In Canada, private funding for the arts has become more important. This is not because there are many wealthy people with philanthropic ambitions in the art sector, but because in Canada, as in other countries, the government has cut down significantly on art funding. An aging but very expensive infrastructure on the one hand, and changing concepts of art and a growing artistic population on the other hand, are circumstances that are putting more strain on public resources. In this context, the private sector plays an important but almost invisible role in the promotion of art in Canada. This circle of art patrons is limited to approximately five to ten financially secure backers.



The DHC Foundation for Contemporary Art is located in the port city quarter of old Montreal, where it operates its own art space. It was founded in 2007 by Phoebe Greenberg, Penny Mancuso, and Tammy Lee. Greenberg is considered to be DHC’s driving force, as well as the financial backer of the foundation. As artist and entrpreneur, she has experience in the field of endowment and as a film producer, as well as possessing the necessary persistence for realizing the foundation. Fifteen years of conviction, planning, and implementation went by until the first exhibition could open.



Audio interview with John Zeppetelli, curotor at the DHC/ART

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Audio interview with John Zeppetelli, curotor at the DHC/ART

[13:02 min] download for: mobile, computer and iPod | send feedback

In the meantime, the foundation took on its role in the promotion of contemporary art through exhibitions, education programs, artist discussions, art film presentations, and special projects. The activities of the foundation are no longer limitied to its own premises, the promotion of presentations of works of art in large international art shows is also part of its agenda.
 
Bringing internationally well-known names to Montreal is one of the tasks of foundation. Christian Marclay, Sophie Calle, and Marc Quinn were all featured in solo exhibitions with comprehensive sets of works. This approach to content is a requirement of  the private funding: the possibilities of the art commissions are supplemented by private funds. It therefore became apparent what was lacking, according to the curator John Zeppetelli, especially in terms of contemporary art.  Those members of the Montreal art audience who could previously afford the luxury of flying to New York can now make a free visit to the DHC, right in the old quarter of their own city. (wh)

With her work, says the Canadian artist Karine Giboulo, she would like to leave behind an impression of the world. That is, her impression. The common thread in the works of this artist is her viewpoint. Giboulo looks closely at those things which do not lie directly before her eyes. Her view refuses to be influenced by the power strategies which aim at holding the world in an overview so that one need not see it in precise detail and can look away so as not to get so emotionally involved. The sociologist Zygmunt Bauman identified such an overview—the social production of moral invisibility—as an intentional strategy of our modern, global world. Giboulo’s view points in a reverse direction. It concentrates on the particular, focusing in on things in detail, thereby identifying the effects of these overviews and strategies of looking away.

Giboulo’s work consists of miniature worlds: 3D views of fast food restaurant parking lots, living rooms, advertising themes, factory halls…all assembled from intricately detailed Plasticine figures. Her childlike representation of the adult world, sometimes reinforced even more by the stylistic use of fairy-tale personification, is disarming. Such art can be so endearing and frank, in the same way children are, who will tell you to your face that from which you would rather look away.

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For example: the readiness in our global world to look away from things and to retain untouchability through a persistent overview remains most pronounced where one extensively seeks out the cheapest commodities, which are in turn produced elsewhere for even cheaper. In her work, “All you can eat”, Giboulo follows the need to illustrate in detail the realities of the productions of things on which “Made in China” is imprinted anonymously: sneakers, TV screens, plastic flowers, mobile phones, electric toothbrushes, and other things that describe the consumer side of our western life. Who are the people who produce these things for us? Do they sometimes wonder about the people who buy all these things that they manufacture? Giboulo visited factories in the Special Economic Zone of Shenzen and made a miniature world of three-dimensional close-ups of the people she observed there after her return. Her views, which go beyond the aesthetics of repetition, bring attention to de-individualization and mass by emphasizing the individual aspects of such an existence. Looking closer in the way Giboulo does closes the gap between the consumer and the anonymous factory worker, much in the way the wall of the consumer’s living room in Giboulo’s work borders the bedrooms of Chinese migrant workers. (wh/jn)

Karine Giboulo won the second price for emerging artists at the Pulse Contemporary Art Fair in New York 2009! Congratulations from CastYourArt!

Carlos, born 1976, Jason, born 1981, surname Sanchez, together, “The Sanchez Brothers”, are an extremely promising, young photographer collective. The work of the two young artists from Canada has already been shown in numerous solo exhibitions in Canada, the USA, and Europe.

Their photography, produced in a Montreal studio located in a factory buildings owned by their uncle, has been successful, although, or perhaps because, they shed light on the dark sides of life and human actions: pain, insanity, death, natural selection, injustice, abuse, disaster, mourning, degradation, isolation, exploitation. One can find among these, that which one turns a blind eye to in life.

What Carlos and Jason Sanchez visualize are themes of events which one hears about based on media reports and stories. Their photographs condense the storylines. They are key scenes, frozen in time, into which one immediately gets immersed, allowing the viewer to experience the challenge of the photographers, who want to share a complex context in a single cinematic image.

Such capsulization is costly and would be not possible for the two young artists without national funding and support from the province of Quebec, which goes into research, scouting for the right locations, the visualization of the imagined scenes in the studio sets. Part of the interior design, purchased in furniture stores and second-hand shops, is carefully packed up again after the shoots and properly returned for reuse – this saves money, because the photographic work of the duo is already costly from a temporal perspective. On the average, two months go into the production of one image.

The brothers have observed development in the extension of their work towards installation, a path which they have already followed in the last few years with works such as “Between Life and Death”, “Natural Selection”, and “Buried Alive”. Film also holds a place in the long-range artistic future of Carlos and Jason Sanchez. (wh/jn)

Their next solo exhibition will be shown at the DNJ Gallery in Los Angeles in February.

In 1771, Louis Sébastien Mercier published the novel 2440, which depicts an utopia of a convenient, more ideal, distant future world. Utopias had already existed in the past. However, in Mercier’s utopia, the ideal world is not stumbled upon – for example, through a storm in which one is shipwrecked and washed up onto the shore of the ideal place – but rather a result of a linear history that is played out through human action. “Some were immediately enlightened from the beginning, but the majority of the nation was still careless and childlike. Gradually, the population became more intelligent. We still have much more to accomplish than what we have created so far. We are only halfway there,” according to the caretakers of the future regarding the intermediate conditions of the half-realized utopia. Mercier’s narration of the gradual realization of an ideal world carried out by mankind is a modern vision – with human capital, reason, and faith, as applied to technical, rational progress, as its focal points.

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The modern visions of progress exploded upon its realizations. This we had to recognize in the centuries that followed. The modern project is halfway down a path which leads it further, however not necessarily forward, and the faith in this common path of mankind towards an ideal world, whose vision Mercier calls “The Dream of All Dreams”, eventually fades. Generally speaking, both on the large and small scale, the conception of a more optimal world multiplies, and instead of one movement towards reaching one big goal, juxtaposition and constant flux of means and ways takes its place.

The sculptures and public interventions of the Canadian artist Michel de Broin refer to a certain extent to the intermediate conditions of this halfway point. They capture those transformations that have resulted from the greater history of modern progress, objects which are already slightly outdated but still determine our everyday life: for example, the car, that status symbol of progress, which is usually only used by one person at a time, consuming gas and destroying the environment. However, at the same time, de Broin’s works also refer to the many new formulas for progress: a general slowing-down as a strategy for environmental protection, a balanced economy without a loss of energy, postindustrial visions of sustainability – and the appropriate means towards this conversion which occupy our life.

De Broin’s work translates and highlights such visions of optimization and reveals their inner tendencies and contradictions, sometimes through exaggeration, but often only through showing examples of possible realizations. He breaks down the restrictive definitions of old and new forms of dogmatic idealism without becoming didactic. His style corresponds more to that of one who is playing hooky from such lessons, summoned by his instinct for playful exploration, poking fun at the “progress” and “efficiency” that is holding back the world. (wh/jn)

“Mankind” consists of two female artists. As in every other civilization, this one also has its prehistory. One half of Mankind is D. Kimm, a poet and musician originating from Montréal. Already before joining Mankind, Kimm was organizing literature festivals and was the leader of “Les Filles électriques”, which performed poetry in its written, spoken, and electronic forms. The other half of Mankind, Alexis O`Hara, a musician from Ottawa, was already examining the human condition through sound experimentation, Onomatopoea, and Poetry Slam performances.

Mankind performs live electronic sound samples, mixed with their own voices set to sound loops, poetic conversations, and spontaneously produced noise bytes, creating a kind of “sound cinema” rich with images, sounds and content. In their own words, Mankind describes themselves as a “supersonic cinema with a visual bonus”. The public gets a cinematic experience minus the rewind button. The improvisatorial character of their performances constantly creates something new to view and breaks through the glass fourth wall, which in conventional theatre, normally separates the art from the audience.

Mankind lives up to its name. The human condition is always the central theme in their productions. Lived and desired everyday scenarios are sketched out. What lies just under the surface of our mundane existence – whether concealed or revered – is revealed. Mankind scrutinizes “the good life”. Our prefabricated beauty and hardship gets visually exposed, improvisatorially explored, broken down, and, every now and then, destroyed. “We seek out Beauty as well as Trouble. We transcend the Palpable and the Impalpable. Our Weakness is our Strength.” Such is the artists’ manifesto. ” We are Mankind.”. (wh/jn)
The video of the episode was shot at the Donaufestival Krems.