Bring out your dead

SKULLS AND LADYBONES : John Todd's "The Altar"

by CHRISTINE REDFERN

Old Montreal is not the first place I’d go to see contemporary art but I think my views are changing. When I was down there last week at Galerie Yves Laroche, I liked what I saw. This gallery is showing art that combines found objects, illustration, pencil, paint, collage, tattoo, comic and graffiti elements in a manner that is somehow very refreshing.

As I stand looking at an image painted on an old piece of wood by Turf One, I think about the Musée d’art contemporain’s recent purchase of Thomas Hirschhorn’s Jumbo Spoons and Big Cake. Hirschhorn’s installation is an aesthetic disaster, a huge pile of worthless junk that the museum is now responsible to store and conserve. “Hey, you just spent tons of money on a piece made of tinfoil and packing tape!” It makes me ask the question—why buy something that looks like garbage and use our scarce art dollars to support a foreign artist, when you can buy real garbage from a very talented Montreal resident like Turf One?

Turf One is part of the upcoming group exhibition Sweet Calaveras at Yves Laroche that includes both local and international artists, such as Jason D’aquino, Blaine Fontana, Audrey Kawasaki, Heidi Taillefer, Jon Todd and many more. Each created work specifically for this show inspired by those tasty little sugar skulls (Sweet Calaveras) that are part of Mexico’s traditional Day of the Dead celebrations. Last week, the Mirror spoke to the exhibition curator, Ximena Becerra.

Mirror: Walking here, I passed many galleries, but they aren’t showing the same kind of street-inspired work. What is the history?

Ximena Becerra: Yves has been here 20 years, he also runs Galerie Orange. Four years ago, we wanted a change, so we started off small downstairs with l’Autre Gallery. It was a big gamble but it went really well. So l’Autre Gallery moved upstairs and it slowly took over more and more of the space. Once it had expanded to almost the full gallery, it was clear that l’Autre Gallery had become Yves Laroche.

M: Why Sweet Calaveras?

XB: Sweet Calaveras is a life or death subject. It is international and it grabs people. I was reading about the Day of the Dead and I read this quote about how we die three times: once when your heart stops, once when your body is put in the ground and lastly when people, your family and friends, forget about you.

And that links to art in general—you leave your mark in what you do. So it was a great way to tie everything together.

M: Tell me about some of the artists you’ve included in the show.

XB: Turf One started out doing graffiti in Paris, moved to Montreal about five years ago and got into painting. He often paints on found objects. He has the potential to be huge internationally. He has a solo show at Fuse Gallery in New York City opening Nov. 3 (www.turfizm.com).

Another local artist is David Choquette (Becerra pulls out three miniature drawings by the artist). We met him at a tattoo convention three years ago. He was an apprentice, not even thinking of being in a gallery. He was just hanging out with his portfolio. We looked at his work and it was amazing—we had to show his work at the gallery.

John Todd is another Canadian artist; he lives in Ontario. He started out as an illustrator. He had a crew in Toronto and they rented our space for a show. The show was happening and we were doing our own thing and then we started to notice what he was doing. When the show was over and he was wrapping up his work we said, “Don’t wrap it up, just leave it here.” Now, he is one of our best selling artists. Everybody loves his stuff. It is sort of like a fairytale.

M: The opening is on Halloween?

XB: Yes. Sixtoo will be DJing, there’ll be candy and I’ll be projecting old zombie movies. They are hilarious—when I watch them, I keep thinking,  “Women, you have to run more, don’t just sit there screaming.”

AT GALERIE YVES LAROCHE (4 ST-PAUL E.)
ON WEDNESDAY, OCT. 31, 6–9 P.M.
YVESLAROCHE.COM, (514) 393-1999