IntoThis

For our first episode of 2019 and overall Episode 21 Marx has a conversation with Roxanne Arsenault. She is the co-general and artistic coordinator, responsible for programming at the artist run center Clark, she also leads a music project called Donzelle and she is involved in many other cultural and artistic projects in the city of Montreal such as Pop Montreal.

Roxanne was very generous and forthcoming with her answers not only about her personal development and her path to arrive where she is but also about genuinely difficult topics such as the responsibility of an artist run center in the current art climate and what type of risks are they willing to take to keep things fresh and not redundant which is something that happens often!

In her musical pursues she shares the type of collaboration that make possible Donzelle and the sensibility and message behind this project. You can find her music all over on YouTube, Spotify or on Donzelle’s website: https://donzelle.ca

It was a huge honor to have had the chance to talk to Roxanne and we hope you enjoy this conversation as much as we have enjoyed producing it.

On a side note TAP Art Space is accepting project submissions until January 15th of 2019, check out the details in TAP’s website https://www.tapmontreal.com

Thanks for listening!

In Episode 20, Marx has a conversation with painter Erik Nieminen. Erik grew up in Ottawa as a member of a family in which being an artist was encouraged. In 2007 he obtained his BFA from the University of Ottawa and his MFA from Concordia University in 2010. After that he moved to Berlin where he worked for over 4 years, he returned to live and work to Montreal in 2016. His paintings walk on the intersection of abstraction and commonly known forms. In this interview he points out that in his work “the content always follows form”. This premise allows him to explore different aspects of a painting with freedom and honesty. Please visit Erik’s website to check out his paintings. His recent solo shows include “The Unreal” at the Albemarle Gallery in London England and earlier this year he presented “Above Below” at the Art Gallery of Outremont in Montreal. He has participated in several group shows in Berlin, Frankfurt, Montreal, and London. He was recently awarded with the Bombay Sapphire Artisan Series that granted him a ticket to the finals being held in Miami this winter. It was a really enjoyable conversation and we hope you enjoy it as much as we have. Thanks for listening!

In Episode 19, Marx talks to artists Guillaume Adjutor Provost and Shanie Tomassini about their collaborative show at TAP Art Space called A Witch is Born Out of the True Hungers of Her Time. This show will be the last show of 2018 at the current TAP Art Space location and it will be in view until October 19th of 2018, the programming will be back at the garage at the end of April of 2019. Keep your eyes and ears open for some upcoming exciting news.

In Episode 18 of IntoThis Podcast, Marx has a conversation with recently arrived Brooklyn-based painter Benjamin Klein. In this episode Ben shares his non-traditional trajectory to the visual arts, he was a martial artists for many years until he gave in to his strong desire to create paintings.

After completing a BA in English Literature at Concordia University it was evident that he needed to change paths, he then made his way to arts school finishing his BFA at Concordia University in 2005, then after a period of time dedicated to the direction of commercial galleries in Montreal, he decided to pursue an MFA at University of Guelph. He was one of the RBC painting competition finalists in 2010 and he was represented by Joyce Yahouda Gallery until it's closure in 2016.

In this generous conversation Ben shares his experiences as a painter, curator, the impact of being involved in the direction of a commercial gallery, what ideas and sensibilities are behind his paintings and a lot more. You can learn more about his work in his website

In Episode 17 of IntoThis Podcast, Marx has a conversation with Montreal-based visual artist Jeanie Riddle and Montreal-based blogger and instagrammer Dimitri Velasquez. The conversation is centered on the ocassion of the opening of the show Single Family Home For Saleat TAP Art Space in which they collaborated.

In Episode 16 of IntoThis Podcast, Marx has a very fun and interesting conversation with artists-couple-collective David and Jorden Doody. They are a British Columbia- based collective working mainly in sculpture and textiles. They are interested in the conversations between image and materiality, as they mentioned in this conversation they draw inspiration from a classic approach to sculpture yet being conscious of the screen-culture that social media and the internet era has delivered. They have a BFA from the University of British Columbia, an MFA from Concordia University and they are currently working in a second MFA at UBC. In this conversation they share their insights in being a couple working together as a collective, raising children while being practicing artists, emoji culture and a lot more.

This is a special edition of IntoThis Podcast, in episode #15 Marx has a conversation with Colombian-Canadian artist Laura Acosta and Mexican architect David Jaime about their collaboration in the show called Ser/Viniendo-Be/Coming-De/Venir presented TAP Art Space in view until July 21st of 2018. In this conversation they share many keys to access the show composed by a virtual reality piece and a performance-activated textile-based sculpture.

As Janet shares in this conversation, her work revolves around the idea of human figures. Even though her work is very close to what is usually described as a portrait, the characters in her paintings are usually invented and stem out of abstraction. In this conversation she shares where those portraits are most likely coming from and what does she think of them. A large part of Janet’s time is dedicated to teaching, she also shared with Marx the good, the bad and the okay of being a professor.

Informed by Neo-Marxist theories, this exhibition analyzes in a personal rather than cumulative manner the drastic changes in the concept of work observed in the past decade. Through a series of paintings based on the aesthetics of different massive communication systems and schematic representation of information, the artists scrutinize the effects on the creative work, knowledge-based economy as well as the constantly increasing gig economy. Even though the considerations proposed in this show are the intimate type, the pillow-talk kind of analysis, the same scrutiny could be extrapolated to a wider and more general statement.

We hope to see you at TAP in it's inauguration show.