Tag, you’re it!

Recently, I’ve started to pay more attention to the #tags that link the content of MagMag’s articles to the wider world. They provide an equally interesting and baffling overview of what each issue holds. For example, this issue contains references to Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood, Austrian film director and actor Erich von Stroheim, Brutalist architecture, socialite Paris Hilton and the writings of Russian literary theorist Viktor Shklovsky. What could all of these possibly have in common?

It would appear that thing is art. As Duchamp (he’s tagged, too) revealed early on in the previous century, art can be found anywhere and made out of anything, from upended urinals to bicycle wheels. Several artists featured in this issue draw inspiration from the most commonplace of items, from concrete blocks (sculptor Jen Aitken) to toilet plungers (painter-sculptor Ryan Quast) to rocks on a beach (Kelly Jazvac) to archival newspaper images (Thomas Ruff) to a tangle of electrical wires (an image of which was submitted to Sara Graham’s Sculptureaday project) to lily pads (Jochen Lempert). I hope that you enjoy these artists’ forays into the everyday, and that their work prompts you to have a deeper regard of the easily overlooked things around you. Magic can be found in them.

BIG FOUNDATION NEWS!

It’s already been a very busy 2016 at the Magenta Foundation!

First, over the past several months, the Magenta Foundation has been collaborating on an exciting new venture with the Montreal/Toronto-based Division Gallery. This October sees the launch of the Edition Toronto art fair. Taking place the same weekend and in the same venue as Art/Toronto, Canada’s international art fair (which had over 21,000 visitors last year), the Edition Toronto fair will be dedicated to showcasing national and international art book publishers and distributors, as well as artists, galleries and dealers who produce and specialize in contemporary and historical artist’s books, art-related ephemera and ‘multiples’ – artworks made “in editions of more than one.” A program of speakers, workshops and presentations is also being organized with the support of Art Metropole, which has been dedicated to the promotion of artist’s books and multiples since 1974.

More information about the Edition Toronto fair will be rolled out in the coming weeks on the fair’s website, on the Facebook page and (soon) Twitter.

Second, save the date – Thursday, June 23, 2016 – for the opening of the Foundation’s annual Incubator exhibition to be held at Clint Roenisch Gallery in Toronto. The Incubator Program is dedicated to supporting emerging artists within the high-school setting. While proposing a new and exciting model for arts education and arts funding, Incubator prepares students for their transition out of high school and into the next phases of their artistic careers. This year’s theme, The Constructed Image, depends on artifice, invention and technology to create, or manipulate the subject.

And finally, back in April, the Foundation was pleased to be a media sponsor of the Papier Art Fair in Montreal, which is dedicated to the promotion of paper-based art, including, of course, photography. A small handful of the many artworks that we saw at the fair are found in the scroll at the top of the page.

As always, thank you very much for reading! We’ll see you again in September and, hopefully, at the Edition fair in October.

 

 

 

 



Masthead

Executive Editor
Bill Clarke

Publisher
MaryAnn Camilleri
magentafoundation.org

Design
The Office of Gilbert Li
gilbertli.com