Catherine Plaisance et Christian Barré

The Kisses of Resistance by Catherine Plaisance et Christian Barré.

"The proposed photographs and video are taken from an action executed in diverse public places. They have been chosen for their impersonal character . These places give off an aura of the alienation of the individual and the dilution of his uniqueness. They can be unusually big businesses, unnatural work places, or even cold and impersonal spaces.

We have chosen to use intimacy, authenticity, and the togetherness of our couple as a material for contamination, propaganda, and solicitation. These passionate kisses present themselves as a poetic axis for connection. They inject love and humanity into places bearing the traces of mercantile anonymity. Sometimes causing discomfort, sometimes a smile or a conversation, our kisses interfere with various contexts which are foreign to the intimate.

Pretending to be tourists or newlyweds, we ask a passer-by to take a picture of us kissing. The presence of a third party automatically makes this kiss an event. The three authors brought together as such, agree to create an improvised scene that makes this intimate act topple into the public domain. A shift in meaning that questions the types of proximities that we hold with each other. Through the involvement of an outsider, the act can continue as symbolic contamination and resistance to the dehumanization that progressively causes death."

Raymonde April

Raymonde April, born in Moncton, New-Brunswick, she lives and works in Montreal and teaches photography at Concordia University. She is represented by the Galerie Donald Browne.

Paul Bureau

NEW CUT by Paul Bureau is on view at the Gallery Donald Browne Art Contemporain from November 29th 2008 to January 3rd 2009. The vernissage is saturday November 29th from 4-7pm.

For the last twenty-five years, Paul Bureau has been working on exploring the transition from automatism to geometric abstraction. Finding one’s place in these two worlds has led him beyond the purely subconscious application of paint and to develop a rational development of color and form. New Cut is a major step forward in his work. The large monochromes hide yet reveal whilst defining an important place in the continuum of non-representational painting in Quebec and Canada. Bureau has exhibited in France, Spain, the United States and Canada. Bureau work has been written about in Abstract’s magazine (France), the Globe and Mail, Le Devoir, Canadian Art, Bordercrossings and the Montreal Gazette.

Kris Knight

Kris Knight works and lives in Toronto, Canada. This is what he says about his work :

" The visual compositions I create examine notions of performance inherit in all constructions of identity, whether sexual or asexual.

My project’s themes have often dealt with ambiguity and androgyny, with an emphasis on the notion of hiding and fronting. The portraits I paint are often a balancing act of concealing identities and desperately wanting to let it go."

Hirst and global economy

Wow. I can not not post this news, as it is very weird and unusual to read. This is a quotation from Artinfo :

"it appears even multimillionaire artist Damien Hirst isn't immune to the downturn in the global economy.

According to the Guardian, sources said up to 17 of the 22 people who make the pills for his multimillion-dollar medicine cabinet series, and three who work on his butterfly paintings, were told last week that their contracts would not be renewed. It's thought that those laid off made up about half of his London-based assistants. According to sources, they were paid about £19,000 a year.

Hirst announced in July that he would stop making his spin and butterfly paintings, as well as the medicine cabinets, but it is unclear whether the staff cuts were planned or not."

If someone makes the art for you, can you still call yourself an artist, or then do you just become a designer?

Nelligan vu par Rohrer part II

I said I would post some pictures of the vernissage I went to on tuesday. I took those pictures with my iphone, so they are pretty bad. The ones I took with my camera are even worst. Go wonder.
Anyhow, I am still posting them thinking you can get a feeling of Rohrer's work. The canvases were charged with old book/paper/pictures clippings and stencil details were repeated all around the central core. On some of his works, he had added old iron nails. The general feeling was dark, religious, disturbed at the image of the poet, Émile Nelligan. I loved it.
If you happen to be in Montreal, stop by the Hotel Nelligan, Rohrer's work should be on display for another 5 weeks.

Mad world

I slept at the hotel tuesday night. And I don't know why but I suffered from major insomnia. And what's to do in an hotel room if you can't sleep apart from watching TV (or something else which I won't discuss here...). So there I was, watching Much Music at 3 o'clock in the morning. And I very rarely watch Much Music. So I'm really out when it comes to music videos. All to say that I saw Gary Jules's Mad World music video. First, I love the song. And when it's 3 AM, and you can't sleep, and there's this song... it gets to you. And the video is just really beautiful. I know half of you are thinking I'm old news here, but I like to think that there might be someone else like me out there that has never seen this music video. And that's why I'm posting it. (Wow, I don't think I've ever talked so much about myself on this blog... what is wrong with me???)

Nelligan vu par... Rohrer et Garou

Nelligan vu par... (meaning Nelligan as seen by...) is a project thought of by Artifex and old Montreal's luxury hotel, the Nelligan where 12 artists (and I am a part of this project, as one of the painters) honour Quebec's greatest poet : Émile Nelligan. Presented over a period of two years, every event invites a painter and a public personality to expose their contemporary vision of Nelligan's life and works through a series of paintings and literary works.

Garou and Jean-Daniel Rohrer will be the first pair to commemorate the poet. The exhibition will be held in the atrium of the hotel, tomorrow, november 25. Guess where I'll be tomorrow night! I'll try to take some pictures at the soirée and will post them on wednesday or thursday.

Jean-Daniel Rohrer

Jean-Daniel Rohrer was born in Switzerland. He came to Canada in 1989 and has been living here, in Montreal, since.

LIFE photo archive and Google

Search millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, stretching from the 1750s to today. Most were never published and are now available for the first time through the joint work of LIFE and Google.
Try it here!

Magnificence of the Tsars at the V&A

"In the reign of Henry VIII, an insouciant English visitor to the court of Ivan the Terrible failed to doff his hat to the Tsar. Ivan had it nailed to his head. He also beat his pregnant daughter for being inappropriately dressed and caused her to miscarry. The etiquette of dress really mattered. It was just as important in the courts of the barbaric Slavs as in genteel England, with all our disembowellings, burnings and beheadings.

For both the Tudors and the Tsars, wealth was power. The ostentation of power created authority. Wealth, power and authority were displayed by dress. Dress was governed by sumptuary legislation - restrictions on what could be worn by whom. And thus, by the laws of dress, extreme and deliberate social inequalities were displayed, stratified and enforced."(The Guardian)

Magnificence of the Tsars: Ceremonial Men's Dress of the Russian Imperial Court, 1721-1917' is on at the V&A, from December 10 2008 to March 29 2009.

Xiang Jing

Xiang Jing’s eerily life-like sculptures confront the viewer with a duplicitous engagement with outward appearance and inner psychology. Xiang’s works range from the larger than life to miniature; cast in bronze or polyurethane, they draw from a classical tradition and aesthetic to portray the experiences of contemporary women. Her works depicting teenagers clubbing, shopping, and primping offer a veneer of generic beauty, sparsely accessorised with synthetic looking props and latest fashion trends; their appearance of mundane innocence is contradicted through their expressions of violence, depression, and malaise. (Saatchi)

Richard Hughes

Richard Hughes makes intricate illusions that trick the viewer while, at the same time, laying their artifice bare. His sculptures and installations resemble the aftermaths of good times gone sour.
See more of his work here.

Wei Dong

Wei Dong, who was born in Inner Mongolia, China, moved to the United States in 1991. A personal obsession with the female body is one of many of the complex interests of the artist.

Growing up in China under the watchful eye of Mao’s red guard, sexual fantasies and freedoms were forcibly repressed. Socialist realism was the standard fair in the art academies of the time, and as a result, any hint of sexual or erotic expression was taboo. Upon entering the United States in 1991, Wei Dong’s preoccupation with the root of erotic desires as a young adult were given free reign over his canvases, resulting in grandiose explorations of the flesh.(Chelsea Art Galleries)

Wim Delvoye

Wim Delvoye was born in 1965 in Wervik. He works and lives in Gand, Belgium.

Ohkayk Do you see what I see card collection

Buy Ohkayk Do you see what I see cards and posters here, on Etsy.
Via Roadside Scholar

Marc Philbert

Marc Philbert
via andreaxmas