Celebrations, my dear friends, always come in pairs.

Or, well…maybe not. BUT if I was attempting to turn this invented phrase into actual expression, I’d go to PUSH gallery tonight. It is officially re-opening, with Nadia Moss as the artist in charge of drawing us all down to its new headquarters at the Belgo Building. Two things to celebrate indeed.

Megan Bradley, the director of PUSH (wherever it may roam) has done an amazing job curating a show guaranteed to bring folks out of the woodwork and into her new abode. Nadia Moss’ work has always been enriching and worthwhile. It’s dream-like, half-creepy-half-comforting beast drawings done right.

For years there’s been a fractured movement of illustrators whose themes revolve around wolves-eating-wolves-munching-on-dogs-turning-into-people. You’ve seen this work. You know what I’m talking about. It’s an interesting phenomena to have watched unfold. Yet it’s never quite grabbed me by the seat of my pants, or anywhere for that matter.

Some of my favourite artists could be placed into this category if surrounded by a lazy audience. But their work manages to emerge as something altogether unique and important. They create their own language and sentiment from the medium. Nadia Moss has always been an artist I consider from this vantage point.

The most exciting part about this PUSH opening is that she’s really working it right now. The work for PUSH is going to be really intriguing - taking a look at her flckr site gives me notions of colour and layers that I have yet to see from her. The compositional spaces seem to be (perhaps) even more stripped down. This I suspect might be a turning point in her present development. I fully intend to ask her tonight.

The opening is a 6-9pm gig, and PUSH is now located at 372 Rue Ste Catherine, Suite 425. Hope to see you there.

From across the sea…

Kim Kielhofner, video artist, drawer (ugh, what a horrifying word) and sketchbook virtuoso is an American living in Canada going to school at Central St Martins in London. She’s been there just a few weeks and is already grappling with what it’s like to have several shows happening at the same time in other places: the first, her ongoing show, In the Hall of Wonders, runs until October 16th at Centre Communautaire Elgar on Nun’s Island. It’s a show of drawings well worth the bike ride or ferry ride (apparently!) out there. As well, as part of the Art POP 2009 line-up, Kielhofner will be presenting a video installation at the Notman House registration venue.

I recently had the good fortune of discussing with her questions mainly concerning In the Hall of Wonders (although the drawings here are not the ones in that fantastic show) as well as other bits and ticks behind her practice.

1. What’s up with the title, In the Hall of Wonders? How do you create the links between your visual world and your written language of expression for it?

The titles are not so important to me in this case because for me the imagery in these pieces is very strong. Sometimes I use text in my work, but it’s much more integrated into the process of the work. Sometimes I will think about a certain phrase from literature or film and work with those ideas. In the case of this show, when I was creating these pieces I wasn’t using any text as a reference. The titles came after, almost as an afterthought.

2. You’re an artist that works primarily in 2 mediums. Could you give a bit of background about each medium and also how your relationships to them are similar, different, etc?

My work manifests itself most often in drawing and video. It all comes from the same process of collecting and working with a visual language. You know how I keep books of things I find, flyers, photos, sketches, even junk from the street. I think I arrange things visually so there is the hint of a narrative, but it’s not completely obvious what it is or I leave enough space for people to bring there own experience to the table. I draw figures but I don’t use any perspective so they all lie flat on a plane, kind of like a dreamscape. One action is not more obviously before another. The dreamscape along with my style of drawing gives a nice reference to a memory from the past.

Similarly with video I have begun to narrate my work but I don’t use a written text so I’m working from memory which creates these nice gaps in the speaking where one gets the sense that there’s something not being said. In my application proposal to Central Saint Martins I discussed these ideas and wanting to work in video installation, in actual space to create an experience.

There’s always an issue of presentation and I think video and drawing are the forms which are easiest to present my work. You know it’s like the question, “Where does the work lie? Is it in the process? Is it in the experience of it?” I’m interested in pushing these kind of questions.

3. Where did this work for In the Hall of Wonders come from?

These drawings are from the same project. It was over the last few years that I did these. They are all on mylar and all contain the same type of imagery which becomes kind of a mythology. These drawings are much more focused than other drawings which were simple, like a single figure. These drawings bring a lot together. When I was making them I was looking at Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights and a lot of pictures of old churchs, but also diverse things like Ian Curtis, Dolly Parton, and Kim Novak. And I also made a video using footage of Kim Novak from the TV show “What’s My Line?” I guess that’s a straight forward example of how my video and drawings fit together! But yes, this was a focused project that took a few years. I’ve done drawing series before but this is the most dedicated.

5. What are you hoping to focus on at Central St Martins?

I’m interested in interior space and memory. I’m thinking of a video following simple actions in house like drinking a coffee, or turning on a TV. Kind of creating a map of the house, but there’s obviously something missing, or something is lost… something you can’t quite put your finger on…I want to create something intimate, something vulnerable about the house. I want to bring this to the gallery into it’s own kind of “house”, to create and experience in the gallery where this space become palpable. Where you can feel it.

As distracting as this…

Alison Moffett, an artist working out of the UK, caught my eye in a similar way to how Mozart’s requiem just caught my ear. Her website is well worth a 10-minute or 20-minute or forever-minute walk through woods other than those you’re currently in. Unless by chance you were already looking at her work, in which case, carry on, carry on.

My new favourite.

Marayanna Hardy, who I think is one of the YPF folks, has a portrait (or several) up at Headquarters Galerie and Boutique that caught my eye. And caught it and held it online, as I have yet to get down to check out Jason Botkin’s curated show of a gazillion artists doing a gazillion interpretations on portraiture.

But there is something about her stuff that I am interested in enough that I thought I would post her blog here as well as the image from the Headquarters show. Go check it out if you’re in the mood. I am curious to see more, and I haven’t heard of her work before, so I am feeling slightly excitable. Not that I don’t feel excitable almost always, but even so…

In the hall, or perhaps land, of wonders…

Kim Kielhofner, an American-landed-Canadian-potential-Brit has been working and living in Montreal for years and years now, or at least a good chunk of time. I have had the pleasure of working with her on several projects, and of watching her practice become more intensely refined and focused as the days have worn by.

She is soon to be elsewhere for awhile as she heads to Central St. Martins for a Masters this fall, but there are plenty of opportunities to see her work in the city as she departs.

The first one is coming up for the month of September at the Centre Communautaire Elgar on Nun’s Island. While a bit of a drive/walk/bike, her drawings held therein are absolutely worth the visit. Entitled, In the Hall of Wonders, the show is a look at some of her most recent illustrative work created in the last few months.

Then, for Art Pop 2009, Kim is showing her latest video installation piece, A Dragnet for Lost Feelings, about train robbing ancestors, the mythology of the wild west, and the reality of violence and memory within families. Kielhofner has a poignancy, humour and ability to transform intense subject matters into an aesthetic and visceral language all her own. I do believe she is very much an emerging artist to keep an eye on.

If you heed my advice, and want to keep your eyeballs on her developing practice, the vernissage for In the Hall of Wonders is happening tomorrow night starting at 7 pm, and if you miss it, you can always go to see her work until October 16th at the Centre Communautaire Elgar. Again, google map, kids, google map.

Donate to Art Pop, Receive a Drawing, Win Life

So let’s talk about this visual arts festival. It’s Art Pop, and it’s a segment of the amazing international Music Festival, Pop Montreal. Although it is affiliated to Pop Montreal, they are a non-profit organization, and as such, segments are basically responsible for their own individual funding.

So here’s the deal: sweet drawings like the ones seen in this post (but on paper), will be sent to Frozen Mammoth readers by mail, for donations of $10 CAD and more. The drawings can be mailed either to you or to anyone of your choice. Drawings will be shipped anywhere in the world, with normal shipping, without any extra cost to you.

Thank you so much for your love and support, and for contributing to a young and relevant free arts festival!

Dusty Peas, blowing your mind from deep in Ontario

The drawing-printmaking-rabble-rousing duo Jamie Q and James Kirkpatrick have been jammin’ on collaborative works together for some time now, but not forever. From the bowels of London, Ontario, their minds seem to mesh in the most cohesive ways, explaining how they are able to present such a playful and consistent body of work as a duo so early on in their practice together.

They recently completed an artist residency and will be unfurling and folding the fruits of their labour at the Drawn & Quarterly Bookstore tonight at 7 p.m., right here in Montreal, 211 Rue Bernard…

It looks like pretty mind-blowing work. They’ve even silkscreened a spaceship folks can assemble themselves. I am a little too excited to get down to the Bookstore tonight and see their finished product in all its glory…

I sat down with them over space, time & the internet recently to ask some questions about their artistic process and to find out, for once and for all, what is the what. The answers are pretty friggin’ illuminating, so I hope you enjoy their notions and all as much as I have.

1. could you describe for all the folks out there who’s in your collective and what your deal is? ie if you have a mandate, if you even consider yourselves a collective…just some basics.

Dusty Peas is James Kirkpatrick and Jamie Q.. we think of ourselves as a collaborative art team more than a collective. But we also feel like we are part of a larger community of people doing creative stuff, one without a name or mandate. We don’t have a mandate as Dusty Peas either… we’d rather not be tied down to a formal set of rules. Maybe that is a sort of mandate… that whatever we make will be pretty unconstrained and open to possibility.

JQ – I come from more of a sculpture background, so doing collaborative drawings is a pretty new thing for me. I did that guest artist project with you, Kit, at silence is not (always) a good medicine, and I’ve done drawings with other people where it’s more like a game in which everyone passes drawings around. But this is the first time I’ve been making drawings collaboratively as a regular part of what I do.

Who doesn’t want another excuse to make a sketchbook?

Personally, I think it’s always a good idea to have at least one sketchbook on the go, as the little friends above will testify to. Over here, at the Art House Coop website, you can sign up for this pretty interesting looking project where they send you a sketchbook, which you then fill up or leave empty or smear honey in, and then send it back to them by mid-December-ish. Then your book, alongisde countless others, will go on a tour through the U.S. of A. They are even offering to bring them to your city if you can find a gallery to host the event. All in all, it seems like a really fun thing to do, and a great motivator for those who like this kind of thing but need external forces to help push their inertia button into the  ”on” mode.

You DO have to pay for the sketchbook, but it’s a small fee considering the scope of the project. If you decided to head over to their website to take a look at this in further detail, consider sticking around, they’ve got a neat thing going on worth poking at.

June 18th: Thoday is Thrazy Thursday

Brace yourselves, there are (at least) three art openings to go to today (Thursday the 18th). They all start at 7pm, and I hope you can find a way to see everything without missing Corpusse’s performance at Zoobizarre later tonight. Details below:

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1. Osvaldo Ramirez Castillo at Galerie Push (7-9pm)

It’s no secret that we’re big fans of his intense and riveting creatures (see Kit’s post below). His Bestiairies show is staying at PUSH (5264 St. Laurent) until the 26th of July.

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2. The Emporium State of Mind (7-11pm)

The product of a collaboration between The Emporium Gallery (3035 St. Antoine Ouest #74) and Montreal State of Mind: a “media spanning group exhibition that will exemplify Montreal State of Mind’s mission- to promote the inherent creativity of those who live in Montreal done through the Emporium Gallery’s curation”. The exhibition features the work of Fangs, Amber Albrecht, Sean Orena, Alexi Hobbs, 123Klan, RAGE5, Robb Jamieson, Kit Malo (!), Julien de Repentigny, Astro, Dave Arnold, Ben Pobjoy and Danielle Levy. They are 13 Montreal-based visual artists, who will each be exhibiting one artwork priced at a maximum of $200CAD

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3. A Red Bird Studios Group Show at General 54, 7pm

General 54 (54 St-Viateur O) is hosting a group show put up by the artist-run arts space Red Bird. The exhibition showcases the work of its diverse group of painters, sculptors, graphic designers and silk screeners, each one exploring their individual practice and methodology within the material constraints of a 10″x10″ canvas board. There will also be cake supplied by Cocoa Locale (best cupcakes in town, and I know what I’m talking about) and 10% off everything in the store!

Artists include: Sarah Courtemanche, Dan Buller, Kit Malo (!), Oksana, Rebecca Rosen, Jayce Yam, Mark Dixon, Julien Ceccaldi (!), Katie Earle, John Player, Andrea Kastner, Colin Lyons, Corrie Peterson, Kim Kielhofner, Naomi Cook, Lisa Wilson, Daniel Nessler, Rachel Berger, Becky Emlaw, Shannon Kelly, Konan Cook, and others…

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4. Where you must be after all the art and cake (Zoobizarre, 9pm)

Starting at 9pm, Suoni per il popolo presents Corpusse (TO), The Unireverse (Mtl) and Knurl (TO). There will be everything you could need by then (besides art and cake), i.e. synth action, confrontational performance and raw noise.

I’m especially looking forward to seeing Corpusse do his thing: it will be primitive hardcore punk with a synthesizer, and it will involve glitter and nice make-up. Here’s a video of his last performance at Zoobizarre (6388 St-Hubert) in October 2006.

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PUSHing out Osvaldo’s Beasts

It is safe to say that Osvaldo Ramirez Castillo, who is younger than you would think and very much brimming over with equal parts creative enthusiasm and dedicated focus, is one of THE contemporary artists working in Canada (or wherever he goes, stays, sleeps and tumbles) to pay attention to now and forever more. 

I have been a huge fan of his for several years since I first saw his large illustrations gracing the halls in the new, oddly sterile (or just odd & sterile) EV building at Concordia University. His use of intense mythologies and an unbelievable technique made me stop in my tracks, rabbit-caught-in-field-in-the-middle-of-the-hunt,  and compelled me to make immediate contact. Since then, we’ve had the honour of working with him for Art Pop 2008, and have seen more and more folks take the appropriate measures they should in regards to aiding and abetting his skills. 

Which is why I am SO excited to go to his latest show at Megan Bradley’s awesome PUSH gallery, which opens in only a few days, on the 18th of June. Penned Bestiaries, it is a series of new works that are smaller in format than some of his larger-scale works, but prove only how versatile an artist he is, as they translate the finesse of line and impact of symbolic gesture equally powerfully. There will be big stuff there too, for those who have…size issues. As well, he’ll be showing some of the lithographs he did recently at the St.Michael’s Printshop residency in Newfoundland, which is a medium he hasn’t explored in some time, so it’s a special treat to be able to look at these astounding prints. 

Honestly, this little write-up hardly does his complex and compelling work any justice at all, but one day I will put up a full-fledged interview with the guy and get it over with. Until then, mark off your calendars for this Thursday starting at 7pm, and get your butts over to PUSH and see for yourselves.