ONE NIGHT STAND / Vernissage / Friday February 17, 2012 / 7 – 10pm

Tunes by Big Mac Daddy / Proudly sponsored by CKCU 93.1FM & OVERKILL Bar

“Foxes are said to display traits of cunning, slyness, stealth, observation, and wisdom Recently I have been interested in North American Indian beliefs surrounding the idea of the life animal guide.  Having lacked spiritual influence in my life during my upbringing, I have been pulled toward the notion of an animal guide. It has been said to connect with your animal guide, helps to make you a better person in that you become physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually healthier while being free to view the world with more clarity and better understanding.

After returning home for some time to process certain events which were out of my control, and to come to terms with them through understanding, I often saw foxes.  The fox would, on several occasions, stop in mid step (no matter what it was involved in at the time), and stare at me.  I would be left feeling completely invaded, excited; happy.  Through some reading, I determined the fox was sent to guide me through the tough time in my life.

In each of the drawings in Fox, people are interacting with their life animal guides as foxes; mainly as their companions through life.  I like the idea of having a fox as my companion”.

- Amanda B.

ONE NIGHT STAND / Vernissage / Friday February 10, 2012 / 7 – 10pm

Tunes by Big Mac Daddy / Proudly sponsored by CKCU 93.1FM & OVERKILL Bar

The black and white photographs in the exhibition “Captivity” by Clive Cretney are the result of an endeavor to present a magical world that links indoor museum displays with the viewer. Many of the photographs use fractured and reflected light, which merge the living with the dead. The images challenge our Victorian obsession with emblems, collecting and imperial sense of acquisition.

ONE NIGHT STAND / Vernissage / Friday January 27, 2012 / 7 – 10pm

Tunes by Big Mac Daddy / Proudly sponsored by CKCU 93.1FM & OVERKILL Bar

- Patrick Greene

NORTH KOREA PROPAGANDA ART SHOW

Friday January 20, 2012 /  Vernissage 7 – 10pm . / Tunes & Visuals for your pleasure !

Proudly sponsored by CKCU 93.1 FM

Event: Inside the “hermit kingdom”: an intimate peek into the Kim Dynasty’s propaganda machine.

The goods: Thirty-five (35) hand-painted North Korean propaganda posters.

Provenance: In 2005, Montrealer Jean-Frédéric (JF) Beauchesne moved to Pyongyang, North Korea to head a group of aid agencies delivering humanitarian assistance across the country. As with other foreign Nationals working in the “hermit kingdom”, JF was assigned a North Korean counterpart (or ‘minder’) to assist him in his duties and to act as a bridge into North Korean culture. Through his minder, JF made contacts at the Mansudae Art Studio, which employs hundreds of artists, many of whom are specializing in propaganda art images. Over nearly a year, JF amassed a large and unique collection of hand-painted propaganda posters from Mansudae. These powerful and colourful paintings adorn the country’s many public buildings, cooperative farms, city walls, and are also seen in several galleries and museums. With the recent passing of Dear Leader Kim Jong-Il, his son Kim Jong-Un has been at the centre of a massive propaganda campaign aimed at legitimizing the Kim legacy. La Petite Mort offers you a glimpse into this propaganda machine that has until today ensured the Kims’ grip over North Korea.

ONE NIGHT STAND / Vernissage / Friday January 13, 2012 / 7 – 10pm

Tunes by Big Mac Daddy / Proudly sponsored by CKCU 93.1FM & OVERKILL Bar
Join fashion/style and art photographer, Dan Ziemkiewicz for a work retrospective and the launch of his new website. In recent years, Ziemkiewicz has made headlines across the country for his artistic photography, while his fashion and style photography has been published around the world.
Join the artist, international fashion models from CoverModels Management and DJ Jas Nasty for, light snacks, a chance to win a signed print by the artist and giveaways.

Artist Bio:
Dan Ziemkiewicz is an internationally published photographic artist based out of Ottawa, specializing in Fashion and Artistic Photography. His most recent work was shown at Vogue’s Fashion Night Out, for New York Fashion Week in September 2011. His critically acclaimed body of work includes the cover page of the Montreal based 2B magazine, the staging of the Arc Hotel in Ottawa, as well as publications in England, India and Canada and an ad campaign in Vogue China. Finally, Dan has shown in galleries in Ottawa and is represented by La Petite Mort Gallery.

DREW MOSLEY / NEW WORKS

Vernissage December 28, 2011 / 7 – 10pm
Exhibit runs till January 5, 2012

The artist will be present for the opening…

Statement:

Drew Mosley

LAURENCE BUTET-ROCH / BEERS, BALLS AND BRONCOS

ONE NIGHT STAND / Vernissage / Saturday December 17, 2011 / 7 – 10pm

Tunes by Big Mac Daddy / Proudly sponsored by CKCU 93.1FM & OVERKILL Bar

“There are self-taught experts who can recite all the facts and statistics, spirited fans displaying their outright faith in their team, and thrill-seekers ready to bet their earnings in anticipation of the outcome. Whether on the streets adjoining the Arsenal Football Club stadium in London, or in the sordid corner gambling houses of Paris, the members of these eclectic and colourful crowds are all driven by a passion nearing infatuation and the momentary promise of distraction and socialization.

In France, the PMUs – a state owned gambling company that allows people to bet on horse races without having to go to the tracks – draws over 6 million gamblers and generate revenues of approximately 10 billion euros (14 billion dollars). Meanwhile, on the other side of the pond, the Arsenal team is valued at over 1.2 billion dollars.

Despite the current economic crisis, it seems there are always a few pennies left in the depth of one’s pockets to enjoy an extra beer on game day or try once more to change one’s luck. And perhaps because of the economy, there is an added incentive – a need really – to perform weekly rituals that root oneself into a community that perpetuates century old traditions and is bound by solidarity.

Although not particularly interested in either sport, I felt drawn to these people. Their desire for fraternization paralleled my quest to avoid loneliness as I began a life in a foreign country. I could relate to the solitude that transpired in the environment and attitude of those leaning at the PMU bars starring at the screens and scanning the audience in search of a familiar face to share the moment with. I felt both aversion for these places, because they reminded me of my state of mind, and fascination because they offered a solution.  I had always entertained such dichotomous views regarding sports fans. On the one hand I could not help but be infected by their boisterous cheers and the feeling of belonging associated with picking a side, yet knew what it could lead to if taken to the extreme.

This series is part of an ongoing project on the place of leisure in the current economically fraught times as well as my own experience of it.”

- Laurence Butet-Roch

JUDITH WAMBERA
One Night Stand
Vernissage Friday December 16 / 7-10 pm

Judith Wambera

Art is meant to disturb: Georges Braque

The clothes dryer has taken a lot from our creative lives (I do admit it has helped in other ways).  When I grew up our mothers had clothes lines.  Back yards, back lanes were full of flaglike sheets and startled pillow cases.  There is something almost “cosmic’ about washing in the sun, in the rain, in the snow.  It is as if human beings and their elements were meeting in a humble and deeply respectful way.

Many years ago, when I was in my early twenties, my mother died.  I wrote a short story called, “On the Day My Mother Died, I was hanging out the Wash.”  It was a thing I rarely did. Why on this brisk windy August day, did I feel the need to hang the wash in our back yard.  I remember when I got the call, my children were rolling under the sheets and towels and I was exalting in our small, humble back yard.

I have been photographing washing ever since.  I do feel there is a kind of philosophical moment here, a connectiveness that is very female, very ordinary, very linked with the elements around us.

Before I found dolls, I did lots of laundry that I found all around me (and which I also  fabricated with great elan.  When did you last see laundry hanging between two birch trees, smothered in heavy snow?)

My greatest adventure occurred when I went to Italy and Yugoslavia one spring.  Here the wash was not in someone’s back yard, but it was hanging like flags, symbols, private stories between the oldest and greatest buildings in the world.

It was awesome.

Unique work, one-of-a-kind cynotype process, including multiple layers of cyanotype process hand-made prints of the Venus de Milo, with an extra cloth panel on the panel, that needs to be lifted by hand to see xerox copied flowers, which are stitched to the back panel. Measures 38 x 25.5 inches, dated 1975, signed on lower right, underneath cloth panel (EVERGON /75). Price available upon request.

EVERGON: a.k.a. Celluloso Evergonni, Eve R. Gonzales, Egon Brut.

Evergon’s work represents a thirty-five year international career as an instructor and as an artist/photographer imaging primarily, but not exclusively, gay male culture. Concerned with technology, past and present, his early photographs explored non-silver processes and electrostatic works. These were followed by instant imaging photographs that culminated with 1 meter x 2 meters colour Polaroid prints. In the 1990’s, there were primarily two bodies of work from press cameras. The first was a fabricated document of ‘Ramboys: a Bookless Novel’ finalized as large silver gelatin prints. The other was documented fiction/action within ‘Manscapes’ – male-to-male cruising grounds completed in various modes of digital imaging. In the last five years, Evergon’s works include larger-than-life nudes of his Mother, ‘Margaret & I’ and a selection of images gleaned from his lifetime trove of memorabilia accompanied with self-portraits, ‘Chez Moi: Domestic Content’.

EVERGON

Né le 28 décembre 1946 à Niagara Falls, Ontario

Formation

1974 Maîtrise en arts visuels, Rochester Institute of Technology, New York

1970   Baccalauréat en arts visuels, Mount Allison University, Nouveau Brunswick

Expositions solo (sélection)

2008 à venir : Evergon XXX/L,  Edward  Day Gallery. Toronto, Ontario

2006        Evergon, Galerie St. Laurent & Hill, Ottawa, Ontario.

Evergon XXXL, Galerie Trois Point, Montréal, Québec.

Evergon XXXL, Galerie St-Laurent & Hill, Ottawa

Evergon, Edward Day Gallery, Toronto, Ontario.

2005 Chez-moi / Domestic Content, Galerie Trois Point, Montreal, QC

Leonard & Bina Ellen Gallery,  Montreal, QC

2004 Il Ponte, Rome, Italy

Evergon, Edward Day Gallery, Toronto, ON

2003 Margaret Flying.  Galerie St. Laurent plus Hill, Ottawa, ON

Manscapes‚  SPIN Gallery, Toronto, ON

Margaret & I‚.   The Stride Gallery. Calgary, AB

Aires de seduction‚ La Galerie d’art de l’UQAC, Chicoutimi, QC

TraficArt’.  Sequence, Chicoutimi, QC

2002 Love moi/Glove moi, SPIN Gallery, Toronto

Margaret & I, Edward Day Gallery, Toronto

2001 Margaret & I, Galerie Trois Points, Montréal

Evergon, New Works, Galerie St.Laurent & Hill, Ottawa

Virtual Museum of Quebec Photography, Vox, Montréal

1999 Manscape & Artefacts, Galerie Trois Points, Montréal

Evergon: An Aesthetic of the Perverse, Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney, Australie

Evergon: Ramboy Suite, Galerie St. Laurent plus Hill, Ottawa

1998 Cowboys and Fairies, Galerie Trois Points, Montréal

Manscapes and Manscape Men, Waygood Gallery, New Castle, Angleterre

Ramboys, Zone Gallery, New Castle, Angleterre

1997 Ramboys, The National Museum of Photography, Film and Television, Bradford, Angleterre

Manscapes: Truck Stops and Lovers Lanes, The National Museum of

Photography, Film and Television, Bradford, Angleterre

Male (a)muses: Evergon Curates, The National Museum of Photography,

Film and Television, Bradford, Angleterre

1996 Le groupe de la place royale -The Dancer Portfolio, National Arts Center, Ottawa

Le groupe de la place royale -The Dancer Portfolio, Galerie L’Autre Équivoque, Ottawa

1995 Ramboys Series, Galerie Trois Points, Montréal

Ramboys: A Bookless Novel and other fictions, Art Court, Ottawa

Evergon – Ramboys: A Bookless Novel, Galerie L’Autre Équivoque, Ottawa

Evergon : Ramboys, Genereux Grunwald Gallery, Toronto

Ramboys: A Bookless Novel, Photography Gallery, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, New York

1993 Evergon, Genereux Grunwald Gallery, Toronto

Ramboys, Le mois de la photo : Vox Populi & Art 45, Montréal

1992 Evergon, Galerie Verticale, Québec

Evergon, Galerie L’Autre Équivoque, Ottawa

1991 The Trilogy of the River…and other mythologies, Art Court, Ottawa

Evergon 1971-1987, Foto Gallery, Cardiff, Pays de Galles

Evergon 1971-1987, The Royal Photographic Society, Bath, Angleterre

The Mythologies of the Rivers, Interference Hologram Gallery, Toronto

Evergon, Galerie Vertical, Québec

1990 Evergon, Richard Feign Gallery, Chicago

Evergon, Art 45, Montréal

Evergon: Recent Polaroids, Jack Shainman Gallery, New York

Evergon 1971-1987, The Edmonton Gallery, Edmonton, Alberta

Evergon 1971-1988, The Nickel Arts Museum”, Calgary, Alberta

Evergon 1971-1988, Frankfurtur Kunstverein, Frankfurt am Main, Allemagne

Evergon 1971-1988, Canada House Cultural Centre, Londres, Angleterre

Le cirque, Galerie L’Autre Équivoque, Ottawa

1989 Evergon, Galerie Séquence, Chicoutimi, Québec

Recent Works -Evergon, Glenn & Dash Gallery, Los Angeles

Evergon 1971-1988, Owens Art Gallery, Sackville, Nouveau-Brunswick

Evergon 1971-1988, Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, Nouveau-Brunswick

Evergon 1971-1988, Memorial Art Gallery, Montréal

Evergon 1971-1988″, Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

1988 Evergon, Gallery Ton Peek, Amsterdam, Hollande

Evergon -mythologie personelle, Palazzo Farnese, Ortona, Italie

Evergon -mythologie personelle, Centro di Ausoni, Rome, Italie

Evergon 1971-1988, Windsor Art Gallery, Windsor, Ontario

Evergon 1971-1988, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Evergon, Galerie L’Autre Équivoque, Ottawa

Evergon, Art 45, Montréal

Evergon, Circa Now, Provincetown

Evergon, Jack Shainman Gallery, New York

Evergon, Bologne, Italie

1987 Celluloso Evergonni: Large Format Polaroids, Gallery Ken Damy, Milan, Italie

Works by Celluloso Evergonni, Norman Mackenzie Art Gallery, Regina, Manitoba

Little Works -Evergon, Galerie L’Imagier, Alymer, québec

Works by Celluloso Evergonni, Toronto Photographers Workshop & Toronto Image Works, Toronto

Polaroids -Evergon, Cassina for Designer’s Saturday, Paris, France

Evergon, Triangola Rosa, Turin, Italie

1986 Oeuvres de celluloso Evergonni – Les géants polaroid, Galerie Junod., Lausanne, Suisse

Evergon – Large Format Polaroids, Gallery Quan., Toronto

Evergon – Polaroids, Galerie Ton Peek, Amsterdam, Hollande

Works by Celluloso Evergonni, Nichel Art Gallery, Calgary, Alberta

Evergon, Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Jouy-en-Josas, France

1985 Contemporary Surface – 40″ x 80″ Colour Polaroid Prints, SAW Gallery, Ottawa

Theatre Pieces – Post Rehearsal, Hallway Gallery, Moore College, Philadelphie

Carte de visite, External Affairs Building, Ottawa

Contemporary Canadian Photography – from the Collection of the

National Film Board, National Gallery of Ottawa, Ottawa

Dreamscapes – Recent 20″ x 24″ Polaroids, Clarence Kennedy Gallery, Cambridge, Massachusets

1984 Evergon: Polaroids 1981-83, Art Gallery of Hamilton, Hamilton, Ontario

Dress Rehearsals for Bobo Leo, Axe Neo Sept, Hull, Québec

Dress Rehearsals for Bobo Leo, Malmo Konsthall, Malmo, Suède

Les Gisants de l’éphémère, Caixa de Pensions for Primavera Fotografica, Barcelone

Evergon: Horrific Portrait and Quadrupeds, Galerie Viviane Esders, Paris

Horrific Portraits, International Museum of Photography, George Eastman House, Rochester, New York

Dress Rehearsals for Bobo Leo, Gallery 28 Arlington, Rochester, New York

Evergon: Contemporary Surface, Galerie Convergence, Montréal

1983 Les gisants de l’éphémère, Canon Gallery, Amsterdam, Hollande

Kunst der Polaroid – Canada, Kanadische Tage, Stuttgart, Allemagne

Caucasians in Birdland, Coburg Gallery, Vancouver

Caucasians in Birdland II, G.O. Centre, Ottawa

Works by Evergon, Rencontre internationale de Montpellier, Montpellier, France

Caucasians in Birdland, Galerie VU, Québec

Quadrupeds and Horrifique Portraits, Galerie Anne Doran, Ottawa

1982 Interlocking Polaroids, Foto, New York

From the Same Shoots – Polaroids & Xerox Prints by Evergon, Ralph

Gibson Gallery, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, États-Unis

Evergon – Interlocking Polaroid Enlargements, Burton Gallery of Photographic Art, Toronto

Large Works, Galerie Anne Doran, Ottawa

Works by Evergon, Viviane Esders Gallery at Photokina, Cologne, Allemagne

Les gisants de l’éphémère, Centre culturel canadien pour Le Mois de la Photo, Paris

1981 Recent Works by Evergon, Sucession Gallery, Victoria, Colombie-Britannique

Rêves de la mer, Édifice Jos Montferrand, Le centre d’exposition L’Imagier, Aylmer, Québec

Interlocking Polaroids & Colour Xerox Works, Galerie Anne Doran, Ottawa

Rêves de la mer, Maison des jeunes, Arles, France

1980 Evergon, Foto, New York

Xerox Works by Evergon, Sandstone Graphics, Rochester, New York

Xerotica, SAW Gallery, Ottawa

Electro Copy Works, Gallery Graphics, Ottawa

1976 Bondagescapes and Large Format Non-Silver Works, The Photographer’ Gallery, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

Large Format Non-Silver Prints by Evergon, Plug in Art Space, Winnipeg, Manitoba

Bondagescapes, The Western Front, Vancouver

1975 Doris, Colonel by Campus Gallery, Algonquin College, Ottawa

Charlie’s Opening, Gallery Graphics, Ottawa

1970 Crucifixion Series, Confederation Centre, Charlottetown, Ile-du-Prince-Édouard

“Colour is the place where our brain and the universe meet.”
– Maurice Merleau-Ponty, quoting Paul Cézanne (1)

Mirana Zuger’s exuberant abstractions are remarkable for their cohesiveness and incessant internal flux. They bridge Lascaux cave walls and the restless paintings of Lee Krasner, Barthes’s sign fever and Banksy’s feverish graffiti. In effect, they are limpid constellation maps of desire and ecstatic phenomena – buoyant integers of pure joy in oil paint on canvas. Zuger captures with enviable immediacy all the sensuous presence of the lived world and offers us, above all else, an unalloyed experience of colour freed from any and all forms of mediation.

Colour is Zuger’s personal way of celebrating life. If her fields constitute a primal index of a life lived, their inherent gestures lend them a sense of seeming preternaturally alert. Chroma, like amber sap from the Tree of Life, entraps memory and experience while her sign language ensures that no vitrification takes place.

Zuger’s signature luminosity trickles down from above just as it surges up and through from below. Like a vegetal resin, the light and the colour enable a tiered archaeology of colour – an accretion over time that must be peeled away like an onion’s layers and revealed. Her palette is radiant, even incandescent in its mien. It is as though she offers us a vision of the terrestrial paradise in the light of a first day. There is spirituality at work and play here, and an acknowledgement that sensation is or can be ecstatic.

French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty once held that our first response to color is pure and unadulterated. He argued that our primary perception of color is unmediated by extant knowledge or culture. If we respond to a certain hue of pink in one way, and a certain blue in another, it is because those colours hold that response. Color affords us direct access to the truth of the world. As Merleau-Ponty quoted Paul Klee: “Turning back to colour has the advantage of bringing us closer to ‘the heart of things.’ ” (2) Working chroma as a way of unveiling perceptual truth and building signs as excavating instruments in order to reach unmediated meanings, Zuger insists on the sensuous response to colour and seeks the fabled “heart of things”.

Mirana Zuger puts paid to the notion that painting is somehow governed by a Greenbergian teleology, which really means the ‘end-of-the-line’ pursuit of absolute purity of medium and form. She is a resolutely abstract painter yet one wed at the hip to the life-world. And her pursuit is different in kind. She embraces the sensuousness of pure chroma. She shows us that the real teleology is in the chroma itself, that it has a voice that expresses itself through colour, and one that might well show us all the way out of darkness.

James D. Campbell
November 23, 2010

Endnotes

1. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Primacy of Perception, edited by James M. Edie and William Cobb (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1964), p. 180.

2. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader:
Aesthetics and Painting, edited with an introduction by Galen A. Johnson, translation editor Michael B. Smith (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University, 1993), p. 41.

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