Better Watch Out For The Skin Deep

Hello,


this blog is down until further notice.



I will be off for a long trip in Arizona.


I've been taking time off from everything.


I haven't done any art visits but local stuff since my last post.
That's about 4 exhibits since 2007. And only 1 that I actually enjoyed.


I'm still participating in other art blogs, but 2007
will bring big changes for me, and I'm taking time off
so I can, first watch how my health is doing, than decide how
these changes should unfold (basically, decide if I'm quitting the arts
for a while to pursue activities in the sheer entertainment world).


I know there is one exhibit slated later this year that I don't want to miss, which
is the Richard Serra retro, so if I visit only this one in 2007, I should be happy.
We'll see. I doubt it will be that good, as there can't be that many monster works
entering the Moma space, and Serra is mostly good because of the monster works.


As far as Autumn 2006 retro that I promissed....Arf...hang in there, will you?
Maybe later, maybe never. My fave was Huang Yong Ping at Mass Moca, which sounds exotic but that's the only big trip I made with Dada at Moma last autumn, and so because I found Dada quite "ordinaire" (contrarely to popular thought), the rest would all be local Montreal stuff, with the gallery that rocked the most being Skol, presenting a couple immersive installations by Cooke-Sasseville and Brendan Fernandes (by the way, their last from January was pitiful). Also, Serge Murphy at Oboro offered a chance for me to realize how much I changed view on this artist's work since 15 years ago (when I truly hated it). Now I call him a baroque Richard Tuttle by way of Michel Goulet, the way that he groups his sculpture as installations. Another big big standout was the Karilee Fuglem installation at Quartier Ephemere that looked like a cathedral made of silk. And the Cristof Migone retro at Uqam, organized by Nicole Gingras, was worth a museum event, so much that things were a little crammed in the spaces, but maybe that's a relief when I've seen so much whitewall emptiness filled with quite mediocre works in the past. I should also mention that Uqam catalogs are IT. They are fabulous. Finally, the Matthieu Beausejour installation at Vox ("1 1/2 Cote-Des-Neige") was a fresh good laugh, in an otherwise austere programmation for this space since a while.

Did I missed anyone? At least those are the ones I remember from top of head
(I'm not mentioning the bad stuff.). Oops...I forgot the Gong Potato work by Rodney Graham which is another big fave of last season. But I should mention that the Rodney Graham retro at the Montreal MAC left me down a little. I thought it wasn't half as great as the AGO retro from a couple years back, very probably because it concentrated on recent works of the artist, and he's been a little too anecdotic for my taste lately. I still remain curious enough to follow his whereabouts. The Neo Rauch is not mentioned as I had seen most of the works in a few different places before.



Ok, have a nice season.


Cedric Caspesyan
centiment@hotmail.com


Ref: Skin Deep