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Vie des Arts

English section / Toronto

Les 50 ans du Refus global Volume 42, Number 170, Spring 1998

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Publisher(s) La Société La Vie des Arts

ISSN 0042-5435 (print) 1923-3183 (digital)

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Cite this document (1998). English section / Toronto. Vie des Arts, 42(170), 92–95.

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This article is disseminated and preserved by Érudit. Érudit is a non-profit inter-university consortium of the Université de Montréal, Université Laval, and the Université du Québec à Montréal. Its mission is to promote and disseminate research. https://www.erudit.org/en/ Josue Demarche both YorkvUle and Kingston A Prophet, 1997 Oil on canvas venues with his Ufe size ethe­ 74 x 68,5 cm real, outstretched, arms yet firmly rooted figurative Leo Kamen, Wynick Tuck, bronze sculptures. Lori Moore, Ryerson and the Richards, Derik Shapton, Cameron WaUace are there QJ headquarters of PADAC (The Professional Art from April 28 to May 17, Dealers Association of followed by Bernard Clark's Canada) and Toronto Pho­ "Tatoo Portrait" photographs tographers Workshop. from May 1-23. Sable April 30 to May 30, TPW CasteUi Gallery and the re­ presents photographers cendy opened Artcore are Carole Condé and Carl at the same corner in Beveridge in a three nar­ Yorkville, where ArtCore Cu­ rative photo series depict­ rator Jessica Wyman's pro­ ing episodes of labour unrest in gram includes Dennis Op­ Canadian history: the demise of the penheim: Works on paper TORONTO Newfoundland Cod fishery;th e 1946 Bernard Clark and project models in Benoit, frame ft p. 1997 April, foUowed by Montreal photog­ TENDENCIES Hamilton strike at Stelco; and recent 41 x 51 cm resistance to the Ontario right wing rapher Michael Flomen Starfields in SPRING '98 May, and Mallorca-based Argentine conservative corporate agenda. Pro­ and Su Rynard Eight Men Called Eu­ duced in consultation with the FFAW, artist Horacio Sapere May 30 to June gene and other works (film and 20. GaUery Gevik is presenting 49 The Toronto gallery scene is CAW and USWA, this exhibition is ac­ video). Gallery Moos relocated to attractive for both coUectors and for companied by a catalogue with essay year Aklavik, North West Territories Richmond St. at Bathurst, (Jean-Paul native Rick Rivet's first ever Toronto Quebec artists who are increasingly by Clive Robertson and a concurrent Riopelle's Toronto gaUery) shows exhibiting there. Toronto's Gallery lecture May 7 at Ryerson Polytechnic solo exhibition Journeys/Mounds, work by Josue Demarche's this May. exploring shamanic traditions and District, bounded by King , Queen, by American photographer Allan Galleries nearby include Susan Spadina and Richmond Streets, Sekula, author of Against the Grain, contemporary reinterpretations of Hobbs, Cold City artist-centre and aboriginal iconography. Rivet will continues to flourish with a great subtided «Dismal Science: Photogra­ S.L. Simpson, which recendy pre­ concentration of private galleries, phy and Imaginary Economies», sented Laurie Simmons exotic pho­ artist studio spaces, photography and concerned with the social impact of tographs as its final exhibition. To­ printmaking facilities. The DeLeon industrial economies. Mercer Union, wards Harbourfront, at 20 Lower White GaUery, 455 King St. W. is an at 778 King St. W, continues to show Spadina Rd., Galerie Céline Allard eco-art exhibition space represent­ ground-breaking work by new con­ and the Centre francophone du ing Montreal-based artists Doug temporary Canadian artists and the Toronto métropolitain featured works by six Franco-Ontarian artists in Tous azimuts/Common ground to April 30. The Power Plant at Har­ bourfront Centre celebrates its 10th anniversary with Threshold (April 3-June 14) curated by Louise Dom- pierre, a roUercoaster of contem­ porary art that includes a hall of mirrors by American Teresita Fer­ nandez, Torontonians Ian Carr-Har­ ris, Judith Schwartz and Lyla Rye, along with Japanese artist Masato Horacio Sapere Nakamura and German artist Mischa 1/2 con botella y mensaje, 1997 Acier, verre et plastique Kuball. Uptown the Art GaUery of 40 x 11,5 x 4 cm Ontario exhibits the Courtauld Col­ lection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Art (June 10- September 20), Victorian Fairy open a solo exhibit at the Canadian Painting (June 23- Sept. 13) and Cultural Centre in Paris in 1999. Sit­ Displacements, an exhibition by uated next to the Four Seasons at 45 three internationally recognized Avenue Rd., GaUery Teodora repre­ Jock Sturges sents Montreal artists Trevor Goring Arianne et François, 1991 sculptors: Columbian Doris Salcedo, Montalivet (France) Ydessa Hendeles Art Foundation is Poland's Miroslav Balka and British and Denis Malo . Teodora Pica's am­ open by appointment. The Open Stu­ sculptress Rachel Whiteread (April 8 bitious spring offerings include Hugo dio artist-run centre at 468 King St. -July 26). Frones' Surface and Symbol (April Buis, Monique Crépault and Daniel W. offers printmaking facUities and 4 -16), foUowed by Carol Rath's Still Toronto's near equivalent to Corbeil, as weU as internationally courses. At 401 Richmond St. W, arts Lives (April 18-30) and Jim Stewart's Sherbrooke St. W in Montreal, the reknowned artists Alan Sonfist and facilities include A Space, Area recent oUs Alignment (May 2-15). Yorkville District, is an area where Nils-Udo. Japanese artist Akira Ko­ Gallery, CARO and CARFAC, GaUery A brief stroU from Yorkville brings the estabUshment galleries increas­ moto's large scale colour nature 44 (contemporary photography), you to Catherine Widgery's lost sense ingly successfully ply their trade. Mira photos can be seen there from GaUery 401, the Women's Art Re­ instaUation at the Institute of Con­ Godard's recent shows by New York May 2nd. At 96 Spadina, the iUumi- source Centre and YYZ Artists' Out­ temporary Culture at die Royal On­ based Irish photographer Sean ScuUy nary GaUery presents Montreal artists let and PubUshers. From April 8 - tario Museum which runs to Sep­ and Joe Fafard's bronze and glass Noëlle Mailloux and Nathalie May 23, YYZ presents Germain Koh's tember 20th. The University of Tables are case in point. This May, Maranda in Body Talk (April 28-May Notices - four projects on the poetry Toronto's Hart House GaUery, or to Tom Hopkins presents an exhibition 21) and Jane Burns'landscapes of commonplace objects in urban the Design Exchange Gallery at the of recent prints. The Edward Day (June). 80 Spadina galleries include space (postcards, instaUation, video) TD Tower Building on Bloor St., GaUery represents David PeUettier at where this April 25 through May a

92 VIE DES ARTS N°170 and First Nations perspective (May 8- 25) and Goodridge Roberts Re­ vealed highlights 116 works in still Ufe, landscape and figurativewor k by this Quebec artist (until June 14). The Oakville GaUeries exhibits Paul Kipps Separation and Observation, l\ imphcations of landscape curated by Martha Fleming, and Robert Fones Basket works & related objects. Contact 98 May = Photogra­ phy in Toronto co-organized by di­ rectors Stephen Bulger (Stephen Bulger GaUery), Linda Book (Lons­ Jane Corkin Herb Ritts. Karen. Los Angeles, 1989 dale Gallery) and Darren Alexander Gelatin sytver print, 51 x 40,5 cm (Tater-Alexander Gallery) is Toronto's 2nd annual photo festival HE' (Canada's largest festival devoted 1-30, consisting of over 90 photo ^•1 to fine art photography) from May exhibitions throughout Greater Toronto including the outrageously personal work of L.A. photographer vwk Carol Rath Still Life no 2,1998 Nan Goldin at the Jane Corkin Gallery Acrylic on canvas and Carole Condé and Carl 91,5 x 102 cm Beveridge's three part photo narrative depicting labour unrest in Canadian history at the Toronto Photographers' Workshop, at 80 Spadina. ••••• \mk 1 \ The Stephen Bulger GaUery, Murray Favro dedicated to young photog­ Air Compressor and Turbine. 1996-1998 silized forms (May 30-July 11). raphers' work, shows Bill Mixed media Christopher Cutts presents Murray 71 x 128 x 41 cm Owens' Suburbia, Our kind Favro's fabuhstic and inventive ma­ of People & Working (I do chines and instruments May 2-27, it for the money) andjock group show, The Greening of functionless reproductions belong­ Sturges through May. Toronto, focusses on the urban en­ ing to industrial production, func­ vironment. In nearby Foresthill, tioning as véhicules for knowledge Lonsdale Gallery presents Ronald and imagination, and of which die Michael J. Molter Boaks Discovered, paintings, col­ joy and discovery of making these lages, sculptures and prints incor­ objects becomes the function of the porating photographic imagery and work. various found materials. Art Gallery of North York be­ STEVEN WHITE Art at Morrow. Wave Contem­ gan 1998 with New York - North porary Art, Christopher Cutts and York: Canadian artists in the Big KIRK MECHAR DAVID BLATHERWICK Olga Korper GaUery are situated on Apple including René-Pierre AUain, March 30-April 27 Morrow Avenue in an artist studio Don Bonham, David Clarkson, David and residential district west of Craven, Karin Davie, Christian Toronto's downtown. The vast studio Eckart, Graham Gilmore, Glen and gaUery exhibition spaces acco­ Hamilton, Susanah HeUer, Michael modate large scale work in a wide Krondi, Carter Kustera, Steven Lack, LORI RICHARDS range of media. Olga Korper's spring Ardele Lister, Attila Richard Lukacs, DEREK SHAPTON BERNARD CLARK schedule includes solo shows by Stan Medrie McPhee, Bobbie Oliver, Denniston (large scale photographic CAMERON WALLACE Claude Simard, Denyse Thomasos April 28-May 17 diptychs), Toronto sculptress Chris- and Martha Townsend. To May 3 Van­ lini' Davis' tunic shapes fashioned couver-based Chris Dikeakos pre­ from chain mail (April 4 - 29), sculp­ sents his first Eastern Canada solo, tor Reinhard Reitzenstein's bronze Sites and Place Names: New work, benches cast from grapevines (May a photographic instaUation. 2-27), and Roland Poulin's dense DOROTHY MACINA wood, layered pigment and cast fos­ At McMichael Canadian Art Col­ PAMELA ALLEN lection in Kleinburg, Skai May 18-June 7 Fowler & Jim Logan ad­ dress issues of represen­ tation from a feminist LEONARD BROOKS LYNDAL OSBORNE June 8 - June 30 A IIII 111 Y lit 1.1. m 33 HAZELTON AVENUE TORONTO ON M 5 R 2 E 3 161 921 6540 FAX 14161 921 6624

VIE DES ARTS N°170 I 93 seedlings in it, that float and move GOODRIDGE ever so sUghdy if you breathe on ROBERTS REVEALED them. Acted out in museums that seg­ regate art from Ufe, could not exist if McMichael Canadian Art art still had a coUective or holistic Collection, Kleinburg purpose, Widgery's art suggests that Jan. 31 - June 14,1998 whereas museum coUections origi­ Spanning some 50 years of nally reaffirmed the course of history Roberts' artistic production and in­ and civilization, exemplified the cluding 117 canvasses and drawings, Goodridge Roberts Revealed paints Jï many permutations of many cultures, Goodridge Roberts the museum object's cultural a portrait of Roberts as a highly com­ Pleasant Island, Georgean Bay, 1952 plex artist, faithful above aU to land­ Huile sur masonite, 81 x 122 cm sources and contexts have now be­ Coll. Art Gallery of Ontario come interchangeable. We switch scape figuration yet equally influ­ Don du Fonds T. Eaton Co. from one artifact to the next at wiU enced by the Ecole de Paris and his Skates with hair laces teachers John Sloan, Boardman walking through the coUections, as (1942), whose dark outUning, sub­ Robinson and Max Weber at the Art we switch channels on television. de colours and classical pose recaU Student's League in New York where The sense is of immediate gratifica­ Picasso's Rose period paintings, are I CATHERINE he studied in 1926-28. As Sandra tion, of incorporating the soul of one also in this major retrospective show WIDGERY: Paikowsky, curator of this retrospec­ object, then another and so on ad which wiU tour to the Beaverbrook tive notes: "it was perhaps due to We­ LOST SENSE infinitum. Art Gallery (20 Sept.-7 Nov. 1998), ber's School of Paris background Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto. As a mercurial tribute to the our Musée du Québec (2 Dec, 1998 - 7 that Roberts would be so at ease with Feb. 14th - Sept. 27th, 1998 nostalgia for die absolute, Widgery's March, 1999), the Montreal Mu­ the aesthetic position of John Lyman Kafkaesque confabulation of a bird's seum of Fine Arts (April 1-June 13, LabeUed like artifacts and pre­ in Montreal a decade later". Clement body with a whisde where its head 1999) and the London Regional Art sented on storage shelves, the 35 as­ Greenberg, America's champion of should be recaUs Joseph CorneU's & Historical Museums (Sept. 4-Oct. semblages in Catherine Widgery's Abstract Expressionism claimed dream-like box assemblages. The 16, 1999). Lost Sense show make use of the Roberts to be the artist who "woke deer's head mounted on a wooden R.O.M.'s extensive collections to de­ my interest in Canadian art in the John K. Grande shield has had its anders replaced by velop a parallel discourse on the first place" and for good reason. two worn boxing gloves looks de­ meaning of materials. Sometimes Goodridge Roberts had an incredi­ feated, not by hunters but ble facility at painting a landscape by museology itself. One subject while seeing it in an abstract, box of glass has dead but­ STEPHEN LACK - highly personal language of colour, terflies that look Uke they're AMERICAN DREAM contrasts, Ught and texture. Roberts alive, flying around and produced some 3,000 paintings dur­ Galerie Bellefeuille, Montreal alighting on a flute that ing his lifetime, some of which pale No artist, it seems, has been so hangs in space. The empty in comparison to his best, which fascinated by the automobile as space within the container were as subde and "abstract" in their Stephen Lack has. A series of 20 car defers to the butterfly spec- approach to figurativepaintin g as the images in a single block and another imens' delicate elusive purist abstractionists. For their 6-pack offer a panoply of generic car beauty. colouristic intensity and textural styles and look strange packed to­ While the sleep of reason painterly atmospheres, where the gether en masse at the Galerie BeUe- may produce monsters, the painting supplants the landscape, feuille. It's an auto enthusiast's legacy of a civihzation that Roberts was something of an anom­ dream or an ecologist's nightmare - bases its knowledge on ev­ aly, particular by the 1960s. take your 6-pack or leave it. The use idence undoubtedly ends Among the best works to be seen of bright shocking colours - tur­ up with a surfeit of artifacts. Lost sense in this show are Laurentian Road quoise, yeUow, white, blue, green, installation view Lost Sense ultimately instructs and No. 2 (1939) which recaU Matisse's even Day-Glo in the straight on side enlightens us to the fact that "When early paintings, and Gouffre River, views of a 62 Continental, a 61 Pink ghastly, othertimes surreal, these museums were founded, cultures Baie-St.-Paul (1949) whose multi­ Cadillac, a white Eldorado Convert­ works communicate unconscious were violated and plundered in the ple shades of greens and blues com­ ible, a Cuban DeSoto, the '67 T-Bird associations precisely because they course of amassing the objects for municate a self contained spiritual and Corvette are a homage to the are unreal confabulations. Nature is display. That may not happen any­ quality. Landscape with Oatfteld demise of America's exuberant love an ephemeral presence that provides more but we should recognize the (1959) has brushwork almost, but affair with car design as an artform. a counter-foil to the man-made ob­ arrogance that represents." not quite, as frenetic as a Van Gogh. As Lack states: "One of my epipha­ jects and artifacts in these works. Roberts' Portrait of a Lady in a nies was at the General Motors pavil­ Widgery's assemblages are John K. Grande Green Hat (ca. 1936), his paintings ion at the 1964 World's Fair where Duchampian in disguise, Uke the an­ of his wife Marian and Seated Boy there was a car Uke a Corvette that tique bird cage with milkweed seemed to be floating in space. There Rick Rivet M«IJ:NI%ft«ft[tllJMtK^^^HM MAY 2 - 23,1998

AN EXEBITION OF ACRYLIC PAINTINGS 12 Hazelton Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, M5R 2E2 ON CANVAS. Tel: (416) 963-0901 Fax: (416) 963-7686

94 I VIE DES ARTS N°170 are only three things that can be bodily estrangement in his recent and Fictions: Hurricane Watch and SYMBOLIZATION called sculpture in the 20th century: film Crash. Lack is no stranger to Understanding Media. the electric razor, the skyscraper and Cronenberg having appeared as AND ITS In Truth Disguised as a Lie, Ran­ the car." The '51 Custom Mercedes, an actor in Scanners and Dead DISCONTENTS dolph writes of her coUaboration with a '57 Chevy, a Hudson Deluxe, and a Ringers. Stephen Lack: "My movie BY JEANNE Vera Frankel and their "manifesto" that '56 Chrysler Lack paints personify energy has been subUmated into my circulated for years known as The Five RANDOLPH American's post-War dream of fu- painting. Painting is a re-centring ex­ > Tenets. These are: Museum of the Rev­ ture-topia with dashboards and de­ perience, film is disembodying." QJ (Edited by Steve Reinke) olution (Precept #1 Art Implicates tails as spiky as a PoUock or De Lack's Der Viper is auto body paint­ YYZ, Toronto, 1997, 224 pp. Life), Toronto Life (Precept #2 The Kooning painting and with dragon­ ing with a difference. This fast car is An associate staff psychiatrist Relationship between Artwork and like fins and wings, smooth noses art, not 3-D metal and glass. Lack with the Toronto Hospital Pro­ Citizen Implies a Public), A Fierce and extended lozenge-Uke Ughts as tells me he painted in the back­ O gram in Medical Psychiatry, Miscreed (Precept #3 Art is Not the sexy as Marilyn Monroe. ground in first, in soUd swatches of Opposite of Technology), Regulation O Jeanne Randolph has lectured Lack's paintings of the latest colour. The Day-Glo image of the car widely on the relation between Time (Precept #4 Interpretation is sports cars models - a red short body came last, spray painted it in a art and psychoanalytic theory Power), and finally Vested Interest wheel base Ferrari, a Turbo Porsche, single gesture. "One of my fastest and collaborated with many (Precept #5 Freedom is Nourished in or Hemi - are no longer Utopian or paintings of one of the fastest cars" Canadian artists to produce the Bosom of Remembrance), where nostalgic but brutish, savage, re­ he comments. The message is sub- photo-text works, video and perfor­ left hand page texts compUment pho­ morseless symbols of macho power. der than you might think. These cars mance. Symbolization and its Dis­ tographs from Frankel's From the They're Body Machine Morphs (dl are symbols of the American Dream contents foUows her previous pubUca­ Transit Bar and other instaUations. streamlined proportion and not a but they look so savage, rapacious tion Psychoanalysis and Synchro­ One section recreates a fictionalmeet ­ shred of decoration. David Cronen­ and estranged from the settings. And nized Swimming and Other Writings ing between Vera Frankel and General berg caught this perverse relation where are the people? on Art, pubhshed by YYZ in 1991. The Schwartzkopf during a flight from between speed, sensation and the John K. Grande latest collection includes Public Lec­ Toronto to Ottawa. Describing Amer­ tures: What Don't Women Want; ica's active psychological warfare pro­ Technology and the Meaningfid Body, gram to Frankel he explains that the and Theoretical Essays: Sacred and words maimed and kilted are miUtary Secular Performance: Psychoanalytic jargon for discredited and fired. Reflections on Identity and Ritual; A Frankel concludes by replying "I wiU City for Bachelors; Sculpture and the teU you - the heart of their commitment Philosophy of Modernism: A Reflec­ is their vested interest in remem­ tion on the Reference to Technologr brance". In the chapter Vérité Folk, U- in the work ofZvi Goldstein; Who am lustrated by Nicole Johcoeur, Randolph 1? and Ficto-Criticism: Truth Dis­ concludes: "Then we aU agreed that it guised as a Lie; Sleepy Time Tales; had been in an attempt to inspire hope Confessions and Proclamations; J B, that the Kleinians claimed we could X&Y, and Dr. Jeanne Randolph: From ever make restitution for sadistic deeds, Stan Denniston 's "Personal Fictions "; symboUc or Uteral." Michael Molter

Reinhard Reitzenstein

May 2 - 27

Roland Poulin

May 30 - July 11

olga korper gallery 17 MORROW AVENUE • TORONTO • CANADA M6R 2H9 TEL: (416)538-8220 FAX: (416)538-8772