Weavings by Katie Jung and Elif Saydam

These self-portrait weavings that were completed last year as a collaboration between Katie Jung and Elif Saydam, two Montreal based artists, are now the cover of the latest Worn Fashion Journal. The two artists laboured away many hours on a Jacquard loom to create these amazing (and huge) pieces. You can read an interview with them about the process in the new issue and you can see more of their work here.

Happy Holidays

With love from Sean, Kit, Amy and Julien!

Of conversations that go a little something like this….aka Happy Holidayz

Julien and I were discussing last night (over some St.Hubert styled chicken-dinner as no one else in all of Montréal was delivering) how it would be nice to offer some sort of Holiday greeting for all y’alls out there celebrating the many holidays going on right now, and we inadvertently came up with one of my favourite things of all time to watch when in a grouchy mood, which is potentially how you might be feeling if you’re with family. Emphasis on potentially.

Hooked on this kindof funny sortof a feeling…

So I will put the video into this page when Julien tells me how, but for now you’ll have to click on the link to get to it. Needless to say, it’s as good as it ever was for getting the happy-juices flowing almost instantly, which is actually no small feat 2-3 years after it was a bit of an internet hit. 

But we here at the Frozen Mammoth are not interested in silly and fun things unless there is rigorous aesthetic debate about important contemporary issues such as conceptual solidity and awareness within performance. It is from this intensely critical bend that I give you our REAL holiday present, that of the dialogue (at least the one I heard) between myself and Julien about this video gem:

Me: This part is so awesome where he flaps his wings around like a birdy while angels float about in the background to make sure he’s safe.

Julien: David Hasselhoff is an idiot.

Me: No! No! No! He is completely aware of how dumb he is being. He is like Mr-I-Know-How-To-Make-Fun-of-Myself. Didn’t you see Dodgeball?

Julien: Ah, no…..

Me: Ok, he is now standing on TOP of a motorcycle. The hip-swagger, that little glint in his eye - everything suggests that the man knows exactly what he is doing here. He is completely and totally making fun of himself no question.

Julien: Yeah, there’s no question he is. But he doesn’t know what we know.

Me: What do you mean? David Hasselhof knows everything I know. Perhaps more. 

Julien: No, he’s making fun of himself, but he thinks we’re laughing WITH him, not AT him. He doesn’t get it.

Me: Look at that! He is catching a giant fish and PUTTING IT IN HIS MOUTH. You can’t possibly tell me that he isn’t totally taking the piss right now.

Julien: Yeah, I guess so. But he thinks WE’RE taking the piss too, instead of just thinking he’s a big wanker.

Me: But…..aren’t we taking the piss, too?

Street Style

Here’s a quick photo dump to show you some sweet local street style; not of the fashiony kind, but of the actual-streets-that-look-cool kind. Street art is still art, y’alls! Especially when it’s cute, colorful and it involves drawing faces on walls and things.

I caught this sleepy/upset heart somewhere on St Viateur, between St Laurent and De Gaspe.

This is the hotness that is the back of Billy Mavreas’ Galerie Monastiraki (close to the St Laurent/St Viateur corner).

This giant TI-83 plus calculator is located further down the same alleyway. I love how it became an ideal location for naughty messages.

I forget where this friendly face was hanging out, but it’s adorable AND practical. DO WANT!

Of projects à la Dare-Dare

Of things that end tomorrow

I got this in my inbox yesterday and thought I would remind one and all in case you’re looking for some awesome gifts for peeps and wanna go before it’s ov-a:

DERNIÈRE CHANCE POUR UN CADEAU ORIGINAL! L’ EXPO-VENTE PRÊT À EMPORTER III SE TERMINE CE SAMEDI LE 20 DÉCEMBRE.

Plus de 300 œuvres d’artistes professionnels et de personnalités invitées issues de divers milieux de la communauté montréalaise seront en vente et prêtes à emporter pour 100 $ ou moins.

At l’Atelier Circulaire in Mile End! Go! Go Already!

Inspirational Youtube Video of the Week

So this one isn’t produced by an ‘artist’ per se and it’s not -meant- to be funny either, but we can pretend like it is and everyone will be happy. It reminded me a lot of the work of two video artists I admire for their realistically grotesque role-playing talent: Glasgow-based artist Erica Eyres and LA comedic duo Prettythingsss (Michael Lucid and Amanda Barrett). I get so excited when life unknowingly imitates art that imitates life in such an eery manner, so I thought I’d share the feeling.

I found myself blown away by the similarities between this instructional video and Eyres’s Uplift video, as both feature a somewhat oblivious female attempting to ’help’ and sell a certain lifestyle and the values that come with it. In an exchange of secret youtube messages with me (swoon), Michael Lucid also points out how Julie Goudreaux reminds him of Barbara Zuckerman (mostly because of her look and mannerism I suppose), one of the characters he portrays in his Getting to Know You series of sketches.

Both Pretty Things and Erica Eyres are so utterly successful in highlighting cues of human fallacies we so often get used to, they do make everyday encounters and random instructional videos exponentially more hilarious/depressing… Hope y’all appreciate the insight! And please check out Erica Eyres and Prettythingsss for hours of quality video.

Of Massimo, holding things

To post about the exhibition currently up right now of the beautiful work of Massimo Guerrera at the Joyce Yahouda is not an easy task. Guerrera, a relatively young and spritely artists born in good old Roma in 1967 is one of Quèbec’s most lauded artists and has been for some years. He is also one not to be pinned down as he zips around (well, I don’t know if he zips, call it an intuition) etching, drawing, sculpting and performing in equal parts. He is one giant recipe for a multi-tiered art-cake with all of the ingredients at the ready in his sleeves.

He was trained at Atelier Graff, (which truly deserves its own write-up), and his etching background shines through in the Yahouda show, Partager Les Outils d’Affection, up until the 17th of January.

Guerrera is partially difficult to write about because of the way in which his many mediums compliment and contrast each other. His sculpture, photography (documentation of his non-performances) and illustrations inhabit spaces in unison, breathing together in some sort of rhythm reminiscent of family relations. Verbally interacting with his work is akin to being asked to write an essay on someone else’s trip home to mom, pop and extendo-mix-siblings for a week. You almost wouldn’t dare, and you might not want to show them the final results.

Difficulties aside, this exhibition is quite an experience and a precious one at that, (and not in the my-little-porcelain-dolly kind of a way at all) as to see Guerrera work in multiple forms and functions is not only to see his flexibility as an artist but to also witness how he carries beauty with him like a tincture in his pocket. 

It also serves as a reminded of the traces we leaves behind or weave into the things we do, regardless of what medium we work/sing/hum/play/yelp in.

And that I call the man art-cake is especially apt considering that what weaves and binds his practice together, from the performative and sculptural to the bits-on-paper, is his grapple with the constant subject of food as a place/substance where bodies/rituals/identities meet and collide. I could go on about that one for well, masters degrees, PhDs, post-docs and more, but let’s just say there’s enough “meat” there (pardon the pun) for a lifetime’s worth of amazing art. Thankfully.

Waitominute!

Adam Waito, star of Adam & the Amethysts and Telefauna, Miracle Fortress side-man, is also an astounding watercolourist! But instead of using his skills to make blooms of subtle feeling, he one-ups the world and makes rad pictures of kitties. He is selling online a series of ridiculous, wonderful holiday cards, any of which I would be delighted to receive.

The backs of all the cards have little bits of holly and candy-cane and things, which are cute and lovely and complete the package. There’s still time before Christmas! Buy.

Of Sculpted Bodies (In New York)

So to continue my recent-trip-to-New-York-art-rant, I present you with the work of GR Iranna, whose sculptures/paintings I almost literally smacked into walking from a “hotel” that was as close to the word as chicken coops and storage spaces can get to something, anything! a little more sleep-friendly.

Before I ran right into the side of the aicongallery door, I had never heard of him nor the gallery where his exhibition, The Birth of Blindness, has only recently finished.

I was tired, as I seemed to be for the entire trip, and so sleep deprivation certainly played a part in how ominous his sculptures seemed to me (which is not a bad thing, not after Francis Bacon ruffled my feathers enough to be open to things I don’t find immensely, immediately beautiful…darn you, Bacon!)

But perhaps by looking at these images you can get a sense of how silent the rooms felt that contained his sculptures, and how glad I was that I was not in them alone. The ringing of the gallery phone felt at once a violation of a bizarre land created and a life-saving hand coming in to rip me out of that very place.

(Meanwhile, in present time Montréal, my cats gnaw - no, devour - boiled potato they’ve been playing with all day. I know it’s people food and therefore exciting, but potatoes? Seriously? It’s like going for the Coors Light instead of the good gin when you’re 15 and your folks are out)

Back in New York, I found GR Iranna’s sculptures captivating with their suffocating, rather terrifying presence. Yet the exhibition also had about 5-6 paintings oddly void of the-energy-that-pulls-you-in. Or the-energy-that-pulls-me-in, to be more precise.

Odd because his practice seems to be couched in painting (primarily) as opposed to sculpture from the little that I’ve gleaned about him since quitting Manhattan and finding myself a good NY rehab clinic here in Canada. Odd too because I am much more likely to be drawn towards paintings (as opposed to painted towards drawings) than to sculpture in the first place.

I just can’t explain it. Iranna’s work visualizes experiences of loss & deprivation, physical restraint & constriction. Perhaps because his process is so inextricably linked to the body does his work become more powerfully represented when in solid form. Or perhaps I was in need of a good haunting, which his sculptures certainly provided. I’ll just wait to see his work again to begin to cement the possibilities currently sparking in this old bean of mine.