-
BAAB [Business is Art/Art is Business]
Because it mounts up the outside of north wall of the Art Condos building, right beside the building’s loading dock, it may not be much noticed by Art Condos owners or their neighbours.…
-
Communicating by Oscar Figueroa
One of the highlights of Oscar Figueroa’s exhibition Air Plane—now installed in the Art Condos Loading Dock—is this work titled Communicating.
It seems simple enough. A desk lamp, fitted with a red bulb, is positioned on the floor, near the …
-
ART CONDOS Loading Dock Exhibition
This is artist Oscar Figueroa. He is just graduating from OCADU (The Ontario College of Art and Design University).
He is a bit out of focus–because that’s how artists are sometimes.
Figueroa will soon be in greatly improved focus, however, …
-
Art We Love: Lynne Cohen
Montreal-based mega-photographer, Lynne Cohen, has built an international reputation making large-scale photographs of the frightening–though sometimes beautiful and inexplicably moving–emptiness and absences of the contemporary urban environment. Here, in this recent work, her cunning use of mirroring compounds the aridity… -
The Little Bed That Could.
Given this expedient age’s tendency to throw everything away and buy new, we think it’s refreshing that TEB Interiors–whose principal, Terry Edward Briceland designed the Art Condos model suites–took on the refurbishing of this elderly settee. Seeing the object as …
-
ART WE LOVE: HWEON 1 by CHUNG-IM KIM
Hovering somewhere between painting, drawing and sculpture—and between pure visual art and design—Chung-Im Kim’s wall-mounted, hand-stitched felt plaque (which has been silkscreened), is a crisply vibrant work that seems simultaneously static and yet full of spinning, torque-like movement.
It sells …
-
Art We Love: Julie Jenkinson – 36 Hours in Uruguay
Designer Julie Jenkinson runs the micro-shop called Verso, tucked into the rear of Inabstracto on Queen StreetWest. Last year she spent three months in South America, thirty-six hours of which were spent in Colonia del Sacramento in Uruguay.It… -
ART WE LOVE: Two Door Mats by Gerald Ferguson
Halifax-based conceptual artist Gerald Ferguson (1937-2009) always did everything he could to avoid making beautiful paintings—but ended by making them anyhow, almost against his will. One of his ploys was to distance himself as much as possible from the actual …
-
Art We Love: Shayne Dark “Bough Laden with Fluorescent Orange”
During the last couple of years, Sculptor Shayne Dark–who lives in the country near Sydenham, Ontario and who maintains a large studio in Kingston, Ontario—has become one of Canada’s most prolific and successful makers of public sculpture. Up until recently,… -
Art We Love – Steve Driscoll’s “CEDAR FALLS”
This prodigious, unreasonably beautiful painting is titled Cedar Falls. It’s huge (9 ‘; x 10), and glistens like a wet forest with the pigmented urethane with which it is painted.
The painting is by a young,Toronto-based painter named Steve Driscoll. …
-
ARTCONDOS: ART WE LOVE JOY by Kai Chan.
We dropped into the nearby David Kaye Gallery the other day to see new work by the celebrated Chinese-Canadian artist Kai Chan. Chan, who was born in China in 1940 and has lived in Toronto since 1966, is the recipient …
-
Art We Love – Thrush Holmes
The lyrically named Thrush Holmes (yes, it’s his real name!) is not what you’d call a repressed painter. This gigantic work–about as big as a Still Life painting ever gets–is 84″ x 180,” and is emblazoned with the artist’s trademark …
-
Art We Love -Verso’s Battered First Aid Boxes
…
-
Art we love: Roland Brener’s Swinger
Among the many remarkable works in the current summer exhibition at the Olga Korper Gallery is a piece by the late Roland Brener (1942-2006) called Swinger. Swinger began in 1999, as a hand-built, laminated plywood figure of a standard-issue businessman …
-
Art we love: Peak Gallery owner Zack Pospieszynski
We consider Zack Pospieszynski–owner-director of Peak Gallery–to be a man of discriminating taste and lucid opinions, and so we dropped by the gallery the other day to ask him about his current likes and dislikes in contemporary art. The …
-
Art we love: ceramics by Robert Archambeau
We’ve not always been big fans of ceramics–a lot of it seems artsy and sentimental– but we’ll always make an exception for the exquisite stoneware pieces of veteran ceramics artist Robert Archambeau. Archambeau, who won the Governor General’s Award in …
-
Art we love: the happy zones by Jose Ciria
For his third exhibition at the Christopher Cutts Gallery–Window Dreamer–New York based Spanish painter Jose Ciria has produced a suite of vast, chromatically explosive paintings which, while they may indeed invoke what the gallery calls the “sanguinity and terra …
-
Art we love: Tidal Waves and Sea Bathers by Y.M. Whelan
By the time you read this, Y.M. Whelan’s sparkling exhibition at the Fran Hill Show Room–called Book of Dreams: New Paintings–will probably be officially over, but gallerist Fran …
-
Design we love: Prairie tables
What might first appear as mere abstract detailing in the eccentric shapes of these sleek, white, interlocking tables turns out to have geographic meaning: the tables, which have MDF tops and solid ash legs, actually come in the shape of …
-
Art we love: Sacred and Profane Love (Self-Portrait II) by Harold Klunder
Harold Klunder is everywhere regarded as one of Canada’s most powerful painters. His latest exhibition, Black Sun, now at the Clint Roenisch Gallery is a remarkable experience, both for the majestic trio of paintings making up the Black Sun …
-
Art We Love: Ominous Footpath by Susanna Heller
Veteran painter Susanna Heller–Canadian born, educated at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax and now living in New York City (where she has lived, in fact, for many years now)–is a maker of exceedingly vigorous, searching, …
-
Art we love: Art Brownies
These hotly coloured, inventively composed mini-blocks of art activity are, in fact, Art Brownies: small, unique works of art made by various artists, both local and international, on one standard format, each Art Brownie being a mini-canvas consisting of a …
-
Art we love: About the River by Thrush Holmes
About the River, 2011 Oil and spray paint on canvas with artist's frame, 72 x 48 inches, 182.9 x 121.9 cm
When a relatively unknown, soft-spoken, 26 year old artist with the lyrical name of Thrush Holmes (his full name …
-
Design we love: the Luna table
“We live our lives in the middle of things. Material culture carries emotions and ideas of startling intensity. Yet only recently have objects begun to receive the attention they
deserve.”
-Sherry Turkle, Evocative Objects: Things We Think With (MIT Press, … -
Art we love: Tabletop DNA by Bradley Harms
We think this large (77 by 54 inches) acrylic by Winnipeg-born, Vancouver-based painter Bradley Harms is really pretty hot. It’s titled Tabletop DNA.
This airy, open-hearted painting, as absorbing and as intimately inspectable as a game-board, is something of a …
