Fragile

Something fragile at the Gardiner Museum, Toronto 2008:

Reflections over Long Divisions

Reflections of the street scene of Ossington Avenue over the show window of Angell Gallery, where Geoffrey Pugen is currently having his exhibition Long Divisions:

Orbits 1

New York electronic musician Copepod(aka Antfactor)'s dream-like composition from 2009:

Video from antfactor's youtube channel

Good luck on all your latest endeavours, A.

Double Rainbow Rainbow

Currently showing at Show & Tell Gallery here in Toronto, American artists Maya Hayuk and Jen Stark delivered an explosion of colours with their exhibition aptly titled Double Rainbow Rainbow.

Hayuk:

Stark:

Almost

Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark 1980:

Video from matadorelov's youtube channel

Communications*

Sketches of an outdoor sculpture in Toronto, 2008-2009:

*Communications, aka Space Composition for Trinity Square, is a constructivist sculpture by Haydn Llewellyn Davies.

Northern skies

Though not really a big fan of the Group of Seven, I was intrigued by Lawren Harris' interpretation of the north Canadian skies when I drew these in 2009:

Venet's arcs and diagrams

I first saw Bernar Venet's mathematical sculpture quite a few years ago in Quebec City.  It was his signature bundle of arcs like the ones I saw at Universitaet Mozarteum, Salzburg last year:

Then I discovered his very unique wall paintings in a mathematical journal when I was studying homological algebra at graduate school.  I love the way he brought two of my favourite things, art and mathematics, together unpretentiously.

Image from http://www2.math.uni-paderborn.de/

Meier Frankfurt

Richard Meier is one of my favourite architects.  I love not only his designs but also his axonometric drawings.  I visited his Museum für Angewandte Kunst when I travelled to Germany the first time in 2005.

Meier's 1985 Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Frankfurt-am-Main:

Image from Richard Meier Works and Projects, Editorial Gustavo Gili 1997

Skyscape

From Radiohead's 2004 collection of short films The Most Gigantic Lying Mouth Of All Time, directed by Vernie Yeung with samples of [The User]'s Symphony #1 For Dot Matrix Printers:

Video from Zedetnik's youtube channel

Freegums

I went to a very fun show at Narwhal Projects today.  Alvaro Ilizarbe(aka Freegums)'s installation In-between is a series of black and white swirling patterns on amorphous wood panels hung in a room with its walls and floor covered with identically patterned wallpaper.  The result was a visually stimulating experience.

A comfy chair

Starbucks or Second Cup?

I want English breakfast tea ... 2009.

Gehry's temporary structure

Frank Gehry's Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, London 2008:

Volta

Two tracks from Björk's 2007 album Volta ...

Wanderlust:

Video from bjorkdotcom's youtube channel


Innocence:

Video from nameless2509's youtube channel

Le Faux Mouvement

The month of May in Toronto means photography every year.  Most galleries here are showing photo-based works, and I am usually not too excited, with rare exceptions.  Montreal artist Gwenaël Bélanger's works often involve the photographing or filming of falling/breaking objects.  His work Le Faux Mouvement from two years ago consists of a video component and a photography component documenting falling mirrors.

Bélanger at Gladstone Hotel, Toronto 2009:

Video from off2theairport's youtube channel 

From Mordor With Love

Pavel Pepperstein's works from his London show From Mordor With Love at Regina Gallery last year seemed to carry a deeper political message.  But I was more excited by their reference to suprematist Malevich.  Many of his paintings at the show were alternatively interpreted "national flags":

Collage Party*

I have always found collages fascinating.  The creative collage works by Paul Butler and John Stezaker are my recent favourites.

Butler at Jessica Bradley Art + Projects, Toronto 2011:

Stezaker at the ICA, London 2010:

I have enjoyed Stezaker's solo exhibition at London's Whitechapel Gallery in March.

*Collage Party is the name of a travelling experimental studio hosted by Butler.

Toronto interiors

Back to Toronto.  Sketches of some interior spaces in T.O., 2008-2010 ...

At the AGO (Art Gallery of Ontario):

At the ROM (Royal Ontario Museum):

zeta(2N)

Euler determined the values of the Riemann zeta function for positive even integers in 1734 by considering the Maclaurin series for the sine function.  He proved that

and found more values of the zeta function for positive even integers.  The fact that π is involved in these expressions was rather unexpected.  These neat results are not shared, or at least not known to be shared, by the zeta function values for positive odd integers.

4'33"

Sitting in front of the window of my hotel room, watching an endless supply of trucks crossing the Ambassador Bridge marching into Canada, listening to probably the most minimalist music composition ever ...

John Cage's 4'33":

Video from sydbarrett5's youtube channel

Enjoying the silence ...

Maps

Nigel Peake was another nice discovery from the Pick Me Up show.  Drawings from his Maps collection are a personal documentation of places he visited or imagined - informal yet authentic.

Image from Maps, Nigel Peake 2008

8-bit Kraftwerk

Nullsleep's 8-bit cover of Kraftwerk's The Model:

Video from riqard0lazz3r's youtube channel

Nullsleep was another artist featured at Playlist.

Measuring Kraftwerk

I went to the contemporary graphic art fair Pick Me Up at Somerset House when I was in London in March.  Stefanie Posavec's project Measuring Kraftwerk caught my attention since Kraftwerk is my favourite band.  Posavec took the cassette tape of Kraftwerk's 1981 album Computer World and built a poster of a winding maze, which, when travelled, represents the exact length of tape needed to record the album.  I like Posavec's clever idea of making time and sound tangible.

Image courtesy of Stefanie Posavec

Hall's geometric landscapes

Not really a big fan of photography, I find every year the month of May extremely boring in Toronto, with most galleries here showing exclusively photography.  It is a real challenge to seek out inspiring shows.  I was at the YYZ this Saturday, surprised to see Lauren Hall's latest exhibition Sail Fast Cloud-Shadows and Sunbeams there.  I have been following Hall since I first saw her sculptural installations in 2009.  I love her geometric treatments of natural landscapes and her use of synthetically made packaging and building materials.

Hall at YYZ, Toronto 2011:

Hall at Peak Gallery, Toronto 2011:

Hall at Peak Gallery, Toronto 2009:

Hall at the DepARTment, Toronto 2009:

British minimalist

The subtlety of Marc Vaux's minimalist three-dimensional relief cuts through the hectic life in London like a knife.

Vaux at Tate Britain, London 2010:

German abstraction in T.O.

Lausberg Contemporary is a Duesseldorf-based art gallery with international showrooms, one being here in Toronto.  It is one of my most visited galleries because of its frequent showing of contemporary German abstraction.  Jürgen Paas is probably my most favourite artist showing at Lausberg.  I have seen his works both in Duesseldorf and in Toronto.  I even got a chance to visit his studio in Essen last year.  I love the mathematical clarity and the industrial precision of his minimalist works.

Paas, 2010:

My other favourite artists at Lausberg include Michael Laube, Achim Zeman and Harald Schmitz-Schmelzer.

Schmitz-Schmelzer, 2009:

German geometric abstraction

I have been following contemporary German art for the past few years.  The early 20th century Russian avant garde pioneer of geometric abstraction Kazimir Malevich has been a major inspiration for the German artist Imi Knoebel's artistic creations.  While Malevich's approach to art is almost religious, Knoebel's is apparently more playful.  I was ecstatic to find Knoebel's installation Genter Raum at Duesseldorf's K21 last summer:

Another German artist Gerhard Richter's artistic practice is more diversified.  He has simultaneously produced abstract and photorealistic works.  I saw the paintings from his Colour Charts series at Duisburg's Museum Küppersmühle für Moderne Kunst in 2009:

8-bit audiovisual

Golden Shower's Video Computer System, animated by Lobo:

Video from anildash's youtube channel

Jellica & Dr Dru's I WLD DI 4 U, animated by Raquel Meyers:

Video from MunakoisoMies' youtube channel

ZX Spectrum Orchestra's Look + Listen:

Video from zxspecorch's youtube channel

1-Bit music

Tristan Perich was another artist featured at Playlist.  His 1-Bit Symphony is musically grand though conceptually minimal.

Video from pod1ru's youtube channel

Chip glitches

My visit to an exhibition at iMAL (Center for Digital Cultures and Technology) in Brussels last summer has got me addicted to the chiptune/8-bit sound.  The exhibition was titled Playlist.  It explored the chiptune music scene and associated visual arts.  Obsolete (both digital and analogue) technologies from as far back as the early 80s were reinvented and turned into powerful tools of artistic creation.  Artists featured at the show include Gijs Gieskes:

Video from ggijs' youtube channel

Chantel Goret:

Video from chantalgoret's youtube channel

Goto80 with Raquel Meyers' animation:

Video from Andros173's youtube channel

Mikro Orchestra:

Video from mikroorchestra's youtube channel

Blast

I went to see An Te Liu's Blast at MKG127 on Saturday.  It is a vortex-like sculptural arrangement, suspending in mid-air and filling the gallery space, of common household devices like air purifiers, humidifiers and fans:

It is a sequel to Cloud, a hanging assemblage of 136 air purifying appliances, I saw at the MOCCA (Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art) last year:

Image courtesy of MKG127