This newsletter from The Art Collective includes news about Phase 2 of the Interactive Bunker project, our latest interactive show, which takes place this Monday and Tuesday (Feb. 12, 13) in the lobby of the Visual Arts building. Come and draw your vision of what future life underground might look like; event is co-sponsored by Concordia’s Fine Arts Student Alliance.
There is also news about these points (take your time, there are lots of links to explore):
Key shows by David Elliott, Philomene Longpre and Bill Vorn.
YouTube videos about shows by the Painting and Drawing Association, which has collaborated with the Collective at art-making events.
Two New York Times stories about Monet’s pencil and pastel work, and post minimalist art.
Features of the website operated by Juliana Espana Keller, guest curator of the Collective’s CDEx show at UQAM in May 2006.
A key influence on our Interactive Bunker project: artist Alexis Rockman, whose work shown in Canadian Art magazine was recommended by Montreal artist Adrian Norvid, visiting professor of painting and drawing, who is advising the Collective this year. You can see images from Rockman’s work on our website.
1) Feb. 12 and 13 is Phase 2 of The Art Collective’s Interactive Bunker project, takes place this Monday and Tuesday (Feb. 12, 13) in the lobby of the Visual Arts building at the corner of Crescent and René-Lévesque in downtown Montreal. Come and draw your vision of life underground in an imaginary future world where the surface is no longer habitable. The first phase took place Nov. 30-Dec. 1 and the new phase takes us further underground.
2) Concordia University Studio Arts chair David Elliott’s not-to-missed show at Joyce Yahouda Gallery, an excellent gallery in Montreal's Belgo building, which opens Feb. 17 and runs until March 17. (see details below) David has provided invaluable advice and support to the Art Collective as it operates in its third year of exploration of collaborative art-making.
The Collective, which operates in collaboration with the Studio Arts department, thanks Concordia’s Fine Arts Student Alliance for its ongoing support and funding of the Interactive Bunker project, including FASA president Ed Janzen, who made the symbolic first mark at the collective’s Strings show in 2006.
Hélène Brousseau, FASA's vice-president finance, placed the symbolic first mark on Phase 2 of the Interactive Bunker project on Feb. 12.
Philomène Longpré’s show at Parisian Laundry, which ends Feb. 24: http://www.molior.ca/artistes.php?section=bio&artiste=7&lang=0&cc=1
This cutting edge show is especially recommended for those who were able to visit Bill Vorn’s excellent show, which just closed at Concordia’s leading-edge Faculty of Fine Arts Gallery. See details below about this show by Bill, who gave excellent advice and support to The Art Collective in its key second year of operations, while he served as acting chair of Concordia University’s high-profile Studio Arts Department.
http://fofagallery.concordia.ca/upcoming_exhibitions.html
To read a story about Hexagram, a Concordia project that Bill Vorn has played a key role in developing:
http://ctr.concordia.ca/2004-05/jul_28/03/index_d.shtml
1) Interactive Bunker project:
See images from the first phase on our website’s gallery page, at:
http://gallery.theartcollective.net/
2) See info below about shows by David Elliott and Bill Vorn.
3) Check out a YouTube video from the 2006 Concordia University Painting and Drawing Association show last January at L’Espace gallery in Montreal. The video, by Ztron, includes images of a piece about wartime identity by Robert Winters, the collective’s co-ordinator, starting at the 45-second mark. The clip is titled FASA Vernissage at l’Espace. The video includes a few words from artist Nathalie Quagliotto, who worked on two large-scale collaborative pieces done by The Art Collective during its show at the VAV Gallery in November 2005, in collaboration with the Painting and Drawing Association.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XziuyEdcZDA
Ztron also has a short video on YouTube from the PDA’s recent show, called Study in the City, FASA show 2007 Vernissage:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WRqictGzKk
4) Attached to this note and posted on our website, you can read two excerpts from recent New York Times art stories: the first is about a show called “The Unknown Monet: Pastels and Drawings,” which will be at the Royal Academy of Arts in London from March 17 to June 10, and at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Mass., from June 24 to Sept. 16. The second, “A Promise that Never Bloomed, a Post-Minimalist You’ve Never Heard Of,” by New York Times art writer Holland Carter, is about alternative art spaces in New York and a post-minimalist that the art world skipped over. You can read more excellent arts coverage at: http://www.nytimes.com/
http://Robert Winters, co-ordinator of The Art Collective
robertwinters@videotron.ca
5) One artist’s website worth visiting belongs to Juliana España Keller, a Montreal artist and curator who curated The Art Collective’s one-week interactive show in May 2006 at the high-profile CDEx gallery at Université du Québec à Montréal, which presents work by UQAM’s master’s level students.
http://www.julianaespanakeller.com
Images from the CDEx show can be seen on our website’s gallery section, at:
http://gallery.theartcollective.net/
Here is the site for the CDEx gallery, which is administered by Barbara Wall, of UQAM’s master’s program: http://www.er.uqam.ca/nobel/cendif/
This section below is from Juliana’s listing at: www.lightstalkers.org
Juliana Espana Keller is an interdisciplinary artist who brings art and life together. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting and Drawing (2000) and a Masters degree in Sculpture (2003), both from Concordia University in Montreal. She explores and experiments with all contemporary media. She has recently curated two exhibitions in Montreal this year at Galerie Articule and Galerie Art Mur and her own work has been presented in many international venues; most recently at the Ice Box Project Space as part of the Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe, Philadelphia, USA, Galeria Nina Menocal, Mexico City, Mexico and Muu Gallery in Helsinki Finland. Her second solo exhibition with Galerie Art Mur opens in Montreal in October. More info. on this project can be found at: http://www.artmur.com.
A link to The Art Collective’s website can be found on this page:
www.julianaespanakeller.com/links.htm
Following is a description of an artist whose work was referred to by Montreal artist Adrian Norvid, who is advising The Art Collective in 2006-07, in discussions that led to this year’s Interactive Bunker project, which provides an imaginary look at what life would be like if it was forced underground because of an inhospitable surface environment.
If you go to The Art Collective’s website, at www.theartcollective.net, Alexis Rockman piece, from Border Crossings in November 2002, was one of the artworks used as a reference in our Interactive Bunker project in 2006-07. This project attempts to show how life might evolve if it was limited to underground spaces, faced with an inhospitable surface environment.
The following is from Rockman's listing in Wikipedia:
Alexis Rockman
Rockman's Manifest Destiny
Alexis Rockman (born 1962) is an American contemporary artist known for his paintings depicting the precarious relationship between man and nature. He has been exhibiting his work internationally since 1985, when he received a BFA in fine arts from the School of Visual Arts. His artworks are information-rich depictions of how our culture perceives and interacts with plants and animals, and the role culture plays in influencing the direction of natural history.
Believing that the past provides clues to the future, Rockman’s 8-by-24-foot mural, Manifest Destiny offers a view of the Brooklyn waterfront after catastrophic climate change. Consulting with experts in various fields, Rockman shows the haunting outcome 3000 years in the future past the ruins of the Brooklyn Bridge, following a sea-level rise caused by global warming. Included are the wrecks of a Dutch sailing ship and a 20th-century submarine, tropical plants and animals, and a two-tailed salmon resulting from genetic manipulation. Rockman's project suggests what the remote geological, botanical, and zoological future might bring, predicting the ecosystem of the area thousands of years ahead.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexis_Rockman
This image is a section of Alexis Rockman's "Manifest Destiny" (8x24 feet, oil and acrylic on wood, 2004). Consulting with experts in various fields, the artist crafted a view 3000 years in the future past the ruins of the Brooklyn Bridge, following a sea-level rise caused by global warming. Included are the wrecks of a Dutch sailing ship and a 20th-century submarine, tropical plants and animals, and a two-tailed salmon resulting from genetic manipulation. Roughly 2/3 of the mural is shown here.
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/xRockman.htm
"Alexis Rockman is a native of New York City. Born in 1962, he grew up in and around The Museum of Natural History. He is a graduate of the School of Visual Arts. His work has been exhibited internationally in numerous solo and group exhibitions, and is in the permanent collections of several prominent institutions, including Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Brooklyn Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Baltimore Museum of Art."
David Elliott
Phantom Engineer
17 février - 17 mars 2007
February 17 - March 17, 2007
Vernissage : samedi le 17 février, 15h –17h
Opening: Saturday, February 17, 3 – 5 pm
David Elliott crée des univers carnavalesques où animaux, étoiles, l’homme et divers signes se côtoient. Il s’intéresse à des signes iconographiques qu’il peint sur un fond blanc, les faisant avancer dans l’espace. Elliott s’applique, dans ses dernières œuvres, à la formation d’une grille sous-jacente à ses compositions où l’on reconnaît la structure de l’abstraction formaliste. Ainsi, leurs compositions ressemblent à des jeux de cartes, des calendriers, des agendas et des équations mathématiques.
David Elliott creates carnivalesque orchestrations of animals, stars and people. This recent body of work explores the nakedness of the white gessoed ground, letting the visual events sit more bluntly on the surface. Elliott has self-consciously employed the grids and stripes of formalist abstraction, giving the paintings the look of playing cards, calendars, agendas or mathematical equations.
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Le travail d’Elliott a été exposé dans divers lieux de diffusion nationaux et internationaux depuis 1974. En 1993, le Musée d’art moderne de Mexico a organisé une rétrospective de son oeuvre. Ses principales expositions sont True North: The Contemporary Canadian Landscape, au Musée des Beaux-arts Kaohsiung à Taiwan (1998), Instant Karma au Centre Saidye Bronfman de Montréal (2002) et une participation à la Deuxième Manifestation de l’art internationale qui a eu lieu à Québec en 2003. Il écrit également sur l’art, notamment pour la revue Canadian Art , et il enseigne à l’université Concordia.
Elliott’s work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally since 1974. In 1993 the Museo d’arte Moderno in Mexico City mounted a retrospective of his work. Other exhibitions include True North: The Contemporary Canadian Landscape at the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts in Taiwan (1998), Instant Karma at the Saidye Bronfman Center in Montreal (2002), Deuxieme Manifestation de l’art internationale, Quebec City (2003), He also writes about art, contributing regularly to Canadian Art magazine, and teaches at Concordia University.
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Galerie Joyce Yahouda Gallery
372 Sainte-Catherine Ouest, #516
Montréal,QC H3B 1A2
514.875.2323
info@joyceyahoudagallery.com
www.joyceyahoudagallery.com
Artistes / artists:
Alain Benoit, Jacques Bilodeau, David Elliott, Massimo Guerrera, Flutura & Besnik Haxhillari, Corine Lemieux,
François Morelli, Alana Riley, Stephen Schofield, Andrea Szilasi.
+ oeuvres de plusieurs autres artistes / + artworks of various artists.
Heures d’ouverture : mercredi au samedi, 12h – 17h et sur rendez-vous.
Opening hours : Wednesday to Saturday, 12pm – 5pm and by appointment.
Bill Vorn’s show:
January 11 – February 9
BILL VORN: RED LIGHT
RED LIGHT: A Reactive Robotic Installation by BILL VORN
Photo: Bill Vorn
Bill Vorn’s cybernetic, feral creatures inhabit a highly theatrical space that evokes the sensation of imminent danger. The moving, twitching machines instantly sense any human intrusion into their environment, emitting loud metallic sounds and flashing lights, and further reacting to human presence in unpredictable, menacing ways. By confronting such complex robotic creatures, the visitor learns to anticipate their erratic behavior, to negotiate a space of coexistence, and perhaps even to empathize with them. Since 1992, Vorn has explored the “aesthetics of artificial behavior” in various robotic art installations. RED LIGHT is his most recent reactive robotic environment.
The red light flooding the gallery space already alerts one to beware. Stepping into the RED LIGHT area, one finds oneself in the midst of eight strange, gesticulating bodies, consisting of long pneumatic and mechanical tubes with sensors. Six of these tentacle-like creatures are hanging from the ceiling, seemingly watching two others convulse on the ground. Immediately, they sense the presence of a visitor. Their tubular muscles contract and conflate, generating a wild play of strobe lights and hissing sounds. They move towards the visitor in a seemingly random, chaotic fashion. But even while they are drawn to the presence of the human intruder, they appear to be secretly communicating amongst themselves – or perhaps conspiring. Once one has entered their strange RED LIGHT habitat, one can no longer remain a passive, detached spectator. Whether choosing to interact with the robotic creatures by touching or moving around them, or whether remaining immobile, one inevitably finds oneself engaging with these animate machines, and by so doing, one becomes an integral part of the RED LIGHT spectacle.
Setting up a space where such human-machine interactions are played out is the goal of the artist, Bill Vorn. While wishing to explore the techniques and technologies relating to “parallel mechanics” and pneumatics, his primary aim is to create a space for human and machine behavioral interrelationships. This is a space where the human qualities of machines and the machine-like character of human beings “are intermixed” and where any behavioral distinctions between them “become blurred.”
http://