Watch Portrayal on CBC Gem.
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Hi, Art!

Sunday, January 23, 2022

Hi, Art!

Sunday, January 23, 2022

Hi, art lovers!

 

For those who’ve exhausted the true crime offerings on their streaming platform of choice, I’ll direct you to this week’s promotional priority, an art-world mystery from CBC Docs that’s now available on CBC Gem. It’s called Portrayal. (Here’s the trailer.) And at the risk of spoiling any tantalizing twists, the following supplementary readings may aid your viewing. Exhibit A: director Billie Mintz on the teensy bit of trickery that earned him access to one of the doc’s key players. Exhibit B: an explainer on how it’s an extremely ordinary thing for an artist to hire assistants. Further to that: “Are fabricators the most important people in the art world?” Don’t answer that question — just watch the doc. Stream it now on CBC Gem.

And because we promised you eye candy ...

 
Still life on a blue damask backdrop. Objects include five lit taper candles in crystal candleholders, two golden pinecones and an assortment of ordinary items (all blue): an ice pack, a wrapped pillar candle, two packs of Excel gum and more.

@soft_turnip_cake/Instagram

A day passes like a year: Ode to Winter by Shellie Zhang. (Keep your eyes peeled for this one if you’re wandering past Mercer Union in Toronto. They’ve put it up on a billboard outside the gallery.)

 
Painting of tall spruce trees. White sunbeams radiate through their trunks from the horizon. In the foreground, a figure stands at the end of a long grey dock. The water is still and flecked with the reflection of polka-dot stars.

Gary Haggquist

Reader Gary Haggquist emailed me last weekend about this painting of his. (Hi, Gary! Thanks, Gary!) It’s called The Call, #3, Deleted Scenes from an Unmade Movie.
 
Painting by Veronika Pausova. Eight skinny and bent yellow sticks, perhaps legs or bendy straws, fill the composition (also yellow). At the bottom of the frame, eight open-toed stiletto boots are rendered in the style of Xerox print (dusky blue). A single photo-realistic toe peeps out of each boot. The toenails are painted blue. A wavy line cuts through the composition, just above the height of the boots suggesting liquid.

@veronikapausova/Instagram

Wading Sun by Veronika Pausova. (The artist just opened an exhibition at Esker Foundation in Calgary.)
 
Photo of two stained-glass forms standing in a white-walled gallery. The works are contained in copper-pipe frames with arched tops and square bases. The glass is in shades of yellow, pink and red and suggests layers of skin or rock. Deep chasms punctuate the bands.

Laura Hudspith

Time heals all … even if it takes an entire geological period to feel any progress. Gorgeous stained glass by Toronto’s Laura Hudspith. The title? Wounds are to fissures, an invitation for a joining (Entry Portals). 
 
Digital image of a patterned Persian rug in shades of red, blue and grey.

Shaheer Zazai

This is nice news … which is also kind of funny, but mostly just nice. Microsoft recently acquired a work by Shaheer Zazai, a Toronto-based artist who uses Microsoft Word to weave his images.
 
 

You've got to see this

 
 
 
Photo composite. At centre, a photo of a person with shoulder-length blonde hair. Their back is to the camera. A red scribble of a spiral fills the composition, which places the photo against the space of a cream backdrop.
Harper Collins

The book that ‘illuminated my experience with mental illness’

 
Alicia Elliott on Jordan Tannahill’s The Listeners.
 
Photo of an orange industrial robotic arm with a grey cube affixed to the end of it, held aloft inside a white-walled workshop space. Windows can be seen above the workshop floor.
Courtesy of the Design + Technology Lab

How to make art with a giant industrial robot

 
This interactive window installation launched Friday as part of Toronto’s DesignTO Festival.
 
Sara Gilbert and Drew Barrymore in a still from Poison Ivy. They are both young white women who appear to be asleep in the backseat of a red convertible.

New Line Cinema

 

Watching Poison Ivy for the first time in 30 years

 
If you grew up in the ‘90s, you probably rented this Drew Barrymore flick from Blockbuster. But all these years later, does the teen thriller hold up?
 

Follow this artist

 
 
 
Instagram

Monique Martin

@moniquesart
Photo of a white-walled gallery. Life-sized paper dandelions cover the floor. On the walls, a murmuration of paper butterflies are installed, appearing to swarm the space.

@moniquesart/Instagram

It’s been a smidge more than a year since I last heard from Monique. Back then, she was planting crops of paper dandelions all over Canada, and it seems they’ve kept spreading across the country and have been joined by a preponderance of handmade butterflies. This is a snapshot from an exhibition she has up now in Okotoks, Alta. Why butterflies, though? Monique sent me this note: “2020/2021/2022 have been [years] of transformation for everyone. We move differently in our world. We think differently about all situations and we have had to adapt to constantly changing information, protocols and restrictions. Like the butterfly, we are having to transform. When COVID ends, we may find that some of the transformations to our way of living will remain and that some of them will make our world a better place.”
 

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I’m Leah Collins, senior writer at CBC Arts. Until next time!

 
XOXO CBC Arts
XOXO CBC Arts
 
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