Rachel Debuque works with myriad subjects and forms. In her work, installation, performance, video, and sculpture collide with themes of domesticity, the still life, and the eccentricities of both individual personalities and physical spaces. Through all of this, her oeuvre coheres around a central concern: the visual re-codification and conveyance of memory through spatial sensitivity. Debuque’s Cacti-Smash (2013) is an installation-based performance that features two[…..]

Despite its universal connotations, Secret Citadel, a mixed-media installation and video projection by Canadian artist Graeme Patterson, explores the nuances of male bonding and friendship from an intensely personal perspective. The narrative of the exhibition, currently on view at the Art Gallery of Hamilton, unfolds in four parts featuring two distinct characters—a bison dressed in blue and a cougar dressed in orange—at seemingly disparate stages[…..]

Canada has a strong history of artist-run spaces; from Montreal to Vancouver, Winnipeg to Halifax, alternative spaces for displaying art are as Canadian as hockey. Hamilton Artists Inc. is a key voice in this tradition of noncommercial spaces directed by artists. What is innovative about their current exhibition, Yam Lau’s Tour China, is that the gallery space is turned outward; the show consists of a single piece[…..]

Today we bring you a video walk-through of City of Disappearances, the current exhibition at the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts. Curator Joseph del Pesco (half of the curatorial team, with Elizabeth Neilson) takes the viewer through the show, explaining the works on view and the ideas that brought them together. “Here we think about the echoes of the city, ” explains del Pesco, “the memories that[…..]

How is Blackness performed?  Most African American contemporary artists will admit in confidence that they are often expected to perform their Blackness for the power players of the art mainstream, regardless of their choice of artistic medium. Artists working in two dimensions such as Kerry James Marshall, Kara Walker, and Wangechi Mutu have gained currency by creating work that makes the construction of black identity[…..]

Getting to the Janet Cardiff installation at The Cloisters was like a modern-day quest for some kind of Holy Grail, which in the end seemed appropriate. After my phone died at the 191st St. subway stop—leaving me with no guide through the unfamiliar paths of Fort Tryon Park—and after circling the labyrinthine rooms and hallways that make up The Cloister’s architecture, I finally found The Forty[…..]

Taking its name from a 2006 feature in National Geographic, Sprüth Magers’ latest London exhibition, From Wings to Fins, features the work of color-field painter Morris Louis and Cyprien Gaillard, a young French artist recently established within the international circuit. While Louis’ position is firmly mid-century, Cyprien Gaillard is a locus of tragic postmodernism. Drawn to modernism’s ideals, contradictions, and historical failures, Gaillard has risen on his[…..]