advertisement indicator

ROADTRIP ALERT: 2012 to see two Frida Kahlo blockbusters within driving distance of Ottawa!

By Paul Gessell

Expect to hear lots about the late Mexican artist Frida Kahlo in coming months. Kahlo will be starring in two blockbuster exhibitions coming to Canada this year. This is, indeed, a rarity.

This Kahlo portrait has been turned into a poster to promote the Merida exhibitition.

And to help get me (and you) in the mood for this unprecedented year of Kahlomania, I recently visited a Kahlo exhibition in the Yucatan city of Merida. More on that later. First some background.

Kahlo’s paintings are constantly in demand around the world. Some of those paintings, such as the iconic Las Dos Fridas, rarely, if ever, travel outside Mexico. So, getting loans of just a few Kahlos is considered a major coup. Yet, Canada will be getting more than a dozen of her masterworks to savour. Check ads in local media in the coming months for transportation-hotel-museum travel packages from Ottawa to see the exhibitions.

First up will be The Surrealist Adventures of Women Artists in Mexico and the United States, an exhibition running from June 7 to Sept. 3 at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec in Quebec City. The exhibition covers the period 1930 to 1970. Kahlo will, of course, get top billing.

Then comes Frida & Diego: Passion, Politics and Painting, an exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto from Oct. 20 to Jan. 20. Most of the 75 artworks in that exhibition come from the Musee Dolores Olmedo in Mexico City.

Pancho Villa y La Adelita. "Adelita" is a word used to describe a woman of courage. (Kahlo gives herself that role in the painting.)

The fabulously wealthy and devastatingly beautiful Olmedo was Diego Rivera’s greatest patron and, some say, his secret lover, which did not endear her to Kahlo, Rivera’s on-again-off-again wife. Nevertheless, the late Olmedo ended up with the largest collection of Kahlo’s paintings on earth. I have visited the Olmedo museum several times. It is a place that is the closest to heaven Kahlo fans can ever get.

The Merida exhibition, simply called Frida Kahlo, is being held right in the centre of the city – the zocalo – in a building called Centro Cultural de Merida Olimpo. It is a small show touring around Mexico, courtesy of the state government of Tlaxacala. The state’s art museum in the city of Tlaxacala has several of Kahlo’s minor works, including very early drawings and paintings that can only hint at the superb, mainly self-portraits, to come.

A giant poster on the exterior of the Centre Cultural de Merida Olimpo draws visitors.

The best of the paintings in Merida from Tlaxcala is called Pancho Villa y La Adelita from 1927. The Spanish word “Adelita” is usually employed to describe a woman of courage, or even a fierce woman soldier. Kahlo, naturally, gives herself that role in the painting.

The Kahlo drawings and paintings are vastly overshadowed in the exhibition by giant blow-ups of the artist’s many self-portraits. There is also a wall filled with photographs of the Casa Azul, the home in Mexico City where Kahlo was born and died.

Merida is a city very close to some seaside communities, especially Progreso,  popular with Canadian snowbirds spending the winter in beach condos. The Centre Cultural Olimpo must have been trying to get those snowbirds in a Kahlo mood before they fly home to see the blockbusters in Quebec City and Toronto. The Kahlo show is in Merida from Jan. 30 to April 1.

ARTFUL BLOGGER: Karen Jordon produces surprising art from old, dismantled cassette tapes

Karen Jordan with one of her sculptures — a wall of empty cassette containers — at the Karsh-Masson Gallery. Photo by Paul Gessell

By Paul Gessell

When big ships are decommissioned, they are often sent to some developing country to be stripped of all salvageable materials. Many outdated computers are likewise dismantled in China, with certain parts recycled. But what about small, cheap, obsolete objects? Where do they go, besides your personal garbage can?

Consider the lowly cassette tape. They started squeezing vinyl LPs out of the market in the 1970s. Then, a decade later, the tapes were muscled out by CDs. So, what ever happened to all those cassette tapes loaded with your favourite tunes? Thousands of them landed on the doorstep of Karen Jordon, the Ottawa artist who has never found any object too lowly to recycle. She even managed to turn human hair found in her shower drain into delicate sculptures.

Read the rest of this story »

ROADTRIP: Visit Montreal’s Musee d’art contemporain for 18 minutes of Althea Thauberger’s best work

By Paul Gessell

One large outside wall of Gallery 101, during its days on Nepean Street, was covered for years by a billboard-sized photographic portrait of Jean Augustine, a Liberal MP at the time.

The Gallery 101 mural of Jean Augustine by Althea Thauberger. Photo courtesy www.g101.ca

Augustine did not have a high public profile in Ottawa those days, despite holding some junior cabinet posts and serving for years as the parliamentary secretary to the then prime minister, Jean Chretien. And so many a person driving or walking by Gallery 101 must have wondered who was this regale figure dominating a particular stretch of downtown. Surely an African queen? Or perhaps the president of some Caribbean island?

The giant portrait was the work of Althea Thauberger, a Vancouver artist originally from Saskatoon. She is really one of Canada’s finest artists and unfortunately is not seen enough in the national capital, although subscribers to Canadian Art magazine would have noticed last year the cover story on her work among female Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan. This series of photographs showed those soldiers in uniform and fully armed but doing rather unwarlike activities. One shot, for example, showed the women, rifles askew, gaily romping through a field near the Kandahar airport.

Read the rest of this story »

EXHIBIT LAUNCH: Performance art and other expressions of bureaucracy at Gallery 101

Sleeping Beauty by Rene Price.

By Paul Gessell

Come for the art; stay for the gossip. A vernissage at Gallery 101 is always worth the trip.

First the art, where the new exhibition at Ottawa’s artist-run centre is called Bureaucracy.

Most of the gallery’s single room is filled with Rene Price’s over-the-top, satirical paintings of bureaucrats engaged in useless work activities. Price knows personally that which he paints, having been a Parks Canada bureaucrat for 31 years in Cornwall. Retired, but never retiring, most of Price’s time is spent these days in Ottawa, with his wife, artist-curator Petra Halkes.

Another aspect of Bureaucracy at Gallery 101 was still under construction on opening night. Immony Men favours time-consuming art-labour of repetitive actions — in this case, a wall-sized mural made of thousands of yellow Post-It notes, carefully placed one at a time on the bare wall.

Read the rest of this story »

ARTFUL BLOGGER: Treasured photo gets the Andy Warhol treatment in Carl Stewart exhibit

Image from the exhibit 'belated' by Carl Stewart. Image courtesy Lawrence Cook.

By Paul Gessell

Textile artist Carl Stewart and I are sitting at a Centrepointe coffee shop talking about dead children and the ways they haunt the relatives who survive them. As Stewart so correctly points out, we often have very few clear memories of a deceased child, because that child may have lived only a few years. Therefore, there are no memories of heart-to-heart conversations, nor no memories of that child playing hockey, graduating from school, getting married, pursuing a career.

So, instead of memories to cherish, we cling to photographs or possessions of the deceased. That is certainly the case with Stewart’s brother, Owen, who was run over by a car and killed Sept. 19, 1970, at age 3, in front of his home in Carleton, P.E.I. Carl, then aged 5, was the only witness, aside from the car’s driver, to Owen’s death.

Read the rest of this story »

SHOCK + AWE: New curator for Ottawa’s first Nuit Blanche offers some hints, rules, and opinions to get us in the mood for the big art crawl

By Paul Gessell

Definitely expect to party in some art-filled parking garage in the Byward Market. Don’t (please) arrive drunk. Definitely expect to see the best art Ottawa can offer in both indoor and outdoor venues. Don’t count on flashy projects best left to Cirque du Soleil.

Stefan St-Laurent. Photo by Justin Wonnacott.

These are just some of the musings of Stefan St. Laurent, newly appointed guest curator for Ottawa’s first Nuit Blanche scheduled for Sept. 22. Before, St. Laurent was curator at SAW Gallery for eight years and brought to Ottawa some of the most talked-about art in the city during that period.

Remember the paintings done by animals? The machine that digests food and spews out feces-like waste? The cherished collection from the Museum of Bad Art? St. Laurent definitely knows how to get us talking.

In the following interview with The Artful Blogger, St. Laurent discusses his evolving plans to make Nuit Blanche successful

Q. What does the curator of Nuit Blanche actually do?

A. Most Nuit Blanche events around the world invite guest curators to develop a general theme for commissioned and open-call projects, allowing for a more focused, cohesive event. Nuit Blanche Toronto invited the very respected Ottawa-based curator Candice Hopkins to co-curate its last edition. The irony of Toronto turning to Ottawa for curatorial assistance is not lost on me! It is definitely evidence of how recognized and established the cultural scene in Ottawa is right now, something to be supported adequately (by this I mean proportional funding; Ottawa is still way below the national average).

Read the rest of this story »

EXHIBITION LAUNCH: Belgium’s Gert Jochems reveals the banality of sex at La Petite Mort Gallery

Photo by Gert Jochems. By Paul Gessell

Widespread contemporary pornography has conditioned us to think that people having sex possess stereotypically perfect bodies, whether those bodies are enjoying the prim heterosexual missionary position or something far more elaborate with ropes, harnesses, and an audience.

Beer bellies, sagging breasts, and wrinkled faces just don’t seem to exist in the world of pornography, except to pleasure the odd connoisseur with a fetish for such physical characteristics.

In truth, people who do not have perfect bodies and (surprise, surprise) may look remarkably like your neighbours or even your aging parents, do indulge in all categories of the sexual arts. For proof, visit La Petite Mort Gallery and view an exhibition of photographs by Belgium’s Gert Jochems.

Read the rest of this story »

1 Comment

EXHIBITION LAUNCH: You don’t have to be from New Brunswick to like this show (but it helps)

Clifford Billiard of Saint John joined the corvette HMCS Camrose in 1941 as a stoker, second class. Photo: Rebecca Mawhinney, L2004-7.12

By Paul Gessell

New Brunswick royalty — or at least those N.B. expats in Ottawa who aspire to lofty heights — came out in droves this month for the opening of an impressive exhibition at the Canadian War Museum.

There was at least one federal cabinet minister from New Brunswick (Fisheries and Oceans Minister Keith Ashfield), a multi-partisan clutch of MPs and senators, high-level bureaucrats, and other expat boys-and-girls-who-made-good, including John McAvity, the New Brunswick lad who has, it seems, been executive director of the Ottawa-based Canadian Museums Association since Confederation. (Well, almost).

Additionally, a coterie of cabinet ministers, MLAs, and bureaucrats journeyed from New Brunswick to the national capital to catch the opening and to frolic at a “New Brunswick kitchen party,” complete with old-time fiddlers, step dancers, and a few embarrassed looking stuffed shirts frogmarched to the front of the museum’s cafeteria for a jolly round of clacking spoons on knees.

Merriment abounded, although there were a few complaints that the guests invited to the kitchen party were then invited to sidle up to the cash bar for a drink and to pay $4.99 for a plate of Irish stew or fish and chips.

Read the rest of this story »

ARTFUL BLOGGER: A visit to American Photographs 1900-1950 is kind of like a trip down memory lane

Arthur Leipzig Opening Night at the Opera, New York, 1945 Gelatin silver print. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Copyright Arthur Leipzig/courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery

By Paul Gessell

I know these people. We all know these people. At least we think we do. We have seen their faces time and time again, these being some of the most iconic photographic images of the 20th century.

And yet their familiarity does not breed contempt, the way the over-exposure of a painted portrait or a too familiar sculpture turn high art into kitsch. Does anybody still take the Mona Lisa seriously? Doesn’t everyone simply snigger at Michelangelo’s sculptured David?

But repeatedly viewed photographs are different. They do not lose their impact. We simply love them more each viewing.

And thus one can thoroughly enjoy a new National Gallery exhibition titled American Photographs 1900-1950. Think of it as a family reunion. Some of the most celebrated photographs of the last century are present: Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother, 1936; Imogen Cunningham’s portrait of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, 1931; Edward Steichen’s 1925 portrait of a wide-eyed young woman titled Sunburn; and Barbara Morgan’s 1940 anguished take on dancer Martha Graham.

These are some of the stars among the more than 130 photographs in the exhibition organized by the gallery’s chief curator of photographs, Ann Thomas. All the photographs are in the National Gallery’s collection, one of the best in the world.

Read the rest of this story »

ARTFUL BLOGGER: Artists push the boundary of the natural world in Preternatural

Much Was Decided Before You Were Born by Mariele Neudecker

By Paul Gessell

The Canadian Museum of Nature has, within its much-renovated walls, one of the largest art galleries in the capital area. But it is also one of the more boring galleries in Ottawa because of a tendency to showcase earnest and predictable photographs or paintings. Rarely is there anything to make a visitor say “wow.”

Thankfully, the newest exhibition, which runs until Feb. 12, boasts considerable “wow” factor. Preternatural, as it is titled, offers visitors a selection of art that travels into the realm of the unexpected, marrying art, nature, and science in fascinating ways.

Who, for instance, can fail to be dazzled by the magical photo-based work of Gatineau artist Marie-Jeanne Musiol? Through a complicated electromagnetic process, Musiol is able to capture, photographically, the light field of leaves.

The result is a series of images of leaves surrounded by a luminous halo. Most of the leaves, arranged like museum specimens, are harvested from Musiol’s Gatineau neighbourhood and include oak, maple, and poplar.

Ottawa artist Andrew Wright confounds you with conceptual photo-based work. Initially, you think you are looking at an extreme close-up of the surface of the moon in the night sky. Instead, these are photographic images of a flat snowy field on Baffin Island that have been transferred onto a laminated plywood surface. But Wright has turned the images upside down so that the snowy field is at the top of the plywood and the black night sky at the bottom. To further complicate things, Wright has caused the plywood to bend in places, giving the images a sculptural effect.

Other artists in the exhibition include Mariele Neudecker from Britain, Anne Katrine Senstad from Norway, and Sarah Walko from New York. Each artist takes elements of the natural world and makes them “preternatural.”

Read the rest of this story »

« Older articles
Food + Wine
Shopping
Homes + Gardens
Society
advertisement indicator