p|m Gallery Toronto

I am very pleased to announce I will be represented by p|m Gallery in Toronto, Canada.

You can check out my works and info on their page here.

I'll have a solo show opening there in October of 2012.

Little Black Book - The Drake Hotel, Toronto. Feb. 11th to Apr. 18th

LITTLE BLACK BOOK

February 11 - April 18, 2011
The Drake Hotel
1150 Queen St. W. Toronto, Canada 001 416 531 5042

Drake’s mid-winter exhibition highlights a group of international artists who are on the edge of something great. These painters, sculptors and installation artists are all at different points in their careers – ranging from a recent grad to a museum veteran, all working in a wide range of media. Brought together loosely by a mutual fascination with pop-culture and a refined sense of craft, these artists have held our attention for sometime, consistently creating thought-provoking works that are at once on the cutting-edge of new directions, yet filled with familiar references that keep us coming back for more. So, this is it: a Little Black Book of artists and projects that have been so inspiring that, at one time, we would have been tempted to keep them secret!

The show opens with a vestibule installation by L.A-based Alise Spinella, a recent graduate of CalArts acclaimed Masters program. We’ve had an eye on Spinella since her early school days and have been struck by how her sculptures expand on the painterly space, much like the work of Jessica Stockholder, but in more ephemeral and seemingly spontaneous ways.

Three paintings fill the chalk board in the front lobby. These works by New York’s Scooter LaForge are a newer discovery, having participated in a recent show with Drake-alumni Shoplifter. A mix of Saturday-morning-cartoons and German Expressionism, these paintings are familiar yet totally fresh.

The back lobby features a painting by Australian Anthony Lister, a street artist who has been turning heads in the fine art community for the last few years with successful gallery shows and hybrid projects like the Hello Kitty Pop-Up Shop during Art Basel|Miami Beach. Lister has a knack for turning our most beloved pop-culture figures on their heads with a wry wit and deft brushwork.

Wil Murray combines the explosive painterly energy of Les Automatistes with vibrant patterns that are reminiscent of background details from vintage Loony Tunes cartoons. Here the painting spills over the confines of the canvas, filling the hotel stairs with vibrant abstract colour and the subtle suggestions of wallpaper patters, balcony railings and landscape details slipping across the screen on a Saturday morning.

The staircase to the Underground has been re-imagined with a new permanent installation by celebrated Canadian artist Ken Lum. Jim and Susan’s Motel illustrates Lum’s keen interest in the tension between the marketing of public messages and more private exchanges.

NYC’s Patrick Griffin shares Lum’s interest in messaging, replicating vintage lapel buttons. Polka dotting the walls, these buttons transcend the clichéd phrases and quaint sayings of the original, with a new preciousness, hand-crafted in sizes that stretch 2ft across.

Special thanks go to Show and Tell Gallery and Galerie Push who made this exhibition possible.

My Guide To The Toronto Art Fair

Magenta TV's profile

Twice As Much Faggot, Twice as Much Drugs

Settling into Berlin nicely after a very good, very hazy art fair in Toronto.
My second arrival here has been even more spectacular than the last. It rains here, but I've not felt a drop.
I stopped checking the weather or the date.
The painting pictured is very big. You can click on the photo and see it bigger. It was exhibited at Art Toronto and in my show at Galerie PUSH. I can never remember it's proper name: Them Faggot Drug Them New Faggot Standard Breasts Shape Drug(144" X 89" X 14" Acrylic & Polyethylene Foam On Board, 2009).
Photo by Yannick Grandmont

Magenta Exhibition In Toronto

I'm headed down to Toronto tomorrow for the week. A few more RBC events, a little repair to a painting, but mostly for the launch of the Magenta Foundation's Carte Blanche Vol. 2: Painting book on the 15th of November.
Hope to see you there.
Click on the image above for the e-invite.

Curtis Santiago's Reverse Homesteading

I met Curtis Santiago last summer in Calgary at the Sled Island Festival. He played at set at the closing party, and even through my five day hangover haze, I remembered his story about Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun taking him on as an an apprentice in part because of his colourful shoes. He pulled a ring case from his pocket and showed me a little bit of what he'd done on the inside. It didn't knock my block off, but the images he sent me today sure did. Lawrence must have seen a lot in those shoes.
Curtis has pulled up roots from Vancouver and re-located to Toronto, where I'm sure, judging by his really nice paintings, he'll do just fine.
Click on the images for larger versions.

Art Fair Blues, Governor General Cheers, Toronto

Hey look, it's Governor General Michaelle Jean checking out Sexe Maniac Maniac Maniac Maniac Maniac at the National Gallery of Canada.
I just got back from Toronto last night. A little broken from the weekend's activities.
I travelled there for the 2008 Toronto International Art Fair. I left there pretty hollowed out.
The opening night gala was great with it's free booze and chatting with other artists, but the rest of the time is was a little heartbreaking to be there. Rarely do I feel extraneous when my work is hanging somewhere, but the fair has little to offer artists past the opening night. The fair is mostly for collectors and gallerists.
Wait, the fair's still on today, go see my work at Booth 1020 before it closes!
Other things I did in Toronto were fantastic. Drunken after-party and animated cab rides with John Eisler, dinner and art fairing with my Mom, recording an episode with Joel and Jenn for Squidpod, times spent with the stripey-jacketed dudes from the MOCCA, and free beer and brewery tour with Wayne Baerwaldt, Matt Masters, Terrence Houle and the boys in the band.
I'll be back in Toronto in November to open the Magenta show and see everyone I missed this time.

Magenta Carte Blanche, Vol. 2 - Painting: MOCCA Exhibition

David Liss and Clint Roenisch have been hard at work in an underground bunker selecting the 30 painters from the list of 194 appearing in the Magenta Foundation's soon to be released book: "Carte Blanche Volume 2: Painting". These 30 painter will receive the coveted solid gold berets and will be included in the exhibition in Toronto at the MOCCA opening November 15th. They're launching the book that night too.
Obviously my Mountain Dew and Creme De Menthe cocktail gift basket was a hit. I knew campaigning was the way to go.
I'm in the book and the show. Busy autumn.
See the list here.
Pre-order your copy of the book at Amazon.

Globe & Mail Review

WIL MURRAY AT LOOP GALLERY

$600-$7,500. Until Aug. 12;

1174 Queen St. W., Toronto; 416-516-2581

It must be pretty devastating for artists to have their studio burn down, as happened to painter Wil Murray in Vancouver a few years ago. I don't mention it to drum up sympathy for him, but instead to suggest that the fire may well have galvanized his subsequent decamping to Montreal right afterward. As well, it may help explain the possibly overcompensatory, I've-got-nothing-to-lose madness of his current painting-constructions, which form an exhibition with the embarrassingly cute, sixties-referential title Strawberry Alarmist Talk Radio.

There is a joyful despair about Murray's convulsive pictures which, to quote the artist's gallery statement, "are thick with acrylic paint, insulating spray foam, glitter, glazes and collaged sections of paint, extending in places out from the board three to four inches." These heavily-laden paintings, which bear wonderfully annoying titles like Birthday Party Shouting Shooting, Why Are You Looking Up Here the Joke Is in Your Hand and Hey Girl You're Ruthless Now So Am I, Hey Hey, feature broken shards of plastic, great droopy, wanton organ-like excrescences, bubbles and blades of pigment, radiating fan-shaped blasts of bubble-gum colour, thundering roilings of what looks like rising oil smoke, and apparently anything else Murray could grab or contrive while he was working.

The energy the paintings generate is both exhilarating and exhausting. I do wish Murray hadn't felt compelled to add to his statement that pictures "take their cues" from three books: John Hawkes's The Lime Twig, Djuna Barnes's Nightwood and Flannery O'Connor's Everything That Rises Must Converge. Three great books, for sure - but our being alerted to them here simply gets in the way of the locomotive force of Murray's amiably demented paintings.

By Gary Michael Dault

From globeandmail.com

July 28th, 2007

Toronto Show Opening At Loop Gallery

"Strawberry Alarmist Talk Radio" opened on Saturday at Loop Gallery in Toronto. I am suitably exhausted from a week of drink, installation, visiting and transport.
Some good introductions were had to the Toronto art world. A review will be forthcoming in the Globe & Mail by Gary Michael Dault on Saturday July 29th.
Some tentative steps toward working with a dealer there were made.

Thanks to Dayna and Elliott for the place to stay and the help with installation and all the with divining the meaning in the words and actions of Toronto art folks.
Thanks to Jackie and Jesse for the roses.

Art and Anarchy. I am finally a punk.

The Toronto Life article on my upcoming Loop Gallery(July 21st to August 12th) show has been added to their site:
"A Fine Mess" by David Balzer

Not since high school have Leslie Feist and I been in such close proximity. I was dating the bassist from her band, she went to alternative high school down the road where all the sophisticated kids with good drug connections hung out.
Now we share the arts sections of magazines. Funny that.

Pre Show Madness & Open Studio Invite

Preparing for the July show at Loop Gallery, I have been rather lax at updating my blog as I have been in the studio and on the phone endlessly.
So, before everything gets moved down to Toronto, I am having an open studio so everyone can see the new work.

Wil Murray Open Studio Day
June 30th, 2007
2pm - 6pm

Loop Gallery Collective

I have accepted an invitation to join the Loop Gallery Collective in Toronto and will be showing there in July of 2007