Mountainous heaps of trash, vast spaces of disarray and neglect, remnants of the many things invariably left behind by many people. Andrea Kastner paints them with reverence. In this exhibition of twelve paintings, we are asked to consider what we’ve all tried to put behind us: garbage.

Kastner’s paintings, romantic and dramatic, portray the ubiquitous scenes of our urban world that are often, if not always, rejected by art. And though they may seem like dystopic scenes of consumerism’s ruins, and though it may seem novel for an artist to elevate this refuse as a subject of her paintings, Kastner’s work is, in many ways, a continuation of traditional landscape painting. When asked to conjure a landscape scene, you might imagine a vast depth of glowing greenery with a moody sky hanging above; autumn trees arching over a gently moving brook; imposing mountains towering in some great distance. But landscape as we know it and live it looks nothing of the sort, and hasn’t for generations.

French activist Henri Lefebvre was one of the first thinkers to theorize upon “the urban.” Prescient in distinguishing the urban not as a space characterized by dense populations, towering architecture and fast-paced living, Lefebvre conceptualized the urban as “the society that results from industrialization, which is a process of domination that absorbs agricultural production.” Within this model, even the picturesque, rural lives that seem an escape from city bustle are in fact implicated in the same social and political economies that are driven by capitalist desire. It does not seem too absurd, then, to characterize the work of Andrea Kastner as a new type of landscape painting — where it is not the pastoral made holy, but the urban sediment; the discarded objects and materials of every person’s past, made perfect and beautiful in its representation.

Andrea Kastner, Keepsake, 2014, Oil on Canvas, 42″ x 42″

With her paintings, Kastner attempts to recreate the world that exists amongst the things we wish to no longer exist. Her process is often collage based: most of the composite images are taken from photographs she captures herself during long walks throughout the city. “I take walks sometimes just to look for new things,” Kastner says. “Alleyways, construction sites, landfills, the house across the street and their magnificent pile of hoarded junk” (see “Traveler”). These images are then photocopied at various sizes and pieced together until each component is scaled to create a realistic yet otherworldly composition. In addition to her personal photographs, Kastner occasionally uses pictures from other peoples’ collections and archives. “Keepsake,” for example, combines a picture of a burning building found in the Kamloops Archives, along with a photograph Kastner took at a recycling facility.

Andrea Kastner, The Inventory of Dreams, 2014, Oil on Canvas, 60″ x 84″

Andrea Kastner, Beautiful Losers, 2014, Oil on Canvas, 30″ x 40″

Kastner refers to her collages for composition, and then paints from the original colour photos. “I am relatively faithful to the images, because I think details really matter,” she says, “but I take some liberties with tone and colour.” Her palette, indeed, is constrained yet dynamic. We see the greyness of preposterously massive piles of trash, butted up against banal architecture (see “The Inventory of Dreams”), yet sharp yellows and reds burst out of “Beautiful Losers.” Using these compositions of waste as a lens into our unconscious minds, Kastner wonders what is revealed about us when we look at all we’ve left behind in an act of forgetting.

Andrea Kastner, Woodlands, 2014, Oil on Canvas, 38″ x 48″

Andrea Kastner, The One That Got Away, 2013, Oil on Canvas, 38″ x 48″

Though she doesn’t talk about her paintings as landscapes, Kastner is nonetheless aware of how her works relate to more traditional representations of the natural world. And yet, is what Kastner paints really anything other than nature? It seems high time in the history of the cosmos that we understand human activity — and all its requisite construction, deconstruction and waste — as very much a part of nature. It seems Kastner is already on board with such a conception, which she cleverly reveals in the titles of her works. Without seeing it, you might think “Woodlands,” for example, was a view onto an idyllic forest. Instead, it features a scene where a dense fog hangs over a pile of wooden pallets, mountains of wood pulp receding in the background. The wistfully-titled “The One That Got Away” shows a construction site where all but the façade of a heritage building has been demolished. Through this play on words, Kastner shifts the perspective of this discarded waste: it is not simply stuff, set to be erased forever. Instead, it is revealing of our selves, our (past) desires, and the world we’ve created as natural beings.

Images

Courtesy the artist.

I’ve been out of the loop with art news this week but the few stories that did catch my eye were all about leaving in some form of another.

It’s Charlie Hill’s last week at the National Gallery of Canada, where he has been the curator of Canadian art since 1980. Katerina Atanassova has been named as Hill’s successor.

This year, like last, a number of projects that were installed for Scotiabank Nuit Blanche remain on view throughout the holiday weekend. How do they fare in the light of day? It’s nice to see a post-Blanche review; so seldom is the event critically reflected upon after sunrise. (One of my favourite in-depth considerations of large-scale art festivals such as Nuit Blanche is PUBLIC Journal‘s Civic Spectacle issue).

MOCCA’s ten-year lease is within ten months of ending; its future is uncertain.

Image

Open Mind by Yoan Capote. Image by Jack Landau.

The importance of place and identity must be on my mind a whole lot, because I kept getting drawn to news about cities, design, and memorial.

Paul Hiebert pretends to ask what the point of city logos is in general, but actually asks whether the City of Toronto logo (“a signal of dignified, centralized leadership”) ought to be updated considering the dubious leadership and bad behaviour of mayor Rob Ford. Yes, the City of Toronto logo is bad, but that’s because it highlights mediocre architecture and bureaucracy rather than the vibrant people and neighbourhoods that actually contribute to the city’s identity. Rob Ford has little to do with why the logo sucks.

At least Toronto is not alone in having a dreadful logo. Here are eleven more Canadian municipalities that could use an update.

In related news, the City of Mississauga has unveiled a new visual identity, meant to highlight its youth (40 years young!), diversity and growth. I’m a little bored by the corporate blue (which is just one possible colour way), but the architectural and geometric properties of the icon are a refreshing change from its existing logo — yet another example of a municipal logo celebrating its city hall. If you’re interested in reading more about this rebranding strategy, the complete brand report is available to peruse online(PDF).

Finally, a bit of architecture/art fun: Famous artworks transformed into buildings by Federico Babina. I wouldn’t mind living inside a Malevich-inspired building.

P.S.: For those of you who may not have heard the news yet, I’m moving back to Toronto in a couple of weeks. While I will surely miss the great city of Montreal, I can’t wait to be home.

Image

Toronto City Hall, 1984 by josullivan.59. Used under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.

Lots of interesting institutional news this week.

Okwui Enwezor has been appointed curator of the 2015 Venice Biennale. Excellent choice. Of the biennale, Enwezor says, “No event or exhibition of contemporary art has continuously existed at the confluence of so many historical changes across the fields of art, politics, technology, and economics, like la Biennale di Venezia. La Biennale is the ideal place to explore all these dialectical fields of reference, and the institution of la Biennale itself will be a source of inspiration in planning the Exhibition.”

Nicolas Bourriaud has been named curator of the 2014 Taipei Biennale. Titled The Great Accelleration, the exhibition will open at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum on September 14, 2014. (Nice to see that the TFAM is already using the new .museum top level domain).

The Art Gallery of Mississauga has announced a new strategic plan (PDF) that will, “allow the AGM to meet the needs of a growing city and serve the community better.” Director and Curator Stuart Keeler is definitely taking the gallery in a great direction. The new strategic plan will see a physical transformation in the gallery, a new membership drive, and updated marketing materials as well. Can’t wait to see how this plays out. (I grew up in Mississauga and even published an arts and culture magazine there about a decade ago; the AGM has a special place in my heart).

Three items that have been most appropriate for myself and my own ongoing projects:

Jad Abumrad on “Gut Churn” (via)

As someone studying cultural policy and the recent shift from subsidizing the arts to investing in culture, this quote has been seared into my brain.

“It is extremely important that art be unjustifiable.” —Robert Rauschenberg

— Brian (@LaRossa) February 19, 2014

(From a great Rauschenberg missive from Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists’ Writings, edited by Kristine Stiles and Peter Howard Selz.)

Finally, I am obsessed with painting lately. One of my recent favourites, which may soon be a part of my personal collection, is Noémie Weinstein‘s Sans-titre, which you can see above.

Image

Noémie Weinstein, Sans titre, oil on canvas, 112.5 cm x 170 cm.

Summing up my life lately, an article over at The Atlantic explores why writers procrastinate so much. “‘Work finally begins,’ says Alain de Botton, ‘when the fear of doing nothing exceeds the fear of doing it badly.'”

The 2014 Federal budget was released on Tuesday, and funding for arts and heritage remains stable. More on the Canada Council, the Canadian Museum of History, and certified cultural property over at Canadian Art.

The Ellen Gallery in Montreal is introducing a new funding initiative, offering up to $22,000 to an artist over a two-year period to produce a work that will then be exhibited as part of the gallery’s programming. Awesome: “The program is open to a range of mediums and practices, including ephemeral, immaterial and site-specific works.”

Do weirdos make better art? I can’t say this is good science, but a recent study found that the perceived eccentricities of an artist caused people to evaluate their works more favourably. Sounds like science is just reinforcing the stereotypes we all know to exist. (via)

Mario Carpo on big data and digital art: “The best way to predict a future event in a given set of circumstances would then be, simply, to sift through this database of past evidence and look for an exact precedent. Whatever happened before (if known) would simply happen again, whenever the same conditions recurred; retrievable data would then replace rules, and search could replace predictive science.”

One of the greatest cultural critics of our time, Stuart Hall has died at the age of 82. Check out The Stuart Hall Project, a documentary by John Akomfrah. Not sure it works outside of the UK or without a VPN, but you can rent it online for £3.50.

Such an important initiative. Getty Images has teamed up with LeanIn.org to present the Lean In Collection, a library of over 2500 stock photographs “devoted to the powerful depiction of women, girls and the people who support them.” Buzzfeed posts their 44 favourites.

Monday is Family Day in Ontario. The Art Gallery of Ontario is being transformed into the Kids Gallery of Ontario for the day. Walker Court will be the site of floor games and an all-day dance party (!) as well as the starting point for a gallery-wide game of Clue. FUN. Their family day pass, which admits two adults and up to five youths (aged 6-17), is available for the discounted price of $39 for Monday, February 17th.

Did you know you can follow Andrew Hunter, the Curator of Canadian Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario, on Twitter?

Casey N. Cep at the The New Yorker makes a case for free admission. Leah Sandals has been covering this topic for years. Here’s her 2011 synopsis of Elaine Gurian‘s writing about reduced admission fees. (The link to Gurian’s paper, Free at Last: A Case for Eliminating Admission Charges at Museums is broken and I can’t seem to find it online anywhere else, but Sandals’s post includes a few key excerpts.)

The Panama Biomuseo, designed by Frank Gehry, is set to open after nearly ten years of construction.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Image

Frank Gehry’s Biomuseo under construction in Panama by Darién Montañez. Used under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.

After several years of neglect, I’ve decided to resume updating my website on a more regular basis. Every Friday, I’ll post a roundup of art-related news that has caught my attention throughout the week. Enjoy!

When it comes to the National Endowment for the Arts, the GOP is very concerned about the unjust “wealth transfer from poorer to wealthier citizens.”

Addressing the disproportionate representation of women on Wikipedia, the Art+Feminism Wiki Edit-a-Thon was a stunning success, with over 101 women artists gaining new entries on the open source encyclopaedia. View the full list of new entries here. (I can’t believe Vera Frenkel never had a page before!)

With over 1.5 petabytes of material indexed already, AcademicTorrents attempts to “give research back to the researchers, instead of having it locked away behind paywalls.”

Photoshopping spectacular places that people swear they’ve seen with their own eyes: Inside the Fakes Factory: My Chat With a Viral Image Creator.

Is a Thunder Bay fraud ring selling fake Norval Morrisseau paintings to art dealers?

Andrea Kirsh says the Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art exhibition, on at the Studio Museum in Harlem until March 9, 2014, is “memorable and well-curated.” I love the picture of David Hammons’s “Bliz-aard Ball Sale.”

Chris Burden on political art: “I think it is effective to make art in the world.”

In museum news, the Museum of Contemporary Art Calgary, the Art Gallery of Calgary, and the Institute for Modern and Contemporary Art join forces to establish Contemporary Calgary. Staff from all three institutions will be retained.

I had no idea he hadn’t shown in the U.S. in so long: Michael Snow’s first exhibition in the United States in over four decades opens in Philadelphia.

I recently attended a private lecture with Winnipeg Art Gallery’s new Curator of Contemporary Art, Paul Butler. His first exhibition at WAG, Looking Up: Contemporary Connections with Inuit Art, invited artists to create new works in response to WAG’s massive collection of Inuit art.

Roadtripper’s guide to Weird Art Installations in the U.S.

Some interesting calls for submissions: Art Spin seeks submissions for tour stops for its sixth season, and The Orillia Museum of Art and History seeks submissions in any media of artworks that engage with the body for Life & Limb, a juried exhibition.

Image

Clare Rojas, Come Hither, gouache and latex on wood (via)

I mulled over two conceptual possibilities. I thought I would be most comfortable working with projects in the spirit of my undergraduate thesis, tinygrants. I imagined a marketplace of interventions, endurance performances and installations, layered with affiliated events like an all-night radio show with artist and visitor interviews.

At the same time, I had become increasingly interested in how people conceive of culture and nature as wildly separate things. To me, it began to seem absurd that an ant hill be so easily considered natural, yet our own built environments are so easily defined as cultural (while in direct opposition to nature; as something that erases nature). As natural subjects, our creations should also be considered natural. The culture>nature hierarchy was annoying to me, and there were lots of great artists whose work could be thought of as resisting these boundaries.

I decided it would be less risky to go with my first idea. But once I started my research, everything fit into the second.

I ran with it.

I’d like to share with you my brief curatorial statement, and then I’ll walk you through the exhibition.

Teacher and writer John Mohawk describes nature as, “everything that supports life on the planet.” This spacious definition of nature is a powerful statement that allows for cultural production to be considered within a broader ecology where people—and what they create—are a part of nature as well. Gather explores these conceptual possibilities by bringing together works that collapse the commonly held perception that culture somehow exists separately from nature, while emphasizing the emergent social relationships that are nurtured by various environments. Anchored by a network of sculptural, kinetic and data-driven works that invite the audience to assemble, congregate and interact, Gather playfully complicates the ways that we, as natural objects and cultural subjects, can consider our own roles in a world where the natural and the urban overlap, blend and coexist. Nuit Blanche is the perfect catalyst for the blurring, shifting and transforming of social, cultural and artistic boundaries; Gather attempts to explore these ever-changing relationships by emphasizing collaboration, experience and play.

Here’s a promo video that OCAD U put together while we were installing the show:

Now, onto the exhibition. Since the audience was moved through the space processionally, I’ll present the work in the same order.

Beginning outside under the canopy of Will Alsop’s Sharp Centre for Design was Shannon Gerard’s Carl Wagan Bookmobile in Butterfield Park.

The Carl Wagan Bookmobile is a nomadic print studio, library, community centre and gallery that brings people together in the name of publishing. For Scotiabank Nuit Blanche at OCAD University, Shannon created an urban campsite, complete with the camper van, a bonfire where visitors could roast marshmallows, and a tent under which spontaneous drum circles erupted throughout the night. Shannon enlisted the help of several scouts, who, in costume, guided visitors through various activities and oaths so that they could earn specially printed badges that Shannon handmade with her students at OCAD U.

Visitors entered OCAD U’s main building at 100 McCaul Street through the bookmobile installation in Butterfield Park. Inside the Lambert Lounge was Annyen Lam’s Great Good Place, a large cube structure, situated in the middle of the darkened room. The structure housed a number of paper cut landscapes, all of which were visible through various openings.

Annyen uses expert layering techniques to create depth, drama and an intense sense of realism in her papercuts. She has designed unique bamboo grids, from which sheets of paper hang, and uses lighting, mirrors and plexiglass to enhance her compositions. Even though the pieces are small and delicate, they are absolutely spectacular in their detail and fragility.

Visitors would make their way around this large box, peeking into the detailed vignettes as they became visible. The piece required a more intimate mode of looking, and I loved the contrast of stepping into this quiet, darkened space from the urban campsite just outside the door.

Christine Swintak’s Anxious Auditorium occupied the main auditorium at OCAD University. Swintak created a chaotic lecture scene, where an 8-foot tall spitball lectured in front of the podium, while its adjacent PowerPoint presentation rapidly flipped through slides upon slides of blob-like things. Three oversized sheets of ruled paper (hand drawn by Swintak – they are also double sided!) sat in sofas as if on a panel at a conference. Over the sound system, a cacophony of ringtones, jeers and whispers flooded the room while the spitball droned on, “Blah, blah, blah blah blah… blah blah… blah” (which of course also sounds like, “Blob, blob, blob blob blob….”). Giant receipts littered the floors. Pools of coffee spilled from the bleachers. Garments and other junk, presumably left behind by disinterested students, lay strew about the seats.

Upstairs in the Great Hall was Relay Studio Inc.’s Stoke. Using custom software, multiple projectors, and over 50 handmade projection surfaces, Relay Studio‘s Andrew Lovett-Barron, Eliot Callahan, Nick Crampton and Adam Carlucci recreated a bonfire by building a large platform concealing a powerful subwoofer, surrounded by a forest of suspended screens. As visitors stepped onto the platform, their movements would “stoke” the fire – the projections would activate, the subwoofer would tremble beneath the platform, and the music would increase in volume and intensity. The sound bled into the lobby below, so as visitors were making their way upstairs from the Auditorium, they would hear the ambient sounds of the environment ahead.

Take a look at this great video that Relay Studio had made to document their wonderful project:

Stoke from Relay Studio on Vimeo.

Stoke was extraordinarily effective in embedding what is typically an outdoor experience, into an interior space. Just as people would gather around a bonfire at a camp site, visitors gathered around the fire in the Great Hall to engage in a social and collective experience. The image, light and sound were mesmerizing.

Finally, in Central hall, was Marc De Pape’s The Chime. The Chime is an extraordinary generative instrument that Marc invented for his graduate work in OCAD U’s Digital Futures program. Just as a traditional wind chime responds to the motion of the wind and emits sound, The Chime responds to several inputs, including temperature, light, motion, proximity and sound, and outputs custom musical compositions whose various elements are modified by the environment. The temperature of the space, for example, changes the key in which the composition is played.

For Gather, Marc placed the instrument in the centre of the room, surrounding it with eight speakers in a circular formation, along with spotlights to illuminate the chime. Marc also projected the visualization he created, which helped to explain how the instrument was interpreting the multitude of stimuli in the room.

Above all else, The Chime creates beautiful, ambient music. You must check out the composition on Marc’s website to hear different iterations of the music from previous installations. It was a great piece with which to end the show, as visitors were overcome with a sense of relaxation and calm before stepping back out into the wild night of Nuit Blanche.

The excitement of the exhibition kept me awake for way longer than is considered normal, and the heartbreaking process of tearing it all down began promptly at sunrise.

Images

All photographs above are by Angie Griffith. Used with permission.

Social Media

I’d like to include some snippets that popped up throughout the night on Twitter. It was a real thrill to see in real time that people were enjoying the show.

Yep. #ocad is the #sbnb13 place to be #nuitblanche #toronto #nuitblanche13 pic.twitter.com/RDY4yPMmOg

— Michael Erickson (@erksn) October 6, 2013

interesting that the most captivating piece I saw or experienced all night was the one installed in the main hall of my school #snbTO #ocadu — Alexis (@alexisk9621) October 6, 2013

If u were staying home last night, you missed a lot. And if u didn’t go to #ocadu you MISSED A LOT! #snbTO — Theodore Soliman (@TheodoreSoliman) October 6, 2013

#data visualization at Nuit Blanche. Great work at @OCAD and #Toronto pic.twitter.com/UShzrUgksf — Wojciech Gryc (@Wojciech) October 6, 2013

Awesome sound-sensory installation at @OCAD right now. Gather. #snbTO #NuitBlanche — jian ghomeshi (@jianghomeshi) October 6, 2013

The bass was totally epic. @OCAD: You absolutely must experience STOKE by Relay Studio at #ocadu http://t.co/ylq2kGopwZ — Andrew McAllister (@andrewmcdotca) October 6, 2013

#Ocadu #NuitBlanche Must see our show – full of magic – immerse in beauty and sound. Stimulate and relax. — Sara Diamond (@CodeZebra) October 6, 2013

If you’re still here, thanks for looking.

Last night, Concordia University’s MFA students held an art auction to raise funds for their year-end group exhibition. I didn’t go in with the expectation to buy anything, but I ended up with a great textile piece by WhiteFeather Hunter.

Image

WhiteFeather Hunter, devour
Silk organza, waxed linen and merino felt
12 x 12 x 1”
2012

[from the MFA Art Auction website]

I’m very happy to introduce the conference I am organizing alongside Samuel Gaudreau-Lalande. Concordia University’s Art History Graduate Student Association has been hosting an annual conference for many years; I’m very glad to be a part of the event this year.

The theme of this year’s conference is, simply, Crisis — we use the term provocatively and hope to see papers that use various interpretations of the concept as a framework for academic research. The call for papers is below.

If you don’t have a paper to submit, I hope you can attend. The conference will take place on Friday, March 22 and Saturday, March 23, 2013, in Montreal. We are also very happy to announce that Dr. Serge Guilbaut from the University of British Columbia will be delivering the keynote address.

CRISIS!
Friday, March 22 and Saturday, March 23, 2013
Concordia University
Montreal 
CALL FOR PAPERS

Keynote Speaker: Dr. Serge Guilbaut, University of British Columbia

Overwrought and hyperbolic in our present-day world, the term “crisis” conjures all manner of frenetic distress. Stripping the term of its typical, neurotic uses, however, may lead to the consideration of more dynamic relationships between creation, destabilization, opportunity, and total rupture. How can the term crisis be problematized, and made more productive in art historical practices?

From the Latinized form of the Greek krísis, Early Modern English defined crisis as the “turning point in a disease.” Our aim is to consider not only the metaphorical diseases with which we grapple, but the myriad directions and developments that result from their emergence. Approaching the topic as an issue of process and effect in art and culture, we envision this conference as a crossroads of interrogation where daily life informs the practice of art history.

Concordia University’s Art History Graduate Student Association is currently seeking original academic papers for its annual graduate conference. Proposals that consider the genesis, condition, or outcome of crisis as it relates to the study of art, visual and material culture, or art history are encouraged, as are proposals that address the systems and institutions that govern and disseminate artistic and cultural production and its subsequent scholarship. We invite creative, interdisciplinary, and self-reflexive interpretations of the term “crisis,” wherein crises persist along varying scales, from daily survival to war. We welcome abstracts that explicitly or implicitly legitimize, oppose, or radicalize notions of crisis and its effects. Papers addressing historical and contemporary examples are encouraged, as are case studies of specific artworks, artists, exhibitions, publications, or institutions.

Topics can include, but are not limited to:

– aesthetic analysis of non-artistic events and conditions
– architecture and design of (dis)empowerment
– visual interpretations of political movements
– state influence on art and culture
– moments of destabilization and rupture, past and present
– art as activism
– self-reflexive and/or politically engaged assessments of art history
– mediating forces of networks and technology

Presentations are twenty minutes in length (2,500 words), followed by a discussion period. Please send a 300-word abstract in English or French, a short biography (100 words), and contact information (including your institutional affiliation and degree type), in a Word document formatted with 12-point Times New Roman type to ahgsaconference@gmail.com by 5 pm, Friday, December 7, 2012. Presenters will be selected by Wednesday, 16 January 2013. A selection of conference proceedings may be published.

As some of you surely know, I’ve been living in Montreal doing my Master’s in Art History at Concordia University. Although it’s been an interesting transition, approaching art history from a criticism and curatorial practice background, I have been happy to pursue my widening interest in cultural policy and its relationship to urban life (and perhaps more specifically, urban citizens and artists). I have chosen, for my thesis, to use Toronto’s 2003 Culture Plan as a case study for exploring a growing range of ideas (which will inevitably be shrunken) concerning the planning of culture and the spatial conflicts that emerge from such projects.

So, as is the norm around here, I invite you to check out cultureandpolicy.ca — an ongoing dossier of my research and findings, thoughts, analyses, and so on. To be honest, I mostly do this as a way to keep motivated about my own work. As such I am happy to note that my motivation is bolstered by your feedback should you have any.