Articles

All Sorts of Things That Are Bigger Than Myself

Phyllida Barlow is a material magician, the consummate alchemist of stuff. She is able to take the most unimpressive things—plaster, foam, PVA, chicken wire, cardboard, sand, polyurethane, lumber, rubber cable, paper, clay and the occasional ironing board or television set—and transform them into objects and environments of irresistible charm, depth and beauty.
Inspirational Embodiments

In 2015 Valérie Blass made a sculpture called “La méprise” consisting of two porcelain objects in flocking, standing on a marble slab and facing a mirror. One of the objects is a black cat with its tail sticking straight up.
The Angel is in the Details

VIE D’ANGE, Montreal’s “hippest” exhibition space, opened all five of its doors in the summer of 2015. Located in the Marconi Alexandra district, the gallery is a former automobile paint shop that also did oil and tire changes.
Vapour and Steel

Entropy is an idea that hasn’t worn out. It was central to the thinking and writing of Robert Smithson in the mid-’60s, and the psychologist and theorist Rudolf Arnheim wrote about the concept in his canonical 1971 essay on disorder and order.
Jack Goldstein and Ron Terada

Jack Goldstein, Montreal-born but residing in the United States most of his life, has received few Canadian exhibitions despite international acknowledgement. Consequently, “Jack and the Jack Paintings: Jack Goldstein and Ron Terada” should be especially welcome in Canada.
“Screening the ‘70s: Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Grand Western Canadian Screen Shop”

The late ’60s and early ’70s were a tumultuous time in Canadian cultural history. Sixty years later, the unrest that was created by regionalism, nationalism and democratization has changed the course of the Canadian artworld.
Przemek Pyszczek

During my very first conversation with Przemek Pyszczek, about four years ago at his home in Berlin, he was showing me with great excitement, videos of metallic sports cars with “chameleonic,” hue-changing paint.
“Land Use”

“Land Use,” a group exhibition at Stephen Bulger Gallery featuring photographs by Robert Burley, Dana Fritz, Geoffrey James and Jamey Stillings, is unified by two related yet qualitatively distinct subjects: human activity and human presence, in nature.
Patrick Cruz

My first look at Patrick Cruz’s show at Franz Kaka happened one evening after the show had already opened and Cruz was scheduled to freestyle at the gallery. I watched Cruz perform with his sculptures and paintings all around, coalescing into a stage he had created for himself, complete with set design, sound and audience.
Meaghan Hyckie

A house can fall in many ways. It can crumble due to natural causes such as earthquakes and landslides, flash flooding. Then there is displacement by humans: foreclosure, eviction and demolition. An unattended cigarette can set a whole house aflame in a matter of minutes. New worries accumulate: nuclear bombs, planes flying into buildings, air strikes by drones.
“But a Storm is Blowing from Paradise: Contemporary Art of the Middle East and North Africa”

In Walter Benjamin’s analysis of Paul Klee’s “Angelus Novus” in his oft-quoted essay “Theses on the Philosophy of History” (1940) from Illuminations (New York, Schocken Books, 1969), the storm of progress blows an angel into the future with such force that he can no longer use his wings.
Cinthia Marcelle

Mid-career Brazilian artist Cinthia Marcelle (born Belo Horizonte, 1974) first came to my attention for photographs she’d made together with the South African artist Jean Meeran, in which Marcelle disappeared into the landscape, dressed in a cape with matching colours so that self and city elided (“Capa Morada”, 2003).

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