Michael Williams , Cancuned, 2007, oil on canvas, 38" x 58".
Courtesy of James Wagner.

Although I haven't yet seen the show at CANADA gallery quite a few of my friends have been talking about, I did stumble upon James Wagner's fantastic documentation of a few of the new Michael Williams paintings hanging there, as well as some of his own thoughtful words on the show. I do plan on going to see the work in person, and based on hearsay and a few jpegs, would recommend it to anyone in the geographic proximity. James does a great job in his photos communicating the artist's expressive and involved use of color, his considered manipulation of perspective, and some of the neo-surrealist figures and content of the paintings.

In the context of having just read most of October's Art of Production survey in Artforum, and Phillip Tinari's lengthy piece on the Dafen Oil Painting Village in the Guangdong province of southern China, I came upon the following link on popular artblog vvork documenting a conceptual project by an anonymous Dutch artist. Just Another Painting is a blog that presents the purportedly real correspondence of an artist attempting to coordinate the remote overseas fabrication of a painting exclusively via electronic communication. The words and images exchanged are spare, and in effect demystify the art-making process. The painting being fabricated itself is constructed via a seemingly half-baked process of collage: the artist selects charged images and pieces them together haphazardly, his vision clearly inspired by fantasy art and an absurdist Internet montage aesthetic.

In Performa related announcements this weekend, Isreali performance and video provocateur Tamy Ben-Tor performs uptown at Salon94 on 3 November through 6 November, each time at 6pm. Email info at salon94 dot com to RSVP for the free performance. Writing of her own work, Tamy Ben-Tor is quoted on Performa's website as stating "it is not a specific individual which I portray, it is a mimicking of public opinion, of cultural phenomena." She has created work in the past exploring various facets of contemporary Jewish and Western political and cultural paradigms, and has put her formal training as an actor to excellent use with her convincing and arresting presence.