Akrylic

Artist Inquisitions!!

Randy Gladman — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 20:16:05 +0000

In this new section, Akrylic asks artists, dealers, consultants, curators and other creative types all sorts of random questions with the intent of shedding light on the way cool people think. Though some of the questions will deal with the art practice+work of these smart people, most of these questions are totally random and cover a range of topics including style, cars, sports, sex, celebrity, food and politics.

We hope to add at least one new artist per week with the questions changing over time. Please click the photo or name of the artists below to reach their interrogation.

Dirk Westphal, photographer

Yorgo Alexopoulos, multimediartist

Rob Carter, video and photographer

Cara Bloch, photographer

Jason Gringler, painter

Heather Darcy Bhandari, artist advisor and curator

Ana Benaroya, illustrator

Viet Art Forum interviews Randy Gladman, 2009

Randy Gladman — Sat, 09 May 2009 05:00:55 +0000

The important Contemporary Art blog “Viet Art Forum”, based in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam, recently interviewed me via email. Viet Art Forum seeks to educate Vietnamese artists on how to promote their careers internationally. www.vietartforum.com A Vietnamese version of this article is available too! It was a lot of fun being on the interviewee side of an interview for a change…

PHỎNG VẤN RANDY GLADMAN

An Interview with Randy Gladman, by Marc Djandji - March 29, 2009

As I had mentioned before, one of my projects for VietArt Forum this year is to conduct interviews with local and international artists as well as other key players in the arts scene.

An Interview with Randy Gladman
Independent Art Critic/Consultant/Curator

1. How and why did you become a curator/critic?
I have always had an interest in visual art. I was always very creative when I was growing up and have had exhibitions of my own paintings. But I realized I understood art much better than I could make it myself. I did a Master’s degree in art history at New York University. I started working with contemporary artists at a company called Mixed Greens around that time and began writing about contemporary art for many magazines. I have been working as an advisor to artists and collectors as well as publishing articles and curating exhibitions ever since.

2. How did you learn your trade?
I learned my trade at MixedGreens.com back in the early 2000s when it was more of an artist management company than the art gallery it is today. I managed 6 artists, much the same way an agent/manager works with authors or actors. We curated many exhibitions in our space and around the United States and that taught me the skills of curating. I began doing independent projects in 2003. I learned to write about art by having opinions and expressing them in writing. Every thing I’ve ever written about art has been published, including my very first article which was about a dog in Brooklyn that made art.

3. In your view, what significance does Art have for Vietnam society?
Art is important for all societies, in particular those going through big changes or big problems.

4. Who is buying Vietnamese art these days? How would you describe collectors of Vietnamese art?
I live in Toronto, Canada now. There is not really a presence of Vietnamese art here at all, though there is a large Vietnamese community. Art from China is starting to have an impact here, though it is nowhere near as influential in Toronto yet as it is in New York City. As far as I know, there really are no influential collectors of Vietnamese art in Toronto.

5. How do you see the Vietnamese modern art scene today?
I wish I knew more about it. I visited Vietnam in 2006 and adored it. There was a lot of creative energy. But that energy has not really made itself known in Toronto yet. I did think that the art in Vietnam tended more towards “modern” than “contemporary”. There is a big difference. Vietnamese art will not have much of an impact on international awareness until strong Vietnamese contemporary artists emerge.

6. How do you draw attention to your projects?
I’ve been very fortunate. During my years in New York City (1999-2004) I met many fantastic artists. Some of them were already very well known while others have gone on to great success. I now work with many of those artists by bringing them to Toronto or writing about them in the Canadian press. Their names are big enough that they bring a lot of interest on their own. I piggyback on them! I think I benefit more than they do but don’t tell them that! Of course, I also find great artists all the time who are young and just getting their start. I tend not to do projects with
them but I do my best to help them advance their careers. I’m very active with helping in this way.

7. What kind of relationship exists between you and the artist?
I tend to become good friends with the artists I work with. The friendship often comes first though sometimes it is the other way around. That develops a deep trust which is necessary because they have to have faith that I can pull off what I promise to do. In this business, your “word” means a lot. In my art critic role, I often write about artists I don’t know. This is better when I intend to write negative things about their work. As a published critic, I need to be able to write what I think and sometimes I think work is weak. Obviously, I don’t curate artists into my shows unless I think they are brilliant.

8. Traditionally artists have been told to approach galleries with informational packets and portfolios, but of course the internet and sheer number of artists out there has changed things. How do you find most of the artists that you represent?
I’m a curator and a critic. It’s my job to find artists and I’m very good at it. I meet artists all over the place. The art industry is a very social game. Work making art is only 30% of your responsibilities as an artist. Most of the rest of an artist’s time should be spent looking at art and spending time in the art community. These things are essential, not optional. No one likes the “hard sell”. Gallerists and curators know how to find artists. They don’t really like being approached though they recognize that every once in a while, a previously invisible artist appears out of nowhere. They’d rather find artists themselves. That said, artists have to get their attention. Self promotion is needed. Intermediaries help. That’s where being friends with curators and art writers and other artists and the people who work in galleries comes in handy.

9. What standards do you follow to select an artist to work with?
That’s too difficult to answer. Art either speaks to me or it doesn’t. I’m all about the idea contained within the art. If the artist has good ideas and they come across in the work in a new and interesting way, then I want to work with that artist. Too many artists get distracted by the aesthetics of what they are making and don’t spend enough time thinking.

10. Is there some kind of philosophy behind your curatorial process? What kind of artists do you find yourself drawn to?
I believe that I understand art very well. But I recognize that the great majority of people do not. So many art exhibitions are catered to people who already know how to look at art. This often leaves the rest of the people feeling alienated. I try to produce exhibitions that do the opposite. My exhibitions are easy for everyone to approach and enjoy and learn from but at the same time they present art by very serious and intellectual artists whose concepts are appreciated by sophisticated viewers as well.

11. What is the biggest mistake you see emerging artists make when approaching you? Is there anything in particular that screams “don’t take me!”?
Getting a gallery to be interested in your work is a lot like dating. It is a courting process. Desperation and trying too hard is highly unattractive. Artists need to be smart, seductive, and a little bit aloof. Artists should develop their relationship with the gallerist first, before trying to push their work. They should make it clear that they appreciate what the gallerist is doing and follow the progress of the gallery. It is always better for the artist when the gallerist or curator asks to see their work rather than the artist asking if the gallerist or curator wants to see it. The art industry is as much about personality as it is about the art itself. A mistake artists often make is that they approach galleries before they understand what that gallery is trying to do. Every gallery has a style, a motive, a program. It is important for their to be the right fit.

12. On the flip side, what makes an artist attractive to a gallery?
Strong, thoughtful, relevant art is a prerequisite. But there are lots of other things. Is the artist committed to his (or her, of course) craft? Has he done a formal education in art? Does he have a graduate degree? Where has he shown? Has anyone written about that artist in published journals? What important collections have collected that artist? All these things contribute to an artist’s resume or CV. These all signal to the gallerist that other people see value in this artist’s work as well and encourage a desire to work together.

13. How many pieces should an artist have before looking at gallery representation? Framed? Unframed?
This is not relevant. The artist has to show a commitment to his craft. Numbers are meaningless. The quality of an artist and his work will shine through, regardless if the art is framed or not. Gallerists know how to see work unframed. An artist should not was time and money framing things except for exhibition and ideally the gallery manages that process, under the creative direction of the artist.

14. What are the responsibilities of a gallery to an artist?
Ideally, a good gallery provides many different kinds of support: encouragement, exhibitions, sales, relationships with important critics and curators so the work is noticed when it is exhibited. Great galleries sometimes provide logistical and financial support, when they believe there are good returns to be made.

15. What should an artist expect from a gallery, marketing and sales wise? And conversely, what does a gallery expect from an artist? Is there a period of time after which you decide to drop a non-selling artist?
A good gallery will show an artist’s work every 12-18 months in a solo exhibition. The gallery will also encourage other galleries around the world to show that artist’s work in the in between times, helping to gain international recognition for the artist. The gallery should contribute connections to press so exhibitions do not go unnoticed. But mostly, a good gallery should develop and manage sales for the artist. The gallery should expect a professional business relationship from the artist. Exhibitions should be planned in advance and delivered on time with little or no annoying or irresponsible behaviour from the artist.

16. Artist-Gallery contracts – good thing? Bad thing? Necessary thing?
Contracts are not generally used in the art world. This is a stupid fact of the art world that bothers me and leads to a lot of avoidable problems. Any smart artist should negotiate an agreement with their galleries. This does not need to be written by a lawyer. It can be as simple as a one page deal-memo outlining all the responsibilities expected of both parties. This kind of document may not hold up in court but if it is carefully thought out by both parties, it will hopefully provide a mutually understood
and beneficial agreement so that a law suit will never be required. I write my own agreements for my exhibitions; these are very difficult to write effectively and take a long time to negotiate but the effort is always worthwhile. I will not work with an artist or a gallery without an agreement in place first.

17. If an artist markets himself well, what’s the advantage to the artist of having gallery representation? In other words, what can galleries offer an artist for the commission they extract?
There are many artists today who have developed very successful careers without having a “primary” dealer. This is a great way to go for business-savvy artists. However, most artists are just that, artists. They are not business-minded people much of the time and they benefit greatly by having smart people manage the business side of their career. Artists should never underestimate the effort invested by a good dealer. There is a lot of risk in running a gallery. It can be argued that the gallery takes much bigger risks than the artist. Artists take this for granted at their own peril.

18. I see a lot of big name artists with multiple galleries representing them. How many galleries should an artist have, anyway?
Many successful artists may be shown by multiple galleries. The more successful the artist, the more galleries he tends to have showing his work internationally. Galleries tend to be territorial; a gallery may represent your work in New York City but another gallery in Los Angeles. Or one gallery may represent all of your work in New York City except for your prints which are represented by another gallery. There are no rules to this. Every situation is different and smart artists know how to manage these multiple relationships. Some artists, however, have what is called a “primary” dealer. This dealer manages the artist’s entire career and even when the artist shows at another gallery, tribute (percentage of sales) is paid to the primary dealer. This method is not as common as it used to be. Smart artists today function as their own primary dealer and manage territorial relationships with different galleries around the world.

19. Describe your perfect artist. How many pieces, what sort of style, what sort of behaviour they exhibit – what does this perfect artist do to make your life as a gallery owner easier?
The perfect artist understands his craft and can speak and write very intelligently/eloquently about his work. He (or she!) has been educated about art at a very high level (Master’s degrees from top tier universities go a very long way) and explores complex and relevant ideas in his work. He has a diverse range of work, ranging from inexpensive books and prints all the way to epic-scale museum-targeted works so that collectors at all levels of society can find a way to incorporate that artist’s work into their life. He should be totally and completely professional in his business dealings, organized and efficient. He should be prolific but only release high quality works into the public; great artists take chances with their work and fail sometimes but they edit the works that make it out into the public realm. He is personable and has a wide social circle made up of artists, curators, collectors, critics, musicians, actors, lawyers, doctors, accountants, real estate developers, rich men’s daughters, sluts, hipsters, losers, bartenders, circus clowns, travel agents, computer geeks, prostitutes, graphic designers, politicians, drug addicts, carpenters, mechanics, playboys, playboy bunnies, …

20. Every artist has a dream gallery they’d love to represent them one day. Do you have a dream artist that you would love to represent?
I have already worked with some of my favourite artists. I hope to work with Shepard Fairey and Banksy one day. As far as I’m concerned, they are two of the freshest and most influential artists in the world.

21. What advice would you give to an artist just starting out?
Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

_______________

This interview was conducted via email in March 2009.

Sign Language: A Brief Explanation of the Work of Ryan McGinness

Randy Gladman — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 03:37:28 +0000

Exhibition Essay by Randy Gladman. Displayed as wall text as part of “Ryan McGinness: Aesthetic Comfort,” Artcore Gallery, Toronto, September 23 - November 15, 2008.

Popular understanding of human history is often given chronological shape by dividing the time we have spent on this planet into various eras defined by our most significant technological innovations. The Stone Age, for instance, marks a broad prehistoric time when humans made their first technological advances, widely using stone for toolmaking. As our ancestors discovered the benefits of metal, the Copper, Bronze and Iron Ages followed. More recent eras are characterized by the development of highly sophisticated and complex achievements in culture and science; the Age of Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, the Atomic Age, and the Space Age. With the rise to dominance of the internet, our own era is coming to be known as the Information Age or the Communication Age, signifying a general shift in the global economy away from the production of physical goods towards the manipulation and distribution of information.

The fact that our lives are dominated by communication technologies is obvious. It is likely that every person who enters this gallery to view this exhibition will be carrying at least one cell phone. Most of us receive, literally, hundreds of emails per week, often accessible from anywhere via the Blackberry or iPhone in our pocket. Facebook enables us to passively and effortlessly keep track of massive networks of friends and colleagues. MSN, AIM and Skype provide no-cost long distance communications with business associates and loved ones around the world while satellite phones allow for crystal clear communications from the most remote corners of the planet. We are exposed to thousands of advertising messages per day via radio, television and billboards, some of which are so subliminal we do not even notice while others demand our attention by being wrapped around giant buildings with glowing LED lights.

The works of Ryan McGinness reflect the global and omnipresent reality of this modern system of technologically-aided communication. His works present cacophonies of ideas communicated visually and simultaneously. It is as if his paintings allow us to see with our naked eyes all of the cell phone conversations, text messages and emails zipping through the atmosphere all around us in any given second. Like listening to a thousand conversations at once, we can perceive words and ideas in these images but the general meanings are lost in the chaos.

McGinness has developed a unique visual language composed of swirling worlds of original icons that is accessible and eye-tingling. Close examination of the details of his paintings reveals rebus-like words and phrases communicating meaning through visual rather than verbal or textual means. The artist has grown a vast and ever-increasing repertoire of graphic drawings, each of which is legible in the same universal manner that symbols in airports denote where the washrooms or passport controls are located; understandable to everyone regardless of cultural background. McGinness has created a new, beautiful, if utterly quixotic, form of communication which, like ancient hieroglyphs, tells stories whose narratives are left to viewers to decipher. While this sign system draws aesthetically on graphic design, it is different in that it does not seek to clearly convey specific concepts, narratives nor ideas. His works obliterate the line between graphic design and fine art and replace it with a new immense language of mass communication that offers a kaleidoscopic visual mindscape. When using this language, the artist promotes the power of creativity over the necessity of communication.

McGinness began to create this language at the time of the birth of the new millennium and the progress of this language’s development can be traced as clearly as that of a child growing into an adult. Like a baby learning to speak, his first works in this new direction (the artist has been exhibiting his work consistently since 1996 but did not begin to develop this sign system until roughly 2000) were simple, monosyllabic outbursts where the entire picture plane was dominated by one simple icon at a time such as that of a snowflake in a circle or a reflected image of a simplified symbol of a man riding an escalator. The meanings were open to interpretation but complexity was absent. Within a year, the entirety of the artist’s output was focused on developing this new vocabulary and he had soon moved beyond the single word phrases to images that placed numerous icons beside each other within the picture window, resulting in visual sentences. Not only were the compositions becoming more sophisticated but so were the icons themselves. Angels sprouted second heads while Gothic churches were reflected horizontally into heavily-armed military fortresses. Monkeys rode galloping unicorns whose shit sprouted magic mushrooms. Soon, these sentences grew into paragraphs as McGinness began to layer the sentences on top of each other, creating more and more complex relationships between the icons via manipulations to size, color, and depth. With “Aesthetic Comfort”, it is clear the artist has mastered the language. Each piece in this show offers a full chapter of some Byzantine, unknowable story, while the total epic novel is composed of all the works in the exhibition.

The process McGinness uses to write these novels mixes traditional crafts like drawing and silk screening with sophisticated technologies such as Apple computers and Adobe software. With pen on paper, he distills ideas into flat, iconic designs. These analog drawings are turned digital as they are scanned into his Mac and further refined by aligning tangent points and outlines. These digital files are catalogued into what is now a massive icon library and then brought into the mechanical realm in the form of custom made silk-screens. Rather than using paintbrushes, McGinness makes his marks on the canvas using these silk-screens, replacing brushstrokes with pulls of the squeegee. The icons on the surfaces of the paintings seem machine made in their sharp perfection, but these marks all result from a careful marriage of analog, mechanical and digital technologies. With dizzying complexity yet simultaneously beautiful simplicity, the art of Ryan McGinness creatively manipulates various modes of innovative messaging technologies to produce a brand new language that speaks about the Communication Age and the ways we use it within and across societies.

Ryan McGinness - Aesthetic Comfort

Randy Gladman — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 13:22:56 +0000

Ryan McGinness
Aesthetic Comfort
Curated by Randy Gladman
September 27, 2008 – November 15, 2008

For Immediate Release

Artcore / Fabrice Marcolini is pleased to announce Ryan McGinness’s first solo exhibition in Canada. Aesthetic Comfort presents a major painting and sculpture installation by this internationally recognized, New York City-based artist.

Ryan McGinness makes work that occupies the stylish space where art and graphic design collide. Influenced by Andy Warhol and mixing digital technologies with more traditional crafts like silk screening and painting, McGinness, who is represented in New York City by the highly innovative and influential galleries Deitch Projects and Pace Prints, is known for his slick, flat, colourful pop works. Made up of swirling worlds of readable custom icons, his rebus-like paintings spill off their canvases and climb the walls. With works that range from consumer products like skateboards, carpets, t-shirts and soccer balls through to museum-collected prints, sculptures and paintings, McGinness has developed an original visual language that is accessible and eye-tingling yet, like ancient hieroglyphs, this sign system tells stories whose non-linear narratives are left to viewers to decipher.

These new works present a cacophony of icons, drawn from the artist’s vast and ever increasing repertoire of symbols. Appropriating the power of corporate branding and advertising graphic design, and acknowledging the universal legibility of visual modes of communication, the baroque mash-ups result in beautiful collisions which inundate viewers with playful stories that do not clearly convey any specific meanings but are somehow never confusing. Drawing from our boundless contemporary visual landscape, McGinness combines symbols as varied as unicorns, fire extinguishers, bathroom indicators, human figures, antlers and electric plugs with pop culture allusions to Pac-Man, Star Wars, Atari, Michael Jackson, Jackson Pollock, Picasso and even Warhol’s famous hairdo, all in a kaleidoscopic effort to promote a new, beautiful, if utterly quixotic, form of communication.

Ryan McGinness, 36, grew up in Virginia Beach and was influenced by skateboard culture, rock concert poster design, and street art. In 1994, he received his BFA from Carnegie Mellon University and then moved to New York City where he still lives and works. In 1999 he published his first book, Flatnessisgod, with Soft Skull Press, which visually presented the parallels the artist saw between street art and corporate branding, and offered insights into his design process. The book, which is today considered an important graphic design manifesto/bible, was the first in the expanding library of books by and about the artist. In 2005, Rizzoli New York published the first artist monograph, Installationview and this esteemed publisher will publish Ryan McGinness Works later in 2008. McGinness has published many limited edition artist books including No Sin/No Future, Multiverse, Project Rainbow, Pieceofmind and Luxurygood. He has been the subject of hundreds of articles in art, design, fashion and culture magazines, including Ocean Drive, Elle, Art News, Art Review, and The New York Times in the last year alone. His solo shows have been hosted in cities around the world, including Milan, New York City, Madrid, Amsterdam, Paris, Tokyo, Munich and Seattle and he has been included in many museum exhibitions at highly prestigious institutions including, among others, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the Saatchi Gallery at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, P.S.1/MoMA in New York City, the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, the Contemporary Art Center in Cincinnati, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver. McGinness has guest lectured extensively in the United States and his works have been acquired by many of the most important collections and museums in the world.

Works from the artist’s new Aesthetic Comfort series will also be shown in simultaneous solo exhibitions at the Cincinnati Art Museum. A limited edition artist book of the same title, published by Los Angeles-based Arkitip to accompany this series of exhibitions, will be launched at the opening reception at Artcore on September 27, 2008.
______________________
Randy Gladman is a Toronto-based Curator and Art Critic who first met Ryan McGinness in 2001 through his capacity as a Curator and Artist Manager at Mixed Greens Gallery in New York City. He contributed an essay to the 2005 Rizzoli New York monograph on the artist, Installationview, and his articles have been published in many art periodicals including Canadian Art, Contemporary, Artforum.com, and Artext, among others. He has been working to make this exhibition a reality since he returned to Toronto in 2004.

The Best Contemporary Art Galleries in Toronto

Randy Gladman — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 03:43:52 +0000

By Randy Gladman. Originally published on BlogTO.com, July 23, 2008

When it comes to the topic of Contemporary Art, it often seems there are only two kinds of Torontonians. There are the culture-junky downtowners who try to visit the galleries at least a couple times a year, in an effort to find unique gems for their collections and to remain cognizant of the heartbeat of the city. And then there is everyone else, the other 98% of our neighbours who don’t know that there are galleries in the city other than the ROM and AGO and wouldn’t have the faintest idea of how to find fresh, exciting new art if it occurred to them to look. What a shame because Toronto sports a wildly creative, at times bombastic and risque, gritty, gorgeous, and cerebral art scene.

Most people in this city, for instance, have no idea that the Museum of Canadian Contemporary Art (MOCCA) sprouted up like a sunflower in 2005 on Queen Street West. Nestled in the rear of a funky, mural-lined courtyard just east of Ossington, it functions as the anchor of Toronto’s Contemporary Art scene. (While The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery casts a long shadow, any Toronto artist will tell you that the MOCCA does the real, vital field work of supporting local art and keeping it from floating away into irrelevence.)

This internationally respected institution, directed by the rockstar-ish, hockey coach-like, beer-drinkin’, curatorial Godfather of cool art David Liss, hosts public openings for its raucous, sexy, intelligent and adventurous exhibitions every six weeks or so. Not only are these creative parties open and welcoming to everyone and their children, but they are free and fun and come with a nice dose of wild. (At all other times, entrance to the museum is “pay what you can”.)

One thing all the art dealers in the city will agree upon is that they wish more people visited their commercial galleries. Like a tree falling in the forest, art only makes an impact when there is someone there to see it. The more people the better. Unlike the pretentious art galleries of New York City or London, the staff and owners of Toronto’s best galleries are friendly and welcoming, always happy to explain the sometimes mysterious but always thought-provoking pieces on display.

1. Stephen Bulger Gallery

Galleries simply cannot be higher quality than Stephen Bulger Gallery, in Toronto or anywhere. Always welcoming, professional, educational and relevant, this West Queen West gallery is dedicated to photography. Presenting images by the finest photographers in the world from the earliest days of the medium through to current practice, this gallery is an essential stop on any art tour. For photographers, it is Mecca.

2. Le Gallery

Hands down the freshest gallery in Toronto, young owner/director Wil Kucey consistently looks under wet rocks for visionary, ultra modern artists no one has ever heard of. Many of them are still in art school. Kucey, who graduated from OCAD himself not so long ago, has the best eye for the new.

3. Clint Roenisch Gallery

More curator than gallerist, some people in the scene wonder why owner Clint Roenisch, possibly the finest curator in the city, runs a commercial gallery when he should be the curator of contemporary art at the AGO. Insightful, knowledgeable and challenging, the exhibitions at this essential Toronto gallery take no prisoners.

4. Artcore/Fabrice Marcolini

Not only does this Distillery District gallery have the most international program of any of the city’s contemporary galleries, but it also has one of the biggest and best spaces to show art. You may never have heard of the artists showing here, but the rest of the world certainly has. If you are looking for “blue chip” Contemporary Art from around the globe, speak to gregarious and knowledgable Fabrice.

5. Monte Clark Gallery

The commercial home base of the internationally admired “Vancouver School of Conceptual Photography”, not only does this gallery consistently present art of the highest quality, often by Canada’s finest artists, but it is housed in one of Toronto’s most gorgeous display spaces, down in the Distillery District. If you are lucky, Douglas Coupland might just be hanging out when you stop by.

6. Interaccess Electronic MEdia Arts Centre

As famous Canadian-Mexican digital media artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer says, “the only thing new about New Media art is that it is not new anymore.” Toronto needs more galleries like this Ossington Street staple, dedicated to ballsy, adventurous, techno-geek art that exists at the gummy intersection where technology and creativity collide.

7. Angell Gallery

With exhibitions that are always daring and original, this gallery was one of the pioneers in the West Queen West art district. You’ll rarely see a safe, conservative show here. Owner Jamie Angell is easily the friendliest, most enthusiastic dealer in the city.

8. Christopher Cutts Gallery

If you like a spoonful of mean, gruesome, beautiful decadence mixed into your art, Christopher “Cutter” Cutts is your tour guide. The art in his gallery usually has a dark and mischievous side. Though a bit out of the way near the intersection of Dundas and Bloor (yep, they intersect), it’s always worth the visit.

9. Diaz Contemporary

You could drop this gallery unmolested into any of the great contemporary art centres of the world and you wouldn’t have to change a thing. Owner Benjamin Diaz had an illustrious and influential career in Mexico City’s art scene before opening this important gallery in Toronto which usually exhibits works by Canadian and Mexican artists.

10. Katharine Mulherin Contemporary Art Projects

Now in its tenth year, this gallery is spread across various store fronts on Queen Street West. Edgy, relevant, and, at times, cutesy, this gallery is one of the most respected and established spaces showing “emerging” and “mid-level” artists in the city.

http://blogto.com/toronto/the_best_contemporary_art_galleries_in_toronto/

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: Text Art

Randy Gladman — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 15:15:47 +0000

By Randy Gladman. Originally published in Contemporary, Text Art Special, vol.21, Issue 13, 2008

We interact with technology hundreds of times a day. We dial telephone numbers, scan our food through supermarket check-out lasers, change the television channel and move our mouse to surf to another web page. We click, slide, dial, push, swipe, turn and type on our machines to communicate our contextual commands, and we take for granted that the device will understand our desires and provide an expected result. The point of interface, where our bodies meet our machines, is at the heart of Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s art. His works create new interfaces and interfere with communications in order to propose new, unexpected, exquisitely simple purposes for our techno-gadgets, and hint optimistically at the intimate things our machines will do for us in the future.

Lozano-Hemmer is the undisputed champion of epic-scale, publiclyinstalled interactive art. His inventive electronic interventions have been exhibited in over 30 countries, and in 2007 he was selected to represent Mexico for the country’s first ever participation in the Venice Biennale. Like all his pieces, his work in the Palazzo Sorano Van Axel used technology to generate spaces that made observers active participants in ephemeral artistic dialogues. Harnessing the power of digital programming and marrying it to the aesthetics and diverse materials at the forefront of contemporary art, his work resides along the fi ne threshold that separates humans from their technology.

Lozano-Hemmer’s works are participatory by nature. His installations provide safe, quirky, technoid environments within which viewers’ movements, thoughts, touches and even heartbeats are recognised, captured and transformed. These are manifested as light and energy through complex yet elegantly refi ned structures to startling, playful and beautiful effect. Drawing on his background in both science and the performing arts, the artist develops spaces where viewers and participants are one and the same.

Holding citizenship for both Mexico (where he was born) and Canada (where he was raised and educated), Lozano-Hemmer maintains studios in Montreal and Madrid. Teams of engineers based in Montreal and Edmonton, Canada, help the artist develop the complex software required for each piece and fabricate the physical structures. During the summer of 2007 he had the opportunity to produce his first major exhibition in Canada during Toronto’s ‘Lumina TO’ festival. Pulse Front redefined Toronto’s skyline waterfront for seven summer nights. Twenty high-power robotic searchlights flashed across the night sky, each beating in synch with the heartbeats of passers-by as they gripped specially designed handlebars at nearby stations. Giant rays of light shot into the night at varying intensities, orientations and speeds to correspond to the viewers’ pulses. Billed as the largest interactive light sculpture ever, Pulse Front’s 200,000 watts of power could be seen from more than 15 kilometres away, seamlessly blending the intimate and spectacular.

Manipulations of text and the technological methods that we use to communicate with one another are always fair game in Lozano-Hemmer’s work. A project at the Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media in Japan in 2003 was similar to Pulse Front in that robotically controlled searchlights penetrated the night sky, but their frequencies and pathways through the ether were determined by intercepting participants’ cell-phone text messages. Encoded into unique sequences of movement and intensity, the abstracted textual messages bounced around in the night until they were received by the intended recipient’s phone. Once ‘caught’, the messages were removed from the night sky and simultaneously displayed on the receiving phone’s screen and projected on to the façade of the museum. In Subtitled Public (2005), he used an infrared surveillance system to track visitors to the gallery, who were then tagged with projections of conjugated verbs. These remained branded by light on the individual, no matter where they went in the gallery, until they touched another visitor, at which point the words switched to a different person. Lozano-Hemmer states that he plays with text and technology in order to ‘slow down communication and transpose it to a more abstract level. The lack of clarity is where communication ends and art begins.’ By injecting digital interference, the artist allows for enriched interpretations of messages.

For many years, Lozano-Hemmer’s works were only recognised in new-media art circles. He has received the Golden Nica award at the Prix Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria, two BAFTAs for Interactive Art in London, an award of distinction at the SFMOMA Webby Awards in San Francisco, the Trophée des Lumières in Lyon and an International Bauhaus Award in Dessau, among many other accolades. But his major public commissions have now attracted the attention of the contemporary art world, which has recently claimed him and his work. In 2007 he was invited to exhibit at both Tate Modern and MoMA in New York, and while he still works with the newmedia gallery BitForms in New York, less technology focused galleries, such as Artcore in Toronto, OMR Gallery in Mexico City and Guy Bärtschi in Geneva now show his work as well. Though he was the only interactive artist included in the Venice Biennale in 2007, his participation in this elite bastion of established contemporary art signifi es his admittance into the accepted canon of important contemporary artists. It also marks the inevitable, if begrudging, acknowledgment that new media art is an important and central form of contemporary artistic expression. As Rafael Lozano-Hemmer says, ‘The newest thing about new-media art today is that it is not new any longer.’

Kristine Moran: Dissolution Plan at Angell Gallery

Randy Gladman — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 19:35:35 +0000

"Continual Drift by Kristine Moran"

By Randy Gladman. Originally published in Canadian Art Magazine, Vol. 22, No. 3, Fall 2005

In her second solo exhibition, Kristine Moran sharpens the focus in her sci-fi paintings, zeroing in on the ideas of utopian theorists from the 20th century—Jane Jacobs, Robert Moses, Constant Nieuwenhuys and Buckminster Fuller—to present inner-city landscapes from an imagined alternative present. While still sprinkled with her signature airborne vehicles and extravagant explosions, these works ponder idealistic urban environments and the social interactions of their inhabitants. Like all science-fiction tales about supposedly perfect societies (think of Spielberg’s blindingly bright future in Minority Report), Moran’s narratives inevitably present harsh dystopias.

The geodesic dome serves as a motif in the exhibition, providing perfect shelter for the chosen few and symbolizing the ultimate failure of the utopian ideal to encompass those left outside its walls. In Blind Sided, the dome is seen from a top-down, aerial view, the same godlike perspective that the original designers of these idealized cities held when drawing up their blueprints. While those designers saw only plans for a perfect future, we see the chaos that now dominates the fictional metropolitan communities, not lucky enough to be included under the utopic domes. In Next In Line, perhaps the strongest work in the exhibition, we witness a military helicopter patrolling over a tangle of traffic-snarled multi-lane freeways. As its searchlights scan the ground, we are left with the distinct feeling that some kind of tragedy has struck the city. The image is reminiscent of the weeks after 9/11, when military choppers and fighter jets patrolled the skies above Manhattan. The vertigo-inspiring aerial perspective and sickly green-blue Matrix-like hue of these top-down works leave viewers with a clear sense of impending doom or fresh disaster.

Moran’s representations of buildings and vehicles are frequently wonky and skewed, their angles and flatness childlike in their clumsy, sketchy quality. The manner in which the artist delineates three-dimensional space in these complex landscapes is awkward and sometimes confusing. But it is exactly this looseness that makes her works so interesting. Combining glossy enamels and alkyds on board with a thick impasto handling of high-keyed paint, the artist captures the intense energy and action depicted in her narratives. The harried, improvised quality of her work injects the pieces with an intelligent and vibrant freshness.

Ryan McGinness; Art and Entertainment

Randy Gladman — Thu, 27 Jan 2005 04:00:00 +0000

By Randy Gladman. Originally published in Strength: Skateboard Culture Magazine, January/February 2002

A small TV in a corner of the gallery projects a video of your worst nightmare. Office hell: A shallow space with white walls and whiter lighting, a nondescript table, and a generic clock, hung low on the wall so it appears in the tight camera angle view. The time is apparently twenty-one minutes past the hour and a skinny dude in a white business shirt sits at the table in obvious discomfort. He looks bad. Hurting bad. As he rubs his hand across his clean-shaven head, you notice that there is a six-pack of beers (Pabst Blue Ribbon) on the table and a shot glass in his hand. With the passing of every minute, he downs a shot of beer and then pours himself another. In a perverse funk, this character attempts to drink a shot of beer every minute for an hour. The first highlight of the video occurs just after the 23rd shot when the drinker pukes all over the table. Without cleaning it up, he pours himself another ounce and waits for the next minute to arrive. He pukes two more times before the hour concludes.

The actor/guinea pig is Ryan McGinness. He is also the producer, director, writer, and cameraman. You wouldn’t know it from this artist video, but McGinness is on the verge of busting the eggshell of the art world wide open and letting the rich, goopy yolk drip down to a democratic pool from which we can all feed. Relying heavily on a dose of influence from his Pop art predecessors but injecting it with sensibilities based in hip-hop hype, skater style and graffiti guerilla warfare, McGinness has pioneered a new territory in the realm of high art. He inhabits the thin layer of skin that separates design from art, armed with an aesthetic philosophy now known as Flatnessisgod, a sense of worship in the importance of surface and the pervasive coolness present in all forms of contemporary pop culture.

McGinness extracts ideas, shared experiences and materials from pop culture and elevates them in an attempt to delineate what brings us together as consumers and producers. In the 60-minute video discussed above, Hour of Power (2001), he uses beer and a college tradition to comment on corporate exploitation of the workforce and the role of ritualized substance abuse. In Saving Ryan’s Privates he glues 10,000 plastic soldiers onto a board resulting in a stunning sculptural painting. The title is an obvious pun on Spielberg’s “Wagnerian orgy of violence” Saving Private Ryan and the work satires American-style military edutainment and Hollywood-inspired lemming-like mentality.

Although the artist often uses traditional mediums such as paint on canvas, he continues to exploit less precious materials culled from daily existence. The intent is to democratize art in order to make it more accessible. Like a modern Robin Hood, he perverts expected capitalist infrastructures with a cunning slight of hand. In 1999, McGinness first caught art press attention by screwing with gift shops in major New York City museums. He fabricated postcards identical to those sold by the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art, complete with the same fonts, bar codes, and logos of the institutions, but he replaced the images of, say, van Gogh’s Starry Night with depictions of his own art works. After infiltrating the postcard racks in the gift shops with his own cards, he arranged for friends and sympathizers to attempt to purchase the moles. Although the postcards remained as the residue of the ‘installation / performance’, the real artistic object of the work was the commotion it caused at the check out counter of the shop when the computerized cash registers didn’t recognize the product.

Appropriating elements from film, television, music, art history, and urban collective consciousness, McGinness (29 years old) feeds omnivorously on the detritus of pop culture, recycling, transforming and condensing the iconography and iconology of a generation. In Sign Series: 80s Sitcoms, the lyrics of sitcom theme songs are soberly engraved in white text on red plastic signs. Subtly and unexpectedly hung in random public areas, their messages are meant to awaken passersby with misplaced and nostalgic phrases: “Makin’ your way / in the world today / takes everything you’ve got.” Small and cheaply made, McGinness hangs the pieces loosely in order to encourage people to steal them and take them home. A similar series called Sign Series: Pick Up Lines offers the kind of sleaze ball lines you might hear at a dive bar in the meat packing district: “As long as I have a face, you have a place to sit”. Perhaps the lowest forms of poetry and theatre, the callow pick-up line and the shallow television sitcom jingle are promoted into the hallowed space of the art gallery.

In 2000, McGinness ventured into the skate world with a series of hand-painted skateboards. Although painting on wood panels has been a tradition in art for centuries, the pill-shaped oval of the skateboard deck afforded a new format, and McGinness was attracted to the medium for its fresh formal qualities and its value as a symbol of youth culture. The first decks he hand painted with imagery familiar from his canvas works, often using readily identifiable iconography extracted from the signs in public spaces and clip art programs. But because these decks were hand-painted, they were necessarily expensive ($400) and tended to remain wheel-less paintings meant more for a gallery wall than for a halfpipe.

Around the time McGinness was first creating these paintings, he was contacted by James Jebbia, owner of Supreme and a partner of the Stussy brand of streetwear fashion. Jebbia is a fan of McGinness’s 1999 book of graphic design, Flatnessisgod, and contacted the artist through their common friend, KAWS, also an artist who exploits consumer culture-based imagery. The result of their meeting was a series of skateboards designed by McGinness and manufactured by Supreme.

As a kid, McGinness skateboarded and built ramps, halfpipes and launch ramps. “I was never really very good,” explains the artist, “but I was enthusiastic about the graphics and styles that defined what was cool.” Recognizing the improbability of ever being a skate star himself, McGinness instead committed himself to creating the signs and signifiers that identified the group to which he wanted to belong. Now years later, he finds himself inserted into the skate tradition of great companies sponsoring spectacular riders. The “Ryan McGinness for Supreme” decks hit Supreme’s New York City and Tokyo shops in September, 2000. Referring to his profession as a graphic designer instead of as a rider, the boards are tricked out Pantone color formula guides, an essential tool for all graphics professionals. When they were exhibited at Joseph Silvestro Gallery in the art-hip Brooklyn village of Williamsburg, a sample of each version was bolted together and fan-displayed like a giant Pantone booklet. Five different versions of the board were made, each in editions of 500, and almost all sold out at $55 before the end of the year, mostly in Japan. The few leftovers are now selling for $110.

2000 ended with McGinness’s solo show at Houston, an art gallery in Seattle with a mandate focusing on young, urban art. The exhibition, a symphony of variations on a skateboard theme, was titled Shtick referring to both the slang term for a skateboard (stick) and the gimmick-like approach of much of McGinness’s work. Alongside skateboard paintings and sculptural ramps made from cardboard and glue was hung a series of ‘grip tape’ paintings. Formally referencing twentieth-century abstract paintings by artists such as Ellesworth Kelley in their flat fields of color and subtly curving lines, these pieces are amplified by their 1980s nostalgia-inducing fluorescent hues. The curves they depict evoke those of transition ramps, so familiar to McGinness from visits to skate parks during his childhood. Their surfaces are not painted but rather carefully cut and applied with the grip tape. McGinness located a manufacturer of the material in California who had rolls of highlighter-colored grip tape left over from the heady Miami Vice days of the late 1980s. Fitting perfectly into his artistic practice and methodology, these works offer flat imagery reduced from pop culture and reuse common materials in untraditional manners.

McGinness never steps onto a skateboard anymore. But his graphic style has helped shape the current hip aesthetics of youth culture among urban factions sympathetic to the skate world. The first two editions of his influential 1999 visual design manifesto Flatnessisgod have sold out and publishers are currently considering a third press. Two artist books have been published, Pieceofmind (2001) and Luxurygood (2000), each in limited editions of 1000 signed copies. Joseph Silvestro Gallery produced an early retrospective catalogue of Ryan’s work to accompany the exhibition at that gallery last spring. The artist is currently preparing for a final burst of productivity to finish Beck, the second work in a series of visual biography books that began with Carrot Top (2001). With a hectic exhibition schedule, excellent distribution channels for his book works, and a near obsessive-compulsive work ethic, McGinness is disseminating his design philosophy with the pervasiveness and speed of a computer virus.

Gorging on the icons of mass communication, McGinness digests the discarded chips of visual pop culture and regurgitates a rehydrated paste of common experience. Whether it cameos in his videos every few shots, or gets widely dispersed around Manhattan by randomly applied stickers carrying his sarcastic criticisms of art itself, his work forces a second consideration of our consumerist habits and afflictions. By resuscitating the leftovers created by the American culture machine and marrying it to a keen concept of art and value, McGinness has stepped into a space where highbrow art meets popular entertainment and enjoyment. “I strive to be a part of culture,” he explains, “not just the art world.”

Nicholas di Genova at Le. Gallery

Randy Gladman — Mon, 20 Dec 2004 19:35:17 +0000

By Randy Gladman. Originally published in Canadian Art Magazine, Vol. 21, No. 4, Winter 2004

‘Street Art’ exists in heavily urbanized environments from Tokyo to Toronto. Much of it is ‘graffiti’, that pestilence of territorial pissing by visually impaired half-wits who have little creative output beyond barely-literate scratches of their own names. However, an informed eye notices that the seas of scribbled spray paint, stickers and wheat-pasted billboards polluting the sides of buildings are sometimes topped by a foamy sprinkling of intelligent work that competes in the same public urban space. Barry McGee, a.k.a. Twist, whose wall paintings, drawings and mixed media installations were among the first to migrate from the streets into galleries such as Deitch Projects in New York and museums like the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum, is one of the best-known practicioners.

Shepard Fairey, whose Andre the Giant has a Posse stickers and Obey populist wheat-paste posters can be seen in settings from San Francisco to Singapore, exemplifies the multi-directional cross over of these artists into the gallery and into consumer products. Together with Brian James ( a.k.a. KAWS), Stephen Powers (a.k.a. ESPO), and James Marshall (a.k.a. DALEK), they comprise a movement of artists—coined ‘The Disobedients’ by Tokion magazine in May 2002—who use the aesthetics and distribution tactics of Street Art but cross breed them with a strange brew of Pop culture, illustration, commercial toy production, critical intelligence and artistic integrity. Nicholas di Genova, one of shamefully few talents to graduate from the Ontario College of Art and Design in 2004, readily admits their influence. In his debut solo exhibition, at Toronto’s tiny but edgy and inspiring Le Gallery, di Genova offered ink and ‘cell animation’ paint on mylar drawings that displayed his attention to artists like Twist, Futura, and DALEK. His nascent career has been noticed outside of Toronto and he has been included in New York City, Detroit, London, Berlin, and Singapore group shows, as well as Pictoplasma 2, a German collection of the best of international character design. Di Genova’s splotchy black outlines, flat fields of solid muted color, and clever suggestions of depth via mylar-and-Plexiglas sandwiches, show the important influence of Japanese anime and manga. At times his drawings look like they could come directly from the pages of Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira manga with their intricate parallel linear shading, finely detailed outlines and gritty futurism. Unfortunately, the work has none of the narrative brilliance of Otomo’s epic Sci-Fi masterpiece.

Story and meaning are lacking. With silly titles like Lump-Head Triclops and Bi-Ped Fish Head Crabot, the works are loosely based on a post-apocalyptic/post-human world populated by mechanized mutations of animal species. However, it is a fanciful and naïve view that fails to deliver any significant message or social commentary. The sculptures included in the exhibit were also regrettable and cluttered the small gallery with objects that showed only that the artist has much to learn in three dimensions. Yet, di Genova’s style is confident and it forms an original departure from his influences. The huge library of charming characters that he has already created function as the foundation of a rich visual language, one that will enable him continue to participate in a vibrant, if underground, art movement.

David Altmejd: 21st Century Werewolf Aesthetics

Randy Gladman — Tue, 27 Jul 2004 04:00:00 +0000

By Randy Gladman. Originally published in C International Contemporary Art, Issue 84, Summer 2004

21st Century Werewolf Aesthetics: An interview with David Altmejd
Interview conducted in Istanbul, September 2003

Montreal born sculptor David Altmejd was the only Canadian artist at the 8th International Istanbul Biennial, curated by the New Museum’s Dan Cameron. Since graduating with an MFA from Columbia University in New York City in 2001, he has taken part in high profile group shows at spaces as impressive as Artists Space and Deitch Projects, received glowing reviews in The New York Times and The Village Voice, and recently signed with the Andrea Rosen Gallery. He also appears in this year’s Whitney Biennial, one of the only Canadians invited to participate in this highly influential exhibition. Yet all this attention belies the complexity of his sculptures, which purposefully intend to confound viewers. Mixing seemingly random objects such as decapitated werewolf heads with graffiti-style Stars of David, stained Calvin Klein underwear, towers made of mirrors, plastic flowers and faux jewelry, Altmejd creates sculptural systems loaded with what he calls “symbolic potential” and open ended narratives.

I caught up with Altmejd for breakfast on the roof of the Armada Hotel in the old Sultanahmet sector of Istanbul the day after the opening of the Biennial. In the shadow of the Blue Mosque with a panorama view of the Bosphorus we spoke about energy generating werewolf heads, studio visits with Matthew Barney, the relationship between art and commerce, and what it means to be a French Canadian artist working in New York City.

Randy: Your work is obtuse, difficult for people to enter. There is definite aesthetic pleasure. Anybody can look at it and see that it involves a complex system of meanings. But the connections between the elements are complicated. There are so many things that are disparate, eclectic. You use mirrors and crystals in different parts of the same sculptures that aren’t connected in any direct way. Even in a lot of the press you have earned since you began showing in New York, the writers seem to have a hard time following the connections. Are you trying to create specific meanings through the relationships of the elements, or are you leaving the meanings purposefully ambiguous?

David: I am interested in complexity as a form. I am happy when people are fascinated by the thing itself, when they are absorbed by it and know that it contains something more. Personally, I like experiencing complex objects, but not because I necessarily wish to understand the system. I am seduced by complexity itself. From my perspective, my work is intuitive. I am not able to mention specific reasons why I associate these things. I get a feeling from certain combinations, a feeling that something is going to happen when I mix things together. I do not have to say something; the object will say it. I see my installations as organisms. I start making something but at a certain point it starts making choices by itself.

R: You have particular symbols that you use like a language. They appear in different forms in different pieces and the interaction between them creates a language.

D: Rather than a language, I am more interested in how the elements create energy. I know that the things I use, the Star of David or certain words affiliated with political activism, are charged and have important meaning potential. I inject them inside the installation and the meaning potential transforms into energy. My involvement is to create something that is alive that will be able to say new things. The energy of these living abstract organisms depends on the meanings of the work being unresolved, uncontrolled. When meaning is controlled, the resulting object is not alive, there is no tension in a logical system that functions.

I am so not interested in art making as a way to communicate a specific idea. That is so boring to me. It makes the art nothing but an illustration. I want my works to have intelligence of their own, not just
be slave to my meaning. I made an installation last year at a gallery in Brussels and two guys were hanging out near the piece during the opening. When they came up to me they said, “That piece is definitely talking about the Holocaust.” In my mind I thought “No, not really”. But then I realized that just because I made the object doesn’t mean I get to determine what the object is saying. The realization that I was able to create an object that - on its own - has the capacity to talk about such a grave subject matter as the Holocaust is amazing to me. I’m not sure that I would be able to say new things about the Holocaust on my own, with a specific intention.

R: So you don’t think your work is political?

D: To me, it is all intuitive.

R: But when you use a symbol like the Star of David, it is as iconographic as a swastika. It undeniably carries a political meaning. Are you using it just to charge the work with energy? Is that responsible?

D: I know that when I use an image like a Star of David there is the potential for something to happen. A thousand things could happen. But in comparison to an icon like the swastika, the Star of David is so much more interesting. With a swastika, only one thing can happen. I know exactly how a swastika will function inside my installation. It is too obvious and I don’t like that I know what will happen. I don’t want to know. You know? I am very interested in that void. In order to make something that is new, that says new things, you have to be able to use intuition and not really know in advance what is going to happen. If it is totally controlled then there is nothing new.

R: When you use the Star of David are you thinking about the connections to what is happening in Israel? I mean, the theme of the Istanbul biennial is “Poetic Justice”. It is about justice and there is obviously a global debate going on today about justice between the Israelis and the Palestinians. I understand from what you’ve already said that you do not want to come out and explain what your work is trying to say but at the same time there is an undeniable connection between the Star of David and Israel and you are surely aware of it and aware of the fact that in Istanbul your art is showing in a Muslim country.

D: I don’t want to sound stupid or give you the impression that I do not want to take responsibility for what occurs in my work. But I feel that it is very much like having a kid. It is very problematic when your child grows up and becomes someone with a totally independent mind. What is your responsibility as a parent for the horrible things that he does as an adult? You brought that child into this world; he has half of your genetic system. You taught him to be polite, how to read, how to count. But then he has a mind of his own. I am interested in where the responsibility lies. I want to make an installation and then at a certain point step back and say “Wow, that’s amazing. It is going in all sorts of different places; it is a thing on it’s own.”

R: Werewolf heads appear again and again in your work. I’m not sure if this has a specific meaning for you or not.

D: I started using that three years ago. At the beginning it was just an alternative to the human body. I made a chopped-up werewolf. Body art is so familiar, in terms of experience. By making a monster leg, it has something of the familiar feeling but there is an added level of weirdness. Then I was very interested in the werewolf because of its complexity, its symbolic potential. It represents both good and evil, human and animal, Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – extremes on both sides.

Every time I talk about my work I use the word “energy” a lot, not in a new age kind of way. The werewolf head with crystals on it is an energy-generating object. A man transforms into the werewolf, which is the most intense transformation, physically and mentally. The werewolf goes from one state, man, to a totally opposite state, animal, in the matter of minutes or even seconds. In movies it always happens in, like, thirty seconds. It even looks painful.

R: Were you thinking of pop movies like Michael J. Fox in Teen Wolf or Michael Jackson in Thriller? Do you deal with Pop issues?

D: I do deal with Pop, but that’s not where the werewolf comes from. For me, it is more of a Romantic notion from the end of the 19th century. In a story I made up about the werewolf, in the seconds right after the super-intense transformation from man into werewolf, the head is chopped off. It is put on a table, and instead of rotting the head crystallizes. The energy related to the transformation is kept inside the head and it crystallizes and becomes an energy-generating object. The architectural structure I use in the installation presents the object in such a way that triggers this energy and circulates or channels it throughout the piece.

R: There are not many artists I can think of who are doing similar work. The first time I saw it, I had a difficult time because it is so unlike what anyone else is doing. What artists have influenced you? Do you feel that you are working in a manner reminiscent of anyone else?

D: Some artists have definitely influenced me directly. Recently, however, I have got lost inside my own work. I get very absorbed. I have built enough objects and materials to use as starting points. But certainly Louise Bourgeois has taught me much about space and energy. Bourgeois has made wire fence and wood cell constructions. You cannot enter them but you can look at what is inside through openings and windows and inside there are arrangements of objects that seem like they are haunted. These works have a number of different parts but they are not installation because they are self-contained in a framework. The viewer can only walk around and peek into it and see objects that are full of memories or pain, generating a haunted-attic atmosphere.

R: Have you been influenced by Julia Kristeva’s “Powers of Horror; An Essay on Abjection”? There are a lot of seemingly abject objects in your work; death, dismemberment, scarification, corpses.

D: I am really not interested in gore. What I make has to be positive and seductive. Instead of rotting, the characters in my work are crystallizing. This makes the narratives of the pieces move towards life rather than death.

R: So even where there is a decapitated werewolf you are being optimistic?

D: Yes, totally. It is intended to be alive. Maybe weird and dark, but certainly alive.

R: You are the only Canadian in the Istanbul Biennial. Is that an honor or is that irrelevant? How does it position you?

D: Yes, I was surprised that I was the only one. I guess it is all about the way Dan Cameron decided to do his selection. I’m not sure how he proceeded.

R: Do you identify yourself as a French Canadian?

D: Depends on where I am. I don’t identify myself as a French Canadian when I am in Quebec. I did when I first moved to New York, but I don’t anymore.

R: Do you find that Americans see a difference between Canadians and French Canadians, or are only Canadians able to see this?

D: No, I don’t think they see a difference.

R: I am always interested in how Canadian artists come to be living and showing actively in New York. How did you get here and what has the experience been like?

D: Four years ago I went to grad school at Columbia University where I was lucky enough to have studio visits with great artists, practically every week. I got to see everyone from Matthew Barney to David Salle to Vanessa Beecroft – the list goes on. It was amazing, really energizing. It gave me the energy to work all night, to make sure that when Matthew Barney was on his way to my studio I would have something to show him. He is so quiet. The visit lasted 45 minutes. There is such a specific language that has been built around his work and he found a way to use his language to talk about my work. Everything he said was haunting and optimistic at the same time. He was the first person to make it clear to me that all the organic growing shapes and crystals I was using were positive. He actually used the word “hopeful”. I thought that was great.

R: In New York, your shows have received all sorts of attention. When Jerry Saltz covered “Demonclownmonkey”, an exhibition curated by the painter Matthew Ritchie, your work was prominently discussed. Then Roberta Smith gave your solo show at Ten In One a glowing review in the New York Times. Now you are in the 8th Istanbul Biennial. All of this makes me wonder how your work has been accepted back home in Montreal and Toronto?

D: Well, I have never shown in Toronto so there has been very little response to my work there. In Montreal people know me. Before I moved to New York for grad school I had some shows there.

R: But you are getting a bigger response to your work in New York than you have had in Canada?

D: Yes.

R: Do you think this is a common phenomenon?

D: I don’t think there are a lot of artists from Canada who have moved to New York. Maybe it is different from English Canada? Maybe there are more artists from Toronto who move to New York than from Montreal? I am the only French Canadian artist that I know living in New York.

R: So why did you move? Ambition?

D: I wanted to come to New York to study. And I really needed excitement for my art.

R: What do you think of the contemporary art scene in Montreal?

D: It is great. I can’t believe it is not, how do you say “diffused’ more.

R: Projected onto the world stage?

D: Yes. I am amazed. It is as if Montreal is bordered by the Great Wall of China or something.

R: Why do you think that is? I mean, from my time in New York, I’ve noticed that Americans love Montreal. They know it is a fantastic city. But yet it seems that no one goes there specifically for the art. I rarely, if ever, see art in Montreal covered in the international art press.

D: I don’t think there is encouragement to be international from people in Quebec. I mean, artists in Canada are certainly helped by government money, by grants. But I think some criticism of this situation would be healthy. I think maybe a lot of artists are hurt by this system. Once they start getting grants, it is almost like they have a job. I am not interested in that.

R: Do you think that young Canadian artists see the New York art world as inaccessible?

D: I can only talk about myself. For me, I need more than to just be part of a government granting system. I understand that the Canadian government has to support culture because there is a lack of a market for this kind of work. I also think that in Canada there is perhaps more of this idea that commerce is evil, that commerce should be avoided, that a commercial context is bad for creation because it influences artists and encourages them to make things just so they can sell them. But this is stupid. There is intelligence everywhere, in every kind of context. There is a way to make something intelligent in a commercial context just as well as there is in a non-profit context. Of course the art may look different, but that doesn’t mean that it is not going to be just as smart and valuable. I believe the market is a good force. I am not suggesting that non-profit art spaces and government sponsorship and the like are unnecessary, because they certainly are necessary. I just think that the market is great and that there needs to be a healthy combination of both things.