Canadian Art
Jan 9, 2019

The suggestively placed knobs and shiny surfaces of feminist artist Nicola L’s functional sculptures tempt the viewer to stroke, poke, pull and touch. A commode, coffee table, bookshelf and two “sofas” playing dress-up as furniture invite sublimation and use while mocking the impulse to realize an absurd desire.

By Anna Kovler
Jan, 2019

Julie Favreau is known for mixing mediums to create immersive environments that heighten the viewers’ attention to touch.

Artnet News
Jan 3, 2019

Conceptual French artist Nicola L., whose feminist work has been experiencing newfound recognition in recent years, died on Monday in Los Angeles at the age of 81. Her shape-shifting art, which spans sculpture, painting, performance, and furniture, often explored the human (and mostly the female) body.

Artsy
Jan 3, 2019

Artist Nicola L., best known for her anthropomorphic, functional sculptures, died on December 31, 2018, at age 81. From a white, foot-shaped sofa to a curvy yellow cabinet with a round face and suggestive, nipplesque drawer pulls, L.’s artwork cheekily merged principles of art, design, and furniture.

Architectural Digest
Nov 19, 2018

"It would be perfect for jewelry," says a gallery visitor at New York's Arsenal Contemporary to the woman next to him, tugging open the nipple drawer of Nicola L.'s La Femme Commode and contemplating its obvious use: storage.

New York Magazine, Bedford + Bowery
Nov 13, 2018

Nicola L was making art around the same time as other household pop art names like Andy Warhol. But while Warhol has a huge exhibition at the Whitney right now (with a sick gift shop), Nicola L. didn't get her first major retrospective until last year.

Art Viewer
Oct 30, 2018

Arsenal Contemporary is pleased to present the Brazilian, Brooklyn-based artist, Juliana Cerqueira Leite’s first solo presentation in New York, Until Different. The exhibition opens 13 September and runs through 4 November, 2018.
Juliana Cerqueira Leite reformulates physical presences and absences in the world and body, negating the mere reassertion of subjects and their environments through acts of pivotal transformation. 

New York Times - STYLE Magazine
Oct 12, 2018

There was a “Saturday Night Live” sketch not too long ago in which Kate McKinnon pretended to be Brigitte Bardot responding to the #MeToo movement. “Why does woman have breast? It’s for a man to grab and pull!” she said, taking a drag on her prop cigarette. “A drawer has a knob. A woman has two knobs!”.

By Anna Kovler
Oct, 2018

Resting somewhere between dream and reality, Vanessa Brown’s sculptures test the boundaries of the familiar. What we normally encounter on a small scale, like a pair of earrings or a cigarette, take on impossibly strange proportions in her metal and glass works.

Office Magazine, by John Martin Tilley
Oct 6, 2018

Breasts stacked like frog’s eggs; the imprint of the artist’s arm or legs in motion as it progressively deconstructs the very sculpture representing it; plaster that captures the memory of her body leaning on or sitting in the confines of a space exploration habitat—these are the discoveries that await you in the uncanny world of Brazilian artist Juliana Cerqueira Leite. 

Artnet, by Sarah Cascone & Caroline Goldstein
Aoû 30, 2018

In her new sculpture series, inspired by Mesoamerican funerary urns, Brazilian artist Juliana Cerqueira Leite has cast her own body in clay to make life-size vases with vaguely unsettling organic qualities.

Artnews
Aug 27, 2018

Today’s show: “A Kiss Under the Tail” is on view at Arsenal Contemporary in New York through Sunday, September 2. The group exhibition presents work by Ana Mendieta, Dena Yago, Abbas Akhavan, Latifa Echakhch, Maskull Lasserre, Virginia Lee Montgomery, Isabelle Cornaro, Michael Assiff, and Julia Feyrer.

Artnet news
Aug 27, 2018

It’s your last chance to catch this summer group show, featuring Abbas Akhavan, Maskull Lasserre, Ana Mendieta, and more. The theme is folkloric rituals associated with witchcraft.

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.