TYPOLOGY

Category: drawing

  • TYPOLOGY presents THE ORDER OF THINGS | LEIF LOW-BEER

    Screen Shot 2013-02-10 at 4.13.42 PM

    Join us Thursday, April 24th from 7–9 pm for the opening of our spring exhibition, THE ORDER OF THINGS or, The Second Conference of the International Network of Personal Relationships (INPR), featuring mixed media drawings, collages, assemblages, and sculptural tableaux by Leif Low-Beer (Toronto/Brooklyn). Evincing a keen interest in the mark of the hand, relationships between figures in space, and the active engagement of the viewer, The Order of Things will be Low-Beer’s first solo exhibition in Canada.

    (more…)

  • Art Toronto 2013 Highlights

    Battat Contemporary booth, partial view. Photo by Shani K Parsons.

    With so much to do in advance of the project space opening, this year’s visit to the fair was more like a drive-by. However, even the short tour yielded many surprises and much to follow-up on. Featured here are a few favourite booths and interesting artworks from this year’s fair. For artwork information, hover over the image or see credits listed at bottom. For a closer look, click the images to enlarge. For more information on the gallery or artist, links are provided to their respective websites.

    (more…)

  • Joining: Agathe de Bailliencourt

    art_file-3-2

    The month of May belongs to Agathe de Bailliencourt, who will have two solo shows, Eintritt in Toronto and Sheer in New York, plus a site-specific projection onto The New Museum, concurrently on view. Eintritt means “joining” in German (de Bailliencourt is French but currently based in Berlin) and this post joins together images from both of her painting exhibitions as well as selected past projections and site-specific installations. The images are strikingly distinct, yet demonstrate de Bailliencourt’s continuing interest in the expressive mark of the hand (particularly her graffiti-inflected splashes and scrawls), as well as her ongoing engagement with architectural form, space, and especially movement/directionality delineated through the use of decisive gestures, layered textures, and vibrantly contrasting colours.

    (more…)

  • WTF is a Wayzgoose? (and WNYBAC, for that matter?)

    This weekend, get thee to Grimbsy for their 34th annual Wayzgoose, a festive fair and celebration of all things book arts-related. While the origin of the word wayzgoose is still up for speculation, there is no doubt that this tradition of annual printers’ parties dates back to at least the late 1600s, when Joseph Moxon, author of Mechanick Exercises (1683-1684), wrote: “It is customary for the Journey-men every year to make new paper windows…because that day they make them the Master Printer gives them a Way-goose, that is, he makes them a good Feast, and not only entertains them at his own house, but besides, gives them Money to spend at the Ale-house or Tavern at Night.” Nice.

    (more…)

  • 44 from the virtual floor of VIP Paper

    John Baldessari, 2623 Third Street, Santa Monica, 2000, suite of four color lithographs with screenprint, overall dimensions 54 x 54 inches, edition of 61, Brooke Alexander Gallery

    …
    As the world’s first online only art fair, VIP has experienced major growing pains since it’s launch in 2011, with many collectors frustrated by tech glitches and dealers reporting low traffic and sales as a result. While the site’s capacity and interface issues are well known and improving, the question of whether the term “online art fair” is an oxymoron continues to be raised. To our minds, this is largely a semantic issue; regardless of what one wants to call it, VIP simply represents yet another web-based opportunity for those who have the art to show it to those who don’t (see our previous post on other online art-buying venues such as Paddle8 and Phillips de Pury, linked below), and the success or failure of any online platform will most likely depend on practical concerns such as whether the art is shown to best effect (sharp, high-resolution, colour-correct images, intuitive and glitch-free scalability, easy and consistent bookmarking for collecting, comparing, and return visits), whether the artwork information is complete, correct, and actually informative, and whether dealers are ready and willing to operate in a more transparent, service-oriented manner (responding to inquiries in a timely fashion, making pricing and availability information accessible, and instituting reasonable return policies where possible, since art sometimes has a way of not actually looking like it does onscreen) which is appropriate to dealing with the wider, more diverse audience that an online platform presumably draws. Improvements in any of these areas would be a welcome development.

    (more…)

  • Michael Dumontier: the middle of the air (plus Ken Nicol's 1000 Fuck Ups)

    On the advice of artist Ken Nicol, we stopped in to MKG127 to see Michael Dumontier’s current show, the middle of the air. Featuring a series of well-crafted works in various media including acrylic on MDF, foil stamp and coloured pencil on matboard, foil stamp on fabric, and string, nails and a fishing weight, the exhibition is both playful and spare, quiet yet engaging. With an incredibly light hand and wry sense of humour, Dumontier utilizes tromp l’oeil effects to fool the eye and surprise the mind. Like zen koans, the best of the works call into question not only the material processes used in their making, but the nature of reality itself.

    (more…)

  • Ashes to dust: Swept Away at the Museum of Arts and Design


    …
    While in New York, we stopped off at the Museum of Arts and Design to see Swept Away: Dust, Ashes and Dirt in Contemporary Art and Design. Part of a series of exhibitions that “explore the intersection of traditional or unusual materials and techniques as viewed through the lens of contemporary art and design,” Swept Away features painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, video, performances, and installations which confront “the ephemeral nature of art and life, the quality and content of memory, issues of loss and disintegration, and the detritus of human existence” through the incorporation of fugitive and often discarded materials.

    (more…)

  • On becoming Lebbeus Woods


    …
    “Dry your eyes, Lebbeus Woods explains why architecture school and years of unpaid labor might be worth it” is how Architizer tweeted their recent post summarizing Woods’ lovely and concise true story, “Why I Became an Architect”. Posted in two parts on his blog this past week, the story is in actuality less about why and more about how one becomes and architect—or any creative professional, really—and therein lies the essence of its hard-won truth.

    Leading off rather nicely with a Gustave Doré image of Virgil and Dante at the entrance to Hell, Woods traces the outlines of his early interests and influences in Part One, focusing on his passions for painting and light. In Part Two, Woods details how these outlines slowly began to resolve into the fuller picture of his life’s work, providing reassurance and inspiration to any creative professional who may currently be deep in the throes of dues-paying, or what one might more productively call practicing, to become a full-fledged architect, artist, designer, etc.

    (more…)

  • David Shrigley does sculpture, and it’s macabre as hell


    …
    David Shrigley is best known for his sardonic, absurdist or just plain weird drawings, often compiled into volumes with titles such as Ants Have Sex in Your Beer and Drawings Done on the Phone Whilst Talking to an Idiot. However his new show at the Hayward Gallery in London is making waves for its unsettling sculptures. Bringing together work from as early as 2001, the exhibition features Shrigley’s darkly funny (or disturbingly demented, depending on your appetite for the macabre) take on taxidermy.

    (more…)

  • More tantric drawings to stir your soul


    …
    Back at the beginning of November we posted on these exquisite tantric drawings in relationship to recent work by Fred Tomaselli. Now we’ve just become aware that a stunning new book on these contemporary abstract drawings was coincidentally released just days before our post, and it contains many more examples than were included in the original Drawing Center show and publication from 2004–2005.

    (more…)