Posted inArt

Pushing Paper in Quebec

MONTREAL — Entry was free but the carpet still red, a rain-sodden lilt up entrance stairs. And under drab skies the people came. Here, tonguing the periphery of Montreal’s infamous red light district, was Papier14, the works-on-paper fair’s seventh annual iteration.

Posted inArt

The Art of Paper in Montreal

MONTREAL — While the big glitzy art fairs in New York, London, and Miami often grab the headlines for the sheer volume of ostentatious art, celebrity-friendly promotions, and over-the-top displays, many people overlook the range of excellent small fairs that appeal to discerning collectors in different demographics. One such fair, now celebrating its sixth year, is Papier13 in Montreal, which opens today and features 42 galleries from across Canada. A compact fair devoted to works on paper (papier means “paper” in French) is a sophisticated and comfortable art-browsing experience dropped on an empty lot across from the city’s contemporary art museum and other attractions.

Posted inOpinion

Turn Google Street View into Google Road Trip

Traversing the virtual mirror of the real world created by Google Earth and Google Street View has become something of a global pastime, putting everywhere (as long as there’s a road, at least) within the reach of armchair explorers. Yet walking through the landscape step by step and mouse click by mouse click is a chore. Good thing creative agency Teehan+Lax has created a way to turn Street View into a road trip.

Posted inOpinion

Do Artists Actually Confront Our New Technological Reality?

Art historian and associate professor at New York’s CUNY Graduate Center Claire Bishop has taken to the pages of Artforum’s September edition to issue a kind of rebuke for contemporary art. She argues, in an extended essay that only briefly detours into egregious artspeak, that though the new realities of technology and the internet provide the fundamental context for art currently being made, art and artists have failed to critically confront this context and are too content simply to respond and adapt to it.