2010 2010 www.art.utoronto.ca UNIVERSITY OF ARTISTS ESSAYS Kathleen Boetto Michelle Jacques MVS Programme Rebecca Diederichs Vladimir Spicanovic Graduating Exhibition Bogdan Luca Alison Syme MEDIA (RE)VISION: HOW TO GET THERE FROM HERE

The 2010 Graduating Exhibition of: Rebecca Diederichs Kathleen Boetto Bogdan Luca

MEDIA (RE)VISION: MVS (Masters of Visual Studies) Programme in Studio Art HOW TO GET THERE FROM HERE relevant to contemporary artists and curators Associate Curator Contemporary Art at the Art in discussing his recent work in the production Gallery of , who considers the work of of “Knossos as a memory object”. Independent Rebecca Diederichs; Vladimir Spicanovic, Dean, curator Nancy Campbell revealed her long- Faculty of Art, Ontario College of Art & Design, standing involvement with artists working in who elucidates the form and the content ’s far North. Jean Baptiste Joly, Director of Bogdan Luca’s painting practice; and our of the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart own Art History colleague Alison Syme who spoke about the origins of contemporary art decodes the mediaized imagery of Kathleen “So, with his word “researches” Herodotus mobilizing desire and response as easily as cool as it has developed amongst young visual Boetto’s work in video and photography. announced one of the great shifts in human appraisal and analysis. Kathleen Boetto strikes artists working at the Akademie since the mid And thanks also to Linseed Projects for their consciousness not often enough recognized. deep into the territory of sociologist Erving 1990s. Gilles Forest, Director/curator at the beautiful and thoughtful design of the catalogue Here was the shift from mere recording Goffman, whose study The Presentation of Self Centre d’art contemporain, Basse-Normandie, and David Robinson (Print Maximum) for again and repetition of tradition to the scrutiny of in Everyday Life suggested that all of life is a kind spoke about the sense of “doubt” he believes overseeing the printing with great care and experience.” - Daniel Boorstin, The Seekers: the of theatre and that context is all, allowing us to to be essential in curating an exhibition. Gregory attention to detail. story of man’s continuing quest to understand “perform” differently in different circumstances. Burke, Director of the Power Plant, offered his his world. Boetto’s work strikes a vivid, resonant chord strategy for putting together the exhibition Within the University of Toronto, there are many with her (re)Presentations of the Sel(ves) of “Universal Code” and the Director of the Albright people to thank. Graduate faculty who served In considering the work of these three celebrities, performance as a kind of collective Knox Gallery in Buffalo, Louis Grachos, spoke of on panels this year include: George Hawken, graduating MVS Studio students, I am drawn penance. Occupying the territory of the how his gallery went about building a collection. Marla Hlady, David Hlynsky, Alexander Irving, to a consideration of Herodotus, the so-called free-agent, Bogdan Luca’s images, while drawn Will Kwan, Sue Lloyd, John Massey, Ed Pien, “father of history” who wrote of Greek culture from the internet and contemporary cinema, The winter Proseminar series kicked off with Shirley Wiitasalo, Joanne Tod, Kim Tomczak. in the 5th century B.C.. Daniel Boorstin’s iden- float outside of their original boundaries, estab- Vancouver-based multi-disciplinary artist Special thanks to all the administrative staff in tification of the difference between what lishing new contexts for interpretation. Hovering Gareth Moore, in Toronto to complete a project our department Gaby Binette Sparks, Joanne he calls “mere recording” from “the scrutiny above the abstraction/figuration dyad, Luca’s with the Power Plant, who gave an overview of Wainman, Vicky Dingillo and Ilse Wister. of experience” seems an interesting point paintings speak to a nascent form of existen- the past few years of his studio practice. Warren of departure for this year’s graduating tialism, one that questions our own ability to Neidich, Berlin-based artist/architect currently And finally, we thank the Department of Art exhibition. All three take current conditions (i.e. observe objectively. teaching in Delft, The Netherlands, spoke of for providing on-going support for the MVS images drawn from media culture, personal his wide-ranging multi-disciplinary projects programme as well as crucial funding for this experiences, internet imagery, etc.) and Shared between the MVS Curatorial Studies “History of Consciousness”. C Magazine editor catalogue. We thank Carl Knappett, Graduate convert them into experience for the viewer. and MVS Studio students, the 2009-2010 Amish Morrell introduced the work of a number Program Director (Art History) who has Existing in the here and now, the source is not Proseminar speakers’ series again provided of artists whose work engages and transforms provided the MVS with valuable advice and necessarily obvious or clear but the resonance the MVS students with engaging and often both real and imagined social spaces and guidance and our chair Elizabeth Legge for is unmistakable. provocative presentations. Most often those ideas of collectivity. Still to come in the year helping us to further our aims, again, throughout presenting a Proseminar also had individual are presentations by artist/architect and this year. We thank the Faculty of Arts & In spite of how linked the pictures are to their meetings with the MVS students. The fall curator of the Eric Arthur Gallery in the Faculty Science for on-going support of our students, (original) place and (actual) location, Rebecca began with Barbara Fischer, Director/Curator of Architecture and Landscape Design, An Te especially the Dean of Arts & Science, Meric Diederichs considers the placement and the at the JM Barnicke Gallery (Hart House) at the Liu, who will talk about some current works in Gertler, who continues to demonstrate a arrangement of her exhibited images - now University of Toronto and head of the MVS progress and Dot Tuer, theorist, critic and writer, strong and indomitable interest in the visual unmoored and disconnected from their origins, Curatorial Studies programme, who gave us currently teaching at the Ontario College of Art arts and their (our) contribution to an enduring existing as representations - to be central to an insight into the challenges and rewards & Design. civil society. their reception by her viewer. As they come to of being the commissioner for Canada’s rest on desktops, her trees and fields threaten pavilion at the 2009 Venice Biennale. Our This year, we adopted a slightly different Lisa Steele, Graduate Program Director, MVS to disrupt the “appreciation” of their inherent colleague Carl Knappett, the Walter Graham/ writer/curator structure for the catalogue, Department of Art, beauty (their “greenness”) by their very Homer Thompson Chair in Aegean Prehistory inviting three arts professionals to engage with School of Graduate Studies, “flatness”, choosing instead to enter into the and the Director of Graduate Studies in the the work of our graduating students. We extend University of Toronto less regulated arenas of pleasure and instinct, Department of Art, proved to be surprisingly our appreciation to all three: Michelle Jacques, KATHLEEN BOETTO 05

In an essay published in Minotaure in 1935, for their names on a YouTube search), Boetto Roger Caillois argued that mimicry in the insect projected the features of famous faces onto her world does not serve a defensive function, own and shot the resulting hybrid visages. We increasing insects’ chances of survival; on the see the artist trying, with varying degrees of contrary, the phenomenon is “a luxury and even success and coincidence, to map the carefully a dangerous luxury, for there are cases in which constructed façades of Amy Winehouse, Lady mimicry causes the creature to go from bad to Gaga, Lindsay Lohan, Miley Cyrus, and Paris worse.” Phyllia moths, for example, “browse Hilton onto herself. The second series of works among themselves, taking each other for real are videos: Being Amy, Being Mischa, and Being leaves, in such a way that one might accept the Lindsay (2010) show the artist, masquerading idea of a sort of collective masochism leading as Winehouse, Barton, and Lohan, trying to to mutual homophagy, the simulation of the leaf hold the pose of a decidedly unflattering tabloid being a provocation to cannibalism in this kind shot of a drug-addled and dishevelled-looking of totem feast.”1 Caillois’s conception of mimicry celebrity for as long as possible. The projection as an essential element in a luxurious social series focuses on the composed face, whereas activity, one equally frivolous and destructive the videos overtly bring the uncomposed or – pathological as much as almost ceremonially even decomposing body and its demands back sacrificial – is central to Kathleen Boetto’s work, into the picture. which explores the mechanisms of identifica- tion and imitation that support celebrity culture. While the projection series takes images of The insatiable public that consumes images famous faces from the height of their success, of famous stick insects and social butterflies the violence that subtends celebrity culture devours them in all states, but perhaps with still pressures these photographs from within. the most pleasure when these creatures are The Lindsay set features a still of Lohan from in the process of going “from bad to worse.” her music video Confessions of a Broken Who has not experienced the horrified delight Heart (Daughter to Father), in which the singer- of looking at photographs of a cracked-out actress’s “real life” family drama is offered Lindsay Lohan or Amy Winehouse stumbling as fodder for public consumption. The video out of a hotel in the wee hours? Our obsession itself flirts with the threat of domestic violence with watching charismatic, successful, imitable without showing any explicitly. Boetto’s images, young women – or rather their images – go to however, bring destructiveness to the fore: pieces is the subject of these works. Female from top to bottom, the composite pictures celebrities running the gamut from the as-yet- become progressively more fractured. Closely undamaged to the masters of disguise to the aligned in the top photograph, the faces twist rock-bottom-hitting addicts populate these slightly apart in the next one down. In the middle images as they do the social imaginary. image, the heavily made up, closed eyes of the projected face create the look of smeared KATHLEEN BOETTO Two series of Boetto’s works are represented eyeliner and running mascara on a teary face, in this exhibition. The first, the projection series while in the fourth photograph the eyes move (2009), consists of five sets of photographs, further apart and what appear to be bruises arranged vertically to look like segments emerge on one cheek. Hands clutch the figure’s BAD ROMANCE of filmstrips. Each vertical set contains five head, as if trying to hold a disintegrating self by Alison Syme photographs that show the artist attempting together. In the bottom photograph the most to assume the image of a particular celebrity pronounced schism between the two faces through a literal act of projection. Using stills results in the disturbing image of what appears from online videos of five stars (the first hit to be the figure taking off – like a pair of glasses 06 KATHLEEN BOETTO KATHLEEN BOETTO 07

these pages: Gaga (left), Gaga detail (right), 5” x 16”x 9”, inkjet prints, 2009. previous page: Lindsay detail, 5”x 16”x 9”, inkjet prints, 2009. 08 KATHLEEN BOETTO KATHLEEN BOETTO 09

– one set of eyes and revealing another pair reads “Courting Death.” The emaciated bodies below. This stripping away of layer after layer of the self-destroying celebrities in the source hints at the absence or annihilation of any core photographs indicate what kind of auto-canni- of identity. balizing and “self”-exhausting metamorphosis would be necessary for the attainment of the Lady Gaga would appear to be one step ahead morphology as well as the mystique of these of Boetto, by already figuring her own construc- fallen stars. tion and destruction in the images she produces for public consumption – as crushed starlet In both series, Boetto continues the investi- in Paparazzi or used sex doll in Bad Romance gation of the function of mimicry in human – though she always comes out victorious in subject-formation, scission, and dissolution her own narratives. But Boetto suggests the undertaken by earlier artists such as Cindy impossibility of such attempts to control the Sherman and Yasumasa Morimura. Sherman public’s appetite for destruction. The still Boetto and Morimura are both attuned to the theme of uses in the Gaga projection is from the video bodily appetite and the drives connected with for Poker Face, an encomium to the ideal of the image idealization. In her late ’80s abjection inscrutable and imperturbable female mask. In images, which incorporated vomit and other the video the “natural” face of the celebrity (who bodily detritus, Sherman explored the violence wears “nude” lipstick) is shown to be equivalent of female embodiment and the corporeal threat to the mirror-masks, opaque glasses, and other of boundary dissolution that arises from trying deflective devices that appear throughout it. to fulfil an ideal image. In a slightly more light- If this human camouflage appears to serve hearted vein, Morimura’s early ’90s tableaux a defensive function, however, in the Gaga vivants invited the viewer’s consumption set the “natural” celebrity mouth becomes an of the artist’s self when he pictured his orifice devouring the subject from within: while face on canonical art historical fruits like the first and fourth images focus on the right Cézanne’s apples. Boetto’s work’s emphasis “fit” of the mask, in the third and fifth images, on celebrity culture rather than art history or the where the eyes closely coincide, a rapacious “everywoman” calls attention to the profound fame-hungry maw opens up in the figure’s chin. ambivalence that underpins the valorisation and Is this autophagy or “mutual homophagy”? imitation of contemporary icons. Do we want to Since self and other have become merely look like, be, or destroy these women? All three, similar pastiches here, perhaps there is no apparently. They represent grander versions longer any difference. of our own narcissistic fantasies of triumph; in retaliation we hound, ogle, and fetishize them, The videos invoke a different kind of destabi- turning them into extreme versions of our own lisation of the self in the field of vision through failures. By revealing the basic mechanisms of mimicry. The form of their titles indicates identification (projection) and of imitation (disci- that being is as much at stake as appearing. plining as well as clothing the body), Boetto The imitation of celebrity in these works implies that we are all caught up in a regime of moves beyond the simulated pattern of facial simulation that functions as a provocation to features to an experience – for an extended cannibalism. By keeping a degree of distance moment – of bodily becoming. Holding still to from this regime – failing to fully assume the simulate another’s image, like a mimicking images, to stay still, to be pure appearance insect, becomes a test of endurance that – Boetto ensures that she can flirt with as ends, in Being Mischa, with a literal fall after well as critique the luxurious masochism of Being Mischa, January 13th 2010, (top left, top right), video, 18:01 minutes, 2010. 18 minutes. Self-preservation is not at stake celebrity culture without becoming one of its Being Amy, September 11th 2008 (bottom left), video, 17:08 minutes, 2008. in these videos or in the tabloid photographs totem feasts. Being Lindsay , August 27th 2009 (bottom right), video, 30:27 minutes, 2009. that inspired them: the Winehouse headline

1 Roger Caillois, “Mimicry and Legendary Psychasthenia,” trans. John Shepley, October 31 (Winter 1984): 17–32, 25. 10 KATHLEEN BOETTO KATHLEEN BOETTO 11

KATHLEEN BOETTO CURRICULUM VITAE

b. Toronto, Canada 1985

EDUCATION

2010 Master of Visual Studies, University of Toronto 2007 Bachelor of Fine Arts Specialist with Honours, York University

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2010 Media(ted) Performance The Centre for Women’s Studies in Education, Toronto 2007 Portrait of A Girl The Gales Gallery, York University

GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2009 RE:VIEW One Spadina Crescent, University of Toronto Smoldering Heat and Blazing Passion University of Toronto Art Lounge 2007 Good Housekeeping The Goldfarb Gallery, York University See Here! York University 720 by 480 The Goldfarb Gallery, York University Once; Again Lennox Contemporary, Toronto

2006 Birdsong Akasa Gallery, York University Birdsong Gallery G+, Index G, Toronto Pause The Goldfarb Gallery, York University

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE AND AWARDS 2010 Instructor, VIS 130 Visual Strategies; Time-Based, University of Toronto 2009 Technical Intern, , Toronto 2008 Teaching Assistant, VIS 120 Visual Concepts, University of Toronto 2007 Cross-Disciplinary Certificate in Digital Media, York University 2006 Instructor, HTML Tutorials, York University 2006-7 Time Based Art Computer Lab Monitor, York University Member of Visual Arts Student Association, York University 2006 Research Intern, Vtape, Toronto 2005-6 New Media Computer Lab Monitor, York University

Paris, 5” x 16”x 9”, inkjet prints, 2009. REBECCA DIEDERICHS 13

Rebecca Diederichs’ current photographic described the many ways in which photo- series is comprised of individual and paired graphs could be used, both practically and images of lush trees and parkland, alongside aesthetically. Talbot also dedicated a great images of a workspace – an artist’s studio deal of his text to describing his photographs. – full of objects and materials that indicate In 2008, on the occasion of her exhibition at the creator’s existence and activity. Posted in the Fogg Art Museum at Yale University, Moyra different configurations, the contents of the Davey published Long Life Cool White, in which images mingle and interact, their relationships her photographs and writing commingle in a to each other in flux suggested by the inclusion single investigation. Davey is completely upfront of post-it notes, pins and other notations. with her admission that she sees photography Diederichs’ trees call to mind the picturesque and writing as inextricable activities, querying inclinations of mid-nineteenth century photo- whether “as Benjamin and Brecht speculated, graphic experiments, such as Oak Tree in photographs are more at home with, even in Winter (c. 1842-3) by William Henry Fox Talbot; need of, words?”1 While Diederichs has also her informal, seemingly casual interior shots been inclined to combine image and text in evoke Moyra Davey’s unassuming photographs past work, words appear only accidentally, or of the domestic and the overlooked. By incor- as brief notations, in this project. Photography porating these divergent references in her and photographs as notation devices are work, Diederichs has created a project that her language, her way of telling a story. As aims to use photography to depict an extended individual images are arranged and rearranged, experience. Size, configuration, viewpoint and within and between her larger composi- approach to the subject shift from image to tions, we begin to understand her attempts to image, and within images, yet it is clear that find the right ‘words.’ In the summer of 2009, these layered, photographic contents describe a while in England, Diederichs took hundreds of particular experience with a particular location. photographs, in the expression of what she Elements appear and reappear – trees, fields, describes as “a compulsive desire to remain windows, sketchbooks, tables and chairs, and within the ‘energy’ emitted and gathered from Diederichs uses an image-within-an-image the subjects and a particular moment of being.”2 technique so that we see test prints of some Upon her return to Toronto, she aimed to find a of the photographs posted on the wall amongst way to convey the imprint of this encounter, as the range of objects pictured in the views of the she names it. Image size and selection, juxta- studio space. As the elements move around, position, and framing become subtly and deftly we get the sense that she has worked her applied strategies that aid in the expression materials, that she has spent time considering, of the many narratives that describe her rela- analyzing and rearranging them. She aims tionship to taking, accumulating, ordering to convey the complexity and duration of her and presenting photographic material, and experience; each photograph functions not as a ultimately, our relationships to looking at, expe- simple document of the instant at which it was riencing, interpreting and reading them. taken, but rather, is there to contribute to the complex, shifting and mutable description of a Diederichs’ selection of images was distilled REBECCA DIEDERICHS moment that unfolds over time. from the many that were taken at the time. The photographs vary in size, composition, Between 1844 and 1846, Henry Talbot issued perspective and subject. Two ‘portraits’ of The Pencil of Nature, the first commercially individual trees, closely framed so that there BETWEEN IMAGE AND EXPERIENCE produced book containing photographic illus- is little foreground, offer great detail but are by Michelle Jacques trations. Essentially an instruction manual, it scant in evidence of location, thus creating a 14 REBECCA DIEDERICHS REBECCA DIEDERICHS 15

these pages: (top image) Telling of Green, diptych, digital image, 17.5” x 54”, 2009. (lower image) Telling of Green, diptych, digital image, 17.5” x 62”, 2009. previous page: Telling of Green, diptych, digital image, 24” x 18”. 16 REBECCA DIEDERICHS REBECCA DIEDERICHS 17

tension between specificity and ambiguity of sketchbooks, often pictured with pages that marks this project. Many of the other open. Ordered, multihued dots, painted in photographs are presented as diptychs and gouache fill the pages of one book; in another, also play on a tension between the real and the rectangles, in landscape format, are described represented. Through their scale, composition by variously coloured juxtaposed stripes or in and perspective, they invite us, in a variety of ranks of loosely painted, but orderly lines. At ways, into our own encounters with Diederichs’ the same time that Diederichs was recording spaces. An image of a table at an open window her surroundings photographically, she was is composed so that we are invited to look out also responding to her encounter in a series of onto a playing field; its pendant image, which gouache sketches painted in exercise books, or depicts another surface abounding with photo- cahiers. Presented alongside a view through a graphic prints, invites us to take a seat and window, or a photograph of a green field, or, in peruse the desktop’s contents. Diederichs one particularly suggestive photograph, on a moved her photographs around her workspace, table top, alongside paintbrushes, in front of a searching for the best articulation, and as she view onto a green playing field, we are tempted did so, she photographed those configurations to find some accordance between the painted in the studio, taking pictures of pictures, layering images and the surrounding landscape. Are the ‘place’ photographs with those of spaces stripes an abstraction of the players, interpreted and still moments. In this way, she writes and as streaks of colour as they move across the re-writes and edits her photographic language, field? Do the colours selected for the dots searching for the most effective phrasing to relate to the tones of the sky in the abutting describe the indent of an encounter. And as we photograph? Diederichs describes the process now move around her images, searching for of painting in the notebooks as one in which the implications of the shifting clues, meaning she “[transcribed] the energy of being there, emerges not just from what is on the wall in watching, seeing, listening,” so that although front of us, but also from the myriad of connota- “seemingly arbitrary, these books of marks are tions from our own encounters that we bring to as much about the encounter with a place as our current experience of Diederichs’ imagery. photographs are its document.”4

In yet another photograph, also one half of a By moving through her photographs as she diptych, we see the landscape through a half does, Diederichs transforms them from an open window, which offers us a view into the accumulation of individual images into a layered landscape that is in part clear and realistic, and complex document that shifts and unfolds and in part blurred and abstracted. Talbot to reveal new connotations and points of entry. expounded photography as an unprecedented Her search is not in aid of focusing or limiting means by which an artist could “introduce meaning; her goal is to introduce a myriad of to our pictures a multitude of minute details possible readings. Through her assiduous rela- which add the truth and reality of the repre- tionship to her photographic information – her sentation.”3 Diederichs, on the other hand, uses choice of subject, yes, but more importantly, her a tactic such as this distorted view through judicious selection, ordering and juxtaposition – glass to introduce the notion that abstraction Diederichs creates a space that communicates might embody an encounter as meaningfully the energy of encounter and invites us to seek as a realistic depiction. Amongst the objects discovery – both in what is represented, and in included in her interior views are a number the experience it engenders.

1 Moyra Davey, Notes on Photography and Accident,” in Long Life Cool White: Photographs and Essays by Moyra Davey, Cambridge, MA: Harvard Art Museums, and New Haven and : Yale University Press, 2008, p. 92. Telling of Green, diptych, digital image, 17.5” x 62” 2 Rebecca Diederichs, “Draft Thesis,” November 4, 2009, p. 7. 3 William Henry Fox Talbot, The Pencil of Nature, New York: Da Capo Press, 1969, Plate X. 4 Rebecca Diederichs, “Draft Thesis,” November 4, 2009, p. 7. 18 REBECCA DIEDERICHS REBECCA DIEDERICHS 19

1990 ec: e without the bar is c, Embassy Cultural House, London, Ontario.

PROFESSIONAL PROJECTS 2004 Editor, Material World: Peter MacCallum, Photographs 1986-2004, published by REBECCA DIEDERICHS YYZBooks, YYZ Artists’ Projects. 2000/01 Urgent Witness/Drawn Remains, co-curated exhibition with Kym Preusse for YYZ CURRICULUM VITAE Artists’ Outlet.

PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS 2000-P Persona Volare, artists group 1999-02 The Red Head Gallery, Member b. England 1962 1996-99 YYZ Artists Outlet, Board Member 1997-98 CARO, Board Member EDUCATION 1996-00 Artists With Their Work, AGO 1989-95 Place & Show Artists Projects, artists’ collective 2008-10 University of Toronto, Masters of Visual Studies. 1988-89 Round Up Committee and Member 2006-08 Ontario College of Art and Design, Toronto, Ontario, B.F.A. 1984-88 Ontario College of Art, Toronto, Ontario, A.O.C.A. PUBLISHED TEXTS 1980-82 York University, Toronto, Fine Arts (Dance and Visual Arts). 2009 “Imaging Constants: Jimin Lee,” Open Studio, Toronto. SOLO EXHIBITIONS (SELECTED) 2008 “Colin Lyons’ Boom Town,” Open Studio, Toronto. 2007 “Spectrum Shift: Yael Brotman,” Open Studio, Toronto. 2007 Neutrinos They Are Very Small, Render Art Gallery, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario. 2005 Introduction for Material World: Peter MacCallum, Photographs 1986-2004, published 2006 Neutrinos They Are Very Small, Agnes Etherington Arts Centre, Kingston, Ontario. by YYZBooks. BLAZE, Window Project, YYZ Artists Outlet, Toronto. 2003 “Crowding: Bill Leeming,” Open Studio, Toronto. 2005 Neutrinos They Are Very Small, with Sally McKay and Gordon Hicks, curated by Corinna 2002 “Thinking in Minutes,” exhibition essay, Gordon Hicks, The Red Head Gallery. Ghaznavi, Art Gallery of Sudbury, Ontario. “but, am I speaking the language?” (Penelope Stewart, Manuel Lau, Ing-Lu Lucinda Chen, 2000 Pattern Language, The Red Head Gallery, Toronto. Luke Painter), Open Studio, Toronto. 1999 GRAFTING, The Lynnwood Gallery, Simcoe, Ontario. “Lilianna Rodriguez,” Open Studio, Toronto. 1998 Considered Vacillations, Tableau Vivant, Toronto. 2001 “Peter MacCallum in Substitute City,” Lola, #9, summer 2001. 1993 Forced Arrangements, The Gallery, University of Toronto, Scarborough. “Alistair Magee,” The Red Head Gallery, Toronto. Urgent Witness/Drawn Remains, YYZ Artists’ Outlet, Toronto. GROUP EXHIBITIONS (SELECTED) 2000 “Velocity + Torque = Culture,” interview with Milada Kovacova, Lola, fall 2000. 1999 “Hello from Julie Voyce,” interview with Julie Voyce, Lola, #4, summer 1999. 2009 Persona Volare: EXPO, Art Gallery, , Ontario. “Janet Morton, Translate,” Lola, #4, summer 1999. 2007 Granite Club, Persona Volare, Tree Museum, Gravenhurst, Ontario “David Rasmus, Offering,” Lola, #4, summer 1999. The Road North/The Road South, Persona Volare, Harbourfront Centre, Toronto.

2005 Canadian Club, Persona Volare, Rodman Hall Arts Centre, St. Catharines, Ontario. GRANTS & AWARDS/RESIDENCES Canadian Club, Persona Volare, Canadian Cultural Centre, Paris, France. 2003 Persona Cantare, Persona Volare, Toronto. 2009-10 OGS Grant (Ontario Graduate Studies) 2001 Commute, (Red Head Gallery/ARC exchange), ARC Gallery, Chicago. 2006 Ontario Arts Council, Mid-Career Individual Visual Arts Grant 2000 Persona Volare, Persona Volare, Toronto. 2003 “Big Rock Candy Mountain,” Thematic Residency, The Banff Arts Centre whorehouse, curated by Jenifer Papararo, Toronto. 1995 The , “B” Grant 1996 Duke-U-Menta, Duke of Connaught Tavern, curated by The 23rd Room Collective, Toronto. 1994 Ontario Arts Council, Individual Visual Arts Grant Limousine, Free Parking, Toronto. 1993 Canada Council, Individual Short-Term Grant 1994 Neo-politan, Place & Show Artists Projects, Dufferin Mall, Toronto. 1992 Ontario Arts Council, Individual Visual Arts Grant 1992 The State of Viewing: Distinguishing Between Wayne & Shuster, Place & Show Artists 1984-88 George A. Reid Award, General Studies, Ontario College of Art Projects, Gallery 101, , Ontario. Anne Adler Kagan Award, Experimental Arts, Ontario College of Art 1991 HOMEFRONT: Current Issues in Interior Decorating, Place & Show Artists Projects, George A. Reid Award, Experimental Arts, Ontario College of Art StreetCity, Toronto. I.O.D.E., Foundation Studies, Ontario College of Art BOGDAN LUCA 21

In his seminal work, The Imaginary, first descent. He immigrated to Canada in 1994. I published in 1940, Jean-Paul Sartre states that met Luca for the first time a few years ago at the word image entails how an object can enter the Ontario College of Art & Design Florence consciousness through observation or through off-campus program where he was completing imagination. If the image is imaginary, he goes his undergraduate thesis under the guidance of on to say, there must be an equivalent to an eminent Canadian painter and art educator, Ron observable perception, something that stands Shuebrook. Luca was also trained in animation in for the real - a painting or a photograph, for and figurative drawing as well as landscape example. He goes on to say that by imbuing this painting, which might help us understand his stand-in with meaning and feelings, the object affinity towards creating scenic compositions becomes engaged through the intentionality of and grappling with the plasticity and temporal the viewer1. Seventy years later, in our visual dimension of painting as exemplified in his culture saturated with images, it seems logical current body of work. Last year, as a part of for an artist to be increasingly self-reflexive his graduate programme requirements, Luca about his/her consciousness of both the curated a group exhibition at the University images and the materiality of art. For Toronto of Toronto Art Centre. The exhibition featured based artist Bogdan Luca, who is graduating works of emerging Toronto painters, and was this year from the Masters of Visual Studies accompanied by a panel discussion which I programme at the University of Toronto, the was asked to moderate2. The overall objective methodology of making paintings conjures a of this project was to engage the community of possibility to illuminate the phenomenology painters, offering a forum for them to reflect on of image making and essay the proximity the role of painting in the digital age. Thus, we between perception and imagination. may think of Bogdan Luca as an artist-philos- opher who questions how painting practice Unmoorings, the title of this exhibition featuring connects to the world of visual ideas and tech- several robust paintings made in oil on nological mediations of perception while at the plywood panels, alludes to the desire of the same time continues to offer a vehicle for “the artist to loosen the contextual meaning of the magnification and clarification of being”3. found vernacular and documentary images that inform the morphology of his figurative The paintings featured in this body of work paintings. On one hand, this method of making are based on the images that Luca found on paintings from photographs using appropriated the internet and in newspapers. Some of the images from various corners of culture speaks images were captured off the LCD screen to the now familiar ecology of image making with a digital camera and have been modified BOGDAN LUCA in which painting and photography coexist and reconfigured in Photoshop, as well as symbiotically, leading us to think of some transformed into perceptual devices and visual photographs as painterly and of some paintings maquettes for Luca’s pictorial inquiries. For UNMOORING THE PHENOMENOLOGY as photogenic. On the other hand, Luca posits example, in the painting entitled Silvio, Luca his research as a form of bricolage that brings works from a Photoshop-enhanced collage OF IMAGE MAKNG to our attention the shreds of cultural memory model of a close up of the face of the Italian by Vladimir Spicanovic about films, events, and social phenomena prime minister Silvio Berlusconi after being hit that act as catalysts of painterly imagination. by an apparently mentally disturbed passerby with a souvenir statue of Milan’s Duomo4. It is Bogdan Luca grew up in Romania where he important to clarify that Luca’s visual studies are received his initial art training from observation not necessarily directed towards critiquing and common to many artists of Eastern European de-legitimizing the authority of media culture. 22 BOGDAN LUCA BOGDAN LUCA 23

these pages: Responsive Formation (left) 48”x48”, Machine of Desire (right) 30”x40”, oil on paper and panel, 2009. previous page: Joey, 96”x48”, oil on paper and panel, 2009. 24 BOGDAN LUCA BOGDAN LUCA 25

Rather, he sees his methodological orientation room that offers fulfillment of the deepest as a way of recycling and following up on the human desires. images and stories that were once worthy of our attention, and that can offer another – intermit- There is something raw and unbeautiful about tently symbolic – existence of the found images these works as they come to being through through painting. This approach, according Luca’s expressive brushstrokes and muted to Luca is not in order to impart another truth RGB palette. The photographic images that about the ubiquitous and impermanent state Luca uses as references for his painterly of contemporary life, but to transgress the real investigations are not necessarily photogenic and remodel an imaginary object-image that and seductive. In addition, Luca’s figuration is embodies the psychosomatic response of the not directed towards realistic rendering and artist and his consciousness to the images. mimicking of the found representational images. This fundamental value present in Luca’s Another unique quality of these paintings is works is perhaps most explicitly captured in that they are made on large and robust semi- Joey, a large painting that features the face of industrial plywood panels. As such, they do the actor Viggo Mortensen who plays Joey not easily fulfill the decorative function and Cusack (also known as a Philadelphia gangster commodity status of painting. It is important to Tom Stall) in David Cronenberg’s film, History mention that Luca’s visual lexicon also incorpo- of Violence. Drawing upon a Photoshop model rates annotations of the residual and accidental that juxtaposes three virtually identical frames properties of the digital images from which he of Joey’s face enlivened with red drips of paint works -- the traces of the mechanical imper- and expressive brushstrokes, Luca resusci- fections of printing, image pixilation, moiré tates the physiognomy of Joey. He does this, patterns, and chromatic aberration. In tandem however, not in order to illustrate the culminating with deliberate applications of Stonehenge psychological sequence of the film, but to give paper, these annotations of the technological his portraiture a sense of metamorphosis and slippages and signs of mechanical reproduc- evoke a hallucinatory effect in the perceptual tion, rather than enhancing the optical qualities experience of painting. of painting, instead mobilize the non-optical, haptic function of the eye. A more contemplative moment is offered in Machine of Desire, a painting based on a still In conclusion, these paintings constitute an image from a segment of Andrei Tarkovsky’s authentic record of Bogdan Luca’s inquiry into film from 1979, Stalker, found on YouTube. The the phenomenology of image making and composition features three standing figures that the capacity of painting to de-territorialize are featured in the film, all caught breathless in and re-territorialize the consciousness of their philosophical voyage. There is the “stalker” the viewer. At its best, Luca’s body of work whose role is to guide and bring people in and distills for us “how images think”5 through the out of “the Zone” -- the wilderness terrain under expressive processes of conjugation and tran- surveillance by the government military forces; scription of objectivity into subjectivity, real into the writer obsessing about his inspiration; and virtual space, and visualization of the figurative finally the professor, hoping to win the Nobel representation into the materialized topogra- prize one day while secretly plotting to destroy phies of pictorial form. the ultimate destination of their journey - the

1 The full title of Sartre’s work is The Imaginary: A phenomenological psychology of the imagination. Routledge 2004. 2 Under the title Facing the Screen, Luca’s curatorial project featured the work of Shannon Dickie, Alex Fischer, Shlomi Greenspan, Hyoki Kang, Michael Lawrie, Meghan McKnight, Amanda Muis, Alex Sheriff, Jol Thomson, and Jeff Tutt. In addition, there was a panel discussion that included Nicole Collins, Michel Daigneault, Monica Tap, and Joanne Tod, and Vladimir Spicanovic as the moderator. November 4 - December 19, 2009, University of Toronto Art Centre. 3 See David Urban, “Painting’s Radiant Array”. Border Crossings, No 91. (pp. 45 - 56). Autumn 2004. 4 As reported on the MSNBC, “The bloody image of Berlusconi, reeling after being attacked as he signed autographs following a rally Sunday, has created sympathy and solidarity on one hand, while on the other generating praise for his attacker on Facebook and YouTube”. For the full report on Berlusconi incident. see http://www.msnbc.msn.com/ Silvio, 96”x48”, oil on paper and panel, 2009. id/34412287. 5 How Images Think, is the title of Ron Burnett’s book in which he explores the meaning of visual perception and the nature of images conjured by digital technologies. MIT Press, 2004. 26 BOGDAN LUCA BOGDAN LUCA 27

BOGDAN LUCA CURRICULUM VITAE

b. Bucharest, Romania 1980

EDUCATION 2008-10 Master of Visual Studies, University of Toronto 2003-07 Bachelor of Fine Arts, OCAD 1997-00 Diploma, Sheridan College Classical Animation ARTIST TALKS SELECTED EXHIBITIONS 2010 University of Toronto. MVS enhanced tutorial. Paradox engine 2009 Emergence I, Whippersnapper Gallery, Toronto 2009 University of . On painting from digital sources. With M. Pierce Peep show. Lonsdale Gallery, Toronto 2009 Whippersnapper Gallery. Painting and its relationship to photography. Storm of Painters. Edward Day Gallery, Toronto 2009 Central Technical School. Illustration as professional practice. Re: View. University of Toronto Recherche. Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES 2008 The Artist Project. Liberty Grand, Toronto 2009-10 Work Study - research assistant, Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, Toronto Grounded. Edward Day Gallery, Toronto 2010 Instructor – Visual Strategies. Visual Studies, University of Toronto Peel Annual Juried Exhibition. Art Gallery of Peel, Brampton 2010 Member of the organizing committee for Out of Sight: Looking Beyond Seeing, Look 2008 Juried Exhibition. Gallery Lambton, Sarnia a graduate union of art history students’ 2 day international symposium on the 2007 Recent Work from Florence. XPACE Cultural Centre, Toronto extra visual in the visual arts. University of Toronto When is Now – solo exhibition. Praxis Gallery, Toronto 2009-10 Teacher Assistant Training Program workshops at the University of Toronto The Figurative Exhibition. Lipman Contemporary, Toronto 2009 Organizer and curator of Facing the Screen, an exhibition and panel discussion on the relationship between painting and the digital realm. University of Toronto, SELECTED AWARDS Toronto 2009 University of Toronto Fellowship 2009 Presenter in the Graduate seminar organized by the U of T Fine Arts Students Timeraiser Foundation Purchase Award Union, University of Toronto 2008 University of Toronto Fellowship 2009 Participant in exhibition and panel discussion, Recherche: a salon celebrating Look 2008: Best in Show intertextuality, aesthetic experience and memory. Stony Brook University, 2006 Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Award New York 2005 Pirelli Relativity Challenge: first prize 2008 Teaching Assistant, Visual Concepts. Visual Studies program, University Carol and Morton Rapp Foundation Award of Toronto 28 ESSAYISTS’ BIOS

2010 MVS Studio Graduating Exhibition University of Toronto Art Centre MICHELLE JACQUES April 1-17, 2010 BETWEEN IMAGE AND EXPERIENCE The MVS (Masters of Visual Studies) is a graduate programme in stu- dio art within the Department of Art, University of Toronto. Michelle Jacques is a Toronto-based curator, writer and educator who currently holds the position of Associate Curator, Contemporary Art at the . Her recent projects at the AGO Catalogue of an exhibition held at include Sarah Anne Johnson: House on Fire (2009); Luis Jacob: Habitat (2005-2006); and Christine University of Toronto Art Centre, Swintak: The thing that won’t let you walk away (2005). In 2007 she was one of the curators for Apr. 1-17, 2010. Toronto’s Scotiabank Nuit Blanche. Recent writings include “The Artist-run Centre as Tactical ISBN 978-0-7727-2440-7 Training Unit” in decentre: concerning artist-run culture (YYZ Books, 2008); and “Art and Institutions: An interview with Janna Graham and Anthony Kiendl,” Fuse, September 2007. She sits on the board of Vtape, is a contributing editor with Fuse, and is adjunct faculty at OCAD. She received her B.A from York University and her M.A. in Art History from Queen’s University. VLADIMIR SPICANOVIC UNMOORING THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF IMAGE MAKING

Vladimir Spicanovic is an artist-educator born in 1967 in Kraljevo, Serbia. Spicanovic immigrated to in 1989, shortly before the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the civil war in Yugoslavia. He obtained his BFA from where he studied under the celebrated Canadian abstract painter and print maker Yves Gaucher. Spicanovic also holds an MA and a PhD from McGill University. In his doctoral work, Spicanovic investigated the ramifications of post-modernism in the studio teaching of painting and the education of artists. Spicanovic’s research spans painting, photography, visual music, critical writing and the philosophy of education. His artwork can be found at Birch-Libralato Gallery in Toronto, and in various public and private collections. Spicanovic’s curatorial projects have been presented at the SoundaXis festival, YYZ Artists’ Outlet, and the Goethe-Institute, Toronto. Spicanovic is Dean of the Faculty of Art at OCAD.

Catalogue essays by Michelle Jacques ALISON SYME Vladimir Spicanovic BAD ROMANCE Alison Syme Edited by Lisa Steele Alison Syme holds a B.A. in Literary Studies, Fine Art History and Semiotics and Communication from the University of Toronto and an M.A. and Ph.D. in History of Art & Architecture from Harvard Catalogue design by Linseed Projects University. She currently teaches in the Department of Art, Centre for Visual and Media Culture, www.linseedprojects.com University of Toronto at Mississauga. Her areas of research include European and American 19th & 20th century art and visual culture, queer theory, feminism, psychoanalysis, fin-de-siecle studies, Printed by Print Maximum history of science. Her forthcoming book, A Touch of Blossom: John Singer Sargent and the Queer Flora of Fin-de-Siecle Art is being published in 2010 by Penn State University Press.