2010 2010 www.art.utoronto.ca UNIVERSITY OF ARTISTS ESSAYS TORONTO 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: UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO 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 Ontario, 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, LISA STEELE standing involvement with artists working in who elucidates the form and the content Canada’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.