My 3 Nuit Blanche Pictures

Nuit Blanche was fun and exciting, and certainly the most enjoyable way to catch a disease from so many different people in just one night (the flu). Fun enough for me to get my old and heavy camera out of the house! And exciting enough for me to only manage to take 3 shots in total :-(

First up is what I understand to be the remnants of a performance I missed at the Art Matters show that took place at Les Territoires, in the Belgo building. The ‘I don’t give a shit and I rip my art up’ vibe of this is nice. There was a lot of other cool art around too - not seen on this picture: furniture that looked like it was made of cake+icing, a replica of the stargate (I think this one was part of a performance I missed too) and various gross and moldy-looking cakes that were actually edible-ish. Also cool and not in the picture, the Christian Marclay exhibition at DHC/ART, En Masse at Galerie Pangée and Jean-Maxime Dufresne at SKOL.

After the belgo sweat party, no time was left for either Usine C or the UQAM headquarters, so my two buds and I went straight for the Eaton center for YAMANTAKA // SONIC TITAN which was really swell. Props to them for their props, skills and various animu & vidya game references. The Red Bird Studios was the last stop of the night, endless fun was had with self-illuminated artworks. I don’t have a single shot of the art though, not even one of the drawing I was showing there. I do have a picture of my aforementioned two buds drinking beer at the Red Bird, but I’m censoring their faces off because they’re models. Enjoy?

We LOVE peace signs :-)

More things to go to this week

Tonight (8pm-12am) is the vernissage of Night Vision Nocturne (FB), an art show presented in association with the IMCA Student Collective and Art Matters 2009. The new media based gallery exhibition showcases 17 artists working within the creative domain of video, electronic, laser and photography based installation as well as theatre and video performance. The space will be in complete darkness except for the self-illuminated artworks.

Three things over there have especially caught my attention for now - and I haven’t even seen the show, those are: jello ipods (Sek Chee Lynn Chen), majorz lasorz projektor (Jonathan Gilmore) , and what seems like a videotaped cat (Florence S. Larose). See you tonight at Galerie Artefacto (3520 Saint-Jacques W, Lionel-Groulx Metro) for multimedia and live video mixing performances!

Then, this Wednesday (FB, 8pm, $8), Frozen Mammoth favorite Jim Holyoak is participating to this mysterious show/event over at the Eastern Bloc. He will have art on display and he is most likely to do live projections and ink drawings. The event is promised to be hypnotizing and disturbing, with Echoes Still Singing Limbs, Holy Oak,  Paper Beat Scissors and Jonathan Beaver Sheppard. Look at those gorgeous myspaces, and dare tell me you’re not intrigued!

Surface Tension (Ready to go back to the Belgo?)

For those of you who experienced the Belgo on Nuit Blanche I can understand if you’re not quite ready to go back this week, but to you I say “Hey come on, don’t be a baby.” This Thursday as a part of Art Matters the vernissage for Surface Tension will be going on from 7pm-10pm in ) Les Territoires (5th Floor Belgo Building, suite 527) 372 St. Catherine O. There will be pieces from Alia Ahmad, Carolina Aponte, Michelle Bui,  Jessica Campbell, Laura Findlay, Anna Labarias, Pier-Yves Laroche, Sarah Maloney, Rachel Shaw, and Veronique Vallieres ranging from paintings to ceramics and fiber work. Not to be missed, even if the idea of entering the Belgo is presently giving you sweaty palms I promise you everything will be okay.

Updatan’ You Alls.

1) Don’t forget the deadline for applying to Art Pop 2009 is March 5th at midnight, please pass the word and this link around: http://www.docstoc.com/docs/4140023/ArtPOP-Call-for-Submissions

2) This Thursday (the 26th), make sure you make sure you show up at the Art Matters Opening Party! The Art Pop squadron is curating part of the exhibition, but that’s not all: the venue (bain mathieu .ca) is crazy, you’ll be dancing all night in an empty pool and the bands/djs are insanely radical. + there will be surprises and props of the kind you’ll want to photograph all night long so you never forget. check the facebook event page for more info: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=52365303557

3) Coming up on the 26th of March - An awesome art education project in collaboration with DHC/ART, articule and Art Pop, more details coming up soon!
Participants will be given a blank white album cover containing a record that has been removed from its original cover. They will be asked to listen to their album and create an album cover for the record they received. This project challenges participants to reflect on the visual representation of sound and music and find inspiration in a randomly selected record.

Expozine 2008 - good times

 I’m really into all things pertaining to printed matter, so y’all can imagine how glad I was to attend this year’s much anticipated edition of “one of North America’s largest small press fairs.” Like always, I thought the experience was definitely inspiring and invigorating and I left the Saint-Enfant Jésus Church with burning feelings of satisfaction, envy and determination, which was great. Here are 7 things I hate about you I found and loved at Expozine, in no particular order:

1) STOLEN.BIKE.MTL, an intriguing zine by Sheena Hoszko which compiles her online correspondence with strangers who engaged with her last intervention. Let me quote an articule email that explains the artist’s project probably better than I ever could:

In the summer of 2008, Sheena Hoszko placed paper tags on stranger’s bicycles which read, “Last summer my bike was stolen, now I’m looking for a bike to steal”. These tags also included an email address. The artist privately corresponded with people who contacted her regarding their thoughts, anger, and questions about the tags found on their bicycles. These email conversations have been archived within a limited edition zine. STOLEN.BIKE.MTL aims to initiate a dialog surrounding loss, ownership, and potential.

2) Jason Hsu’s Holy Shmoly 2, printed at Space 1026 (in Philadelphia) and sold to me by Space 1026 founding member Maximilian Lawrence. This is a gorgeously screen-printed colorful pamphlet full of psychedelic visuals, cool-looking characters and references to late 80’s/early 90’s cartoons.

3) Walter Scott’s newest zine. This one features great collages/drawings/photos that all demonstrate the density and the awesomeness of Walter’s mind. I’ve been keeping an eye on his art for more or less a year now and it’s been so nice to see it more and more all over the city. But allow me to tell you more about Walter in an upcoming (and way longer) blog post, as he totes deserves it!

4) Lisa Czech’s Lazy Eye #2 is a collection of collages and drawings that was sold at the table Lisa, Walter and their friend Rick Trembles were sharing. This one contains lots of ice cream and female gymnasts with awkward facial expressions, which I always appreciate.

5) Elif Saydam’s Things I Have Loved & Lost: 1989-2009 is my friend and co-worker’s adorably honest, funny and sweet reflection on - you guessed it, the things she lost since 1989. Her writing warms the heart, and it’s a pleasure to relate to her charming and personal stories that make you go ‘I feel you, man’ at every single chapter.

6) Photographs by Erik Osberg, who just got mentionned in Amy’s post. I was sold at the first page, with a shot that got me lingering on the decaying beauty of all-night diner / Montreal hot spot Nouveau Palais (281 Bernard W). Things only got better with pictures of corporations oddly surrounded by trees, or a shot of Bobo the cat sleeping under the protection its plush-cat-mom. The zine ends with super insightful words from Erik regarding both photography in general and his own practive of it. Oh yeah.

7) The great folks over at Art Matters put together this collection of drawings and collages made by fellow Concordia University students the night of a drawing party over at Korova on November 12th. Under its lovely (and oh so shiny) cover, you’ll find two pages dedicated to my new nineties-inspired cartoon rubber-furries. You get a preview of that if you click on the image below, although I guess it’s not really a preview if I give you 1,5 pages out of 2. Oh well.