C: International Contemporary Art articles from September 1996

C: International Contemporary Art archives from September 1996

Poetics, politics & storytelling a letter from this year's "Festival du nouveau cinema".
September 22, 1996... For ten days in June, Montreal becomes one of the few places in North America where you can leave the screening of Wim Wenders' new film (this year it was Die Gebruder Sklandowsky, a documentary and historical re-enactment about Germany's first...

Modern romance.
September 22, 1996... Looking at Cesta's work over the years, I have witnessed a consistent critical process at work. His method is at base visual and modernist: form is a fluid and elastic material for polymorphic play. He works, however, within the enlarged,...

Necessary selection.
September 22, 1996... Since the early 70s, Max Dean has engaged passing (passive) museum-goers with devices that react to their presence and/or allow them to complete the work; and his work on view in the lobby of the Art Gallery of Ontario this summer was no...

Fashioning care: and other acts of memory.
September 22, 1996... The woman who models Richard Lyle's Prophet Future is wrapped in a white coat of fibreglass fabric - plastic tiles rim the bottom, cobbling together a familiar image of Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night. Lyle's technicollaged dreamcoat seems to...

Ashley Bickerton (exhibition).
September 22, 1996... In the mid-80s, beach-boyish artist Ashley Bickerton surfed to fame on the Neo-Geo wave, positioning his work as an eminently consumable metacritical commodity. A few years later he redirected his attention from the art system to the...

New York in brief: summer and fall 1996.
September 22, 1996... Summer season is usually laid back, with group shows giving us the cliff-notes for the previous season. This is the lull before the big fall presentations - like the NAN GOLDIN retrospective at the WHITNEY in October - but it's a mistake to...

Distemper: dissonant themes in the art of the 1990s (exhibition).
September 22, 1996... The summer exhibition at the Hirshhorn Museum presented the work of ten international artists under the title "Distemper: Dissonant Themes in the Art of the 1990s." Distemper, the title's key word, refers to disorders that affect the mind or...

544 (exhibition).
September 22, 1996... On May 17, 1996, in Room 544 of the Sheraton Halifax, Charmaine Wheatley had a one-night stand with twelve other artists. A crowd of people dropped in to watch. Sleazy innuendo matches the spirit of this independently curated, self-funded,...

Atlantic Canada in brief: summer and fall 1996.
September 22, 1996... Photography gets its share of attention this fall in Atlantic galleries. Montreal sisters CLAIRE and SUZANNE PAQUET collaborate on a photo-text installation at the MOUNT ST. VINCENT UNIVERSITY ART GALLERY. "Comme les jours precedents, les...

Anne Ramsden (exhibition).
September 22, 1996... In recent years, Vancouver artist Anne Ramsden executed site-specific installations for the Burnaby Art Gallery (1996) and Oakville Galleries (1994), both housed in former Arts and Crafts style homes. These installations explored boundaries...

Quebec in brief: summer and fall 1996.
September 22, 1996... Summer in Montreal may be spent almost exclusively in museums, but in the regions outside the city it is the galleries that hold the most interest. Since this is the season for travel, I decided to spread myself (so to speak) beyond Montreal in...

Of common knowledge/Les savoirs usages (exhibition).
September 22, 1996... Entering Ginette Legare's exhibition is like falling down a rabbit hole into a world at once familiar and peculiar. Legare's wall-assemblages appear to be - as the exhibition's title suggests - "Of Common Knowledges/Les savoirs d'usages," yet...

Margaret Priest (exhibition).
September 22, 1996... The content of Toronto-based artist Margaret Priest's drawings and paintings is architectural spaces and surfaces - our third skin, you might say. The drawings are small in scale, evoking the architectural photograph and revoking the...

Ontario in brief: summer and fall 1996.
September 22, 1996... The spirit of collaboration reigns in Toronto with artists and galleries demonstrating that if two's company, three's a collective. Artist-collectives continue to be a strong presence, especially since the Canada Council officially set up a...

Bereft (exhibition).
September 22, 1996... "Bereft" speaks to the character of our times, specifically its preoccupation with death. In this exhibition, curated by Sylvie Fortin, the works conjure associations tinged by the body count of military actions, the absences that characterise...

Charles Wiesen (exhibition).
September 22, 1996... Beginning with Dada and Surrealism and continuing through works as disparate as those of Jeff Koons and Mike Kelley, deviation from the "traditional" course of artistic development has run a rich parallel to the innovations that define the...

Negotiating rapture: the power of art to transform lives (exhibition).
September 22, 1996... The exhibit inaugurating the Museum of Contemporary Art's new building supports an inclusive vision that connects past art to the present and to sources within the broader culture. Radically subverting modernist claims for art's autonomy,...

Chicago in brief: summer and fall 1996.
September 22, 1996... Eclecticism has always defined Chicago's art scene in summer; and this season was no exception. Capitalizing on the opening of the new MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART in July, the Chicago Art Dealers Association along with Absolut Vodka sponsored...

Jin-me Yoon (exhibition).
September 22, 1996... With "imagining communities," Jin-me Yoon tentatively enters the geography of the cyberspace to comment on displacement and the construction of identity in the Korean diaspora. However, her organizing principle is not the "superhighway" but the...

1996 Alberta Biennial of Contemporary Art (exhibition).
September 22, 1996... The 1996 Alberta Biennial of Contemporary Art is a welcome overview in a province that, for years now, has been mired in factionalism - that of two cities, committed to turning their backs on each other; and of groups, committed to the autonomy...

Western Canada in brief: summer and fall 1996.
September 22, 1996... The much anticipated 1996 ALBERTA BIENNIAL OF CONTEMPORARY ART (see review previous page) opened to a large and enthusiastic crowd at the EDMONTON ART GALLERY (June 28-Sept. 8). Jointly curated with Calgary's GLENBOW MUSEUM (Nov.2-Mar.2), this...