Thursday

REARVIEWS



 


As a way of extending critical privilege to artists, the Rearview will publish reviews of published reviews, in any creative discipline. What makes a good review? I guess we decide.
Submissions should be sent to to rearviewtoronto@gmail.com
Anonymous submissions are accepted. Please include a link to the original review.



BEGINNING NO END, a collection of rearviews was launched in a limited edition at W WTWO Montreal, Feb 2012, in Conjunction with Craig Leonard‘s exhibition, No Beginning No End.


Beginning No End is available at Art Metropole, TorontoPrinted Matter, NY, and Formats, Montreal.
Edited by Xenia Benivolski and Danielle St. Amour
Printing by Black Dot
Design by Kim Tsui and Danielle St. Amour

CRAIG LEONARD -WILLIE BRISCO-JACOB WREN-ADAM O’REILLY-BRAD TROEMEL-SCOTT INDRISEK-TESS EDMONSON-ZEESY POWERS-STACEY HO-ARIANNE DI NARDO-MICHAEL KEOUGH-LAURA MCCOY-MAGGIE FLYNN-NOEL MIDDLETON-JESSICA VALLENTIN-BILL CLARKE-and-L’ESCALIER (JON KNOWLES LORNA BAUER VINCENT BONIN YUKI HIGASHINO)



 



IN SEARCH OF RELIEF



W WTWO

August 2012AUG 4 - 9th7PM-MIDNIGHTVERNISSAGE AUG 4TH
Working, Working, Working, 

In the corner someone is always grumbling. Bound to its own construction, the work is deterministic in its attempt to couch theory into evaluable achievements. The necessity of pedagogical value binds limit to pre-determined work. The text projects boundaries in an attempt to reform its viewing subject. Academic redistributions. Courtly manner. The air conditioner hums along amid the din of casual laughter. 

An unhinged secret meanders through the room as a nod and a wink. These exchanges have no need for justification. There is no history tonight. Waves on blue paper, slightly crinkled. Evocative and sufficient. 

Later, sailing along the shore you wonder, is this how people leisure? Is this how one performs enjoyment? Ocean spray pummeling your senses. You are exhilarated by fear and nausea and the desire to be casual. This beach was built upon a long collapsed port. BBQ smoke now replaces the steam of industry. By our presence new structures of production develop. Let us capture this moment and smile to stabilize the catamaran. 

There is no being-on-a-boat like being on a boat. 


Text by Willie Brisco









MAKE A SICK PICTURE OR A SICK READYMADE


Works by: Karlie Marsh, Robert Raushenberg, Mark Florian, Mia Riley, Katue Furness, 

Curated by Xenia Benivolski

Make
a sick
painting
or a
sick
readymade.(1)

This Duchamp quote, taken from his collection of notes the Green Box refers to the piece Readymade malheureux (Unhappy Readymade, 1919), which implies that an artwork's physical condition is integral to its meaning. It was comprised of a geometry book that he instructed his sister, then living in France, to hang on her porch. Predictably, the weather gradually destroyed it. The inspiration for Unhappy Readymade, then, involved the notion of the physical vulnerability of artworks. The Unhappy Readymade is unhappy because it will not endure; it is gradually deteriorating. Insofar as real weather tears the work apart, the piece is a metaphor for the damaging effect of time on art.(2)

The exhibition make a Sick painting or a Sick readymade functions as a single assembly installation and a homage to modernist exhibition aesthetics. It includes works by students of Red Deer College, pieces from its permanent collection, and found objects, all of which function as vulnerable readymade objects. Obscured by flaws, the ceramic works are floating in a formatic limbo. Mia Riley's small clay maquettes, suggest a possibility of scale play and scale dynamics that ultimately leads to meditation on miniatures, the ambiguity of its organic forms a contributing factor, giving room to mystery of both scale and function. Katie Furness' fractured and unfinished ceramic bowls stacked on top of one another find a new agency as an aesthetic assembly. Carly Marsh's unfinished test tiles demonstrate an open material fragility. This exhibition is complete with the inclusion of five true readymades: Robert Rauschenberg's collage piece Ploy, which operates in a conceptual vacuum of its own creation, and two partially abstracted tone silver gelatin prints by Mark Florian, as well as two untitled found objects, marked by their lack of authorship.

The gesture of exhibiting a work's weakness points to metaphorical intent; in this we are inclined to look at the objects as entities, with a particular agency separate from function. There is a window of possibility that becomes available when an object has yet to reach its eventual form, or if it has passed that mark. According to Novalis, only the incomplete can be understood, can lead us further, and what is complete can only be enjoyed.(3) In this process crossroads, one may explore formalist reactions against content(4) and focus on the discursive function of the form. Form, is a possibility of reflection in the work. It grounds the work as a principle of existence. It is through the form that the living work of art is a centre of reflection.(5)



This work was created for and within the context of the artist in residency program in red deer College, Red Deer, Alberta.



1 Marcel Duchamp, Salt Seller: The Writings Of Marcel Duchamp, Da Capo Press; New edition edition , Mar 22 1989
2 Mark B. Pohlad, "Macaroni repaired is ready for Thursday...." Marcel Duchamp as Conservator, tout-fair articles, volume 1 issue 3. December 2000
3 Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg (Novalis), Novalis: Philosophical Writings, State Univ of New York Pr. April 1997
4 Robert Smithson, Entropy and the new monuments, Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings, University of California Press, April 10 1996
5 Benjamin Walter, The work of art; The concept of criticism, Selected writings 1913-1934, Harvard University Press, June 15 2005




















Wednesday

Curtain show

A still from a project for Jon's curtain show where I extended their duct around the room

Mugs Fugging

For this project at the AGO curated by Sean Martindale and Pascal Paquette I made these

Mugs Fugging, 2011

CANADIAN MYSTIC

November 2011

Lisa Cristinzo, 2011






Mística canadiense. Arte contemporáneo de Canadá


November 11 2011- January 11 2012


Museo De La Ciudad
Gerrero 27 Norte
Centre Historico
Queretaro, QRO 76000
MEXICO


Performance, video, pintura, fotografía, instalación
Victoria Cheong, Lisa Cristinzo, Brette Gabel, Ulysses Castellanos Matt Crookshank, Jamie Ross, Seth Scriver, Tyler Clark Burke,Terrance Houle,
Curadora: Xenia Benivolski.


Mística canadiense

Verdad es que al llegar vengarás sus violencias: mas luego que a los fieros galanes des muerte en tus salas, ya sea por astucia, ya en lucha leal con el filo del bronce, toma al punto en tus manos un remo y emprende el camino hasta hallar unos hombres que ignoren el mar y no coman alimento alguno salado, ni sepan tampoco de las naves de flancos purpúreos ni entiendan los remos de expedito manejo que el barco convierte en sus alas.
Una clara señal te daré, bien habrás de entenderla: cuando un día te encuentres al paso con un caminante que te hable del bieldo que llevas al hombro robusto, clava al punto en la tierra tu remo ligero…

Homero, Odisea, Canto XI, 116-129

Un bieldo es un instrumento usado para separar granos y por tanto sólo aquéllos que viven lejos del mar podrían confundir un remo con éste. Así es como Ulises sabrá que está suficientemente lejos del hogar. Sin embargo para llegar a este conocimiento debe cargar el remo hasta que alguien le cuestione su propósito. La pregunta se convierte en una confirmación de su estado de expatriado y en motivo de alivio. –una vez que es preguntada, puede abandonar la prueba. En la exposición “Mística canadiense” queremos huir también.
La identidad canadiense se caracteriza por tradiciones místicas y relatos folklóricos que no serían entendidos en otro lado, vivimos en un mundo de tradiciones mágicas y místicas, insular y frágil, cuyo balance se sostiene por la autoconciencia. El fenómeno está atado a una cultura de preservación de nuestro legado y de la mezcla de hábitos, tradiciones, arte y escasez. Nuestras identidades comprenden elementos heterogéneos confeccionados por generaciones de prácticas rechazadas, recuperadas y malentendidas.
Cuando vamos a un lugar nuevo, esto se convierte en un motivo de lucha: ¿se sostienen nuestros esfuerzos en lugares formados por tradiciones menos difusas, somos capaces de plantarnos ahí? Cuando Ulises llega suficientemente lejos tiene que abandonar el remo, encajándolo en el suelo, a un tiempo recuperando la tierra y abandonando su virtud. Fuera de nuestro contexto nacional canadiense podemos ver algo que nos reúne. Algo de lo que podemos sentirnos bien por haber dejado atrás. Esta es una exposición colectiva diversa que reúne una variedad de identidades y prácticas culturales.
Esta exposición viajará a México, un lugar que comparte un continente con nuestro país y sin embargo diferente. En esta exposición queremos llevarnos a nosotros mismos ahí, para sentirnos suficientemente diferentes, suficientemente lejos de nuestro hogar para saber quiénes somos, para abandonar nuestro remo.

Xenia Benivolski







Ulysses Castellanos, 2011


Jamie Ross, 2011


"After you have killed these suitors in your own palace,
either by treachery, or openly with the sharp bronze,
then you must take up your well-shaped oar and go on a journey until you come where there are men living who know nothing
of the sea, and who eat food that is not mixed with salt, who never
have known well-shaped oars, which act for ships as wings do.

And I will tell you a very clear proof, and you cannot miss it.
When, as you walk, some other wayfarer happens to meet you,
and says you carry a winnow-fan on your bright shoulder,
then you must plant your well-shaped oar in the ground"
 (The Odyssey, book XI, 11.119-137)

A winnowing fan is a device used to separate grains, and so only those living far from the sea would mistake an oar for one, thus this is how Odysseus knows that he is far enough from home. However to come to that realization, he must carry the Oar until someone questions its purpose. The question becomes a confirmation of expat status and a source of relief - once it is asked, he may abandon the proof. In the exhibition "Canadian Mystic", we want to get away too.

Canadian identity is characterized by mystical traditions and folktales that would not be understood elsewhere, we live in an insular, fragile world of magic and mystic traditions the balance of which is held up by self-awareness. The phenomena is tied to a culture of heritage preservation and the mixture of habit, tradition, art and sparsity. Our identities comprise a heterogeneous verse, concocted from generations of rejected, reclaimed and misunderstood practices.
When we go somewhere new, this becomes a point of struggle: do our efforts hold up in places shaped by traditions less diffused, are we able to plant ourselves there? When Odysseus got far enough, he had to abandon the oar, by sticking it in the ground, both claiming the earth and abandoning its virtue. Out of our National Canadian context, we might see something that brings us together. Something we could feel good about leaving behind.
This is a diverse group show bringing together a variety of identity and culture based practices.

This exhibition will travel to Mexico, a place that shares a continent with our country, however different. In this exhibition we want to bring ourselves there, to feel different enough, far enough from home to know who we are, to abandon our Oar.


Artists:
Terrance Houle
Matt Crookshank
Brette Gabel
Tyler Clarke Burke
Seth Scriver
Lisa Cristinzo
Jamie Ross
Ulysses Castellanos
Victoria Cheong
Curated by Xenia Benivolski


http://museodelaciudadqro.org







Seth Scriver, 2010








Friday

Cold Cold Water

Hi Friends!

Tonighth there is a screening of Jamie Ross's collective works - entitled Cold cold water, at the whitehouse. This sreening is part of THE LEGEND IS BLACK.


Cold cold water: a screening of complete works by Jamie Ross


The Whitehouse, 277.5 Augusta, 8 PM.



Curated by Xenia Benivolski.
THE WHITE HOUSE
277.5 AUGUSTA AVENUE
JUNE 17TH 8 PM – 10 PM

“When everything else has gone from my brain – the President’s name, the state capitals, the neighborhoods where I lived, and then my own name and what it was on earth I sought, and then at length the faces of my friends, and finally the faces of my family – when all this has dissolved, what will be left, I believe, is topology: the dreaming memory of land as it lay this way and that.”
-Annie Dillard, An American Childhood


Jamie Ross is a multi-disciplinary artist interested in personal psycho-geography, Land and Place. The ways in which people establish connections and meaningful relationships with their powerful places – their linkages to the landscape and topography and to the specific non-human persons who inhabit these landscapes drive his art practice.

Ross’ work deals with mythology, genealogy, storytelling and dreams; the numinous as is approached by a young, urban queer man largely isolated from the powerful magical cultures from which he sprung.
Creating and documenting queer community based on a sincere engagement with magic, grafting myself onto the rich artistic traditions of my cultural ancestors is fundamental. Overt references to things queer and punk are often present.

This show is Part 2 of THE LEGEND IS BLACK: a three-part curatorial project by Xenia Benivolski concurrent with THIS IS PARADISE/PARADISE NOW.

http://www.mocca.ca/exhibitions/upcoming-exhibitions/
http://paradisenow.ca/
PART 1: THE LEGEND IS BLACK
PART 3: 10 DEGREES MOUTH

Jamie Ross was born in a little house on Pendrith Street, just north of Toronto’s Christie Pits Park. He is a red haired film/video artist, working primarily in time-based media, working at the farthest-flung edges of narrative film and video. His work has screened in nationally and in Europe and Asia. His fiction has been anthologized, self-published in the form of a zine, and his most recent work, a novella entitled Coldwater, was published this year. Ross now lives in Montreal.


With generous support from the Canada Council for the Arts and CARFAC.
Paradise Now is a series of art, music, and theatre from the downtown Toronto art community. Paradise Now, although a separate entity, is intended to complement the historical exhibition at the MOCCA – This is Paradise, which runs from June 25 – Aug 21, by bringing emerging and established artists together, to connect the dots from our rich history from the early ‘80s on Queen Street West to today.

Paradise Now acknowledges the generosity of the artists, performers and musicians who have donated their time and creative energies to create programming that reflects the ecology of the street.
Paradise Now acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the City of Toronto and OCAD University.

For Information about Paradise Now please contact Rae Johnson, Artistic Director of Paradise Now at : info@paradisenow.ca

For information about the exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, This is Paradise | Place as a state of mind The Cameron Public House and 1980’s Toronto. And NGC@MOCCAThis is Paradise | From the National Gallery of Canada Collection, please go to http://www.mocca.ca/exhibitions/upcoming-exhibitions.

Stephanie Fielding was nice to write the follwoing essay for the screening:

FINDING ONES PLACE : The retelling of myth in the work of Jamie Callum Ross



Stephanie Fielding

Our thirst for the exotic and fantastic remains unquenched, humanity has created an amazing array of unseen or rarely seen creatures, forces and entities to populate the world and describe animate its mysteries. Taping into this thirst, weaving tales of myth and punk-rock absurdity, artist and writer Jamie Callum Ross presents a stream of videos that enter into our unconscious and conscious desires. Curated by Xenia Benovoski, Cold Cold Water: A Screening of Complete Works by Jamie Ross, gives us a view of the artist’s video work from the last five years.

Ross has a particular interest in the personal and psychological geography of land and place. The ways in which people establish connections and meaningful relationships with location, their link to landscape and topography, and to specific spirits who inhabit such landscape drive his art practice. There is a clear sense in his work of someone claiming their identity through their history and personal mythology. As a queer Metis man, Ross asks who has written his history, his identity? In Ross’ videos the supernatural is expressed in the vernacular of the everyday, recognizable locations and members of his social network link the work to actual people and events. His sequences, edited together rapidly and layered with streams of dialogue and imagery present striking but obscured narratives. Vivid, visually textured dreamscapes, shot primarily in super-8, are layered with sharp DV sequences, lending the videos an elusive poetry, especially to their most debaucherous scenes.

Ross’ films place great stress on sexuality, each film is punctuated with at least one cum-shot. The more perverse the sexuality, the more it strays from the norms of society, the more potent it is liable to be, and more disruptive of though patterns inhibiting the non-conformist. Sex and violence are used as forms of access to the spirits of chaos. As sex can, humour has the power to unlock the unconscious and release spiritual forces through its sudden associations of what the rational mind keeps separate; through its wild, anarchic amateurism and tongue-and-cheek, a certain sacredness is induced.

This body of work echoes the punky-transgressions of historically underground Queer filmmakers such as Kenneth Anger and Gregory Markopolous; each sharing a rebellious appropriation of ritualistic and humour-filled symbolism. Much like many of Anger’s films, Ross’ works are heavily influenced by esoteric systems of belief and the sacramental, although here there is a strong sense of a unified and affirmative self that isn’t necessarily present in his predecessors’ work. These rituals invoke vital forces that are sometimes symbolized and sometimes embodied in gods and goddesses; in this case, the figures are drawn from the artist’s Ojibwa and Scottish heritage as well as Nigerian and Greek folklore. As film historian Richard Dyer remarks, ‘Queer cinema often co-ops narratives involving supernatural forces of chaos and disruption, joyously celebrated but also actively employed to cause change in conformity.’ In The Bakkhai, 2008, Ross adapts the gruesome Euripides tragedy describing the vengeful return of the God Dionysus to the kingdom of Thebes. Like all of his work, the actors in the film are friends and the setting is specific and recognizable- in this case the Leslie Spit in Toronto’s east end. The video, part gruesome bloodbath, part hedonistic love-fest, retells the mythic story but also gives a mischievous real portrait of Toronto punk-subculture.

More recent work explores Jamie Ross’ personal genealogy, tracing his own connections to the myth and paths of his ancestors. Biboon Geamhradh, 2010, presents an earnest search for ones place in the lineage of oral storytelling. Cras Valde Facessite, 2009, created in collaboration with Derek Muehlgassner, combines myths of both filmmakers’ cultures, creating a hybrid tales of two fathers. By deconstructing the two myths, Muehlgassner and Ross re-claim their heritage and place their own visions within its rich history. Ross’ work is a cry for us to engage with our storytelling pasts and develop our own personalized sense of our heritages.

Wednesday

The Legend is Black

Hello!

at the Butcher Gallery

June 4-18 2010












there's more! but I'm at work.





























This weekend we are screening the 2nd component of this show at The Whitehouse.

Cold cold water: a screening of complete works by Jamie Ross



Curated by Xenia Benivolski.
THE WHITE HOUSE
277.5 AUGUSTA AVENUE
JUNE 17TH 8 PM – 10 PM

“When everything else has gone from my brain – the President’s name, the state capitals, the neighborhoods where I lived, and then my own name and what it was on earth I sought, and then at length the faces of my friends, and finally the faces of my family – when all this has dissolved, what will be left, I believe, is topology: the dreaming memory of land as it lay this way and that.”
-Annie Dillard, An American Childhood

Jamie Ross is a multi-disciplinary artist interested in personal psycho-geography, Land and Place. The ways in which people establish connections and meaningful relationships with their powerful places – their linkages to the landscape and topography and to the specific non-human persons who inhabit these landscapes drive his art practice.

Ross’ work deals with mythology, genealogy, storytelling and dreams; the numinous as is approached by a young, urban queer man largely isolated from the powerful magical cultures from which he sprung.
Creating and documenting queer community based on a sincere engagement with magic, grafting myself onto the rich artistic traditions of my cultural ancestors is fundamental. Overt references to things queer and punk are often present.

This exhibition is Part two of THE LEGEND IS BLACK commissioned by THIS IS PARADISE. Organized by the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art and the National Gallery of Canada.

PART 1: THE LEGEND IS BLACK
PART 3: 10 DEGREES MOUTH

Jamie Ross was born in a little house on Pendrith Street, just north of Toronto’s Christie Pits Park. He is a red haired film/video artist, working primarily in time-based media, working at the farthest-flung edges of narrative film and video. His work has screened in nationally and in Europe and Asia. His fiction has been anthologized, self-published in the form of a zine, and his most recent work, a novella entitled Coldwater, was published this year. Ross now lives in Montreal.


With generous support from the Canada Council for the Arts and CARFAC.