Posts tagged: CSA Space
Image credit: Brad Phillips, Just Snapped.
Take 1: Angry white guy.
Take 2: Unresolved root chakra issues.
Take 3: Recovering from addictions.
Take 4: Is this the artist’s suicide note?
Takes were taken from the following assortment of identities (in no random order): a new mother, retired jr. high school teacher, art critic, and golf course owner.
Oh my god look at that crowd of people coming down the hill. Oh my god are they all here for art?
I took a bus for chicken skewers and lentils in a cup.
I am not given a chance to guess which cities are which. I only see cranes. Berlin sticks out, obviously. You can’t hide history. Well, you can. You destroy it. So why is Vancouver in the mix. This isn’t about place. Is it about becoming? Vancouver would be the odd one out. Oh look, mountains.
But let’s face it: that vinyl lettering stole the show. Four tones. Seriously, are we at the AGO? Lavender is an attitude.
There are a lot of screens tonight.
The pink cocktail never worked itself out. Well, it eventually did at four in the morning. Hibiscus is not a flavouring so much a smell. Rose flavouring is not in colour rose is in the water.
On the other side of Main, the walls are alive with the sound of music. A pond is also a screen sometimes. Up the hill, someone shouts my name from a truck. Light is climbing up and down the walls. You smell like where you work. Sea bass and cilantro is good, no?
Image and photo credit: Tonik Wojtyra, Hard to Pronounce, 2012. CSA Space
Do you mean you dictate as you walk? No, I mean my thoughts take form in steps. I admit my thinking can be schizophrenic, and writing is a means to control it, but I don’t even know if I believe that. It sure makes sense though. We’ve been talking for two hours, which is pretty good given we were up till two maybe three the night before. Agnes Martin got everyone plastered! Too much beauty and innocence for all. Yeah I think I saw you running. Yeah I think I started running. But 12 hours later we each have a coffee in hand and pull apart the Russell Baker chairs to have a chat. We talk about the chairs. 1980s West Coast Modernism. Visible Japanese influence. They are outside of our time. We are totally hung up on time. I only have 90 minutes, but I give 120. The room is just so welcoming. I would have no idea that this is about The Black Madonna. The subtlety of things. I stand up to take a look at the cobweb. It’s a joke that I don’t get. Am I really writing down “Finnish Fetish”? This is jumping around already. We are at the altar. We begin with nationalism. That’s been a hot topic lately. Or maybe all the time. Do you feel Chinese? Do you feel Polish? We both shrug yeah. Do you feel Canadian? There was less shoulder movement. This has nothing to do with Toronto. The bamboo painting gets better the longer we talk. Not formally, of course, not formally. But the wall and the corner meet at the palette and we are onto iconography. Has he made a conceptual bamboo painting? Wow if he did. And he just might have. He is channeling a lot of different traditions between the bamboo and the totem and the religious pilgrimages, but somehow that’s pretty reflective of Vancouver right now. Don’t get too hung up on traditions was some good advice he got. Not from me though, I’m in the same boat. He’s also painting monochromes with reflective backs. They glow. That’s a pretty good reflection of Vancouver too.
Image credit: Still from “Moonstruck” Francois Roux, 2012
The penetrating darkness of a quiet city park is the subject of rumination in Francois Roux’s Moonstruck. While produced during a residency in France, the video work/installation certainly resonates with wanderers of this city.
Anyone who has taken a walk after sun down in Vancouver, especially through any one of its park lands, will know how pervasive the night really is. The night in this city is not entirely urban, and yet, the light also differs from the countryside as there you can at least see the stars. The darkness in this city, as it is in the video, is broken only by the sparse illumination of manufactured light. Street lamps become one’s navigational stars — and here is Roux’s fascination and play.
There is a play between being drawn to the light and hiding from it too. The presence of lamp posts are very literally at the centre of experiencing Moonstruck. Their formal similarity to tree trunks is not lost, but it is also not exaggerated. An element of voyeurism is hinted as your eyes strain and search, but the intimacy of the space diffuses the lurking sensation, especially if more than one person is present.
More to be seen from Roux as grunt Media Lab presents H20 Cycle, a new series of video works made in and around the English Bay area. As Roux came to Vancouver on an internship through grunt, the cyclical element will be present in more than one way for this emerging artist.
Francois Roux’s Moonstruck runs until March 18, 2012 at CSA Space. Click through for more information.
H20 runs March 16 - 31 at grunt gallery. Opening reception on the 16 from 7 - 11pm
