C: International Contemporary Art articles from September 1997

C: International Contemporary Art archives from September 1997

What to C: Asia.
September 1, 1997... Kwangju Biennale The second Kwangju Biennale opens this September under the title "Unmapping the Earth." Kwangju is one of numerous new points of interest in a remapping of the international world of art. If, since the nineties, we have...

What to C: Europe.
September 1, 1997... Guggenheim Bilbao For years now, those attending art fairs have been treated to scale models of this Frank Gehry-designed museum, which is a centrepiece of a major revitalisation of the historic Basque city of Bilbao. And with its grand...

What to C: Canada.
September 1, 1997... Le mois de la photo a Montreal The fifth annual invasion and celebration of photography will present exhibitions and related activities in over forty sites around the city. The festival features a combination of curated group shows and...

Imagining architecture: thoughts arising from recent exhibitions of works by Mark Gomes, Karl Blossfeldt & Noel Harding.
September 1, 1997... That art has the power to change the way we think is a belief that runs through most artists' veins, if not an absolute article of faith. At minimum, the original research involved in making art acts like free-floating information set into the...

Spirit of modernity: recent paintings of Ben Walmsley.
September 1, 1997... Toronto artist Ben Walmsley has been exhibiting an understated wit and technical precision to art audiences since 1983. In this respect, his most recent show "STILL" is no exception. But the particular range of arcane cultural artifacts his...

European scrapbook (introduction).
September 1, 1997... Artists, critics, collectors and contemporary art-lovers in general were in Europe this past summer for a plethora of openings and mega-shows [Venice Biennale, Documenta X, Skulptur Projekte Munster and more]. Many of our friends came back with...

Music, light and other conundrums.
September 1, 1997... The highlight of my trip was attending the world premier of Hindenburg, performed by Ensemble Modern at the Kunsthalle in Bonn. Hindenburg is the first act of Three Tales, a new video documentary opera by Steve Reich and Beryl Korot. This...

So this is (Amsterdam, Venice etc).
September 1, 1997... text and images by Suzy Lake Amsterdam so, this is gary... I met gary on one of those canal cruises. He's an oil tycoon from Calgary. To fill his time until his business partner arrived, he joined me on a trip to the Stedelijk. I...

Arakawa & Madeline Gins (exhibition).
September 1, 1997... Guggenheim Museum, New York Marcel Duchamp once said that through his own work he wanted to "put art back at the service of the mind." Similarly, Arakawa (a personal friend of the late artist) and Madeline Gins claim that philosophy...

New York in brief (exhibitions).
September 1, 1997... Fall 1997 Art in New York seems on the rise. Everyone is much cheerier about it, although no-one can say exactly why. With many new galleries housed in architecture that is antithetical to the modern white cube, the art work within prompts...

Lucy Pullen & Mitchell Wiebe (exhibition).
September 1, 1997... Saint Mary's University Art Gallery, Halifax Curated by Gordon Laurin, this show featured the pairing of two recent graduates of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Lucy Pullen and Mitchell Wiebe, whose works combined to create an...

Atlantic Canada in brief (exhibitions).
September 1, 1997... Fall 1997 We're here, we're Queer, we're coming to a gallery near you. The muted lesbian and gay presence within Atlantic visual arts becomes more vocal this fall. After Steve Reinke shows his fagboy magnum opus, "The Hundred Videos," at...

8 Canadian artists (exhibition).
September 1, 1997... Metro Hockey Centre, Halifax Surely one of the shortest exhibitions ever, "8 Canadian Artists" took place in Halifax's Metro Centre Hockey arena for two hours on the afternoon of March 17. The exhibition included sculptors Thierry Delva,...

Lau Tin-Yum (exhibition).
September 1, 1997... Observatoire 4, Montreal As the world focused on the British handover of Hong Kong to China on June 30, 1997, Montreal artist of Chinese descent Lau Tin-Yum's most recent exhibition "La vie, ce n'est pas une fleur bleue" turned our...

Karen Lebergott (exhibition).
September 1, 1997... Jan Cicero Gallery, Chicago The grid has been a particularly hallowed haven in twentieth-century art. Appearing as abstract, methodical, two-dimensional, aloof, logical and impassive, with sobering references to mathematics, science and...

Chicago in brief (exhibitions).
September 1, 1997... Fall 1997 Powered by the anticipation and aftermath of the return of Hong Kong to China, a surge of Asian art exhibitions overtook Chicago's summer season and continues to course through the fall. One of the most appropriately historic of...

Western Canada in brief (exhibitions).
September 1, 1997... Fall 1997 Calgary is the only major Canadian city without a civic gallery; and, although not civic per se, the proposed Institute of Modern and Contemporary Art (IMCA) - housed in two downtown buildings donated by Telus corporation - holds...

Brent Irving (exhibition).
September 1, 1997... Fringe Gallery, Edmonton Last summer, a work by young Edmonton artist Brent Irving was included in a small exhibition during "The Works" (Edmonton's summer visual arts festival). Irving's piece was a competent (albeit fussy) little,...

Sheila Butler (exhibition).
September 1, 1997... London Regional & Historical Museums, London, Ontario The colour-rich, pictorially-resolved oil-on-canvas works exhibited in Sheila Butler's recent death-and-dream-themed exhibition, "Matters of Life and Death," herald an exciting new phase...

Toronto in brief (exhibitions).
September 1, 1997... Fall 1997 Toronto seemed to shrug its shoulders this summer and let the residual dandruff of 80s pomo fall to the ground. There seemed a tacit agreement amongst curators that great art can hold its own, without apology or defensiveness -...

Vanessa Beecroft, Jennifer Bornstein, Martin Kersels & Gillian Wearing (exhibition).
September 1, 1997... S.L Simpson Gallery, Toronto Group exhibitions of contemporary art risk the carnivalesque, particularly when they're assembled (even loosely) around performance and identity. However, a recent four-person show at S.L. Simpson favoured work...

Oliver Girling (exhibition).
September 1, 1997... Red Head Gallery, Toronto "Soft Image" assembles arrestingly chromatic and gauzy examples from Oliver Girling's paintings of the past half-decade, several of which have enough reglazing to give Venetian luminosity a run for its money. But...