Governor General's Awards in Visual and Media Arts 2011@ NGC

It looks like due to the freezing weather conditions in Ottawa, everyone has a cold! Me too! That's why I could not attend the opening of the Governor General's Awards in Visual and Media Arts 2011 at the National Gallery on Thursday – such a shame!

I was in particular interested in the work by the photographer Geneviève Cadieux, of course (see my posting a while ago). But I have to say that Kye-Yeon Son's works are also impressive. Son won the Saidye Bronfman Award for excellence in fine crafts with her fragile metalsmith works. She finds her inspiration in natural forms and shapes, like leafless trees in winter, or birds' nests.

Calming, 2006, sterling silver, gold-filled wire, 24k gold plate, 46 x 13 x 12 cm. Private collection.
(photo: Perry Jackson) from the CCA website

In the video provided on the CCA website, she speaks about her grieve after her father's death and how this personal experience influenced her art. In using precious metals like gold, silver, copper, niobium and titanium wire, these metals gain new, organic forms in an intuitive process.

Nature’s Breath, 2009, copper, enamel, 17 x 17 x 9 cm. Courtesy of the artist.
(photo: Kye-Yeon Son) from the CCA website

Son is a Associate Professor in the Jewellery Department at NSCAD University in Halifax. She was born in South Korea, and received her BFA from the College of Fine Arts at Seoul National University, and her MFA from Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. A Canada Council founding has supported Son's recent research regarding soldering methods. She experimented with a PUK electro-welder, an industrial machine which allowed her to improve her techniques and create sculptural forms. Her minimalist aesthetic can now be seen at the National Gallery. She is also represented here in Ottawa by Lafreniere & Pai Gallery.


Facts:
Governor General's Awards in Visual and Media Arts 2011
March 25th - June 19th, 2011
National Gallery of Canada
Gallery B109

Joy Kardish: Echo of the Dance @Dale Smith

Abandoned spaces full of history that evoke impermanence and tristesse – Joy Kardish depicts in her photo-based works derelict spaces before their unavoidable reinvention or demise. In stage-like compositions, the observer's eye is drawn to deserted rooms with debris of by-gone existences.

Kardish says: “While photographing, I often wondered: What happened in these buildings that were once alive and now lie dormant? Within the confines of these haunted walls where history intersected with my imagination, I wanted to create images to reflect this weaving together of reality and fiction. What began as a curious need to gain entry to spaces that I was told I could not enter has now become an ongoing project.“

Basement Hallway, 18 x 12.5'', 2011, paper negative/oil on Japanese washi paper

Her works on handmade, silk screened Japanes washi paper with its rough surface-structure refer to 19th century photo techniques like Calotype and albumen print. It gives these photographs a dreamlike atmosphere of a long gone era. These photographs are no historical documents; they are transformed into the vanity concept of meaning that constitutes the still life.

On the right side: 17th floor, 36 x 21.25'', 2011, paper negative/oil on Japanese washi paper

The exhibition shows the Sœurs de la Visitation convent in Ottawa, the Crystal Ballroom at Toronto’s King Edward Hotel, and the Valley Halla mansion outside Toronto. They seem to belong to a lost epoch, and we wonder about the long gone residents and visitors. Their presence can be detected from their tracks but not from any personal or individual relics. It is indeed just an Echo of the Dance... 

Facts:
Joy Kardish - Echo of the Dance
Dale Smith Gallery
March 11th - April 5th, 2011
Joy Kardish's website

Military Art Now - Symposium on YouTube

For everyone who was interested in my posting about the symposium on Canadian War Artists: I just want to let you know that the War Museum put these videos on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=913104D2D63B6852

It's 15 videos and the total lenght is more than 2 hours!

Abstract and Figurative Painting @ Cube

“Trinary - A show of recent work by a trio of emerging artists” is the title of the current exhibition at the Cube Gallery. Presenting both abstract and figurative paintings, I was surprised by the broad spectrum of the works by Kristy Gordon, Susan Ukkola, and M. (Peggy) Hughes. That's why I attended the Artists talk at the Cube Gallery on Sunday.

Kristy Gordon @ Cube Gallery

I was in particular looking forward to meet the youngest of these artists, Kristy Gordon. But unfortunately, she had no time to come to Ottawa from Toronto where she lives. This was such a pity, because I was so interested in her work! But her statement was shown in an uTube video – and it already revealed what an energetic and enthusiastic artist she is.

Portraits and landscapes by Kristy Gordon

Obviously, her paintings in oil refer to the Pre-Raphaelites (founded in mid-19th century in England) with their soft landscapes, elegant compositions in an idealized nature setting.

Kristy Gordon

But also her portraits are very impressive. As she mentioned in her uTube video, she first painted landscapes and later focused more and more on portraits of family and friends. She really catches the empathy between the artist and the sitter. Furthermore, a lot of her small scale paintings seem to sell very well: a lot of them are already marked with red dots! No wonder why she has received honours from the Portrait Society of America and e.g. made the third Prize at the Portrait Society of Canada International Portrait Competition.

Kristy Gordon: Study for self-portrait in Armour

This is a study for a self-portrait in an Armour. Here, she clearly refers to the Quattrocento Italian painting. As she said, her interest in self-portraits comes from the fact that she understands them as a vehicle for self-introspection. Hope to see more!

Susan Ukkola's encaustic paintings @ Cube Gallery

Susan Ukkola mentioned that she works intuitively, starting from a simple idea. Working in encaustic, she responds to the surface, adds and removes colour, until she likes the results. She emphasized on her love for the encaustic medium, because she loves the lines and scratches on the surface. Therefore she can combine her interest for drawing with her excitement for painting. Finally, when “it feels right” she creates marks on the surface, by scratching into it. Surprisingly, she even uses a meat tenderiser! With the last step, the patina, the texture becomes visible. “The line is what makes my paintings an artwork!”

Peggy Hughes

Peggy Hughes works non-representative or abstract since 10 years now. She started in watercolour before she retired, but then switched to acrylic. In her talk, she referred to the visual texture of her abstract paintings and to her ongoing search for forms and shapes. She develops them from the textures.

Peggy Hughes in the Trinary exhibition

Hughes focuses on three main topics: isolated forms, abstract shapes that remind us on cityscapes, and imaginary forms.

"Trinary" shows figurative and abstract works in oil, acrylic and encaustic – a broad spectrum of contemporary painting.

Facts: 
Trinary - Kristy Gordon, Susan Ukkola, M. (Peggy) Hughes 
Cube Gallery
March 1 – 27, 2011
Exhibition link

Benjamin Rodger: "I Saw the Invisible Man but He Didn't See Me"

The Ottawa artist Benjamin Roger explores in his large-scale paintings the issues of seeing and not seeing, being seen and being invisible. In doing so, he refers to the poet Patrice Desbiens who explored the alienation of the Francophone minority in his L’Homme invisible/The Invisible Man. This poetry collection from 1981 is written in both French and English.

 

Invisible Man #3, 72 x 96 inches (183cm x 244cm), acrylic and oil on canvas, 2011

Like Patrice Desbiens, Rodger focuses on the two sides (English and French) of his cultural identity. Like he said: "With a lot of Franco-Ontarians, it's this idea that you can blend in. There's nothing that says on your face that your mother tongue is French. There's an invisibility between even Franco-Ontarians." (Adam Volk: The Man who wasn't there, 02-10-2011, Ottawa Xpress, Link)

Invisible Man #4, 72 x 96 inches (183cm x 244cm), acrylic and oil on canvas, 2011

This invisibility is the main topic of the series which is currently shown at the Orange Art Gallery. His impressive artworks blend detailed portraiture with colourful textures. Therefore, his paintings seem to oscillate between abstract and figurative when full lenght portraits of his friends are floating on backgrounds of geometric patterns.

Invisible Man #2, 48 x 72 inches (122cm x 183cm), acrylic and oil on canvas, 2011

The figures are standing on front of the pattern, but are more and more superimposed by them, until only a white contour drawing remains of them. They seem to dissolve into the geometric lines. According to the artist, the series refers to a meeting that did not actually occur between Desbiens and Rodger a few winters ago in Montreal (Link to the artist's website).

Facts:

"I Saw the Invisible Man but He Didn't See Me"

Orange Art Gallery

233 Armstrong St.

March 3 - 27, 2011

Petra Halkes – Bright Nights @ Ottawa School of Art

Petra Halkes: Drive-by Window Shopping 10 (Blur with Green and Orange), 2011 (copyright by the artist) 

When I walked by the Ottawa School of Art on my way home last week, I got a quick glimpse of the current Petra Halkes' exhibition. I could just see her paintings through the windows because the OSA was already closed; but they captured my gaze because they depicted exactly what surrounded me in that particular moment: The urban landscape at night. So I came back the next day...

The paintings – mostly small scale – base on photographs that Halkes took from the passenger seat of a driving car at night time. That's why they were blurred in first place; but the blurred views gain an abstract quality when she transfers them into paintings. They question also the representational function of photography.

“Bright Nights” Exhibition view (copyright by the artist) 

The street and advertising lights and the urban buildings have been morphed into abstract shapes. They are all blurred and therefore almost unidentifiable. But on the other hand they are universal: The scene depicted could be anywhere in Ottawa or somewhere else. Sometimes brand names like Tim Horton's or Cosco are visible, but in most of the paintings the abstract colour stripes and fields dominate.

Drive-by Window Shopping 6 (White Windows), 2011 (copyright by the artist) 

Halkes reminds my at the blurred figurative paintings by the German Gerhard Richter. In his early photo-realistic painted works he also worked from photos (made by himself or collected almost endlessly from magazines, advertisements and books) which he projects onto the canvas where he depicts them very accurately. In a second step, he blurs the painting by a soft, wide brush or a squeegee. They are out of focus, both literally and in the poetic sense. His paintings deal with the boundaries of human perception and pictorial representation, and the borders of realism and abstraction. Like the German art historian Wolfgang Ullrich writes in his “Die Geschichte der Unschärfe” (The History of Images out of focus, 2002), this is symptomatic for the area we live in, the postmodernity.

Drive-by Window Shopping 2 (White Blur), 2011 (copyright by the artist) 

By the way, the Hamburger Kunsthalle in Germany is showing an exhibition “Out of focus. After Gerhard Richter” (11 February to 22 May 2011) with stunning paintings which follow Richter's approach. The works on exhibition show a softened, veiled surface that refers to fading memories; but also things in motion that got blurred by movement in our hectic surroundings. This brings me back to Halkes' works that are now on view at the OSA and that also challenge our representational habits - worth a visit!


Facts: 
Petra Halkes – Bright Nights 
February 17 - March 23, 2011
OSA Gallery
35 George St. ByWard Market
Link to the OSA exhibition