January 2010
10 posts
CBC's Scandalous Pay-to-ReBlog Plan.
I feel less free this morning.
The CBC is now using a ridiculous software called iCopyright. CBC’s website describes the software like this: “With iCopyright you can quickly and easily reuse copyrighted content.”
Nothing could have been easier than reblogging or quoting a CBC article with no software on it, there is no way iCopyright does anyone any good. We’ve entered...
Marie Lanoo Through and Through
If you missed the handful of people walking around in blue medical booties at the Mendel opening last week, their is a good chance that you missed the highlight of Marie Lanoo’s Through and Through and Through. The exhibition takes Lanoo’s approach to abstract painting and applies it to a quasi sculptural/installation involving the refracting of light. A reflective surface, like the...
Valentin Ruhry
Valentine Ruhry’s Humbleness. Perspective at work
Ed Pien
Ed Pien’s Haven of Delight opened this past Friday at the Mendel Art Gallery as part of the winter exhibitions. Using drawings, paper cuts, and paper installations Pien creates a haunting and compelling mental scape. His line works it’s was across paper, into paper, and into the gallery space itself. You could label his cuts as plant-like or neurological in nature, either would be...
Bovey Lee
Rooted in the Chinese folk art tradition of paper cutting, Bovey Lee creates intricately sliced compositions, molding rice paper into scenes that mix contemporary anxiety with fantastic folk tales. In Tsunami Oblivious (pictured above) giant waves crash down on what appears to be an oil rig. When something as massive as a tsunami invades the everyday, all rules of normalcy are gone. Lee’s...
Thoughts on Google Vs China
On January 12th Google’s official blog told the world that they are considering a different approach to business in China (even pulling out of China) after Google was the victim of on-going cyber attacks that appear to be connected to the Chinese government. This, I say without hyperbole, is huge. What, at it’s core is a business dispute between a company who relies on a network of...
Character
Character is an awesome company out of Helsinki that recycles and reconfigures company signs, turning old brands into text-fetish design items.
“When company signs and logos are taken down, they get demolished. We recycle the characters into individual design objects. We dismantle the letters, clean them up, add a new transformer, LED lights and the power cord, and put them back...
Kelly Mark, Stupid Heaven
Kelly Mark’s Stupid Heaven at the College Art Galleries presents a self deprecating, humorous look at work, and the filling of time with Mark serving as the framework for the observation.
In the far right corner of the lower gallery a punch clock full of cards takes up an entire wall. Each card holds the hours that Mark worked in the studio that day. The piece denies art any pedestal to...
Heritage Moments
I once had the difficult task of describing the greatness of Canadian Heritage Moments to an American in New York. I failed, an outcome which should have been obvious from the get go. How can you put someone, who comes from a country that has a wealth of ever-present historic events to define themselves against, in the position of a Canadian.
Our history is kept behind a modesty curtain, and...