Contemporary Art Commons^™

Relational Maneuvers In Autobiographical Video Art, Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

No abstract provided.

Art Without Cultural Borders: Reflections On Qin Feng's Art, Curtis Carter

Curtis Carter

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Museum Pieces: Toward The Indigenization Of Canadian Museums, Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

No abstract provided.

Bill Burns: Dogs And Boats And Airplanes, Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

No abstract provided.

Lovesick Child, Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

No abstract provided.

The Official Picture: The National Film Board Of Canada's Still Photography Division And The Image Of Canada, 1941-1971, Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

No abstract provided.

Family Photography And The Documentation Of Trauma In Contemporary Art, Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

No abstract provided.

Heather Saunders: The "Freaky Friday" Series, Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

Desire and sex and lust. The conflation of signifiers of sensuality and femininity in female clothing points to a rigorous sexualization of the body beginning in girlhood, through their dress and the way it’s worn. Lace, fishnet, silk, leather, satin, chiffon and latex are shown in their various iterations in children’s fashion. The same materials, fabrics and the words used to describe them host different meanings and associations in adulthood. Yet, somewhere in this liminal divide, childhood and adulthood speak to each other, and the conversation is uncomfortable, like the first time you heard about the birds and the bees.

Exhibition Review: Clive Holden: Media/Mediated, Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

An approach to artmaking that is driven by the prospect of chance, by the accidental, is reliant upon the inherent rationale of the natural world. There, chaos constitutes change (or vice versa) and reveals new forms that displace and/or update the old. Toronto-based multidisciplinary artist Clive Holden’s recent practice has manipulated the properties of the natural world into an aesthetic strategy. Utilizing the randomization and dynamism found in nature serves to unsettle and reconfigure his installations, transforming them into ever-evolving media.

Shapeshifting: Transformations In Native American Art, Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

Gary Wyatt: Seekers And Travellers Contemporary Art Of The Pacific Northwest Coast, Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

No abstract provided.

Some Things Last A Long Time, Matthew Ryan Smith

Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

Relational viewing is also linked to poststructuralist theory, which has provided a framework for shifting away from the idea that the author is the creator of meaning to instead consider how readers interact with texts to produce meaning. Some Things Last a Long Time considers the connections between autobiography and relational experience. With this exhibition, I propose that contemporary autobiographical art can operate as a site where social encounters are created and where self-discoveries become possible. I encourage viewers to use their own lived experiences and personal histories to interpret the artworks in the exhibition.

Mass Production For One: Inverting Standards In Design Art Furniture, Lauren L. Gallow

Lauren L. Gallow

“When is a chair not a chair? The answer is probably, ‘When it’s a piece of design art.’” So began a recent article on the burgeoning field within contemporary art known as design art. While it is difficult to summarize the diverse practices of design art practitioners, typically they share an interest in exploring the tools, methods, and forms of the industrial manufacturing system. This project examines several designers who are using the means of industrial production to create limited edition or one-off design art objects. While they often start with familiar, functional forms such as chairs and tables, these …

What Matters/What's Matter, Samuel Solomon

Samuel Solomon

No abstract provided.

The Participating Witness: A Conversation With Jaret Belliveau, Matthew Ryan Smith

Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

Jaret Belliveau is a Moncton-based photographer and filmmaker whose photographic work addresses illness and loss. Arguably, Belliveau is best known for his series Dominion Street (2003-2008), which began as a visual investigation into family dynamics and the hegemonic balances of power that maintain it. However, ten months into the project, Belliveau’s mother was diagnosed with stomach cancer. Soon after, the disease spread throughout the rest of her body and in time it took her life. Upon the recent staging of Dominion Street at Fredericton’s Beaverbrook Gallery (April 26, 2012 - June 10, 2012), I conducted an e-mail exchange with Belliveau …

Karin Doleske: The Drama Of Abstraction, Matthew Ryan Smith

Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

Karin Doleske’s most recent series Embedded Paintings from 2012 maintains a heightened interest in placing the viewer as an arbiter of knowledge. With these works, Doleske has manipulated poetic narrative for the visual sphere so that viewers may experience her paintings as they would written texts. However, in a twist of semiotic mischief, each painting formally characterizes an empty page to be filled by the viewer’s thoughts and imagination. For example, the horizontality of "Ten" subtly points to the lines of a written novel yet alphabetical letters are clearly absent. By doing so, it is as if Doleske has created …

Nature's Laws And The Changing Image Of Reality In Art And Physics: A Study Of The Impact Of Modern Physics On The Visual Arts, 1910-1940, John George Hatch

John G. Hatch

No abstract provided.

Modernism Remodeled: Branding The Image Of Modernism In Dwell Magazine, 2000–2010, Lauren Gallow

Lauren L. Gallow

Dwell magazine is not a magazine and it is not about architecture. Often grouped in the shelter magazine category, Dwell describes itself as somewhere between an architecture trade publication and a consumer shelter magazine, pulling successfully from both of these audiences to form its current circulation base of 341,000. In an analysis of the ten-year history of the Dwell brand—which includes the magazine as well as several other branding outlets, including a website, a design show, and even a line of Dwell prefabricated houses—this project examines how the Dwell company has created and insistently promoted a lifestyle based on the …

She Comes From Text, Exhibition, Moya Costello

Dr Moya Costello

No abstract provided.

Modern Earthworks And Their Cosmic Embrace, John Hatch

John G. Hatch

No abstract provided.

Primitivism, Humanism, And Ambivalence: Cobra And Post-Cobra, Karen Kurczynski, Nicola Pezolet

Karen Kurczynski

Examines the issue of primitivism in the Cobra movement and its aftermath, with specific attention to the role of Ernest Mancoba in the movement. The article observes that the Cobra artists were ambivalent on the subject of primitivism--some, like Karel Appel, taking a classic modernist primitivist approach while others, like Asger Jorn, Ejler Bille, and Constant, rejected the racist assumptions of primitivism in the search for a modern "folk art." We conclude that the discourse of primitivism entered a crisis in the postwar period in tandem with its opposing discourse, humanism, which began to break down as a "universal" western …

Adel Abdessemed: The Future Of Décor, Matthew Ryan Smith

Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

Adel Abdessemed’s Future of Décor at OCAD’s Onsite Gallery is the artist’s first solo exhibition in Canada and is a testament to the university’s ‘Nomadic Residency’ programme, which has featured work and lectures from ORLAN, Rirkrit Tiravanija and Hal Foster. Some may find Abdessemed’s invitation by curator (and OCAD professor) Charles Reeve as a daring gesture considering the artist’s 2008 show in San Francisco was terminated after the artist received death threats over a video series that featured close-ups of six animals bludgeoned to death for food. That being said, Abdessemed moves in a different trajectory for Onsite. The work …

“El Humorismo Gráfico De Maitena Burundarena: De Lo Local A Lo Global; De Los Estereotipos A La Subversión”, Gema Pérez-Sánchez

Gema Pérez-Sánchez

No abstract provided.

Modernism Remodeled: Branding The Image Of Modernism In Dwell Magazine, 2000–2010, Lauren L. Gallow

Lauren L. Gallow

Dwell magazine is not a magazine and it is not about architecture. Often grouped in the shelter magazine category, Dwell describes itself as being somewhere between an architecture trade publication and a consumer shelter magazine, pulling successfully from both of these audiences to form its current circulation base of 341,000. Although the magazine has been the centerpiece of the company since its inception in October of 2000, the Dwell brand is composed of several other outlets, including an extensive website; Dwell on Design, the largest design show on the west coast; a Dwell television show; and even a line of …

Romanticism And Cynicism In Contemporary Art

Curtis Carter

No abstract provided.

John Cushnie: Greying The Grey, Matthew Ryan Smith

Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

Paintings are not talking heads. They can produce a conversation, an interaction, an exchange. They ask us to listen with our eyes, to feel the space between us, to project ourselves. The paintings in Eidolon Prospects aim for a mutual exchange, a reciprocal relationship — they push us to face our uncertainty, to work at them, to reconsider their visuality, to tap into their manipulation of materials. Their material and pigment are rendered as voices, and in their silent speech, the paintings come to haunt us. John [Cushnie]’s paintings disturb, incite and ambiguate.

Autobiography And The Family Frame: Jaret Belliveau's “Dominion Street” At Gallery Tpw, Matthew Ryan Smith

Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

Documented over a period of five years, “Dominion Street” presents a visual narrative of love, loss, and life encapsulated within an East Coast milieu. Privy to the Belliveau family’s emotional and physical plights, the artist utilizes an autobiographic frame offering up strikingly informal glimpses of his family.

Inside Out: Representations Of Women And Work On Popular Television, Liz Linden, Jen Kennedy

Liz Linden

Inside Out: Pregnant Actresses Playing Nonpregnant Characters, a video montage by artist Liz Linden, was originally exhibited in combination with the video Outside In : Fictional Commercials for Real Products at Art in General in New York in Hay 2009. Both videos use appropriated television clips to point to the formal and ideological mechanisms ~that structure our relationship to materials and content that we are confronted with on an almost daily basis, but which are often overlooked or dismissed as benign or banal. Displayed side-by-side on TV monitors, a reference to the videos' source material, together Inside Out and Outside …

Present Tense Biennial: Chinese Character - Re-Framing Questions Of Identity, Ann Taylor

Ann Connolly

A review of the Present Tense Biennial: Chinese Character exhibition at the Chinese Cultural Center in San Francisco, which ran from May 1, 2010 through August 23, 2010.

Internet Killed The Copyright Law: Perfect 10 V. Google And The Devastating Impact On The Exclusiive Right To Display, Deborah B. Morse

Deborah Brightman Morse

Never has the dissonance between copyright and innovation been so extreme. The Internet provides enormous economic growth due to the strength of e-commerce, and affords an avenue for creativity and the wide dissemination of information. Nevertheless, the Internet has become a plague on copyright law. The advent of the digital medium has made the unlawful reproduction, distribution, and display of copyrighted works essentially effortless. The law has been unable to keep pace with the rapid advance of technology. For the past decade, Congress has been actively attempting to draft comprehensible legislation in an effort to afford copyright owners more protection …