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Redemptive and Diremptive Criticism

I have already scratched out a few general statements on my position regarding art. One way to complicate this a bit is by way of contrast. There are a number of art theorists and critics I hold in high regard and whose notions would provide some significantly different nuances to what I am about to attempt, and perhaps fail, to articulate. For the sake of brevity, I will deal with only two here to delineate the background for my position. They are Donald Kuspit and Leo Bersani. Both were writers for October, Artforum and other publications. Bersani, in particular, has had a varied and expansive career covering many different art forms and darting off in various (not entirely reconcilable) directions. Kuspit has been much more limited, focused, and repetitive, working in a vein influenced primarily by Adorno. I find myself only partially agreeing with either of them most of the time, but I think they each provide some useful direction for art criticism. The following is not intended
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Reviews: Christian Messier & Syrine Daigneault at Loulou; Véronique Buist & Christelle Lacombe at COA

Espace Loulou is a small space at the north end of Saint Laurent that you reach in a brown elevator. It is currently hosting the show Le Jour Défait , by two artists I have discussed previously, Christian Messier and Syrine Daigneault . Made up of a small set of paintings, they are woven together through a set of recurrent referents (match held by hand, volcanoes) and more elaborate tableaux. The show is given a certain unity thanks to these recurrences and to the styles of the two painters which, while distinct, do not abrasively rub against one another but work in a complementary way. According to the exhibition statement : Syrine draws her inspiration from the contingency of social norms and the construction of reality. Her paintings visually capture the tension between individual consciousness and learned social behaviour. This sharp perception, exacerbated by the derealization she experiences, translates into an exploration of the vital force that emanates from this lucidity.
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On the Political Economy of Contemporary Art [Part IV]

This is probably the last of my looks at the basic political economy of Contemporary Art in the province. It is a review of Guy Sioui Durand’s L’art comme alternative: Réseaux et Pratiques d’art parallèle au Québec 1976-1996 . A member of the Hurons-Wendat nation, Durand is a sociologist by training and the book is an adaptation of his dissertation. He has a long history working within the milieu he describes as well as museums, as an author for various provincial arts magazines, and as an academic instructor. We have already seen how a leading technocrat for the cultural sector has justified its existence as a form of enchantment, how the sector was critiqued for being essentially corrupt and fostering incompetence by two of its insiders, and how even its apologists recognized that what resulted from the various strategies of artists, artists’ groups, federal, provincial, and municipal governments was primarily the establishment of a system of pastoral care for its ideological bur
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Reviews: Chapitre III at Galerie Nicolas Robert and Lucie Rocher at Centre Clark

Galerie Nicolas Robert has moved to a new spot on Saint-Laurent. Chapitre III: Exposition inaugurale recognizes the latest stage in the gallerist's career and contains the works of more than twenty artists associated with the gallery. The new space is bright and evenly lit. Far larger than the gallery’s former residence on King, with high ceilings and rough floors (in the front anteroom maybe too rough). The more interesting thing about the exhibition is that it works coherently as one despite having no real conceptual framework, and no apparent intention beyond an indexing or autobiography of the gallery. It could be interpreted as a partial catalogue of one person’s taste or at least their sense of the market. I am not going to speculate on either of those things. Part of what makes the exhibition work is a certain degree of thematic complementarity between the works (it is pretty loose), but even more in how the selection of extreme variations in colour and scale create a
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