught me how to engage with a conceptual appreciation of art. My elder brother works as a project manager for exhibition installations and my sister is a fantastic puppeteer!

FF exhibited the photographs from his 'Art Handling Re-creations:' a clever series with art historical references. Sometimes, despite whether it should or shouldn't be done (an argument over the lack of critical discourse in photography is for another post), I like to insert photography into the art historical canon. Here, Ainsworth chose various (male) modernist, minimalist and conceptual artists as a starting point for his work. Each photograph is named after these referents. In doing so, I'm reminded of Griselda Pollock's article titled 'Avant-Garde Gambits,' that divides the avant-garde into a point of reference, deference and difference (she was into the Manet/Gaugin- 'Olympia'/'Spirit of the Dead' comparison). Ainsworth's series, while maybe not necessarily typically avant-garde, is nicely framed by Pollock's terms.

The ode to Baldessari is so subtle, but one of my favourites (the first image). While I don't know much about Baldessari, I do like that his work is often underscored by mathematical/scientific processes. In '72, the white-haired artist repeatedly threw a ball in the air in an attempt to perfectly record it at the centre of a film frame. You can read somebody who's wayyy more well-versed on the wonderful Baldaessari here.




Peter Ainsworth, Equivalence VII After Carl Andre, 1966, 2007 (above) and Carl Andre, Equivalent VIII, 1966 (below)

The Ghost Who Walks

Good album cover!

Flash Forward Pick- Numero 2

Carlo Van de Roer is one of my absolute favourite 2010 Flash Forward Award recipients. Robyn showed me his work a few weeks ago and I've fantasized about organizing an exhibition in Toronto with his work since then.
The reason I was so excited by these photographs stems from my past research in the 'ghost' photos from the Spiritualist movement at the turn of the century (see a few posts ago...). Van de Roer uses a 1970s Polaroid aura camera invented to record the aura of the subject- something normally only reserved for a psychic.

From Van de Roer's website: The subject is connected directly to the camera by hand-plates that measure biofeedback, which the camera depicts as an aura of color in the Polaroid and translates into a printed diagram and description explaining the camera's interpretation of the subject. It also explains separately, what the the subject is expressing and how they are seen by others, such as the photographer, suggesting the camera bypasses the control of the photographer and subject in making the portrait. This printout, which includes information about the subjects emotions, potential, aspirations, future, etc. is presented to the viewer along with each photograph in a similar manner to a caption.

Besides using such an awesome, new-age, hippie-like device, Van de Roer has chosen some truly stellar artists for subjects like Terence Koh, Tim Barber and Miranda July. Accompanying these images on his website is the mini-description yielded from the camera. Obviously this thing has a stockpile of analyses that it dishes out, but the Scorpio in me totally buys into it.

For Koh: 'People see Terence as willing to work, to gain wealth in terms of educational, cultural or physical attainments.'

For July: 'Everything which is thought and desired must become reality.'

For Barber: 'Creative, artistic... constructive self expression is important to (him).' People see Tim as: '...alive, outgoing, sexual and powerful...working hard...conquest.'

How great would it be to see these alongside some of its Spirit photo precedents? And, I happen to know Winnipeg has one of the best archives outside New York and Germany (how strange is that?)...

Flash Forward Pick- Numero 1

Noemie Goudal's photography was part of the British exhibition Paper, Rock, Scissors curated by Simon Bainbridge and Diane Smyth. This exhibition examines the growing trend in the constructed image in photography. Here, on the one hand, construction refers to the collage-aesthetic in photography; on the other hand, this construction refers to the building process involved in setting up the photograph- as seen in Goudal's waterfall image above.

Goudal's waterfall really reminds me of another favourite- Letha Wilson (below). Wilson's photographs aren't necessarily collaged; rather, her work is a deconstructed/reconstructed installation, and thereby more sculptural than 2-D.

Noel Rodo-Vankeulen

My good friend Sarah described Noel's work as having a hallucinatory post-apocalyptic feel, totally spiritualized- which I love and think perfectly describes the works Robyn and I chose for Where is Here.

Flash Forward Festival 2010

The Magenta Foundation's Flash Forward Festival has begun in Toronto and will run until Sunday, October 10th. With curated exhibitions, including a British, Swiss, American, Canadian and Group show, the festival will also play host to a number of amazing individuals, like Donald Weber, who will be giving free lectures and workshops for the Toronto community.

With Robyn McCallum, I co-curated the Canadian exhibition. Titled "Where is Here," the exhibition is framed by Northrop Frye's theories of the Canadian experience; more specifically, his description of the Canadian psychology against the physicality of the landscape. Robyn and I are the only emerging curators involved in FF, and unlike the other exhibitions, this show is installed outdoors and is probably best described as an exhibition-like installation. The photographs chosen (from artists Dylan Hewlett, Sara Cwynar, Natalie Ferguson, Johan Hallberg-Campbell and Noel Rodo-Vankeulen) are placed right onto the brick facades. Sunday, FF will have its closing party in this space from 3-9 at 20 Mowat Ave.

On that note- I'll be posting my favourite photographs exhibited at the 2010 Flash Forward Festival in the coming days. I've already started scribbling names in my trusty notepad.

Kiss Kiss Sang Sang

I really do think if I could own any artwork, Joyce Wieland's O Canada would be wayyyy up high on my list. Such a simple concept, so effectively executed. To accompany it of course, I would need her incredible quilt Reason Over Passion. Then I'd stuff the 1971 True Patriot Love catalogue (from her show at the National Gallery) in my dusty bookshelf. That catalogue-a conceptual work of its own- was originally titled The Illustrated Flora of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, which Wieland unbound and filled with Canadiana 'things', everything from letters to flowers. Wieland is the only female artist who made it into the art history lectures I attended that incorporated Canadian nationalism into her work. Besides that though, her work has this perfect combination of DIY-aesthetics and craft (particularly the quilting), rooted in feminine history, producing a complexity to the nationalistic work in True Patriot Love.