Take Notice – Paul Roorda

Waiting at an Ottawa bus stop or intersection can be awfully boring. I try to make the best of it and I'm always thankful for any visual distraction. Sure, most of the pictures that shape our cityscapes belong to advertisements. But keep your eyes open: Some are no commercial images at all, some might even belong to an art project!

If you recently saw an old encyclopedia image on a small placard with the caption “Take Notice” wired and nailed on an utility pole somewhere in Ottawa, you can consider yourself lucky: It belonged to an installation of the artist Paul Roorda that can now be seen at the City Hall Art Gallery. The small mixed media artworks by Roorda (Waterloo) involve the gaze of the beholder who automatically tries to create meaning of what he or she is looking at.

A detail of “Take Notice”, 2010, with images from vintage encyclopedias, paper, rust, nails, 14 x 11 cm each panel.

“What was once the post war optimism of a vintage encyclopedia is now re-contextualized as an anxiety over the consequences of the unsustainable progress we have a compulsion to pursue.” says Roorda about this installation “Take Notice”. The artworks which were hanging all around the city are now re-contextualised in an art gallery. That's why the underlying implications and topics become visible: history and progression, the human body and machinery, ritual and religion, faith in the future and destruction, nature and industrialisation.

The mixed media installation on the wall of the City Hall Art Gallery. The placards are posted to the walls with weathered, rusty nails like they were still on the poles. The empty spots refer to the notes that disappeared somehow from their posts. How exactly is not clear; some got damaged because of the weather, but some were taken from passers-by.

A closer look at “Take Notice” reveals that the installation deals with themes of construction of knowledge, the human impact on environment, and the faith on progressivism of earlier generations. The weathered images with rusty stripes and spots also reveal how time progresses and how ephemeral these images are.

“Sky Notice”, 2010, Polaroid photos, staples, nails, rust, and vintage paper, 24 x 17 cm each panel.

“The photos suffer colour distortion or overexposure and are scarred by rust and water damage reflecting the increasing anxiety with which we have come to view the sky: Global warming, intensifying storms, increasing UV warnings, and smog alerts have cast a shadow on our once bright and optimistic upward view.” so Roorda on his project “Sky Notice”.

Furthermore, Roorda's polaroids don't show an untouched sky; they show the sky cut up by con trails. Scarred by rust, water damage, and overexposure, these sky images reveal as well as the “Take Notice” series that an optimistic view in the future and even in the sky is problematic today. Roorda's installations visualize the uncertainty over the planet’s future. Thanks to Paul, we will take notice now!

Facts:

Paul Roorda - Take Notice
City Hall Art Gallery

Ottawa City Hall

January 28 to April 3, 2011

About the exhibit

Art market goes virtual - VIP Art Fair

Virtual, digital, online, and interactive: The VIP Art Fair is the very first virtual art fair and it just started! 138 galleries from 30 countries, with more than 2,000 artists and 7,500 artworks are represented in three online exhibition halls: VIP Premier, VIP Focus and VIP Emerging. Navigation through the fair is easy, you can select galleries by locations, or search by artist and artwork medium.

I was surprised that 360 artworks were photographs; with such “old masters” like Diane Arbus, Robert Mapplethorpe, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Thomas Struth; but also emerging artists like Etienne Chambaud, Brendan Fowler, William Hunt and Kim Yunho are represented. The only Canadian gallery that has a virtual booth at the art fair is Corkin Gallery, Toronto.

Unfortunately, I cannot show a screen shot of the online art fair here, because it's all protected by copyright. But you can image a website with lists of artworks, artists or galleries; and visiting a booth means you will see the artworks from different perspectives and get some further information about the artists, the technical data of the artworks etc. If you zoom in, you can examine details of a painting’s surface, get multiple views of a three-dimensional work, and watch videos of a multimedia piece. This sounds great, but I think you will still miss the haptic quality of the artworks, also the chatting with other visitors around you, and the direct participation at this event.

Quiet a contrast is a regular art fair with the excitement to discover art, and actually TO BE THERE! The photo shows visitors at the documenta 12, in Kassel, Germany. (I know, the documenta is no art fair, it's an international exhibition of modern and contemporary art. But you will get from that photo what I mean with excitement and participation.) This won't be possible with digital art fairs like the VIP art fair when you just sit isolated in front of you computer.

By the way, to see price ranges and chat with gallery staff – that means make contact if you want to acquire an artwork – you need to upgrade to a VIP. And of course, than you have to pay for it! On January 22 and 23 it was $100 and thereafter $20. The price range for the artworks is huge: more than 50 works are priced over $ 1 Million US, more than 100 artworks are valued at less than $ 5,000. But browsing is free; so take your chance!

Facts:
VIP Art Fair
January 22 to January 30, 2011
For tickets you need to request an invitation (it took me 24 hours to get mine, so hurry up)
VIP art fair

Disturbing and Energetic: 4 Ottawa painters @ Carleton University Art Gallery

The current exhibition at CUAG is both: disturbing and energetic. It shows recent paintings by the Ottawa artists Melanie Authier, Martin Golland, Andrew Morrow and Amy Schissel. All four have garnered acclaim in Canada and internationally and the combination of these four so different artists is very intriguing.

Entrance of the Carleton University Art Gallery: The yellow paper warns the visitor against sexual content. It proved necessary!

Why disturbing? Because Andrew Morrow, who is a University of Ottawa master's of fine art graduate, deals in his large-scale paintings with mythological scenery in a rococo kitschy style with pornographic content. That's disturbing because you just realise this at second glance, although it is so obvious. Even more disturbing are the inscriptions that point on the very sex scenes and comment them.

The two paintings in the front: Melanie Authier, Augury (2010) and Lift (2010).

Why energetic? Because Melanie Authier demonstrates the potency of the paint palette, plays with different perspectives when she creates movement and momentum with wide vertical brush strokes. In her abstracted images landscape elements might still be visible.

On the right wall: Amy Schissel, Common Ground (2010); Martin Golland, Lockjaw (2010), Facade (2010). On the back wall: Martin Golland, Detour (2010), Armature (2010). Golland paints in oil on canvas whereas Schissel uses mixed media and encaustic on wood. Golland is master’s of fine art professor at Carleton; Schissel a recent graduate.

Amy Schissel reflects on her work that deals with the human imagination in the age of electronics and digital images: “The constant presence of digital technology in a data-driven and media-saturated culture supplies the subconscious with an onslaught of virtual and synthetic imagery, to which the human imagination has adapted.” (Schissel's comment on her exhibition “Prolix X” 2009 at the Karsh Masson Gallery)

The exhibition shows paintings that are all made exclusively in 2010. A great insight in the status quo of the Ottawa art scene; at least in the media of painting. Let's keep our eyes open in 2011!

Facts:

Four Ottawa Painters: Authier, Golland, Morrow, Schissel

Carleton University Art Gallery

November 22^nd, 2010 to January 30^th, 2011

CUAG 

Alex Colville @ NGC Library and Archives

One of the most famous and iconic paintings in the National Gallery is without doubt Alex Colville's “To Prince Edward Island” (1965). The situation depicted is somehow humorous: A woman on a ferry stares at the beholder while she holds big binoculars right in front of her face. As Colville said, this painting reflects on the conditions of seeing, the female vision and observation. Colville himself is a distinctive observer of everyday life situations; and he depicts them often in unusual and therefore bemusing juxtapositions of figures or animals.

The Library of the National Gallery presents in a small exhibition some early chalk drawings that already show unusual perspectives and Colville's interest in the human body. “The formative years 1938-1942” mark the beginnings of the Canadian realist. In his later paintings it is obvious how rigorously constructed his compositions are; but it also seems that the studies of human figures and their physiognomy build the underlying base of his works.

Colville graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of Fine and Applied Art at Mount Allison University (New Brunswick) in 1942. During his studies (started in 1938) he created hundreds of drawings in chalk, watercolour, graphite and ink; and the Library and Archive of the NGC holds in its collection 570 of these works. An ambitious composition can for example be found in a chalk drawing called “Male figure from above” from 1941. It shows a male body, observed from a higher standpoint, with astonishing attention to the proportions and the challenging perspective.

Exhibition pamphlet © National Gallery of Canada,Ottawa, 2011

The exhibition contains 18 drawings and is located at the entrance to the Library, directly above the cafeteria. It can be easily overseen; so make sure that you watch out for this small but impressive exhibit at your next visit to the National Gallery.

Facts:

Alex Colville - The formative years 1938-1942

Library and Archives of the National Gallery of Canada

380 Sussex Drive

January 12^th to April 29^th, 2011

Exhibition info from the NGC

Colville about "“To Prince Edward Island"

Urban impressions: Berlin @ Exposure Gallery

Berlin is the most exciting city in Germany. I know what I am talking about, I lived in Berlin for a while, I am visiting friends there as often as I can, and I love it! Not only because of its vibrant art scene and subcultures, but also because of its history. Berlin's chequered past is on the one hand represented in numerous museums and memorial sites, but on the other hand still visible in the architecture and urban environment. Did you know that you can always tell if you are in the former western or eastern part of the city just by looking at the pavement?! In the eastern part it looks like this:

In the western part the pavement is mostly asphalt. However, Berlin is also a city of historical important monuments and buildings; and some of them are pictured in photographs now exhibited at Exposure Gallery. The exhibition presents recent photographic works by Abigail Gossage, Barbara Bolton, Leslie Hossack and Patricia Wallace. A main focus lies on the Jewish Museum in Berlin with its distinctive architecture by Daniel Libeskind, the Holocaust Memorial, the Olympic Stadium (venue for the 1936 Summer Olympics) and of course the Berlin Wall.

These photographs of urban landscapes and monuments in their strict compositions and mostly black and white provide a striking view on the global city.

Facts:

Berlin. An Exhibition of Photographs

Exposure Gallery

1255 Wellington Street

December 9, 2010 to January 18, 2011

Exhibition Info about "Berlin"

Daniel Corbeil @ Gallery 101

Thinking about aerial views in Canadian photography, what comes first to my mind? Edward Burtynsky, of course, with his industrial landscapes! Yesterday I was at the exhibition opening of “Daniel Corbeil. Fragmented Landscapes” at the Gallery 101 that totally reminds me at Burtynsky's work. Daniel Corbeil (Montreal) is also interested in environmental issues like overexploitation and global warming, but he follows a different aesthetic approach. He builds models of industrial landscapes with clay, cement, metal and so on, and then takes pictures of them from an elevated position. In a second step, he creates collages of film and digital images with slightly different perspectives, and tapes the small pieces together with blue archival tape. 

On the floor: the landscape model “Complexe industriel” (2009) made of cement, metal, salvaged objects, clay, on cardboard, 60x400x400cm. Great idea: Corbeil used try ice to make smoke come out of the cooling towers when he took photos of the model. On the wall in the background: “Paysage construit no. 3” (2009), a collage of film and digital images mounted on vinyl, 1/1, 105x190cm.

These landscape collages – like “Paysage construit no. 3” – look at first glance like real aerial shots, but if you look at them carefully, you will discover that the trees, houses and little sheep are just miniatures. It is indeed a fictional landscape. The shadows of airplanes were made with little models hanging over the model landscape.

Model “Complexe industriel” (2009) on the ground; on the wall a recent work “Dispositif de paysage construit no. 8” (2010), laserprint on polypropylene, 110x240cm, 1/5. Corbeil's comment to the impact of global warming. The icebergs were made of sugar and will elevate if someone presses the red button below the model.

Unfortunately, the show is very small – with just 4 artworks – but nevertheless worth a visit.

Facts:

Daniel Corbeil. Fragmented Landscapes

January 14 to February 19, 2011

301 ½ Bank Street, Ottawa

Gallery 101

Perceptions @ Ottawa City Hall Art Gallery

Seven artists with a disability or who are deaf
reinterpret artworks in the Fine Art collection
of the City of Ottawa. The exceptional approach:
To explore and challenge the beholder's perception,
and to make artworks accessible to a heterogeneous

and diverse audience – with and without disabilities.

I was in particular impressed by an artwork by
Jolanta Lapiak (Edmonton) “Two Thousand and One
Years” (2010). In the video, shown in the exhibition,
she asks in sigh language how she – belonging to the
“eyeing people” - feel about the “hearing people” for
2001 years. Her scream remains silent in the video.

She explains how the Phonocentric point of view that
understands the speech as central point of language,
suppresses the communication of deaf people. Her
artwork (mixed media on 4 panels) shows a female
body that represents textuality and lingual violence.
It refers to Shala Bahrami's “Mille et une Nuits.
Sur la Route de la Soie Teintée de Safran et de
Pétrole” ( 2006, photographic transfer and paint on wood).

City Hall Art Gallery, Ottawa: "Perceptions" booklet ©2001-2011 City of Ottawa

The little booklet that you will find in the
exhibition includes an introduction about the
exhibition concept and a DVD with some very
enlightening features. It includes for example
pictures of all shown artworks, statements by
the artists in video, the catalogue text and
a list of works. It's a great source of information!

The show ends on January 16th; so take your last
chance to see it!

Facts:
Perceptions – Reinterpreting the City of Ottawa's Fine Art Collection
Ottawa City Hall Art Gallery, 110 Laurier Avenue West
December 3, 2010 to January 16, 2011
Ottawa City Hall Art Gallery