Ottawa artists at the 4th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art

Svetlana Swinimer: Glaciata

Three Ottawa visual artists will show their works at the 4th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, Russia’s most prestigious contemporary art event!

Under the exhibition title “Flowing With”, Kenneth Emig, Svetlana Swinimer, and Jean Halstead present some of their artworks, in particular sculptures.

Svetlana Swinimer: Not Green Anymore

All three artists belong to the Enriched Bread Artists (EBA),  an artists' collective on Galdstone. EBA is an art studio and an artistic laboratory, located in a former bread factory - therefore the name.

Kenneth Emig is a trans-disciplinary artist who cmbinates sound, sculpture, optics, dance and technology. He encourages his audiences “to be sensorially observant and curious about the world around them” - like he is saying on the EBA web site.

Svetlana Swinimer: Cosmic Embryo

Svetlana Swinimer is interested in humanity, cosmology, mythology and cutting edge science. She works in painting, sculpture, installation, video, and inventive photography. She collaborated with Jean Halstead on art in public and on mixed media installations.

Jean Halstead started sculpture when working in clay during her time in Japan in the 1950s. In her current work, she is in particular interested in aspects of perception. She uses different media like sculptural constructions, photos, video projections, sounds, words, and colours.

4th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, Parallel Program:

FLOWING WITH

Organizer: "Blue Apple" Group

Artists: Kenneth Emig, Svetlana Swinimer, Jean Halstead

Venue: Cultural Center The house-museum of Marina Tsvetaeva

Address: Borisoglebskiy per.,6

Opening: September 22, 2011 at 19.00

Exposition date: September 22 – October 7, 2011

http://4th.moscowbiennale.ru/en/program/parallel.html

http://www.enrichedbreadartists.com/

About concepts of time: Time Pieces by Jesse Stewart

Untitled, 2005, glass, sand, installation view, Karsh-Masson Gallery © Jesse Stewart

13,000 pieces of glass, collected over the last 20 years from various shorelines arranged in concentric circles – marking the passage of time. One piece of glass for every day of the artist's life, and one circle for every year; this is one of the stunning works by Jesse Stewart in his current exhibition at the Karsh-Masson Gallery in Ottawa. The title of the exhibition: “Time Pieces”.

Keeping Tabs, 2011, plastic on canvas, installation view, © Jesse Stewart. This installation consists of 365 plastic bag closures that you would find on milk and bread bags, which he has collected over the past 8 years. Stewart arranged them in form of a calender.

Jesse Stewart is both: percussionist and conceptual artist.

As percussionist, he creates sounds out of virtually any resonating object or material. Even materials as glass, stone, ice, and cardboard were used by him to built instruments! As an conceptual artist, he is fascinated by the conceptions of time and how to make time - hardly tangible - visible and audible.

Untitled, 2009, clock hands on paper, installation view, © Jesse Stewart

Stewart describes his approach: “One of the major points of intersection between my work in the visual arts and music/sound is my ongoing interest in different conceptions of time. For me, time isn’t just a linear sequence of events with the future continually becoming the present and then slipping into an ever receding past. Rather, time is intimately connected to patterns of growth and decay, to ritual, memory, rhythm, cycles, and impermanence. Suzanne Langer famously wrote that “Music makes time audible.” With this body of work, I have tried to make time both audible and visible in a variety of ways.” [Catalogue excerpt]

Wheels of Time, 2003, sand-blasted vinyl records, installation view, © Jesse Stewart

Jesse Stewart plays with the intangibility of time and music; and he creates stunning results. Not linear is his concept and understanding of time, but rather related to memory, cycles and rhythm. Talking about rhythm: There is a musical performance by Jesse Stewart coming up in September (Musical Performance and Q & A (in English): September 18, 2011, at 2 p.m.). You can check his striking and impressive percussions out on his web site: http://www.jessestewart.ca/

Untitled, before and after, Karsh-Masson Gallery, installation view, © Jesse Stewart. These pieces of paper belong to a video that shows how the artists makes sounds out of them by scrunching, tearing, rolling them up...

Facts:
Jesse Stewart - Time Pieces
Karsh Masson Gallery
August 12 to September 25, 2011
http://www.ottawa.ca/rec_culture/arts/gallery_exhibit/karsh_masson/index_en.html

The Nude in Nature – and in Photography

Exhibition view arts & architecture gallery, Ottawa

Since photography is my academic specialization, I was very excited to see the current photography exhibition “The Nude in Nature” at the arts & architecture gallery in Ottawa. It shows some of the impressive results of a workshop that was let by the accomplished photographer Karin Rosenthal in Maine last year. The exhibit shows a broad spectrum of stylized depictions of the nude body with emphasis on the line and form of the human figure as part of the nature and landscape. 

Karin Rosenthal's works in "The Nude in Nature"

Rosenthal's (www.krosenthal.com) photographs have been published internationally and are represented in numerous museum collections, like e.g. the Yale University Art Gallery. She has received several grants and prizes including Grand Prize in the 2010 Renaissance International Photography Competition and First Prize in Nudes for the Julia Margaret Cameron Awards. Like the web site of the gallery states “Rosenthal’s work expands the concept of nude from the erotic to the metaphysical, seeing our bodies as vessels of Being within all of nature’s components.” Her black and white photographs that show a detail of the human body in front of a black background, and that gain geometric balance through reflecting surfaces, seem to refer to Man Ray. 

Photographs by Len Ward "Origami"

Indeed, most of the photographs in the exhibition seems to be inspired by renowned photographers of the first half of the 20th century. For example Len Ward's photo series of a model standing on a rock and holding a long, white scarf in the wind that creates astonishing effects, reminds me on German photographers of the 20s and 30s like Horst P. Horst, Erwin Blumenfeld and George Hoyningen-Huene. These photographs are examples for a classic elegance and style.

Photographs by Steve Schmidt

Steve Schmidt's nudes in landscape, curled up in a rock ledge covered with thousands of Balanidae reminds me strongly at Edward Weston with his photographs of female nudes, landscapes and vegetables. In his artist statements Steve writes that he wanted to explore the relationship between human and natural form, between people and environment, and people and their own image. 

Photographs by Tony Schwartz

This weekend the Nude in Nature photography workshop takes place once again, this time in Wakefield. Again it's led by Rosenthal and I am already pretty curious to see the results at the arts & architecture gallery soon...

Facts:

arts & architecture gallery

The Nude in Nature

August 17-28, 2011

1181 Bank Street
Ottawa, ON K1S 3X7

http://www.artsandarchitecture.ca/

Works by:

Karin Rosenthal
Judith Monteferrante
Tony Schwartz
Trish Wright
Steve Schmidt
Sukumar
Len Ward

Summer Mosaic - Ottawa Printmakers Connective

Exhibition view of the Britannia Art Gallery, Ottawa

That's my personal tip for this summer: The first public exhibition of the Ottawa Printmakers Connective. Why? Because the exhibition at the Britannia Art Gallery shows not only a broad range of print techniques, but also of artistic sujets – and it offers original artworks by local artists for decent prices. Exhibited techniques are: woodcuts, linocuts, etchings, monotypes, drypoints, intaglio, collographs, aquatints, stone lithography and silkscreens. 

Woodcuts and linocuts at the Britannia Art Gallery, Ottawa

The woodcuts and linocuts with their formal simplicity caught my eye in particluar. In ther strong black and white contrasts and subjects like cityscapes and birds they reminded me on the German Expressionist movement. In particular Deidre Hierlihy's, Rozemarijn Oudejans' and Keith Bells' prints are worth to be mentioned. Their prices range from $100 to $350.

More colorful are the collographs by Paule Fournier that play with the concepts of abstract and figurative. Collographs are created by applying materials to a rigid substrate like cardboard or wood. In Fournier's case, the interesting structure in the print is made by using substances such as textiles, and leaves in creating the collograph plate. 

The prices of prints in the show range from $85 (e.g. for a small etching by Jeanne Vaillancourt) to $750 (a stone lithography by Lynda Turner) and include the frames. These decent priced works of art might be a good start for an own art collection. The Connective has also a blog: http://ottawaprintmakers.wordpress.com/

Artists in the exhibition:

Leigh Archibald

Mary Baranowski-Lowden

Keith Bell

Manon Boulet

Kathryn Davis

Paule Fournier

Leonard Gerbrandt

Deidre Hierlihy

Maya Hum

David Ladouceur

Louise Lépine

Rozemarijn Oudejans

Debra James Percival

Rod Restivo

Nathalie Roy

Jen Simpson

Denise Tremblay

Lynda Turner

Jeanne Vaillancourt

Shirley Yik

Britannia Art Gallery

Summer Mosaic

August 4 – September 6, 2011

2728 Howe St.

Ottawa

Tuesday thru Saturday 10 am to 5pm

Sunday: 1 pm to 4pm

Monday: Closed

http://www.britanniagallery.ca/