Connect4

This past week I was asked to help out at the merch table at the Connect4 vernissage.  The pop-up art show was brought together by the artists' themselves in conjunction with Mural Festival and Station16.  Alex Scaner, Kevin Ledo, Labrona, and Mathieu Connery busted out their works for an eager art-buying audience.

signature works by Alex Scaner

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Plantlife! Works by Mathieu Connery

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Left, sunflowers by Mathieu Connery  Right, a large Labrona (one of my faves!)

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and a quick stroll down St-Laurent to try to catch some of the art in progress.  Chain-link fence work by Fafi

ok, found another Labrona in a doorway.

Roadsworth for Amnesty International

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Winded down the art tour at Station16 where the insane felted works of Lucy Sparrow transformed a room in the gallery into Lucy Sparrow's Erotic Emporium: Le Sex Shop Feutré.  Holy moly EVERYTHING was made of felt!  From little condoms, to DVDs, porno mags, and giant butt plugs, all rendered in fuzzy felt giving the works caricature absurdity.  Do yourself a favour and check it out if you're in this fair city.

Bloc Shop: Expansion Mode

Bloc Shop delivered an early Christmas gift to eager climbers last week by completing a new extension ahead of schedule. 

Originally slated to open in the new year,  Bloc Shop's now 20 000 square foot facility can boast to being the largest bouldering gym in Canada, welcoming hundreds of climbers-from newbies to seasoned pros-every day.

I popped by a couple of weeks back to document the in-progress action.

Kyle (right) from Flashed and Yan (left) get some crash mat making done.

Nathan Leblanc-Limoges' second addition to Bloc Shop's walls is a painstaking effort with a ballpoint pen inspired by art historical imagery.

Artist buddy Kevin Ledo recreates his Wynwood, Miami portrait of his grandmother "Vavo, the Montreal OG"

Yoris gets the first climb

Two out of the four Bloc Shop partners Cloé and Fred kindly pause for a picture amidst their race to completion.

I stopped in again for a quick session after the new section had opened and the place was packed and bumping.  Good times were had as I tackled some problems over and over and over and over again!

Kevin Ledo & 5800 Harold

Kevin Ledo is at it again.  This time with two massive pieces for 5800 Harold, apartment residences in Hollywood, California.  I checked out the in-progress canvases, one 7'x20' and the other 7'x30' (holy moly!) each featuring astral bodies rendered in paint and gold leaf.  See that shine in the image above?  That's not just any old photographic hot-spot-that's the shine of the leaf itself.

Ledo set up camp in Sid Lee's very cool multi-purpose space which had multiple rooms each thematically dedicated to some of my favourite film directors.

A quote from David Lynch, excerpted from a piece the director wrote for the Huffington Post on his obsession with coffee.

A quote from "A Clockwork Orange"

This is a quote from Jean-Luc Godard, but has been used often in describing the non-linear style of Michel Gondry.

A Sergio Leone quote from Spaghetti Westerns: Cowboys and Europeans from Karl May to Sergio Leone.

 A Hitchcock quote from a 1960 BBC interview.

Loved the lighting in the Hitchcock room

Admittedly when I first saw the name, my mind first jumped to Roy Andersson, which wouldn't be that much of a stretch given both directors' absurdist tendencies.  But indeed this quote is from Wes Anderson's Darjeeling Limited.

Kevin and I found this gold box next to a red cord.  It was thematically appropriate with his painting.

This photo ensued:

ÉGRÉGORE: YVES LAROCHE

Égrégore at Galérie d'Art Yves Laroche was a jam packed crazy confluence of all sorts of styles, artists, mediums and messages.  And somehow it all worked together: the lowbow, the pop surrealism, the graffiti or street art influenced and the classically trained brought forth a dynamic show that will be on Yves Laroche's walls until the 20th of December.

Click on the photo above to learn about the word "égrégore" or to marvel at the insane work of AJ Fosik's Nighttide for Idols (2012)

I checked out the show during the opening and will share a handful of faves here, but the show is massive! Worth an in-person visit, unless you can't make it/feeling lazy you can check out the online visit and start picking out works that will look great above your sofa.

Whoa! Upon walking into the gallery Dave Cooper's bronze Crittergirl (2014) is the first work that greets you.

Two beauties by Miss Van: Diablada (2014) and Lady Blue (2014)

Jeff Soto's Man (2014)

Ok, this piece isn't from Égrégore, but from the adjacent gallery Lacerte, whose space we ambled through during the opening.  Jean-Robert Drouillard's Mini Love Louve (2014) is barely a foot tall and was sitting on the floor.  I crouched down trying to take this image, causing another art reveler to almost trip over me.  Art party!

Back to the show! The insane awesome cardboard sculpture work of Laurence Vallières

Liam Barr's Wed to the Wheel (2014)

An Immaculate Conception (2014) by artist and friend Kevin Ledo.  I've had the pleasure of sharing gallery wall space with Ledo in the past and have seen his work evolve over the years, but still remaining distinct in his figurative style. We chatted about this evolution and getting ethereal with gold foil.

Regarding your new works (Arsenal, Yves Laroche, Muralfest) portraiture always remains strong and present and dominantly women, but recently you have integrated elderly faces and men, where did this direction come from?

I never really planned this progression, though I've been wanting to explore some new subjects and themes. Once I began painting murals I found that it was the perfect outlet for it.

The use of gold foil is consistent in your work and it first appeared as glowing halos in your Guiding Light (2006-10) series.  How has the use of the foil evolved and what does it represent to you now?

It still represents an ethereal energy in my recent work.  It is still speaking some of the same language that it did for me in older paintings, though it's not literally a halo anymore.

Any words you can share about you work in Égrégore?

That piece, like most of my recent work, wasn't planned to convey any particular idea before I began working on it.  I just went on feeling and a vague direction and then began understanding what it was about more and more as it progressed.  I titled it "An Immaculate Conception" because it seemed to me that that was what it was about.  There is a clear religious reference there, and the fact that it's "An Immaculate Conception" and not "The Immaculate Conception" plays with ideas surrounding Christian beliefs and how similar story lines were told in religions before Christianity existed."

Voilà, a little art insight for the day.  

These works and so much more on Yves Laroche's walls until December 20th.

Current @ the Arsenal

Mega contemporary art space Arsenal, will be holding its closing event of Current, a street art exhibit curated by Alejandro Figueroa.  The weeklong show invited local and international street artists to create their works in a gallery setting, allowing visitors to view the works in progress.
I stopped by earlier in the week to scope out some of the pieces.

Iron getting the signage under way

Crates full of blue chip art served as a set. Kevin Ledo's gold leaf star seen in the background

Art crating and moving has always fascinated me.  Herein lies a Franz West.

Getting up close to Ledo's gold detritus

Ledo working it out

This is the second out of three large format portraits that Ledo is mounting

Labrona working on his signature faces

Labrona set up a series of barrels in the loading ramp, coming to life with his imagery

Alexis Diaz is back! A crosshatched heart is starting to come through.

For those who don't want to splurge on some art at the moment, stamps representative of each artist were created so you can take home a freebie.

The dirty business of art. Ledo and Zoltan illustrate.

For a full list of the artists involved check out here, or go see it in person!