Kimsooja

Ned and I went to see the Kimsooja exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Toronto.  It was really beautiful and I wrote about it over on my Modernist Aesthetic Blog  I hope that you will go to that blog and read more.  Click here.

Lawrence Carroll A Place

1969 by Lawrence Carroll
oil, wax, canvas, staples, wood
212 x 93 x 34 cm  2017

There's waiting a place

someplace.  I have

not found.

A place I know

but cannot picture,

cannot describe

cannot feel.  

Untitled (stacked painting) by Lawrence Carroll
oil, house paint, wax, canvas on wood 
63 x 41 x 8 cm 1992 - 2017

It's there, over there

not behind me, but

over there,

ahead of me

and my impatience,

Untitled 2005 (house paint, wood, wax, plastic flowers
and Untitled 2017 (house paint and wax on canvas) both by Lawrence Carroll
installed in Museo Vincenzo Vela, Switzerland in 2017 

a place I'll sleep

with knowing its

a place I can sleep.

And not turn from side

to side, night to night,

but a place not silver or gold

but something else,  its

not perfectly round

A Place by Lawrence Carroll
pencil, house paint, masking tape, wax on paper
43 x 35.5 cm  1985

it's over there,

ahead of

not behind me. 

Lawrence Carroll  (1954 - 2019)

More about this  fabulous artist over on modernist aesthetic.

There are also some videos here and here.

Meryl McMaster

Dream Catcher
2015 Ink Jet Print
32 x 66 inches
Meryl McMaster 

"A lot of times in life, we are not necessarily held back, 

but our dreams, our past, and our circumstances are tethered"  

Meryl McMaster 

I've just put a post up about Canadian artist Meryl McMaster on the modernist aesthetic blog.  

Yayoi Kusama

Once the Abominable War is Over, Happiness Fills Our Hearts  by Yayoi Kasuma   2010  Acrylic on Canvas  194 x 194 cm

Yayoi Kusama exhibited this past spring at the Art Gallery of Ontario, and although I was in Toronto while the exhibition was up, I did not attend.  For one thing, it was difficult to get tickets, you had to book months ahead for a specific time.  Then towards the end of the exhibition, the art gallery sold timed tickets if people lined up outside before the gallery opened.  Too much hoopla for me - I didn't participate.

Yayoi Kusama 

When we were in London England in 2012 for my graduation exhibition from Middlesex (and the oral exam (the VIVA)) an exhibition of her work at the Tate Modern had just come down.  People told me that I should have gone, I would have loved it.  So I did purchase the catalog for that show.  Last week I finally read it.
Well, her work is very impressive.   I was especially interested in the determination she demonstrated during her early career and wrote a bit about that on my Modernist Aesthetic blog,  

This 89 year old artist is riding the popular culture train  and has touched many hearts with her joyful dots that cover everything.  Lots of books available about her, and she is all over the internet.  Here, here and a video here.

Our daughter and her art work

Windy  (detail)  mono print with textile collage

from left:  Pink Hill ceramic, April installing the mono prints with textile collage, Windy and Breezy,
 and Royal Mountain ceramic sculpture

April and I spent a couple of days in Sudbury this weekend.  She installed her work at the Northern Artist Gallery at Artists on Elgin on the Friday, and then Saturday, January 6,  was the reception.  The exhibition, Effloresence, will be on view until January 30.

 This is her third exhibition in seven weeks.

foreground:  three of the twelve untitled factory sculptures made entirely from clay glazed with oxides, each sitting on custom made plinths from welded metal, background:  found linen with custom wooden stretcher

The first opened on November 17 at Roots and Culture in Chicago, the second opened December 1 at ACRE Projects in Chicago.  We were so pleased to see both of those shows when we went to Chicago in mid December to pick up April and bring her back to Canada.  I've written about them on Modernist Aesthetic - click here for direct link.

The people that we worked with at the gallery (Lauren and Stephanie) were very helpful.

left:  Untitled Factory clay sculpture, middle: Breezy monoprint with textile collage, right: Royal Mountain ceramic

For myself, it was a real treat to see my kid with her playful and brave art.

She has made art all her life, knew about Vincent Van Gogh when she was three years old. 

Britta Marakatt-Labba

A note to myself - but that I am sharing with all of you for inspiration.

Britta Marakatt Labba's beautiful embroidered tapestry about the history of the Sami people from Lapland.  (wool on linen)

The complete textile is pictured beautifully on the Textile Forum blog - click here.
A few photos are also on Modernist Aesthetic, posted today.

The tapestry is 24 meters long and has the elements I love about Finnish (and Swedish) textiles.
Modesty
Simplicity
Craftsmanship
Sumptuousness yet pared down
Just the right amount of empty space

The artist speaks about the Goddess myths and the reindeer on the textile forum link.  xo

primordial faith

phenomenology is not a theory, it is a practice

have 'primordial faith' (merleau ponty)

have faith in my own perceptual experience

perceiving is not theoretical

this is just how it is

this is just how I experience it

a primordial dimension of experience

phenomenology does not replace everything that has gone before

it just tests it

phenomenology is lived experience

not denying anything

just clarifying

believing in the world

including myself in the world

sensuous

not forgetting

letting my heart break

things keep happening

sometimes it is confusing

whenever I don't know what to do

I look at the sky

it is accessible all the time

national gallery visit

Jutai Toonoo The Arsennal 2012, Oil Stick on Paper  Cape Dorset

I'm writing this after a brief stop in Canada's capital, Ottawa.

Grace and I visited the National Gallery.  We saw several large horizontal artworks on display, like the drawing above by Jutai Toonoo about his mother's cancer treatment.

We also viewed Robert Houle's Kanata. a conte crayon drawing over acrylic that appropriates the 1770 painting by Benjamin West about the death of General Wolfe on the plains of Abraham. This battle between the English and the French is a pivotal moment in Canadian history.

 "Native people are just voyeurs in the history of this country" Robert Houle said, referring to the French-English division in Canada that has ignored the indiginous peoples' land claims for years.

Robert Houle won Canada's highest honour, the Govenor General Award  in 2015.   Throughout his long 40 year career, he has certainly not been a voyeur, but an active participant in our nation's culture and politics.  View some of his paintings here, here, and here.

The following text is from the G G aard nomination.

Working from his knowledge of Anishinaabe conventions of abstraction embedded in such arts as quillwork, and from his research into Western art history, Houle has forged a new, and distinctly Indigenous, visual language, informed by complex currents of Aboriginal traditionalism, European realism, and American modernism, and shaped by autobiography, historical events, and contemporary politics. 

It was synchronistic to come across Robert Houle.  I just posted a new moderinst aesthetic blog post about Rebecca Belmore and quote Mr. Houle in it.  Here.

Sati Zech

 When I started to use the internet as a research tool, I came across the work of Sati Zech.

A 2006 exhibition of her red and white bollenarbeit series excited many art lovers.

The rounded shapes refer to the rounded hills of her childhood landscape in southern Germany. Currently, the artist resides and works in Berlin.

 This beautiful white space is the Heidelberg gallery that held that important 2006 exhibition.

Sati Zech also works with black vinyl. The wall piece above is large, nearly 160 inches wide.

New work is in rawhide and uses the motife of repeated circles.  (2014)

In 2010, Zeck participated in a resdency in California.  James Chute interviewed her and the following quotes are from his article in the June 27 San Diego Union Tribune.

“I don’t want to have any contact with quilts,” exclaimed Zeck, whose English is salted with a pronounced German accent. “I never thought about quilts. I don’t want to make quilts. I have nothing to do with it.”  The only parallels between Zech’s work and most quilts is they both involve fabric.  Both also have the function of providing warmth. Of course, you have to pull a quilt over you for that to happen. With Zech’s larger pieces, you stand in front of her strange, hypnotic red shapes and layered canvasses and your temperature starts to rise.

“You can see, I’m not a drawer; I’m not really a painter. I’m a sculptor. I’m not really interested in color. I use color to show energy, that’s why my work is warm.”   Most of all, she’s intrigued by the “language beyond normal language,” how people reach out, cope and connect beyond mere speech.  “What happens when the normal language stops and you are in a crisis in your life?” she asked. “You are in really deep trouble, then you use other languages.

“I traveled and worked for 10 years in Africa, and for me this was very important because I found the same experience, that people don’t trust what you are telling. They don’t trust your words but they trust your body, they trust how you move, the way you look into my eyes, much more than the words.”   “The color red, I don’t use it as a color, it’s more like a statement, more like reminiscent to Africa. I never thought about it, but I’ve always lived in cities, and I think it’s reminiscent of the warmth, the heat and the energy of Africa, and the empathy between the people."

click here to read the complete article

More about this artist over on modernist aesthetic. 

organic, labour intensive, energetic marks

no. IZ  detail  Yayoi Kusama  

No. IZ  Yayoi Kusama  (Japanese born 1929)  oil on canvas 1960 

The First Part of the Return From Parnassus  detail  Cy Twombly

The First Part of the Return From Parnassus  Cy Twombly (American 1928-2011) oil, coloured pencil, lead pencil, wax crayon on canvas,   1961

Vast Ocean  Gunther Uecker (German born 1930) paint and nails on canvas over wood  1964

Vast Ocean Gunther Uecker detail

The three artworks in this post are just a taste of what I was able to see in Chicago earlier this week, selected because of their simple yet lively marks.

The three artists who made them were all born within two years of each other. They were toddlers at the same time but lived in different countries.  They turned twelve during WW II.  When they were 30, they made paintings like these that fifty years later remain relevant.  

Human experience, imagination, risk.  Our connections.

Ned and I visited our daughter this week.  She is studying at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and these pieces are part of the collection of the Art Institute's gallery.   I'm glad I was able to experience them face to face.

the aesthetic of distress

Chiyoko Tanaka,  Brown #602 grinded hand woven fabric 1989

Chiyoko Tanaka from Japan weaves cloth and then wrecks it.   Her process leaves tiny holes in the surface of her work, allowing light to shine through.  

Chiyoko Tanaka, Blue RF #601  grinded fabric rubbed with white stone 1989

The weaving process is one of accumulation.  Weft threads repeatedly go over and under the warp threads for a lengthy period of time.  Thus woven cloth is about growth and about space and the warp threads (the time it took) eventually become invisible.  Chiyoko then makes time visible again when she places her finished beautiful linen, silk or ramie cloth on the ground and rubs it with a brick or a stone. She calls this body of work "Grinded Fabric".

"For me the act of weaving, as the weft threads accumulate one by one, is a representation of time passing away..... Placing the fabric on the ground, I trace out the ground texture and grind out the surface of the fabric.  .. The true past tense of the verb to grind, "ground" , also implies the earth, which is used to embed, erode and emboss its own surface into my work."  Chiyoko Tanaka 

Chiyoko Tanaka, mud dyed cloth, poppy seed oil  Permeated fabric 1983

Sometimes, this artist covers her cloth with mud and occasionally pours oil onto it. Again, the time it takes for mud and oil to be absorbed into the cloth, is very important to her process.  She uses the term "permeated".

"I enjoy the sense of addition from a new dimension: on one plane you already have the criss-crossing of the fibres, and now, from above, a new element gently descends and starts spreading outwards from its centre.  For me, this is a symbol of gravity: energy toward the centre of the earth."  Chiyoko Tanaka

All images and quotations here are from Art Textiles of the World Japan
There's a new post about Chiyoko Tanaka on modernist aesthetic. 

I'm still thinking about weaving and the connections that cloth has to human mortality.

Go Slow. Be Alert.

 Agnes Martin acrylic and pencil paintings, 2012 installation at Dia: Beacon

"You have to go slow.
You have to not try hard.
Just be in the mood for the truth to come.
A small happy state of mind.
 
Be alert.
It will come into your mind, what to do."

Happiness, 1999  60 inches square, acrylic on canvas

"People who live by inspiration say "I have to sleep on it"

People call me a mystic but I'm not any different. 
You're not a mystic when you respond to beauty.

Trust - Absolute trust."

Agnes Martin


More on my Modernist Aesthetic blog.  Click here.