Wicked Cool! stuff and some gossip

Howdy!

Le Devoir has three articles about art today, and each and everyone is not moneywalled. Woo-Hoo! Rene Viau on two Belgo building galleries and Angela Grauerholz, Isabelle Porter on Martin Bureau at galerie Lacerte in Quebec City, and Michel Hellman on the show by Raphaëlle de Groot at Galerie de l'UQAM. Props and shoutouts all around, now go read them.

On a related but tangential note I ran into Nicolas Mavrikakis yesterday, and he just doesn't get it. If you remember, I had tried to make up with him last November. I called him, invited him to see Wil Murray's show, he said he would. Unfortunately he never did. During that phone call, he asked why I called him a racist in print. I tried to explain to him that being quoted saying "Hand rather spuriously claims that Zeke's gets no attention from the French weekly Voir’s art critic because his space is called Zeke's Gallery and not Galerie Zeke," is not exactly calling him a racist - and when you look at the evidence I'm not so certain that I would call myself "spurious." But then again, I've been wrong.

Anyhows, I asked M. Mavrikakis when he would like to come to the Zeke's Gallery. He stated that it was not up to me, that it was only up to him as to when and how he would visit. I then attempted to explain to him the problems I had with the listings in Voir when Zeke's was starting. He stated he had absolutely nothing to do with the visual arts listings in Voir, which I questioned. I am good friends with most of the people on the masthead of their sister publication (in English) Hour magazine, and they had told me at the time that M. Mavrikakis did in fact choose what was in the listings. M. Mavrikakis then suggested that perhaps my friends had not told the truth. I asked if he was calling my friends liars, and he got offended swung around on his heel and stalked off.

It struck me that M. Mavrikakis seemed to be behaving sort of like some sort of self-appointed emperor of art, which does go against the grain of what he said if he had nothing to do with the listings.

Then, as I'm getting all of this off my chest. There is a wonderful nugget of misinformation going around that seems to have taken a life of its own. Everybody seems to think that I threatened to beat up M. Mavriakis. In fact, on August 24, 2002 there was a vernissage for Nadia Bertrand's exhibit here. Ms. Bertrand's exhibit was the infamous exhibit that M. Mavrikakis said he would come to see (he showed up while we were hanging it) but never did. I was talking (and drinking) with Gabriel Doucet Donida about my frustrations with M. Mavrikakis, and after a couple of beers, decided it would be a wonderful idea to spray paint "Nicolas Mavrikakis is a weenie" in front of his house. After each beer, it seemed to be an even better idea than it had been for the previous beer. It even morphed into placing an ad in Voir stating the same thing. I can see how a game of broken telephone would change that into throwing punches, especially after 3½ years.

[later: I wonder how Nicolas Mavrikakis would react to Charlie Finch?]