Everything's opening: MOCCA winter exhibtions this Saturday

MOCCA comes out of hibernation this weekend (it's been closed since the end of December) with a pair of shows: Tasman Richardson's Necropolis, an epic videodrome on the culture of death and, in maybe a necessary restoration of equilibrium, a show of landscape works in the National Gallery of Canada's pocket gallery on MOCCA premises.

I don't know much about the former just yet, but the latter, called Spectral Landscape, offers an intriguing slate of counter-intuitive groupings of such artists as photographer Sarah Anne Johnson and painters Tim Gardiner and Peter Doig. One thing they have in common, of course, are their unique, personal and thoroughly contemporary takes on the classical notion of representational landscapes, which capture a world quietly but insidiously transformed by human presence.

Such subtleties aside, there's also the marquee draw in Doig, whose paintings have blown through the roof at auction in recent years, offering both the chance to quietly contemplate earthly transformation, and an opportunity to gawk at an A-level multi-million dollar international superstar. Necropolis and Spectral Landscape open Saturday, Feb. 4 at 2 pm at MOCCA

Image: Big Sur, Peter Doig, 2001

Mike Kelley is dead; likely suicide

Gagosian Gallery has confirmed that Mike Kelley, one of the true giants of his generation, is dead. ARTINFO is reporting it was a suicide, but this is so far unconfirmed. He was 58. 

It's hard to know where to begin with Kelley's ouevre, which spanned the gamut from the viscerally grotesque to the more-than-occaisionally beautiful. In reviewing his 1993 survey at the Whitney, Times critic Roberta Smith observed that Kelly's work was "eccentric, obsessive, completely uninhibited and mind-bogglingly diverse."

That being the case, there's not much time or space for me to touch on it here, other than to say that Kelley's devotion to punk rock provided me with one of my earliest entry points to the visceral confusions of the contemporary art world. A native Detroiter, he was a co-founding member of the art-punk band Destroy All Monsters; his design of the aptly-named 1992 Sonic Youth album Dirty, with images of stuffed animals being defiled in the most gleefully dark ways, remains a signpost in my formative understanding of art in general. Sorry to see him gone so soon. 

Axis Mundi: Macho speaks

 

To go with their presentation of Team Macho's Axis Mundi, the Art Gallery of Ontario has made this (shall we say) instructional video describing the project. Visually a little less than thrilling, keep the headphones on; MAcho-ites Lauchie Reid and Stephen Appleby-Barr elucidate nicely.

A parent's nightmare

I love this. But also secretly fear it. Art: only marginally better than meth.

Forget Europe; how about me?

 

I went to a preview screening of Yael Bartana's film trilogy "And Europe Will Be Stunned" at the AGO this morning, and was quickly made a believer in the 41-year old artist. If it's possible to delicately render an absurdist take on the Holocaust and subsequent Jewish diaspora, this would be it; Bartana crafts a naivist narrative of moral restitution through the character of a well-intended but ultimately simplistic demagogue who seems to believe that all the Jewish ghosts of Poland's fractious recent past will be exorcized if he can just convince 3 million or so Jews to repatriate and make a home of a newly welcoming, multicutural Poland. Right.

Anyway, it's a pretty clever critique on the idealist cosmopolitan dream of a pan-cultural global society thta we seem to be sold every time we turn around, not to mention a pointed dissection of the particular complexities of Zionism in immediate pre-and-post war Europe. It's also riveting. It's rare that I suggest (or condone, or even support) this, but I'd encourage you to watch each of the films in the cycle in order, from beginning to end. It's the best way to get the most out of the experience, and man, is there a lot to get. While you're at it, check out the talk Bartana is giving at the AGO Thursday night at 7 pm, Jackman Hall.

At Tomorrow tonight: McClellan/Jansen opening

Sorry, couldn't resist the pun: That is to say, tonight, frequent collaborators Jeremy Jansen and Niall McClelland (The Barricades, for one, which, to borrow a sports network phrase, was a highlight of the night at last year's Nuit Blanche) are opening a short, personal show of posters that look a little closer into their personal indie-cultural histories. I don't really know what that means yet, but show up tonight at Hugh Scott Douglas, Tara Downs and Aleksander Hardashnakov's Tomorrow Gallery and see for yourself. Or don't rush. You've got all week. Until Jan. 27.

RIP H+C

Proof going to cocktail parties is good for something other than the free booze (not that there's anything wrong with that): Last night, while I was at the BMO event for Shary Boyle's Canadian Artist, I bumped into Tony Romano. As you may know, Romano and partner Jay Isaac have been running Hunter + Cook, a magazine, art gallery, and general hub of interesting cultural thought, for the past few years. A month or so ago, the pair quietly decided to call it quits; as working artists, editing, adminitstrating and general management malaise was taking away too much time from their own practices, so Hunter + Cook met its subdued, graceful end.

For my part, I told Romano I didn't want it to end this way, and suggested some kind of anthology -- a publication of some kind that immortalized the magazine's unique, always-engaging voice. Sure, Romano said, but who's going to pay for it? Good question. Someone, surely. If you're out there, drop me a line and I'll put you in touch. 

Back to life: Winter season in high gear, starting tonight

My dance card is filling up quicky, which means we've finally shaken off the Christmas doldrums. Thank heavens. The art world is humming again, with a bunch of openings tonight and this weekend worth your while, if you're up for braving the snow.

Just off the top of my head tonight is Flavio Trevisan's intriguing Museum of The Represented City at 80 Spadina. Trevisan's an urban-minded sort, as his recent show at Diaz Contemporary, "Studies of a New Past," would indicate; so too would his work curating the always eye-catching Convenience Gallery, a storefront on Landowne just norht of Queen. This project, in its own words, is  "(a) series of sculptural works (that) present a fragmented yet multifaceted mapping of Toronto’s built history, inviting the viewer to retrace familiar paths and discover surprising new ways to explore the cityscape." Works for me. An off-site project of the Koffler Centre, the show opens tonight at 6 with remarks by Trevisan at 7.

That's only the beginning. Gallery TPW has Chrsitine Negus's invitingly-titled show "You Can't Spell Slaughter Without Laughter," a collection of darkly festive obejcts -- banners, wreaths -- providing decorous atmosphere for an installation of video and digital animation pieces at its core. Opening tonight at 7 pm at the gallery, 56 Ossington Ave.

What I'm most interested in this evening, though, is the first Toronto showing of new work in almost a decade by Toronto hyper-political proto-conceptualists Carole Conde and Karl Beveridge. They've been working in a devout mode of social justice for almost four decades -- they are, if anyone is, the art world voice of the labour movement -- and the current show, Scene Otherwise promises to be as fiery as ever. I'll have a closer look at it in the next little while, but more immediately, it opens tonight at the Toronto Free Gallery in that emergingly-hip strip coming to be known (at least by the hipsters that inhabit it) as Blansdowne (for Bloor/Lansdowne, get it? Hipsters are so clever).

Anyway, it's 1277 Bloor West, at 6 pm. Enjoy.

 

Gene pool: Shary Boyle's Canadian Artist opens at BMO Project Room

I was one of the lucky invited few to the opening of Shary Boyle's new installation "Canadian Artist" at the Bank of Montreal's Project Room last night. I'll have more thoughts on the piece itself a little later on -- suffice to say for now that it's infused with Boyle's unflagging rigour for craft and her particular, unique brilliance for social narrative, cross-fertilized with her gift for the fantastical -- but first, I wanted to steer you over to the project's web site. Boyle said the site is not so much a supplement to the work itself, but a necessary companion piece, and as you start sifting the depth of research Boyle committed to for the work, you'll see why.

Then, once you've done a thorough perusing, give BMO a call at (416) 643-2609, or drop them an email at curator@canadian-artist.ca and have a look (viewings are by appointment only). I'll be back again. More than once.

Marclay's time: "The Clock" coming to the Power Plant

Just heard that the Power Plant will be presenting Christian Marclay's much- celebrated 'The Clock' this coming September. It's the property of the National Gallery, which cannily bought last year it in cooperation with the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. They showed it first, it's in Ottawa 2nd, and given what I image to be a very long loan request list, given its exceptional profile and popularity, it's a coup for Toronto to be 3rd.