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Happy Holidays and Our Favourite Exhibitions of the Year.

 

The holidays are right around the corner and the best thing to do during the holidays is nothing. The life of the artist is usually a busy one, where juggling your art practice, your part-time job, submissions, checking out shows, doing research et cetera doesn’t leave you a lot of time to relax. Trying to find a good balance between your art-life and your real-life is important to avoid burning out. I sometimes have trouble relaxing because I feel guilty that I am not doing something productive but my guilty feelings are easily calmed with a glass of eggnog.

I enjoy making and buying art to give to my friends and family. Art is a great Christmas gift for many reasons, and, there are always affordable ways to purchase art during the season including the upcoming Santa’s Choice Zine Fair, which is happening this Saturday at Xpace from 12 to 6. Also Art Metropole is currently having their yearly holiday sale with several artist multiples still up for grabs. Another option is to go to an artist friend directly and see what they have in your price range. Prints or artist’s multiples are always your best shot for affordable work, but depending on the artist you might be willing to spend more money on an original piece you really love.

I love the holidays because of all the food, but also because of all the “year end lists” which tally up the best of the best of the year. Since this is also my last time you will be hearing from me till the new year, I have asked a few of the Xpace staff what is their favourite art exhibition of the year?

Adrienne Crossman

Cory Arcangel – Power Points at DHC/ART in Montreal
June-November 2013
Power Points is Arcangel’s first major Canadian Exhibition. A mix of web, performance and various digital and analogue media works, Power Points was a successful show of interesting new media work placed within a gallery setting – large scale video installation alongside hacked video games, kinetic sculptures and glitched data visualizations from the artist’s own digital journal.

PERIOD PIECE: THE GYNOLANDSCAPE at OCADU Student Gallery
March – April 2013
A refreshing show by female artists featurig powerful feminist work that challenges Western notions of femininity.

Amber Landgraff
Theaster Gates spoke at the AGO as part of this year’s Rapp Lecture series.  At the beginning of the talk he explained that he was getting tired of talking about art and that he wanted to figure out more ways to be art, so his lecture was actually part performance.  Exploring questions of race, knowledge, privilege and identity, his performance blew my mind.  I enjoyed it so much that I can’t wait to go see him talk again as part of Prefix’s Urban Field Speaker Series in May!

Humboldt Magnussen (me) 

Locating Ourselves at Scrap Metal Gallery

October 2013 – February 2014
My favourite show of the year has to go to the group show by some of my favourite artist with large works by Shary Boyle, Sarah Sze and Joana Vasconcelos. This show opened in October and will be open to February with public viewers on Saturday 12 to 5. Why I love this show is mostly because of the complexity of each individual work, the handmade quality and each individual piece felt like its own world or map that you could immerse your imagination in. Plus at the opening there were tiny little hamburgers, which were scrumptious.

This is the last Xpace Blog post of the year, I wish everyone a Happy Holidays and a wonderful New Year. SEE YOU IN 2014

By Humboldt Magnussen