Notes on a Crisis in Beauty
1. “I do not mourn for what I have lost. For if there is one new art that we have had to learn, those…
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“Where Does Art Get To Live?”: A Conversation Between Anique Jordan and Michèle Pearson Clarke
On a perfect spring day in late May, I found myself huddled in a crowded gallery for an artist talk, my head leaning forward,…
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Branding the Anthropocene: Canada’s Art Institutions Privilege the Artificial
Anthropocene – the wide-reaching exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) and the National Gallery of Canada (NGC) – tackles perhaps the greatest…
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Performance Art in a Precarious Time: A Conversation with Johanna Householder and Francisco-Fernando Granados
In movement study of a standard North American strip-search procedure, Francisco-Fernando Granados gambols through a codified gestural sequence: “empty pockets … remove clothing ……
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A House Divided: Theaster Gates’s Confused Beat at the AGO
Touted as “a new immersive work,” Theaster Gates‘s first museum solo exhibition – self-knowingly titled How to Build a House Museum, and recently on show…
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Toronto the Good, in Two Histories
Sometimes you get the history you want. Sometimes you get the history you deserve. And sometimes you get the history that’s good for you….
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“You Can’t Win It”: Jon McCurley on the Art of Facebook
I woke up this morning to find that Jon McCurley was emitting tiny wails from the “isolation chamber” of Facebook late last night, a…
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“It‘s Like Deciding to Cut Off a Leg and Keep Walking”: Jessica Bradley On Her Controversial Closure
I first sat down with Jessica Bradley in late July, hoping to discuss her recently shuttered gallery. I was, at that time, wanting what…
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These Are Not Ideas; These Are Things: A Conversation with Liz Magor
Liz Magor claims her “space between the mould and the cast.” It’s a pronouncement reified by thirty years of installation and sculpture that reads tentatively, delicately,…
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What Gets Revealed When Iris Häussler Finally Owns Her Name
It’s not easy to write about Iris Häussler. I’ve been avoiding it, though desiring it, since her daring He Named Her Amber (2008) subsumed the…
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