Narakorn Sittites wins second prize in Panasonic Art Competition in Thailand

Many of you have seen the three Thai artists the gallery 'discovered' in Thailand in summer 2006. You will be hearing plenty about them in the days, weeks, months, years to come. Two new artists are also in the wings.

I firmly believe that the gallery is working with the very top echelon of the new generation of artists in Thailand. Tomorrow's posting will be proof-positive of Uttaporn Nimmalaikaew's stature as one of the most exciting talents in Asia (dare I say, the world) today. But for the moment let me announce and congratulate Narakorn Sittites for recently receiving second prize in Thailand's 2008 Panasonic Art Competition. Apart from the National Art awards, a handful of corporate-sponsored art prizes (Panasonic, Toshiba) are coveted honours and this finish by Sittites is no exception.

We will later post the image of the winning work, as at the moment I have not clarified which image received the prize. But above is an image from his most recent series from which his entry came. It shows continuity with, while moving on from, his "red" series of which two are currently on display at the gallery (and available for viewing upon appointment during this August semi-vacation for the gallery). On the left below is "Hindrance" and on the right below is "Three Personnel." Forgive the light wash on the tops of each photo: yours truly took the photos. Pro shots are being taken soon.

Roving Eye: Jeremy Mayer

My first "Roving Eye" posting was about Doris Salcedo at the Tate Modern. As I was just reflecting on whether to do a second "Roving Eye" for today's post, this just in from Martin Mills, a friend of the gallery with not only a terrific eye but great knowledge about art history:

"Sculptures entirely made from disassembled typewriters - supposedly no welding or affixing involved, just 'cold assembly'...

I took a look, and, well, wow. That decided today's posting.

And the artist? One Jeremy Mayer.

Storkwoman

Not that I always notice such things, but today is a holiday in Toronto. As such, I am giving myself a tiny break with today's posting. Yesterday's post noted Julie Tremblay's "Storks and Eagles" installation that starts in two days in Copenhagen. I uploaded a quick studio photo Tremblay took as she was moving towards completion of her 26 pieces of wearable art. Today I upload her sketch of "Storkwoman" that she has used as a rough guide as she sculpts her pieces. Enjoy this modest peak into the creative process.

Another Kind of Bossa Nova: Innovative Turkish Textiles Giant Teams Up with Julie Tremblay in "Storks and Eagles" Installation in Copenhagen, August 7

(Above) A shot taken in Julie Tremblay’s workshop of a work in progress for her “Storks and Eagles” installation.

I wrote a week ago about Julie Tremblay (indirectly, as the post was actually about why Craig Scott Gallery is "an address to remember"), and indicated we would soon have some interesting news to announce following on from her sensational Reflections exhibition at the gallery in May.

Well, here we are. I am delighted and excited to announce that the largest (and, it seems, perhaps also the eco-friendliest) textile, fabric and garment company in Turkey (Bossa) has commissioned Tremblay to create 26 pieces of “wearable art” for a fashion event called “Vision CPH” in Copenhagen’s annual Fashion Week.

Tremblay’s installation is called “Storks and Eagles.” It consists of 24 mannequins wearing Bossa jeans and also, from hips to the top of their heads, clothing and headwear created by Tremblay from the same cast-off industrial sheet metal that she uses to create the figurative Reflections sculptures. Two actors, who will also be wearing Tremblay-created sculptured clothing, will pose and otherwise interact with the mannequins, making the installation something of a performance piece as well. The sculptured clothing morphs into bird-like shapes, turning the installation of the mannequins and actors into a kind of humanoid aviary.

“Storks and Eagles” is being exhibited in three days time in the Øksnehallen district of Copenhagen, and runs August 7-10. After the installation, Bossa plans to auction the Tremblay pieces for charity.

Tremblay is the real deal. Several pieces from the Reflections show remain available at exhibition prices that are very much on the low side (and won't stay this low for very long). Keep in mind that only two of the pieces in the Reflections exhibition were wall-mounted. The majority (7 of 9) either float from the ceiling (one Toronto collector couple have their piece hanging from in a window alcove), while a few are floor pieces. With a little imagination, even homes bursting at the seams with wall art will have a surprising range of options in terms of where to place Tremblay's non-wall work.

Do think about it, and consider getting in on the ground floor with an emerging global talent! (I swore I would not use an exclamation mark, except in jest, in this blog, but, well, Tremblay is well worth an exclamation or two.)

On the Rules of the Game

Damien Hirst's The Golden Calf courtesy of The Art Newspaper.

Today I add another favourite art website to my Links section (see righthand column), The Art Newspaper. It joins the first set of links: View on Canadian Art, the Tate Museums, and of course a certain gallery in downtown eastside Toronto located at 95 Berkeley Street.

The Art Newspaper tends toward news on the high-end art world, whether 'elite' artists and dealers, major public museums, and news being made in courts and legislatures, but it has a very good style of writing that mixes the neutral-journalistic with an edge of commentary by the way critical questions are posed as part of some of the articles.

In that vein, of several interesting pieces in the Saturday, August 2, 2008, issue, the second of a two-part series on Damien Hirst's latest rule-shaping behaviour is well worth a look: Damien Hirst is rewriting the rules of the market (2). You can also start with the first instalment and then click on to the one just published today: Damien Hirst is rewriting the rules of the market (1). The subject of the two articles is, specifically, on how Hirst and Sotheby's auction house are collaborating to produce a solo auction of Hirst works in September in London and, generally, what this says about the cutthroat business of meglomaniacal (my editorializing) art dealing. On the specific theme, be clear that is the use of auction as a primary mechanism of sale, outflanking the standard 'rule' that artworks from gallery-represented artists first enter the world of art collecting through gallery sales and only later (ideally, much later) become available (if ever) through auctions as a key player in the secondary art market. While this may be taking its lead from how art-market 'rules' have already been bent out of shape in China and somewhat in India by the offering of new works at auction for some artists (because of how market-oriented much art collecting in China is: see in the same issue of The Art Newspaper, Meet China's Top Collector of Contemporary Art), the Hirst stunt is bound to have a more profound impact on the Western art market simply because of who Hirst is, but, more importantly, because of a somewhat juvenile tendency of many in the art world (artists included) to look on the high-end art market as somehow a governing reference point for how the whole art world either is (a truly naive thought) or should be (a thought borne more from high envy than any sense of proportion). [Boy, that was one long frenzy of a sentence...]

There are already signs of artists and auction houses moving towards a primary market alliance, or of galleries and auction houses discussing such collaborations on behalf of represented artists. As a sign of artist independence and initiative, it is fine as far as it goes, but we may well come to see such phenomena as self-defeating acts of cutting of our noses despite our face. This development may indeed be a logical next step in the pressures that are making the the model of regular-hours, regular-exhibitions, open-to-the-public-as-free-cultural-space commercial/private gallery more and more of a tenuous proposition. Those existing pressures include: the Internet and direct selling by artists using the Internet as platform; the great global mall that we call art fairs and that sees people prefer to attend such events in one intensive shot over the increasingly quaint practice of gallery-going; and a fascination with buying 'name' art at secondary-art auctions ahead of discovering emerging and meritorious under-recognized artists.

Don't get me wrong. I am not here making the mistake of equating the lot of Gagosian and White Cube (Hirst's gallery representatives) with the situation of the vast below-the-sea remainder of the art gallery iceberg. But nor am I so cynical that I am crying only crocodile tears for the artist-representation dilemmas in which they find themselves due to Hirst playing them off against each other to support his outflanking of each of them (see the article details on how this is being orchestrated by Hirst). For the point is that the Hirst/Sotheby's auction may be a big canary in the coal mine for the signal it sends to artists that they don't really need galleries or, if they do, it is on the basis of very short-term and contingent commitments. It may well be that the evolution of the art world and market will prove these new developments not to be a danger for the quality of art, and collectors and public institutions will find the best artists without the hard work and judgment filters of galleries as a key actor in the art ecosystem. But, right now, my prediction (my cutting off the nose despite the face point) is that the squeezing out of full-operation galleries (versus no-public-premises art dealers) as key actors will not do much for the quality of art. Mass publishing technology on the Internet has not made the editorial judgment and work of the best publishing houses unnecessary (even if they too face similar financial pressures to develop business models that is faithful to good literature while still being commercially viable), and I would argue that the role of good galleries is just as indispensable.

But, in wanting to have their cakes and eat them too, the Hirsts of this world and those keeping-up-with-the-Joneses artists who will take their cue from him may just find fewer and fewer cakes on the counter. It will in any case be interesting to watch the follow-on from the Hirst/Sotheby's auction in the years to come.

Samuel Chow is "Feeling Lucky" after Toronto International Film Festival embraces his September show at the gallery

Today, a little something for your calendars:

SAMUEL CHOW, I’M FEELING LUCKY,

SEPTEMBER 3 - SEPTEMBER 27, 2008

OPENING RECEPTION WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2008, 6-9 PM

at CRAIG SCOTT GALLERY at 95 Berkeley (see top of blog for full address)

This is going to be a very different kind of exhibition from any that have yet come before it at the gallery. We are very excited, as Samuel Chow introduces a new-media artwork that he calls a 'random path network.' (Above is a still called "Horses at Sea" from the work. Apart from DVDs of the entire work, a selection of stills will be displayed and sold as limited edition prints.) The press release, which is doubling as text for the Exhibitions page for the show, explains what it is all about. Click on through.

We are doubly excited by the fact that the I’M FEELING LUCKY exhibition is presented in association with the Toronto International Film Festival: Future Projections. TIFF '08 will shortly be announcing its Future Projections line-up, and at that point we will let you know more and include a link to their website.

Roving Eye: Doris Salcedo at Tate Modern - The Show I Wish I had Seen

Today's posting is the first example of the Craig Scott Gallery Daily Blog drawing readers' attention to great artists who have no associations with the gallery (however much I wish they did!). My friend, Ana Maria Bejarano, first drew my attention to Doris Salcedo, and I have since followed her work online with fascination. Salcedo is from Colombia (where she lives, in Bogotá) and much of her work explores memory and the dark side of humanity at the intersection of sculpture, assemblage and (that catch-all) installation. But, of all the works I wish I had had a chance to see was her recently-ended Shibboleth exhibition in the huge Turbine Hall at London's Tate Modern. According to the Tate, it is is the first work to intervene directly in the fabric of the Turbine Hall. Says the Tate,

Rather than fill this iconic space with a conventional sculpture or installation, Salcedo has created a subterranean chasm that stretches the length of the Turbine Hall. The concrete walls of the crevice are ruptured by a steel mesh fence, creating a tension between these elements that resist yet depend on one another. By making the floor the principal focus of her project, Salcedo dramatically shifts our perception of the Turbine Hall’s architecture, subtly subverting its claims to monumentality and grandeur. Shibboleth asks questions about the interaction of sculpture and space, about architecture and the values it enshrines, and about the shaky ideological foundations on which Western notions of modernity are built.

Below is a still photo showing one perspective of the Shibboleth floor. Your guess is as good as mine how she accomplished this monumental feat -- and convinced the Tate to allow this kind of work (or did they have to convince her?). If you click on the video and images tabs on the Tate's splash page for the Salcedo exhibition, I hope you will experience the same sense of awe and appreciation I have each time I visit this page. I can only imagine what experiencing the work in person would have been like, as the exhibition closed April 6.

Whence "an address to remember"?

Our young blog has attracted its first question. A correspondent asks about the context of the 'blurb' quotation included at the top of the blog: "An address to remember." - Lyne Boily, Host of Radio-Canada's Les arts et les autres.

Well, during Julie Tremblay's Reflections exhibition in May, Radio-Canada (the French arm of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) did a long review of the show on a weekly radio show called Les arts et les autres. The segment (both an English-language transcript and a link to the audio of the show) -- called "The sculptures of Julie Tremblay" -- can be accessed from a News page on the Craig Scott Gallery general website by clicking HERE.

In the transcript, you can see at the start of the discussion chain that Lyne Boily says a couple of interesting things about the gallery in general:

Lyne Boily: In Toronto, there are the ‘official’ places where galleries are grouped but when we open our eyes wide, and look in corners and hidden places, there are others who have some extremely interesting propositions on offer. This is the case of Craig Scott Gallery, located at 95 Berkeley, which is currently presenting the quite fascinating work of the Québécoise Julie Tremblay. Marjorie Murphy was attracted by the siren-chanting of her mermaids.

And, in closing the exhibition review:

LB: Well you give us the desire to go dance with them. Reflections, of Julie Tremblay. It is presented until June 1st so there is no time to waste. There are only two weeks left now. And it is at Craig Scott Gallery, located at 95 Berkeley. And I think that this is an address to remember as there are often interesting and pertinent offerings there. Thank you very much, Marjorie Murphy.

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The photo at the start of this posting is an in situ shot of Tremblay's Reflections No 5, 7, and 8. Below is a close-up of the recycled industrial sheet metal she creates her works from: look closely and you might be able to guess what the metal has been used for, before being cast off.


Coming soon: a report on an exciting new project for Tremblay in Europe, involving the creation of 23 new works.

Rogers TV Video of Raymond Waters' Values exhibition

Everything in its own time. Raymond Waters' seven-week Values exhibition in January-February of this year generated enormous interest, including (for Toronto) extensive critical notice in the media. But only recently did Mass Art Guide / MAG (which featured Waters' on its February cover) finally receive from Rogers TV the video of a "Toronto Living" segment on the exhibition that aired several times during the exhibition.

Most people will not have seen the show when it aired -- indeed, we didn't -- so you may now be interested to see the video now at the following MAG page: Raymond Waters at Craig Scott Gallery (video). An earlier audio interview with Waters can be listened to at: Raymond Waters at Craig Scott Gallery (audio) .

I have included images of three works from the show in this post. There is first of all (above) "King Kong (1933), 16mm," created from all five reels of the original King Kong movie and over 500 LED lights; the work is over 9 feet long, 5 feet high and almost 1 foot thick.

The second image (below) is of "You Are Either With Us or Against Us" created from a shredded and then reconstituted black and white American flag. I also reproduce "New Orleans (August 2005)", another flag work acquired by a Texas art collector who has, we are reliably informed, the largest and most significant collection of US-flag-related artworks.

By the way, why was the show called Values, you may ask? Read the overview essay in the show's catalogue here: "Foreword: The Art of American Values."

Stay tuned for news on an exciting new series of conceptual paintings recently begun by Waters in a fascinating new medium.

Feature Story on Christian McLeod on Magazine Stands Now

A Quebec-based art magazine called Magazinart, on the scene there for 20 years, has just hit the stands with its summer issue. In the bilingual tradition of this magazine, key articles appear in both French and English in two parts of the magazine. And so it is that we are happy to report that an article by John Norris and Noel Meyer has been included both in English - "Landscapes in Modern Time", pp 116-118 -- and in French -- "Paysages des temps modernes", pp 68-70. Some nine images are repduced, including three that will be in McLeod's next show at Craig Scott Gallery -- Further Unmanned Strategies, which opens October 30. These are the 48" x 96" "The Conversation" (upper right), the 66" x 66" "Charing Cross" (below), and the title piece for the show, the 60 x 48" "Further Unmanned Strategies" (below right).

We will link in a later post to the full text of the article, which is heavily composed around an interview with McLeod in which he offers (insightful) insights about his work. I reproduce one paragraph below that helps orient the newcomer to McLeod's work:

Like many artists his style is difficult to pin down, certainly abstract, but also at times representational and loaded with both political and aesthetic content. "I think it is an extension of the abstract impressionists but it has gone further than that. I am also heavily influenced by David Milne, the Canadian painter, his whites and his sense of landscape."

In terms of McLeod's interactions with art and artists that have come before him, he is quoted as saying:

"I really try to look at art and its history and see where things have come from and try not to live just looking at my own art."

Amen to that. On the Craig Scott Gallery website, in a mini-essay, I also comment on this quality of McLeod's work:

Christian McLeod is a painter who is completely secure in his own skin, not duped by art-world fetishizing of the new and confusing of the new with the important. He is aware of his forebearers, including a particular call on his soul of both the Canadian landscape tradition, the Canadian (perhaps primarily Québécois) abstract tradition, and also Aboriginal traditions. In any given work, he may be in conversation with Canadian artistic ancestors like a Riopelle (e.g. Transformer”), a Borduas (so brilliantly echoed while arguably being surpassed in McLeod’s “Particles” series paintings), a Thompson, a Morriseau, or a Jackson. But his influences cannot but be – and are – global: as noted by [Gary Michael] Dault, one can in some pieces discern echoes of New York or Paris ‘School’ adherents like Gorky, de Kooning, Pollock, da Silva or de Stael; or, for that matter, discern the spirit of van Gogh (e.g. Burning Studio) or of ancient cave paintings (as commented on by Martin Mills in relation to the work Breaking Apart).

The magazine article also references new figurative work by McLeod, notably Warholian portraits of Tommy Douglas. The triptych "Tommy Clement Douglas" is currently on display at the gallery. More on this body of work in a future post.

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If interested in knowing more about McLeod's work, have a look at Gary Michael Dault's essay on McLeod's work written for the Craig Scott Gallery catalogue during McLeod's Ascending Language exhibition of June 2007. You can read that essay at: HERE. From there you can link to McLeod's Artist's Page and the Exhibition Page for that show.

Magically realist - Maleonn alongside Colville in South Korea

Public Art, now one of the leading art magazines in South Korea, has recently come out with its May 2008 issue on the theme of SURREALISM and Maleonn is one of seven artists who are the focus of a 10-page editorial feature text-and-images essay, “Magic Realism,” on the global art scene. Alongside three reproduced images of Maleonn’s work are five images of Michael Parkes, two images by Vladimir Kush, two images by George Tooker, one image each by Patricia van Lubeck and Peter Blume, and four images by hyperrealist Canadian artist Alex Colville.

Although we tend to prefer the terms "fantastical" or "fabulist" to describe much of Maleonn’s body of work (as indeed noted by the Public Art editorial with its article byline, “Looking for fantasy in daily life, feeling the marvelous in reality…the world of ‘magic realism’”), Maleonn’s work is also most definitely connected to the “surreal” art tradition. The works selected for commentary in the editorial and as examples of Maleonn’s work are at p. 60 “Shanghai Boys No 10 (Dancing With Eyes Shut)” (the same work chosen for full-page reproduction by Enroute magazine in spring 2006; image to the right); “Unforgivable Children No 1 (Love)” at p. 61; and “Portrait of Mephisto No 5” at p 62 (image below). (“Magic Realism,”, Public Art (South Korea), Issue 20 (May 2008), pp 56-65. )

Incidentally, readers may be interested to learn that “Portrait of Mephisto No 5” was refused by the Paris-based International Herald Tribune for use in a booked Craig Scott Gallery ad in an art advertising section of the IHT. The gallery cancelled the booking, not without noting to IHT the irony of Western corporate (media, no less) censorship of a boundary-pushing Chinese artist.

Gord Smith in summer issue of MAG

As regulars at the gallery will know, I firmly believe that Gord Smith "is unquestionably one of the great sculptors of post-war Canada." (quoting myself on Gord's artist's page). From his first welded bronze work completed at age 21 for the Frazer-Hickson Library in Montreal, he had completed 37 commissions by the mid-1980s and seen his work acquired by major institutional and private collectors. He may be best known for the “Canada Screen” work commissioned by the Government of Canada for the Canadian Pavillion at Expo ’67 (seen just below); this Cor-Ten steel work measured 110 feet by 12 feet, and won him Second Prize for the entire Expo ’67 in the Monuments and Fountains category.

This past year, he took on two new large-scale commissions in a new medium that he has been working with for the past half-dozen years, wooden dowels. Each is now in buildings owned by the Atria Development Corporation. To the left is Smith's life-size "Inspiratrice", currently being exhibited at the gallery.

For its summer (July & August) issue, MAG/Mass Art Guide gave Smith's dowel work its cover and feature editorial essay, which is well worth a look.

Alongside a special display of some eight dowel pieces at the gallery, we also have a cross-section of figurative works in metal by Gord as part of our Go Figure Summer Salon. To the left is one work from his fantastic "Nuclear" series of 1961-63: "A People."

Launching the CSg Blog - Note from Craig Scott

My gallery, Craig Scott Gallery (or, CSg), had its first show in April 2006 and is thus now just over two years old. The gallery arrived on the Toronto art scene "out of nowhere" (as one of Toronto's leading auctioneers put it recently) and have already carved a respected niche for ourselves as one of Toronto's most exciting galleries. Of course it is near-impossible to prove this claim, but we are of course happy to believe the dozens of clients and other observers who tell us this. In any case, people who regularly visit our website and receive our 'literature' on shows and artists have commented now and then that they like the way the gallery writes about our artists, their work, and art generally. For some time, some have been encouraging us to start blogging, including podcasting, to let more people know about us -- or, more accurately, about our artists -- and more generally to share snippets on the art world that others might be interested in. Some friends of the gallery also say that they would like to know about new works as they arrive and are posted on the Craig Scott Gallery website, but that, when one goes to the gallery website, it is not easy to know whether one has seen works that are new since the last visit -- especially since new works may often be posted at the end of the existing images for a given artist.

So, now that we have turned two, the time seems right to add this blog to our current Internet presence. While we do already have a News section on our website, it isn't really designed for frequent, informal posting of information and thoughts on the gallery -- let alone my random thoughts on art and the art world. That said, I may indeed link to News posts on the gallery website, where there may be fuller information. I am very much looking forward to the flexibility and freedom of the blog format.

Note that, through the months of July and August 2008, we will mix three kinds of posts: 'backfills' that refer back to recent or otherwise significant past news about artists or the gallery (this, we hope, will be of special interest to those who do not yet know about the gallery); current news and announcements as they occur; and random thoughts about art-related things.

By the way, for those of you who have yet to hear about, let alone visit, the gallery, it is located in downtown eastside Toronto. More specifically, it is part of the East King East district known for its design-furniture stores, and is three blocks north of the Distillery. Canadian Stage (a great theatre) is south of us on Berkeley and the Church on Berkeley (one of the great music events halls in Toronto) just north.

Just a couple more overview things to finish off this first post. The aim of my gallery is to introduce exceptional artists from around the world to North America and, at the same time, to represent emerging and under-recognized Canadian artists with great potential to generate excitement beyond Canada’s borders. We have a regular schedule of exhibitions of eight to ten solo or two-person shows per year. Works in a broad range of media and styles are exhibited.

As for me, Craig Scott, the gallery is, to use a cliché, a labour of love. It has to be, as I am also kept pretty busy on other fronts, notably as Professor of Law at Osgoode Hall Law School of York University. Here is my faculty profile page at Osgoode.