Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art September 6–October 26, 2014 Brew Pub Journal (Vancouver/Toronto) Jonah Brucker-Cohen (New York) Bill Burns (Toronto/Dawson City) 952 Queen Street West Toronto, Ontario, Canada M6J 1G8 Arabella Campbell (Vancouver) tel: 416 395 0067 ch+qs arquitectos (Madrid) email: [email protected] Tomas Chaffe (Stockholm) Gallery Hours: Tuesday–Sunday, 11 AM to 6 PM Michelle JaJa Chang (San Francisco) FREE ADMISSION courtesy of the RBC Foundation Steven Chodoriwsky (Los Angeles) Maggie Groat (St. Catherines) Exhibition Supporters Jesse Harris (Toronto) J.P. Bickell Foundation Justin Langlois (Vancouver) The Ouellette Family Foundation Donald Schmitt and Cheryl Atkinson Gordon Matta-Clark (American, b. June 22, 1943, d. August 27, 1978) Armstrong Fine Art Services Dax Morrison (Toronto) Paint the City Archer Pechawis (Toronto) Jon Sasaki (Toronto) Institutional Supporters Jeanne van Heeswijk (Rotterdam) and others Architecture program and consultation by Jennifer Davis an Ontario government agency un organisme du gouvernement de l’Ontario Curated by Su-Ying Lee Further reflecting on our own visibility, an archi- again begins to create the same effect. Few truly TBD Outdoor tectural intervention has been executed for this innovative solutions have been realized to allow all exhibition—a second doorway that was cut into parties to exist side by side. & Spatial the lobby wall. With this modification, pedestri- ans have a sightline from the sidewalk into the To Be Discussed; To Be Defined; To Interventions gallery. Previously, when entering the exhibition Be Deleted; To Be Decided; To Be space, visitors walked around the reception desk. Performances The new doorway allows visitors to enter directly Developed; To Be Destroyed; To Be TBD begins streetside as a response to observations into the main gallery. As a doorway only, without about how visitors initially encounter MOCCA. As part of TBD, two performances take up Detailed; To Be Determined doors, the new entry-point reduces visual and Audience experience and related concerns continue disparate characterizations of contemporary physical barriers. The exhibition title TBD, most typically used as an to be reflected upon throughout the exhibition, art institutions. The first is a single performance acronym for “to be determined,” proposes that considering the museum’s effect as an entity and The former entrance remains, giving the audi- by Archer Pechawis on the occasion of the the definition of a contemporary art gallery is not structure that is part of a larger community, system ence two choices for entry into the exhibition. opening reception. The second is a reoccurring fixed. TBD scrutinizes the power and potential and ecology. Dual access points allow the exhibition to action by Jon Sasaki that has a yet-to-be within contemporary art galleries in order to be designed to begin with two different but determined frequency. imagine possible futures and new approaches. related propositions. Jesse Harris The discussion about culture’s impact on com- HOW MUCH ART CAN YOU TAKE? Archer Pechawis munities endures. As dialogue develops through a Tomas Chaffe 2014 Seeking Bones range of theories and criticisms, contemporary art Sometimes Artists Work Here museums must be self-reflexive and self-motivated Extruded polystyrene insulation and hardware Multi-media performance on opening night, 2010 towards evolving, asking: How is a contemporary September 5, 2014 A double-sided sign rhetorically advertising an Vinyl banner art gallery defined? What is the art institution’s exhibition that greets museum visitors outside What place do we occupy in the gallery? function in society? Are contemporary art galleries, and leaves them to consider their return. The An unforgiving take on the state of affairs of What place does the gallery occupy in as they presently exist, relevant? For MOCCA, this construction materials of the piece are left the original site in which it was shown—an the environment? is the decisive moment to consider how we as an exposed in refusal of any defence against the artist-run gallery within a complex of artist Seeking Bones, a live, multi-media performance institution are perceived and situated within our elements, encouraging the viewer to question studios, located on a busy main road and in the by Archer Pechawis is presented on the occasion own geographic, cultural and professional commu- the question. heart of a redevelopment zone—Sometimes nities and what our contributions are or can Artists Work Here broadcasts the common of the opening reception for TBD. Accompanied be within these realms. HOW MUCH ART CAN YOU TAKE? is a sign fab- transitory and fragile nature of spaces for the by his digital drum, the artist performs in Cree ricated of low-budget materials inspired by the production and display of art against gentrification and English. TBD is an exhibition that facilitates discussions and aesthetic of used car lot signage. and increasing rental prices. experiments. The former includes a programme Bones can be taken to variously symbolize physi- of events, both intimate and public in scale, that Located at the street side of MOCCA’s courtyard, Sometimes Artists Work Here hangs on the façade cal structures, death, the sacred, mortality and are integral to the project. The latter includes the sign acts as an institutional experiment in way- of MOCCA indicating the contents of its container. resurrection; we learn from long buried bones. works and interventions that begin before the finding that is intended to both draw in visitors The conditions under which Chaffe originally What then are the bones in and around a cultural viewer enters the exhibition space. Artists are and identify the site through the sign’s accessible produced this work—competitive demands for real institution? While taking up the query of what the barometer of our cultural consciousness. aesthetic and curious query. estate in urban areas—are shared and experienced a contemporary art institution is and can be Today, they continue to produce work in the line- near and far. Pechawis’s performance prompts us to view place With a courtyard/parking area between the side- age of institutional critique, a discourse that has and history on a broad continuum. If understood walk and the museum’s doors, the general public been evolving since the 1950s. Maintaining a A familiar and ongoing dilemma is caused when as a metaphoric excavation, the project of MOCCA are sometimes unsure whether they are welcome critical interest in the mechanisms of art produc- the presence of artists and cultural organizations and all contemporary art institutions can benefit through the gates and across the courtyard to the tion and exhibition, artists have incorporated enhance a community and popularize a neighbour- from more deeply acknowledging the societal and museum entrance. Further, with MOCCA residing social, community and spatial practices into hood. Commercial interests are attracted and, in geographic structures they are propped upon and in a shared complex of buildings, each with several their work, and these gestures can be read here, turn, lower income residents are displaced. When supported through. doors, would-be visitors are frequently confused throughout TBD. the creative community begins to undergo the as to which one is MOCCA’s entrance. strain of high real estate values a migration once Jon Sasaki ity. Happening throughout the exhibition, the Collection of the Canadian Centre for Architecture, drawn from a series of writers including Judith Performance to Double the parodic survey attempts to configure statistics Montréal Butler, Jacques Rancière, Chantal Mouffe and Sol about MOCCA audiences through a series of Lewitt, among others, are stitched together to Conical Intersect, Matta-Clark’s contribution to the MOCCA’s Visitor Figures unorthodox questions. How do we qualify this in- create a winding statement on the embedded Paris Biennial of 1975, manifested his critique of 2014 formation, and how much of it is used to enlighten challenges in which contemporary gallery spaces urban gentrification in the form of a radical incision Weekly performance, attendance counter institutional procedures when creating new exhibi- (and the art contained within them) are necessarily through two adjacent seventeenth-century buildings tions? Aisle 4 will also be conducting No Art Tours implicated, while the emphases added to the texts Throughout the exhibition, the artist will come by designated for demolition near the much-contested during the exhibition. creates a secondary entry point into the work. MOCCA regularly, ask the desk attendant for the Centre Georges Pompidou, which was then under The text could be read as a caption, response, daily total of visitors, then set about matching that construction. For this anti-monument, or nonu- critique or commentary on the context and number: Sasaki will enter through the front door, The exhibitionTBD examines ment, which contemplated the poetics of the civic potentially hidden frameworks of support, be counted by gallery staff, exit out the emergency contemporary art institutions ruin, Matta-Clark bore a tornado-shaped hole that antagonism or compromise within which the door, and repeat until he has done this once for spiralled back at a 45 degree angle to exit through gallery space exists. every real visitor to MOCCA, thereby doubling the under two broad headings: the roof. Periscope like, the void offered passers-by gallery’s attendance figures. institutional