During the book Vancouver Art Book Fair, I picked up the latest zine by Vancouver based artist, Sonja Ratkay. The zine contains Ratkay’s abstract and empathetic illustrations:
The illustrations are so beautifully minimal and abstract. An eye unfolds into a machine and dreams deject the skull, and float off into the atmosphere.
For more info:
sonjaratkay.com
Oct 9
I can hear chatter grow louder as I escalate the narrow staircase that leads me above Pulpfiction Books on Main Street. A crowd has gathered in the doorway of the exhibition room and are watching projected waves of muted colour transverse a screen at the end of the room. The waves seem to induce a trancelike state of tranquility even though they are an abstract rendering of the site where the construction site for the Rize was burnt down in 2009.
Exhibition runs October 9 – November 9
CSA Space, 2422 Main Street
See Pulpfiction Books for admission during business hours.
For more information:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/CSA-space/169719629770507
Steven Tong reading exhibition text — he says check out the Rize Oct 9 – Nov 9 at CSA Space!
The current issue of Montecristo features an article on artists OSGEMEOS, who were invited by the Vancouver Biennale to paint the concrete silos on Granville Island last summer. Please see the silos on Granville Island if you haven’t done so yet, they are incredible.
http://montecristomagazine.com/
Image source: http://van-art.com/
Tonight, Oct 7
Taralee Guild artist talk at 7pm
Vancouver Art Gallery, 750 Hornby Street
Website description:
In Taralee Guild’s Nature’s Cathedral series, treed canopies from British Columbia’s rain forest become a metaphor for the sacred space and echo the euphoria of being in these surroundings.
Free to attend but space is limited. Advance registration only. manager@artrentalandsales.com or 604.662.4746
https://www.vanartgallery.bc.ca/events_and_programs/lectures_talks.html
See Taralee Guild’s work at: http://van-art.com/
Image source: http://www.contemporaryartgallery.ca/events/vancouver-electronic-ensemble-alternative-energies/
Alternative Energies by Vancouver Electronic Ensemble
Contemporary Art Gallery
October 6, 7pm
The Contemporary Art Gallery is hosting Alternative Energies by the Vancouver Electronic Ensemble on October 6 this week at 7pm in the gallery.
Website description:
In response to the exhibition by Jürgen Partenheimer, VEE will create a special improvised performance as part of the Vancouver New Music Festival. Players will be scattered across the gallery rooms, as sound, light and colour flow throughout the building creating an abstract sonic environment.
http://www.contemporaryartgallery.ca/events/vancouver-electronic-ensemble-alternative-energies/
Vancouver Art Book Fair presented by Project Space
October 4-5 at the Vancouver Art Gallery Annex, 750 Hornby Street.
Vancouver Art Book Fair website description:
Free and open to the public, the Vancouver Art/Book Fair is the only
international art book fair in Canada and one of only two on the West
Coast. In 2014 the event is anticipated to attract over 1,500 visitors from
across the Greater Vancouver Area and beyond.
Presented by Project Space, VA/BF is a two-day festival of artists
publishing featuring nearly one hundred local, national and international
publishers, as well as a diverse line-up of programs, performances and
artist projects. Featured artists travel to Vancouver from across Canada
and the globe, and produce everything from books, magazines, zines and
printed ephemera to digital, performative or other experimental forms of
publication.
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 3
Members Only Preview
Open to Members of Project Space and the Vancouver Art Gallery
Vancouver Art Gallery, Lobby & Annex, 750 Hornby St.
Friday, October 3, 6ââ¬â8pm
Memberships available at the door or http://www.projectspace.ca/memberships
VA/BF Reception
Free and open to the public
UNIT/PITT Projects, 236 E Pender St.
Friday, October 3, 9pm
Doubles as the launch of ISSUE Magazine, published by UNIT/PITT Projects
SATURDAY & SUNDAY, OCTOBER 4 & 5
Vancouver Art/Book Fair
Free and open to the public
Vancouver Art Gallery Annex, 750 Hornby St.
Saturday & Sunday, October 4 & 5, 12-5pm
Full schedule: http://www.vancouverartbookfair.com
VA/BF has been made possible through the generosity of the following
partners: Vancouver Art Gallery, City of Vancouver, Georgia Straight,
Downtown Vancouver BIA, Discorder, Foam, Sad Mag, Fillip, Geist, Ethical
Bean, The Keefer Bar, Bandidas Taqueria, Paper Pusher, Publishing @ SFU,
Modo and The Paper Hound.
For more information please contact: info@projectspace.ca
Vancouver Art/Book Fair | website | #VABF2013
Project Space | Facebook | Twitter
2 – 236 E Pender St
Vancouver BC V6A 1T7
For full description, schedule, events and exhibitors please visit the VA/BF Website:
Adjacencies | 221a | September 27
I cut through a back alleyway off of Pender Street in Vancouver Chinatown’s hip art district and arrived at the soft opening for the latest collaboration between 221a, Access and Grunt Gallery. Empty tents that were pitched within close proximity to one another echoed eery sound effects and chatter. Spotlights visible at the end of the narrow walkway attracted visitors towards a gathering of onlookers who were waiting in line to have their palm read by a psychic or waiting for the main performance to begin.
With enthusiasm, Mayor Gregor Robertson (was he really the Mayor or a performance artist….) took to the spotlight to recall the complicated history of the ownership of the space, and concluded his speech by slicing into a cake modeled after a house that was once located where the celebration was held. Cheered on by the crowd, the Mayor was easily convinced to raise a roll of cannabis to the cool night air, and onlookers lined up to receive a slice of cake.
The soft-launch celebrates gallery 221a’s ten year long program to commission work that “considers the changing dynamics of Chinatown and the surrounding communities”.
221a event informatio:
Schedule of Programs
September 27, 4–10 PM
4:00–5:30
Fortune House, tarot readings, Cindy Mochizuki (limited spots)
4:00–10:00
Funny Flow, mixed media, Dennis Ha
“We Are Cheesy” by Jeremy Todd, from SPOOX Issue 11: Crowds, Julia Feyrer and Pietro Sammarco (eds.)
10x10x10 I, installation, Felicia E. Gail
6:30–8:00
Fortune House, tarot readings, Cindy Mochizuki (limited spots)
8:30
The Future is Uncertain (The Past is a Piece of Cake), performance, Lauren Marsden
Contributors
Felicia E. Gail, Artist
Lauren Marsden, Artist
Dennis Ha, Artist
Cindy Mochizuki, Artist
SPOOX (Julia Feyrer and Pietro Sammarco), Artists
http://221a.ca/adjacencies/#more-3254
Cavalier was the perfect setting for this event. If there were ever a pause in discussion, one could admire the beautiful diamond rings, watches and necklaces that were being displayed in glass vitrines .
And He Built A Crooked House, with Sung Pil Yoon
By Michaela Mitchell
On a hot sunny day in Vancouver’s China Town, I met up with the curator Sung Pil Yoon at a café beside the gallery he is currently with, 221a. He sat down with me to discuss the tesseract – a cube within a cube consisting of eight cubical cells – and how this structure has inspired his latest exhibition, And He Built a Crooked House, which features work by Lauren Cherry and Max Springer, Nicolas Sassoon, and Valerian Goalec.
MM: Why the tesseract?
SPY: As a child of the 90’s I used to watch a lot of television. My early interest in the tesseract occurred during this time when I would trace invisible boxes around the television with my finger, drawing a border between myself and the reality that was projected through the TV screen. I became very interested in the exchange and encounter of these spaces though this window.
The structure of the tesseract is explored in the short story, And He Built a Crooked House (1941), by Robert A. Heinlein. The story describes the protagonist’s attempt to construct a house modelled after the tesseract. The protagonist is only able to construct an unfolded cubic prism, but a large earthquake morphs the structure causing the house to collapse into a literal tesseract. It represents higher and lower structures merging together.
MM: These objects seem to operate in relation to one another through a systematic dialogue; each structure embodies an emotion whether it stands precariously or spreads outward invading the surrounding space.
SPY: Lauren Cherry and Max Springer, Nicholas Sassoon, and Valerian Goalec are from distinct international backgrounds and are working in completely separate mediums – digital film, Internet, ceramics and painting. The artists and myself shared the exhibition site while developing and installing works. This collaborative exchange has resulted in a disruption between works that attempt to organize and contain space and those that grow sporadically. Like the tesseract that fluctuates from one shape into the next, the objects in the exhibition remain in a constant dialogue, mediated by Sassoon’s black and white flashing screens.
MM: In what way are these works attempting to free themselves according to Georges Bataille’s (the French intellectual and literary figure) Base Materialism?
SPY: Georges Bataille was in the process of destabilizing vertical hierarchy by arguing for an equal political system, a completely flat plane. The exhibition engages with these concepts through formal arrangement, examining ways in which a vertical position may be deconstructed. I also wanted this exhibition to be about accessibility and balance; prior knowledge of Bataille’s work is not necessary to engage with the art in this exhibition as the interaction of form speaks for itself.
Images belong to 221a Gallery.
Art Daily Vancouver 
