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Eloi D on the 30e Symposium international de Baie-Saint-Paul, The Belgo Report on Galerie [SAS] and Galerie Luz.
All posts by zeke
The EZ Montreal Art Podcast episode 4, Ryoji Ikeda at DHC/Art
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Last month Eloi Desjardins from Un show de mot’arts and I got together to discuss art in Montreal in the summer. We were in Joliette to see the Jacques Hurtubise exhibit there (more on it later) but the conversation quickly got focused on the Ryoji Ikeda exhibit at DHC/Art.
The EZ Montreal Art Podcast episode 4
Listen (21:23):
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Download: Ogg Vorbis 12MB, MP3 18MB, Flac 76MB, WAV 216MB.
L’épicerie on Fancy Fast Food Hamburgers
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I don’t know why it blipped on my radar yesterday but this YouTube video of a three year-old episode from the Radio-Canada TV show L’épicerie on Fancy Fast Food Hamburgers was brought to my attention.
They did regular and fancy burgers at A&W, McDonalds, Burger King and Harvey’s noting that in general the fancy burgers were bigger, more expensive, saltier and fattier than the regular burgers while not being significantly better tasting – however they did note that the fancy burger at A&W was slightly better than the regular one.
[Edit 9h25: What a difference 18 months will do, I kind of thought I had seen the episode before, but couldn’t find it anywhere on Zeke Dot Com, so thought I hadn’t written about it. But I was mistaken. I previously wrote about it on a different website, oops! Apologies for the duplication.]
Dil Hildebrand, Back to the Drawing Board (Reprise), Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain
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Mr. Hildebrand is a significant and important contemporary Canadian painter. It’s obvious because his most recent exhibit was reviewed in Canadian Art magazine (written by no less than the editor-in-chief!), Le Devoir and one of Louise Blouin’s magazines. The only things that could make him a more important and significant contemporary Canadian painter would be a review/write-up/preview in ArtForum, the New York Times/New Yorker/New York Review of Books, or some publication in London, Paris Berlin or Shanghai.
This is both a good thing and a bad thing. It’s a good thing mainly because he is a very accomplished artist, looking at his work, I get a very strong sense that not only does he know what he wants to do, but he know how to accomplish it as well. There’s nothing namby-pamby about his work. Adjectives like forthright, bold, strong and direct are the ones that I would think of using in order to describe his work. It’s a bad thing because he only gets reviewed in local media outlets and his paintings sell for a song (The work in this exhibit was selling in between $800 and $15,500 depending on size, and how much (or how little) color there was). Both of these are examples of (apologies for repeating myself here) how little respect Canadian/Quebecois/Montreal art gets in the rest of the world. Mr. Hildebrand has exhibited in Auckland, Beijing, Chicago, Los Angeles and Miami, among other places, and will be exhibiting in London but there is nary a peep in anything other than the good old Canadian intelligentsia about his work. It’s frustrating. It’s getting to the point where I’m beginning to question if Canadian art really is truly good art. Or if what is being called good is merely a function of myopia. (As an aside, I think I should point out and say that it is a good thing that I wear glasses).
But enough about the politics (at least for the time being) and on to the art. In all the other reviews that I’ve read and in the artist statement that accompanies the show, a big deal is made out of the use of the color green. While I understand both the significance, historical antecedents and reasons Mr. Hildebrand states for using green (“the chalkboard, the cutting mat, or the green-screen”) given that almost 40% of the show were drawings in a sort of architectural bent. Simple gray lines on a cream colored paper, I’m not certain I’m drinking that Kool-aid. I’d much prefer to put my emphasis on the title and the works themselves.
I think I’ve always been a big fan of drawing. Maybe because I can’t do it to save my life, or perhaps because of the simplicity of the act, or maybe I’m just full of it, and in fact I never really liked drawing ever. But for purposes of this argument, let stick with the positive for whatever reasons. Mr. Hildebrand’s drawings are of some extraordinary objects that at first appear to be some kind of structure. Something like the plans for a house of cards, an aerial view of some maze or now that I think about it the kite like structures from John Horton Conway’s mathematical Game of Life a representation of Pick-Up Sticks.
Viewed from a distance (and from my memory) the polytopes seem to form some sort of pattern. Not quite Penrose tiling but close. And I’m certain if I stared at them long enough I would be able to come up with some kind of mathematical formula to describe what they were doing.
By calling the show “Back to the Drawing Board,” Mr. Hildebrand is tacitly admitting that whatever was done prior didn’t quite work out the way he intended. I can’t help but think that the repetition of forms helped in finally getting the finished product the way he wanted. It’s almost as if you can see the process taking place even though the drawing in front of you is complete. Despite the simplicity of the drawings they are extremely powerful and even a full month after seeing the show I can still imagine them in my mind as if I had seen them half an hour ago.
The actual paintings in the exhibit, the things with the color green in them, did not affect me as strongly. It’s easy enough to see how they are related to the drawings, but I did not get a visceral sense of anything from looking at them. They almost appeared to be some kind of academic exercise, which is surprising as the drawings, when viewed from a technical standpoint could be considered by anyone’s definition academic exercises. I think that it might have something to do with the fact that, for the most part, the paintings are titled as objects (Compartment, Contraption, Module, Parabola, Spire) while the drawings, for the most part, are titled as actions (Reconstruction, Dismantling, Replicating). But then again, since grammar was (and still is) not my strongest subject and I’m picking a choosing titles that fit my theory, I could be very wrong.
And then there is Treehouse. A glorious painting if there ever was one. As you might expect I’m not entirely convinced it is a representation of a actual tree-house. To me it looks more like an imagined memory of what a tree-house was, or could be. Or more precisely like a collection of doors. Doors that are unlocked with the key of imagination.
But I digress…
More white than green, with some brown thrown in for good measure, it seems like some sort of gateway. I’m not certain how it fits in with the title, unless you go for the Helen Keller (or Alexander Graham Bell) quote about doors opening and closing, which I would have sworn was Zen or Buddhist and not American. But even then it’s kind of a stretch. I think the reason I like it has more to do with the form and structure of the painting than the actual content. It has a certain heft, that by extension makes it feel important.
I could kick in here with the cheesy puns and talk about how if Mr. Hildebrand doesn’t at first succeed, but I’ll avoid that. I also would like to try and figure out some way to link either his paintings or the drawings or both to some sort of hope or possibility of him being able to make it as a Canadian Artist (with the capital C and A) but I’ve been wracking my brain for the past hour and half trying to figure out some sort of way to tie things up neatly so it looks like I know what the heck I’m talking about. But I can’t, for the life of me think of anything. So I’m going to have to leave it like this, kind of dangling and not quite perfectly polished.
Interview with High West’s David Perkins
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Believe it or not, you can actually get some of High West’s products here in Quebec. Specifically Rendezvous and Silver Western Oat. Yossi over at JewMalt interviewed High West proprietor and distiller David Perkins.
It looks like I’m going to have to try and get myself to Utah one of these days…
64 years ago today
How to hang an abstract painting…
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George Mather a British psychologist did two experiments to see if people thought there was a right way (and by extension, a wrong way) to hang an abstract painting. He had seen the Black on Maroon series of paintings (two, three) that Mark Rothko originally did for Phyllis Lambert and were the catalyst for the Rothko Chapel in Houston and ultimately donated to the Tate in England (and received on the day Rothko killed himself) and noted that at various times the stripes were horizontal and at other times they were vertical.
After noting that there had been five other similar experiments done since 1970, none offering any real conclusive evidence either way he decided to to test his own hypothesis. Adding in something called the Fourier amplitude spectrum slope and testing to see if it also played a role in how people thought abstract paintings should be hung. As he says in the conclusion “In agreement with anecdotal reports from galleries, the judgements of nonexpert viewers accord with the intended orientation for abstract or semiabstract art at levels well above chance. However, performance is far from perfect, consistent with results in previous studies.” – Note to self, if I ever need an easy way to get press, redo study once again.
La Belle et La Boeuf prise deux
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Yet another reason why not to go to a restaurant immediately after their grand opening. Back in June, a bunch of us went to La Belle et La Boeuf. Their grand opening 9sorry you need to be signed in to Facebook to see the pictures) was at the beginning of April, and my rule of thumb is three months to work out all the kinks, get the staff working together as a team and in general have it working as a well oiled machine.
While for most people the experience in June was fine, I ended up having to send back not one, but two burgers (and man do I hate wasting food) because they weren’t cooked properly, and for the most of our evening the service was nowhere near up to snuff. But word got back to management, and I received an invitation for a make over, a second chance, a redo, or if you prefer a chance to wipe the slate clean and start over. They were offering free burgers in order to show us that the previous time had been an anomaly.
It only took us a month to get our act together (and we almost didn’t!) but by then, La Belle et La Boeuf, had passed the three month probationary period and on the surface it seemed like everything would work out. The first sign that things would work out, was that my name had been circled in the reservation book. I wasn’t certain if I should be honored, scared or or if it was merely do alert the staff. I’m kind of used to being noticed and recognized in restaurants, but I do think that this was the first time I had been felt a tinge of embarrassment upon sitting down (I was the last one to arrive, and as a consequence everyone else pointed out and/or asked if I had seen that my name had been circled). I think I was able to stop the blush before it reached my Adam’s apple.
The second sign that everything would work out was immediately upon sitting down, I was asked what I would like to drink. The first time we had been there, they hadn’t received their liquor license. Liquor with my meal, while not a deal breaker, does go a long way to making bad situation easier to handle. Back in June without any liquor, it was kind of like they were flying without a safety net. I got a pint of Okanagan Spring which is distributed here in by Sleeman’s Quebec (aka Unibroue), which in turn is owned by Sapporo.
Some of my dinner companions decided to go all girly (it’s a good thing that they are all women) and ordered a pitcher of Rose Sangria. Thankfully my manhood wasn’t questioned and no one offered (or forced) me to taste it. I was told on very good authority though that it was delicious, but since I have hair on my chest that I am proud of, sing with the worst tenor voice you have every heard in your life and can grow both sideburns and a mustache (but won’t anymore) I wouldn’t be caught dead drinking something like that.
You can judge for yourself.
But we weren’t there for the drinks, we were there for the burgers. La Belle et La Boeuf makes their burgers from 8 ounces of Certified Angus Beef from Alberta that as they point out has never been frozen. They specify the shoulder, I would think Chuck, but translating cuts of beef from English to French is never an easy thing. So take whatever I say with a large grain of salt.
Since this was a free pass, I decided to leave my comfort zone and try something unusual that I would normally never ever order (kind of like the Rose Sangria, but in a meat form). La Belle et La Boeuf offers eighteen (18) different types of burgers ranging on price from $10.95 to $29.95. The low end of the price spectrum gets you a standard issue burger, with lettuce, tomato and onion. As you move through the range of offerings they offer additions like Monterey Jack cheese, fried eggs, peanut butter, Meyer lemon mustard, Brie cheese, an eggplant puree, grilled pineapple and a bunch of other things as well. I’m certain that if you wished you could get a burger with the items in the Calimero (fried egg, smoked bacon, lettuce, onion and mayo) with that of the Goldorak (Mozzarella, pepperoni, merguez, spiced ground beef(?), homemade tomato sauce and fried onions) to make some kind of Manga Super Chicken Robot burger. Or if you prefer the Calimero and the Billy Idol (caramelized onions, grilled pineapple, sunflower greens, blue cheese, guacamole and a dijon mayonaise) into a Funky Chicken burger. Personally, this time I chose a Calimero, there was something appealing about the fried egg, with peanut butter (I’ve been kind of going through a phase recently…). As you might expect I ordered it rare.
As you can see I ordered mine with onion rings instead of french fries, and behind that behemoth is a quarter of a kool-aid pickle
My dining companions ordered La Boeuf (cheese sauce, jalapenos, red pepper and blue corn chips), the fish burger(!) – she also was the one drinking the Rose Sangria, The OMG burger (double patty, American cheese in both colors, onion rings, extra bacon, tomato, onion, lettuce and a mustard-y mayo), La Belle (Brie and Monterey Jack cheese, fig jelly, arugula and caramelized onions) and a Classic with bacon and cheese (onion, tomato and lettuce).
Judging from the time stamps on the pictures I took, it appears that the burgers took about 8 minutes to appear. There are benefits to getting your name circled in the reservation book. As you can see my burger came exactly as ordered and was particularly delicious, or if you will allow me, a particularly sloppy and messy delicious taste sensation that accomplished just about everything I asked of it. There’s nothing like reverting back to my inner adolescent while scarfing down a fairly decadent burger to put a large smile on my face (along with some egg yolk, peanut butter and spicy mayonnaise, thankfully there were napkins available).
While I am not 100% certain that everyone at the table was as happy, sated and satisfied as I was with their burgers, I believe it due more to the fact that I was kind of on top of the world, and in relative terms they were just above the arctic circle. Or in plainer language, I really really enjoyed the experience and I think everyone else only really enjoyed it. In speaking of the experience, I should mention that La Belle et La Boeuf is in a new building (as is everything at Centropolis) that has exposed brick walls, something like a 25 foot ceiling, and has been designed to evoke some kind of retro feel. Although it is not an age, era or period specific feel (or at least I didn’t think it was) more like, “there’s something old, lets put it on the shelves! It’ll add atmosphere.” It appears to be geared to young professionals and students living in Laval (or at least that’s what the crowd looked like on the nights I was there. I wasn’t quite the oldest one in the restaurant, but lets say the next oldest) and as a consequence the music can get kind of loud and there are TVs on the wall. They also have a small-ish terrace that looks out on Centropolis if you want to eat outdoors. My preference when eating outdoors is to eat someplace where there are plants and trees and grass, but that’s just me.
The address is 510 promenade de Centropolis. If you’re interested in other opinions, this is what is being written about them on Yelp, RestoMontreal and Urbanspoon. Their Twitter account is, sadly, underused and their Facebook page is not viewable to the general public, but I’m certain over time, like the food these kinks will be worked out.
And finally, if you’re still reading this far, on Monday the 13th, they are having a special Opening Party to celebrate their liquor license.
I think everyone is invited.
Time Lapse Video of the Montreal Sky on Monday August 6, 2012
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Taken from various vantage points around the city
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Montreal have a nice looking church on de Lorimier
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I always thought that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, aka the Mormon church, was from Utah. But either Utah doesn’t really have any distinctive architectural styles or the sect that went to California sent their architect to Montreal. Complete with palms and a parking lot, it definitely doesn’t really fit in here in Montreal…
If you’re interested, Adam Gopnik (an ex-Montrealer) has an interesting article in next week’s New Yorker on the Mormon church, it’s history and how it relates to this year’s presidential election.
