Soi Fischer

3 – 1424 Dundas Street West
Toronto, ON

December 10 – 17,  2011

Things Exist

Birch Libralato

October 20 – November 19, 2011

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Photos by Toni Hafkenscheid

Neubacher Shor Contemporary

Saturday, November 5th, 7-10pm

Hunter and Cook
1082 1/2 Queen St West
Toronto

Artist in attendance.

Nicole Ondre is an emerging artist living in Vancouver, BC.

http://available.hunterandcookprojects.com/nicole-ondre.html

The Gladstone Hotel

October 27 – 30 2011

Room #206 and Art Toronto

Brad Phillips – Hi Bruce. I should start, for the sake of full disclosure, by saying that you were the first person to collect my work, and gave me my first solo show in 2002. What first got you into collecting art?

Bruce Bailey – Well Brad, I must say we both owe a debt of gratitude to the brilliant editor of Canadian Art Magazine, Richard Rhodes, who introduced me to your work. He called me and said, “drop everything, you must take a look at the paintings of this young fellow Brad Phillips.” Rick has a great eye and he also wrote the finest book ever, called A First Book of Canadian Art which was written as a children’s or young adolescence’s introduction to Canadian art, but is really so sophisticated in its elegance and simplicity that I keep it out on a table and refer to it all the time. I also have a stack of about thirty copies I keep in a cupboard and give it as a present when friends bring children to visit me. In any event, when someone like Rick Rhodes says do something, one does it, and I cycled down Spadina Avenue and saw your paintings and realized we had a new genius in our midst – a strange pale inked alternative young rebel called Brad Phillips with beautiful eyes and very soft skin (laughs)! I suppose while I was thinking you were an eccentric character, you were thinking I was an eccentric myself (laughs). You seemed surprised that a guy in Toronto would appear within seven minutes of being ordered to do so by Rick Rhodes, buy a slew of works, and offer you a solo show at my private art project space in order to launch your career!
I have always been interested in art and as a young child I would draw Peter Rabbit and Friends for hours from different perspectives. I was taken to Europe when I was twelve for a “grand tour,” and that opened up the visual art world for me – the Louvre, and National Gallery London, and the Klimt’s in Vienna. When I won a scholarship at university in the 1970s, I bought my first artworks by Michael Snow and Eric Fischl.

Brad – And what have you collected over the years? I saw some amazing Peter Doig paintings at your house years ago. What have you been interested in lately? Also, where are you living now, and what works do you have hanging in your home?

Bruce – Well, I was a first or very early collector of Andre Ethier, Steven Shearer, Rodney Graham, Dawn Mellor, Paul P, Gursky, Demand, Doig, Kerry James Marshall, Fischl, Snow, Massey, Monkman, and Phillips. I tend to be there at the beginning, which mimics my interest in early stage business ventures.

Brad – What is something you’ve bought/acquired recently?

Bruce – I just bought a wonderful Geisha girl photographic triptych by Ron Terada from this terrific Vancouver art dealer called Catriona Jeffries. It fits into my identity series in my photographic collection. I also sponsored Mr. Terada’s solo exhibition at Justina Barnicke Gallery in January 2011, curated by the remarkable Barbara Fischer. I also just acquired a wonderful vintage Mapplethorpe portrait of Patti Smith from Olga Korper, who is one of our top dealers and a very lovely lady. Again it is part of my interest in identity for my photographic collection.
I live in a forest near Peterborough, Ontario. I have hanging here in this room a suite of four Elizabeth Peytons from1992 that I acquired at that time. I have hanging nearby two Old Master Dutch paintings from the 17th century. One of greyhounds and one of a dawn landscape with peasants, and these hang near a collection of bird’s eye and tiger maple Ontario furniture. I like to mix it up.

Brad – You had a gallery for a while in the early 2000s, or what you call an “arts incubator”. Living in Vancouver, there are really a handful, honestly, of what could be called contemporary art galleries, and there are a lot of young artists coming up who need space to exhibit – space besides artist run centres. I think there is a real vacuum here that could be filled by someone with ambition, similar to what you did in Toronto. Why do you think Canada, Toronto not being much different, is so difficult for artists to show in? We all have to try to find galleries in NY, to be seen, which is hard. I wonder what you think about the whole commercial gallery situation here.

Bruce – We have a small country. Of course Canada totally rocks. I mean Leonard Cohen, Glenn Gould, Alice Munro, Robert LePage…it really is sort of amazing our cultural influence despite our small size. I made a decade long commitment from 2000 to 2010 to showing talented artists who had no gallery representation in my non-profit artist space. It was an enormous amount of work, and I do not think I had any impact at all. Of course the individual artists benefited and were seriously enriched financially as one aspect was to sell their work to important collections. However, the art scene did not alter. I have a completely different philosophy now – I would just give cultural funds to the top five museums, and let the curators buy. And my advice to young artists would be to get out of Canada and show abroad.

Brad – I wouldn’t say you had no effect on the scene in Toronto. You brought artists like Tony Matelli and Ryan McGinley to Toronto, which made it apparent that success is not impossible – difficult, yes.
Can you tell me a bit about your relationship to Peter Doig, and how you came to acquire those paintings I saw at your place years ago? They are very seminal paintings by Peter. I’m curious as to how you came to see the incredible talent in Peter’s work.

Bruce – Well in addition to giving talented Canadian artists their first show and launching their careers, I also did the first Canadian exhibition for foreign artists such as Doig, Chapman brothers, Guillaume Bijl, Christian Jankowski and Tony Matelli etc. That was to create a dialogue and allow Canadian artists to have a foreign connection with the hope that the foreign artists would assist the Canadian artists with referrals and gallery connections. I tried very hard to be a good ambassador for Canada, and I think we had some success. The Chapman brothers stayed for ten days and had the time of their lives, they later said. And it was gratifying that the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts “got” me, and took my Chapman/Goya exhibition to Montreal with a catalogue.
With respect to Doig, I saw a work in 1993 at the Miro Gallery on Cork Street, and bought it there and then had an immediate studio visit. That is how it all started. Painting was out of favour then, and video art was all the rage, so I was a welcome and rare visitor, and of course, Peter is a delightful person and so it was a great joy to become friends. His parents live only a few miles from me, so it has been lovely. His daughter Celeste is a divine creature whom I would love to call my daughter-in-law.

Brad – So, with respect to the artists you’ve collected, often there is a personal connection or a friendship. Do you buy work from assholes? What has your relationship with Kent Monkman been? He seems like an ideal artist for you to collect. The flamboyant-ness, the old school Canadian painting technique, the incredible craftsmanship. How did you find Kent and what are you doing with him currently?

Bruce – Well it depends on the artist. I have a personal friendship with Michael Snow, and of course had an intimate relationship with the late Paterson Ewen and the late Betty Goodwin. John Massey and Peter Doig are friends. I think, with respect to the artists I have tried to help, it was more important to place their works in other collections such as those of Whitney Museum trustees. Of course I tried to buy at least one work for my personal collection as Peggy Guggenheim observed in her memoirs that the artists appreciate that gesture. I do have works of artists I have assisted where I have no personal relationship or friendship. I also have friendships with artists where I am not interested in their work, which of course can create difficulties in the friendship. With respect to Kent Monkman, I would say we have a friendly professional relationship. I owe a debt to Stephen B. Smart and David Liss of MOCCA for both calling me up and asking me to help launch Kent’s career. I am sort of the Ghostbuster of Canadian art – “who ya gonna call?” kind of thing (laughs). Ironically, I spent the most time launching Kent’s career due to the content of his work, which created a barrier in a conservative society. He now has works in the National Gallery of Canada, The AGO, The Smithsonian, The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts -works in the hands of the most important private collectors and has four dealers, two domestic and two international. And of course, I sponsored his book designed beautifully by Barr Gilmore.

Brad – Tell me a bit about what you have been doing in Québec the last few years. You mentioned to me that there is an aspect of nation building involved, wanting to incorporate Québec into the international dialogue etc.

Bruce – Well, since 2000 I decided to do my cultural donations mostly in Québec. I do not believe one can run down at referendum time and wave the flag. I think we have to act as a nation daily if we want a nation. So I reached out to the museums and the curators and developed a personal relationship with Louise Déry at UQAM, Marcel Brisebois at MOCA Montréal, and Guy Cogeval at MBAM and so forth, and helped them with art donations and shows. So it was an Anglo-Saxon farmer from Ontario treating Québeckers as his brothers and sisters. It certainly has been an eye opener into our country dynamics, and I have learned that we share so much from French Canadians. I recently agreed to be on the art acquisition committee at The Montréal Museum of Fine Arts, and have already learned so much from the brilliant Montréal curator, Stephane Aquin, doing curatorial artist studio visits. Culture matters to me, and it really matters to Québeckers, so I am so happy to be on the same wavelength at last with people for whom culture is as important as water and air.

Brad – Who do you think is the most under appreciated Canadian artist? And who do you think is overrated in Canada?

Bruce – Most under-appreciated internationally would be John Massey – his recent exhibition After Le Mépris was a highlight of 2010 exhibitions anywhere in the world, and should be a museum exhibition at MoMA or The Pompidou Centre. (I should disclose that I have the largest holdings of Massey in the world, and my pal Ydessa Hendeles would be a close second in holdings with The National Gallery of Canada).  As for the most over-rated Canadian artist, there can be no such thing as an over-rated Canadian artist. All Canadian artists have a special song to sing – we are a great people with a rich cultural heritage and every Canadian artist has cultural worth and significance.
Massey is very appreciated by the cognoscenti in Canada, and has influenced artists such as Jeff Wall and Stan Douglas and a whole generation of new artists as he is a revered professor of art at U of T, so he is really our Joseph Beuys in that regard. One cannot be considered a serious Canadian art collector unless Massey is included in one’s collection. His most recent exhibition, After Le Mépris was a tour-de-force, one of the finest bodies of work I saw anywhere in the world in the past two years. It was just acquired by the Albright Knox Museum in Buffalo. That was great, because I am usually frustrated that we have enormous cultural talent here that never sees the light of day abroad. That is why I spent four years working my tush off on the Chairman’s Council at The Whitney Museum in New York. I was able to initiate the dialogue to end the rule that only American artists could exhibit at The Whitney Biennale. So now any artist can be included, whether or not they live and work in New York. Since that rule change Canadian artists have been in every Whitney Biennale, and Michael Snow has been included in each one. That is actually the most important work I have done for Canadian artists in a whole decade of activism for Canadian culture – far more important than my exhibitions and launching of solo careers.

The Whitney rule was a real “game changer” for Canadian artists. Oh, heavens to betsy! That reminds me, I should take a set of Massey’s images down to the curators there next week, as I am going to the AADA Fair on Park Avenue.

Brad – Any other frustrations with the Canadian art scene? Or ideas about how to build a stronger art scene locally and nationally?

Bruce – I am frustrated about the complete absence of Canadian artists invited to public museum and gallery events. One would think it was self-evident: no artists, no art exhibitions, right? You would think the well- heeled financial types could buy drink tickets for the artist community, and have them at all the openings. Instead, you have cultural apartheid with no artists at museum openings and all these business folk and socialites – some gorgeous ones by the way – check out this Trinity Jackman gal Brad! We need to enliven these parties with our fabulous artists. Barbara Fischer at Barnicke Gallery is the only one who tries to do this, bless her heart.

Brad – What is the greatest piece of advice you’ve ever been given?

Bruce – Do not cry as a woman for what you cannot defend as a man.

Brad – I asked this question to Jeff Wall in the last interview, so I’ll put it to you as well. If you have any advice for young artists coming up, what would it be?

Bruce – Do not listen to the advice of others; listen solely to your heart and be true to yourself.

Brad – Reflecting on knowing you for 10+ years, it strikes me that you are very much like a character in a Karen Kilimnik painting. Your Rolls Royce, your brocade, your rubberized Gucci trench coat, your magnetic glamour sensibility, antechambers, rooms behind bookcases, love of Spanish arias; as an aging, happily married gay man, what is it that strikes you most about Ms. Kilimnik’s paintings? They seem very much suited to you, in temperament and style.

Bruce – Well my children and girlfriend will laugh when they read you describe me as “a gay man”! And my faithful steed Bold Magic, who is the current great passion of my life, would also perhaps snort in derision when I tell him about this question. ‘Tis true I married a man; why one assumes this entails I am “gay” is beyond my comprehension. All those ghastly plaid shirts, Kodiak boots and blue jeans not to mention “The Seven Gay voices” – perish the thought! Like Gore Vidal and any public school boy, I understand that there can be homosexual acts, but certainly do not believe in any such thing as “faggots” as a sui generis species. My secret to not aging is to do as Picasso did; try to paint each day as a child. Meaning of course, to take a child-like wonder in the world. Funny you should mention Karen Kilimnik, as I have some great artworks by her – we are sort of birds of a feather, you know. I keep a photograph of Emma Peel (Diana Rigg in The Avengers) on my desk and Karen is fixated with her, and in horses and carriages as well. Karen and I are in fact the Last of the Romantics: I long for the olden days when messages were delivered on horseback or by pigeon, and believe in chivalry. Above my bed is a dream-like painting of a horse and carriage by Karen with glitter, and opposite a Kilimnik Harlequin singing in a forest. Those are actually the mirror dualities and realities of my life – a forest man to the core and a dreamer. One can fall into and be absorbed by her world – an alternate to the realities of quotidian daily life. Surely that is the ultimate hallmark of greatness in an artist, the creation of an alternate world.

AC: Today in preparation for this interview I was listening to Tattoo You, which as far as I can tell is the only piece of music we share a mutual affinity for. At the very end of ‘Start Me Up’ Jagger alters the choral chant to say: “you make a dead man cum,” and I had this strange vision (I was stoned) of you digging up Caravaggio’s corpse and giving it a hand-job, ostensibly to garner some kind of inspiration.

That got me thinking to what measure resurrection figures into your practice. You are prone to dragging your creative progenitors out from the grave: Brancusi, Hollis Frampton, Carl Andre, and re-animating them as figures in your work. Of course we know from fiction and film that raising the dead is a dicey practice with oft-disastrous results. This is a strange question, but do you think that some of the problems associated with resurrection might be what lends many of your works their macabre vitality?

DM: Any, or actually, all of the problems associated with resurrection would only lend credence, stamina, and determination to my particular venture. Perhaps they’re temporary benefits, and not liable to lending their particular characteristic enhancements to a long-term relationship similar to the one I’m offering… But I’m happy with the results so far. There must be more than that in terms of our musical crossover?

AC: I don’t know. We probably both like Nitzer Ebb? I only say that because that’s pretty much the nastiest music that I like, a lot. So when you talk about these temporary benefits, are you saying that you’re concerned when you bring something up from the past it might be nice to see it again at first, but should inevitably be filed away again before it starts to what? Rot? I’m really going to stretch out this zombie metaphor as far as I can.

DM: Nah, not rot just, at the risk of sounding fantastically corny – last forever in my imagination. I really can’t speak for anyone but myself. I guess I always believed that all artists (contemporary artists) use something authored by another as a point of departure. This thing could be a text, as I guess would have been more prevalent in the late 90s and early 2000s, or in my case, a work of modernist art. I suppose that I usually come back to the initial point of departure or at the very least, make it an integral part of my work’s structure. Perhaps a better metaphor would be of a haunting, or possession, as I have incorporated elements of role-playing in certain works. Please god, don’t bring up Dungeons and Dragons. Even losing a month of your teenage years to that confounded game is enough to make you shiver at the thought of having to talk about it again many years later… I’m surprised you didn’t bring up the fellow who frequents your pet food store with the tattoos of all his lovers names on his face in regards to Tattoo You, and how it could relate to my work. That could be the best metaphor…

AC: Your presentation of your idols is almost as blunt! There seems to be a point at which you run out, specifically when you start to focus on yourself. Though I don’t think of your representation of yourself as being aggrandizing, in fact, quite the opposite. There seems to be some kind of slow-burning, self-consumption going on. Here I’m thinking of Toe Picker (in a literal sense), and some of your many forms you have concocted which seem to be circular (self)-digestive systems.

DM: Nice question… I guess I’d say yield rather than run out. Although I’m thinking of Hadley Howes’ response to my last exhibition at Catriona Jeffries in March last year when she said the show had a strange sense of myself fighting against something. She said the show had a sadness and struggle which came through in the paintings, which I found initially odd since the paintings in regards to ease of creation, came long before the sculptures. Her comment, or rather observation, has stuck in me. I know it to be true, but the struggle was outside of art. Anyway, her observation and now your question, point to an element in my work which I never thought would be obvious. I can’t say I don’t like it… It’s strange as I’ve felt a bit as though I’ve forced certain autobiographical elements into my work through the inclusion of certain images in my drawings and watercolours, and now to know that this deeper, let’s say, unease is sneaking though the cracks, makes me think my work is far more personal than I once thought. Indeed, self-digestion or some circular, slightly, downward spiral makes perfect sense. My only hope would be that the outside references which I bring in (Caro, Calder, etc) would degenerate alongside. Which is what I’m working on now – unseating or wrecking a specific historical work and using that wreckage as my only intervention against that work.

AC: We were talking once and you accused my ‘calloused generation’ of ‘solipsistic anachronism.’ After I looked up those fancy words and understood what you meant, I really thought about throwing that back at you in terms of your work, so I’m glad that came up. However, there is a kind of spectral third party lurking the peripheries of this discussion, that being the audience – the reader, your viewers. You seem to have such an ascetic, studio-bound practice, and although we often see your exhibitions in Vancouver as compendiums or accumulations of works, I can’t help but see your individual works as being oblique transmissions, something I find is fortified by your recent endeavours with Twitter, which I was completely shocked to see you using. But that’s just my observation, how do you perceive your relationship with your audience, or do you?

DM: My work’s probably far more solipsistic than anachronistic. I’ve made a couple anachronistic works but only a few out of many, which are not. Your question is very difficult to answer… I guess my relationship, or my interaction and understanding with my audience is entirely up to it (them) and not me. It’s only when these beautiful observations are passed on to me that I have any understanding at all of how my work translates, or lives outside of my own, sometimes one-sided, understanding of my work. But back to your question – I do see my work as accumulations, each work having a specific number of sibling works, that ideally would be seen together.

AC: Do you consider Fallen Caryatid to be one of those anachronistic works? It doesn’t look like contemporary art. I had a unique reaction when I saw that piece, which was a jag of nervous laughter. I felt self-conscious finding such a sanctimonious-looking object so funny. It was so out of place yet familiar, gorgeous yet ridiculous. Greek caryatids, in my understanding, are architectural implements, female forms that act as columns, burdened beauties. Your version is squatting beneath the weight of absolutely nothing; in fact, the fingers seem to be grasping for something to be burdened by. I’m not probing for you to unveil some kind of subconscious misogyny, unless you want to go there. Maybe we should go there? I was thinking more of futility as a point of inspiration, the supposed weight of history, and what kind of freedom we might deign from its perception.

DM: Yes, it’s one of the few, and the most anachronistic of those few. The unseen burden is all that surrounds it, including you, the viewer (and myself of course as well). I first exhibited it with all my drawings and watercolours surrounding it, representing the burden of history. Of course, I see that as an unavoidable and inspirational burden, but a burden no less. The figure is female because it’s derived from Rodin’s Fallen Caryatid with Her Stone, which is one of many figures in his monumental Gates of Hell sculpture. In a funny way most of the sculptures that I’ve done since, maybe all, are versions of that same work. The idea of something carrying something else, sometimes a balance, or as I’m moving towards now, an imbalance, and eventual collapse.

AC: I often find myself assessing the ingredients of an artwork by noting the wet-to-dry ratio, which you could also call viscera vs. structure. Does that make sense? I mean this in a formal sense but also figuratively (because I’m being thoughtful). I would say that the earliest work of yours I’ve seen was already running about 35% gooey, and it’s been pretty steadily oozing throughout the years. I have wondered if it ever might present itself in a fully puddled form. Of course a puddle still has the earth to hold it, unfortunately.

DM: I’d have to say that I’m more dragging myself out of the primordial ooze as each day goes on. My student work and the work I did in the immediate years preceding were far more formless in their nature. I’ve been trying very hard to tone down my love of sludge. Perhaps if a push/pull exists, then I’d say that I tend to lean towards the blobs sculpturally, and am trying to pull some hard-edged abstraction into my paintings. Perhaps an analogy that would work better for us both would be “wet” as effects on a voice or guitar, and dry being clean and undistorted. I’d say that your work is all about being wet and about wet while remaining dry. Your work undercuts your own, pretty explicit sense of humour. I guess for myself I’d say I swing between jumping on the proverbial pedals and noodling on the acoustic… This would go right back to your question about my audience, in that I don’t have a good idea of how ‘funny’ my work is. I guess it’s like life (my life, that is) in that my jokes don’t crack many people up, but I get laughs when I’m dead serious. I’m gonna ask you a question now: do you find yourself toning down your sense of humour in regards to your work? I ask because as I said before, I get the sense that although your work is very funny that it is, in a way, trying not to be that funny.

AC: Well, apparently when the members of Monty Python conducted their writing meetings there was rarely any laughter. They were so professional they just solemnly assessed what was funny or not. That’s kind of how it works for me, I realize at some point that something is humorous, or about funny, if that makes any sense. I’m not actually all that crazy about funniness. I value wit, which is hardly the same thing. So now that we have our lugubrious/arid analogy/dichotomy in action, lets talk about sex. Do you ever find your libido manifesting itself in your work? It’s a horrifying realization I’ve come to in some of what I consider to be my strongest works, and I’m genuinely curious if you’ve ever had it.

DM: Oh absolutely… When I look at the photo works I made through the 90s I can’t help but see these images as various sexual surrogates for some kind of libidinous desire. I think at the time I probably was able to justify these images with all sorts of complicated theoretical relationships, and then with the passing of time there is an inevitable distillation or purification that occurs and one finally sees, and admits, the simplicity of an image or object. Maybe not necessarily the simplicity, but there is finally a moment when the dogma and rhetoric of authorship fades, to allow a slightly more objective view of what one has done. The five-years-later return to things you have done is a wonderful thing, although I confess there are times when it’s less wonderful and more akin to a sleepless night in a cold sweat!

AC: It’s embarrassing and enlightening, kind of like this interview.