Well hung

The shit machine led the way for the art of ’09

HUMANITY AND BEAUTY IN HAVANA: Polidori’s
“406 Empedrado Courtyard, Habana Vieja, Havana, Cuba, 1997”

by STACEY DEWOLFE

It has to be said—2009 was the shit. Or at least it started out that way.

In January, Belgian artist Wim Delvoye’s controversial shit-making machine Cloaca No. 5 moved into the gallery at UQÀM and proceeded to eat and poop to its heart’s content. Though many people found the project both aesthetically and morally offensive, I was won over by Delvoye’s sense of humour—we had a fantastic chat by cell while I was in a Waffle House parking lot just south of Baltimore—and was impressed by his commitment to these Cloacas, whose digestive systems he has worked tirelessly to perfect since the early aughts.

Having the opportunity to chat with an artist is definitely the major perk of this gig. And though February and March were mostly all about student art, I did have the honour of touring the Claude Tousignant retrospective at the MAC with the man himself. It is quite an experience to watch an artist observing his own work. But back to the students. From Concordia’s student-run Art Matters festival, which celebrates the work of undergraduate artists and curators, to the MFA shows at Art Mûr and Parisian Laundry, it became clear that this city’s universities are nurturing the careers of some pretty impressive young talents such as painter Jenny Schade, sculptor Meghan Price and interdisciplinary wunderkind Bridget Moser. But what was even more inspiring was the spirit of community and collaboration that characterized all the student-run events.

IN-YOUR-FACE EXCITEMENT: Murray’s “Baby Ghost
From the 1900s Says Beat It With Your Chain”

Push pushing

Push Gallery continued its winning streak with impressive shows by local artists, including Sébastien Lapointe’s Différence, Répétition in March, and Osvaldo Ramirez Castillo’s Bestiaries in late July. Castillo’s mixed-media drawings are visually stunning, and with their symbolic complexity and powerful narratives, there is always something new to contemplate in the work. Another favourite was Wil Murray’s We Pet Your Cat to Death? in September. With a fondness for Pepto-Bismol pink and an in-your-face aesthetic, Murray’s work made it hard to walk past the gallery without going inside. Push ended the year with a solo show Lock Stock and Two Smoking Trolls by the fantastic painter Vitaly Medvedovsky, whose work will remain hung until Jan. 10, for anyone interested in a post-Christmas perusal.

But back to summer for a moment. In July, the large-scale photographs of Robert Polidori at the MAC totally blew my mind. I was so completely gaga that not even my normally exuberant vocabulary was up to the task. In photographing some of the most devastated, most isolated and most antiquated locations in the world—from Chernobyl and post-Katrina New Orleans to the empty palaces of Versailles and the streets of Havana—Polidori captures the humanity and beauty of his subjects in photographs that are exquisitely composed and simply gorgeous to behold.

And though space limitations mean overlooking so many other notable inclusions—like Maskull Lasserre’s incredible sculptures at Maison de la Culture CDN and BGL’s nostalgic “Marché aux Puces” at Parisian Laundry—I would be remiss if I did not mention Tehching Hsieh, who gave an artist talk at DHC/ART in November. In the ’80s, Hsieh subjected himself to a series of one-year performances, including punching a time-clock every hour and locking himself in a cage. Perusing the documentation of these performances was pretty cool, but hearing Hsieh describe the day-to-day of his experiences was really quite extraordinary.