Wired, by Michael Hardy
Mar 27, 2019

Twice a year, hundreds of America's most hardcore gun enthusiasts flock to the northern Arizona desert to spend a weekend firing military-grade weapons at pickup trucks, storage containers, and grounded propeller planes.

Savoir média
2019

En 2018, le Musée d’art de Joliette invitait le sculpteur anglais Mat Chivers en résidence de production au Québec, afin qu’il crée un nouveau corpus d’œuvres en dialogue avec le milieu de l’intelligence artificielle, en pleine ébullition à Montréal

Creative Applications, par Greg J. Smith
3 aoû, 2018

The 4th edition of the International Digital Art Biennial (BIAN) wraps up this week, and per previous editions it did not lack in ambition. Drawing on the momentum built over the last six years, and – in particular – the excellent last, third edition, this BIAN was dedicated to the theme ‘AUTOMATA: Sing the Body Electric.’

Artsy, by Tess Thackara
Jul 30, 2018

Creating new forms is a mission for me,” said Juliana Cerqueira Leite, “a way of not reasserting the world as it is, but of positing a transformation.” Leite’s sculptures testify to one’s ability to transmute the world around them.

Le Devoir, par Jérôme Delgado
26 jul, 2018

La mission autour du potentiel créatif des technologies les plus avancées n’a pas changé depuis 2012. Le programme est toujours aussi touffu, les lieux de diffusion, aussi nombreux, le mariage expositions/spectacles, aussi… fastidieux.

Art in the Digital Age, par Dominique Moulon pour Art Press
18 jul, 2018

Créée en 2012 par Alain Thibault, la Biennale Internationale d’Art Numérique (BIAN) s’inscrit dans la continuité du festival Elektra initié en 1999. Elle s’articule autour de divers lieux incluant la Société des Arts Technologiques (SAT) et l’Arsenal Art Contemporain.

Art Press
17 jul, 2018

L’aventure de cette quatrième édition de la BIAN de Montréal se poursuit à l’Arsenal où se tient la principale exposition intitulée Automata et dont le commissariat a été confié à Peter Weibel, fondateur du Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie (ZKM) de Karlsruhe en Allemagne.

Garage, by Meg Whiteford
Jun 29, 2018

The hybrid screening and performance by these two artists of native ancestry—Ortman is White Mountain Apache and Latimer is Algonquin/Métis—was a closing ceremony of sorts for Canadian artist Wanda Koop’s solo exhibition, “Standing Withstanding,” which is on view through July 1.

Jun, 2018

Standing on the western edge of the North American continent, by the boats docked at a Vancouver Marina, Maskull Lasserre’s enormous steel sculpture takes a shape that most viewers might hardly recognize. This monumental single-horn anvil, 25 feet long, and about 800 times larger than a normal anvil is perplexing and mysterious. Did it fall from the sky onto a Loony Tunes character? Or is it waiting for its blacksmith of gigantic proportions? Getting closer reveals the anvil to be an amplifier, outfitted with a recording of the sound of the ocean, which can be heard through musical “F” holes (like the ones on a violin,) cut into the sculpture’s side.

A tool whose flat top supports an object as it’s struck by metalworkers, the anvil was once commonplace but now elicits more cartoon associations than industrial ones. Indispensable for centuries, anvils were used to form all kinds of metal objects including chain, saws, and wheels for carriages. “Blacksmiths and their tools,” reflects Lasserre, “were the Fords and Toyotas of civilization, because they were putting the shoes on horses that moved goods and carried the mail. That was transportation, and for a time they were highly valued for that contribution.” With mechanized production supplying most of our goods now, anvils are used primarily for custom metal work.

Anvils are uncommon musical instruments, but this is not the first time an anvil has been used acoustically. Ringo Starr played one in the song Maxwell’s Silver Hammer, and composer Richard Wagner used 18 tuned anvils in a cycle of operas in 1869. With fourteen years of classical violin training, Lasserre is frequently drawn to musical instruments as sculptural material. His version of the anvil as instrument ties it to the more delicate violin while recalling Vancouver’s industrial history in a string of associations that remains porous and open-ended.

Added to its ambiguous meaning, the sculpture has a mystifying effect on those who stand near it. “People think the sound is air passing through the column,” Lasserre notes, “kids say it’s breathing. Many layers of interpretation emerge beyond just the sound of the ocean.”

Lumbering and poetic, Lasserre’s acoustic anvil stands in a landscape that has changed around its ancient, genius design. A stand-in for all the remarkable tools civilization used to arrive at the current moment, the tool/instrument both celebrates and questions technological progress, giving the impression that our tools are often impressive, but also asking at what cost, and to whom. Equal parts lullaby and monster, Lasserre’s sculpture provokes without judging, offering up questions without prescribing all the answers.

Acoustic Anvil: A Small Weight to Forge the Sea is installed in Vancouver’s Leg-In-Boot Square until July 2020 as part of the Vancouver Biennale. His sculptures are currently on view at Arsenal Contemporary Toronto until October 18, 2018.

Eyes Towards the Dove, by Katy Diamond Hamer
Jun 2, 2018

Artist Wanda Koop paints in a very lyrical way. She let’s the paint dictate the painting, not completely dissimilar from The Composition Series  by Kandinsky. Using acrylic in a watered-down format, Koop has been making work for forty years. In that time, she has inherently studied the medium, how it responds to various surfaces, and how to work in a way that is freeing and uninhibited. 

Baron Mag, par Claire-Marine Beha
jun 3, 2018

De l’art 100% digital et avant-gardiste! Toutes les informations sur la 4e édition de la Biennale (BIAN), le 19e festival Elektra ainsi que le 12e Marché international d’art numérique sur elektramontreal.com.

Redazione Digicult
Jun, 2018

ELEKTRA showcases artists and works that fuse art and new technologies, and that are connected to current, contemporary aesthetics of research and experimentation. 

Huff Post, par Ismaël Houdassine
30 mai, 2018

Les organisateurs de la manifestation d'art numérique ont dévoilé, ce mardi 29 mai, les noms d'une première liste d'artistes qui se produiront dans le cadre de la 19e édition.

Whitehot Magazine, by WM Staff
May, 2018

A preeminent figure in contemporary Canadian art, Wanda Koop has been making waves stateside recently for her au courant paintings of silhouetted skylines that comment on the intersection between urbanism and the natural world.

Office Magazine, by Evan Nicole Brown
May 21, 2018

Walking through the space, an intimate and cool respite from the busyness of Bowery just outside, I couldn’t help but think about the impact of color, both in painting and in cultural conversations. Koop, a Winnipeg, Canada native, explains her relationship to cultural color early on: as a young girl, her family lived in close proximity to the Indigenous peoples of Winnipeg, and embraced one Native woman in particular as family.

Blake Gopnik on Art
May 7, 2018

THE WEEKLY PIC:For a couple of decades, Wanda Koop has been one of Canada’s most respected painters, but she’s only now getting a solo show in New York, at Arsenal gallery on The Bowery.

Artnet news
May 1, 2018

Canadian painter Wanda Koop gets her first major New York solo exhibition, showcasing her unique take on landscape painting, informed by globalization and the technological age, as well as the tradition of communal bonfires maintained by the indigenous people of her native Winnipeg

Métro, par Érick Rémy
5 avr, 2018

L’œuvre picturale complète du défunt cinéaste Gilles Carle est à vendre. Cela représente 425 œuvres, toiles et dessins tous exposés à l’Arsenal, dans Griffintown.

Whitewall, by Pearl Fontaine
Apr 3, 2018

Arsenal Contemporary in New York is currently presenting a two part exhibitions of Robin Meier’s “Synchronicity” and Kim Dorland‘s “Same Old Future.” Curated by Marc-Olivier Wahler and Jean-Michel Othoniel, it is presented in collaboration with the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University.

Mitsou Magazine, par Mitsou Gélinas
31 mar, 2018

Quand Chloé Sainte-Marie me fait une invitation, je n’hésite jamais. Je me lance, j’accours vers le lieu donné. C’est pourquoi j’étais à l’ouverture officielle de l’exposition de l’amour de sa vie, le réalisateur Gilles Carle présentée à l’Arsenal dans Griffintown.