The Toronto Star

THE TORONTO STAR
AGO course explores feminism through art: Participants learn to use visual art to inspire change and create dialogue."

by JACKIE HONG, staff reporter
Friday, April 14, 2017

Canadian artist Aleks Bartosik has long used painting, drawing and sculpture to explore feminist ideas.

Her life experiences were the inspiration behind the first edition of “Art-making Inspired by Feminist Ideas,” a course at the Art Gallery of Ontario that saw a dozen participants explore feminism through various visual mediums including zine-making, collage, painting and sculpture. 

“It was feminist-driven . . . but I don’t want that to be the only thing that (participants) take away from it,” Bartosik said in March after the conclusion of the first edition. “(I hope they get) a sense of achievement and self-expression to speak through visual language, to inspire change or create a dialogue about feminism and talk about ideas to end sexism, oppression, things like that,” she said.

“Art-making is just one form they can do that through without standing around and picketing.” 

The second edition of the course will run for five weeks starting May 3, and costs $275 for AGO members or $355 for the public. Registration is available on the AGO’s website.

The Star asked some of the first edition participants what feminism means to them and how they expressed it through the art they made during the course. 

And here's the direct link to the article: https://www.thestar.com/life/2017/04/14/ago-course-explores-feminism-through-art.html enjoy!

Below,  some of the work created during my class.
all photos by Cole Burston of The Toronto Star.

camille deputter

 

karen vianna

anna zhyn

kristyn dunnion

news coverage

Thank you to blogTO!

"Toronto Instagram stars get the spotlight at local gallery." 

written by Amy Grief / SEPTEMBER 21, 2015

http://www.blogto.com/arts/2015/09/toronto_instagram_stars_get_the_spotlight_at_local_gallery/

interview with Crystal Lee of AWESOME SAUCE TV

Thank you for the great article Crystal Lee of Awesome Sauce!

"The contemporary figurative paintings of Aleks Bartosik aren't something you'd typically see hanging in a dining room.  With wildly intense subjects and colour, her paintings are vivid and disconcerting.  How do you create powerful and memorable work?  Aleks tries not to worry so much about what will or will not sell.  Instead she sticks to her goal as an artist, wich is to create visceral pieces that give viewers an emotionally moving experience." 

__  Crystal Lee

To read full article visit  Awesome Sauce.

Lee, Crystal.  "Art Follows Heart: How to create impactful work."  Awesome Sauce: September 9, 2014.

aleks Bartosik.  in a dream (2014) acrylic, conte and oil on canvas.  5x5'

WHAT IS AWESOMESAUCE?

"We distill the forces behind creativity and design through artist spotlights and interviews. We are purveyors of all things awesome."  

__AwesomeSauce

La Petite Mort Gallery presents: ALEKS BARTOSIK / new works / theatre of cruelty Show is open from DECEMBER 6, 2013 - JANUARY 2, 2014 Vernissage/Opening Reception: FRIDAY, DECEMBER 6th, 2013. 7-10pm  * painting performance at 7pm * dj and drinks Music provided by co-op students from the Capital DJ Academy who will play a mix of groovy tech house, nu-jazz, and deep house while Aleks Bartosik does her live painting event. La Petite Mort Gallery 306 Cumberland Ave., Ottawa, ON K1N 7H9 CANADA * * * “I cry out in the dream but I know that I am dreaming and over BOTH SIDES OF THE DREAM I make my will prevail.” - Antonin Artaud, from Theatre and its Double (1938) * * *  In her upcoming La Petite Mort Gallery exhibition, Aleks Bartosik presents new works that center on a theme of metamorphosis, capturing figures in the intermediate spaces between the internal self and the manifest extension of the mind and body into visual space. In this series of works, Bartosik offers neither fully animal nor human figures, but rather, hybrid creatures held within a tensed space of the imagined and the real. In her practice, Bartosik extends drawing elements into the realms painting, sculpture, performance, film/video and installation. Her experimentations with form and figure are grounded by an instinct to dream and thus suspend reality. As such, Bartosik’s works can be seen from a view of life as theatre. We are all performers – both within and outside of ourselves, in private and in public. It follows that we redeem our physical bodies by allowing our innermost imaginations, fantasies and desires to take shape. And it is only when we become conscious of our immaterial potential that we hold the power manipulate and subvert “accepted” reality and thus create new reality. From this view, this exhibit centers on a process of metamorphosis or becoming of the self. Subsequently, Bartosik’s works can be read through such themes as repression and manifestation, instinct and knowledge, emotion and gesture, and identity and artifice. If the very notion of the theatre forces us to believe in (or at least temporarily accept) some emotive truth that lies beneath performance, then further, in Bartosik’s ‘theatre of the self’, we must read each, figure, form and symbol as operating from within a kind of emotional intelligence. Bartosik’s practice can be reflected onto Antonin Artaud’s theory of the ‘Theatre of Cruelty’, which advocates that the role of the spectator must be implicated from within the spectacle on a deeply human, instinctive level. Artaud’s ‘cruelty’ does not point to a literal reading physical violence, but rather to a violence that disrupts order, normalcy, and thus, defeats socially accepted “false reality”. In this view, if we can direct our instinctive drive towards a liberated physical determination, we can defeat false reality and, however paradoxically, begin again in a chaos towards something new. Bartosik works from within this gesture, in the attempt to offer the imaged as the real, and thus, to blur the distinction of life through art in general. Following Artaud, Bartosik’s works inherently implicate the spectator through the spectacle. The strength of her visual language depends on our willingness to recognize ourselves from within and without. Bartosik’s figures, arrested in a flux of means and ends – at once morphing and evolved, or repressed and manifesting – push towards an idea that we are always more than what we are immediately willing to know. As such, her creative process is motivated by the dualities of inner and outer experiences; the particularities, delicacies, sensitivities, and obsessions held within relationships, between lovers, siblings, strangers, and finally, from within ourselves.  It is in this complex emotional space that Bartosik’s figures breathe with a kind of fluidity from both within and beyond the work itself. This is her theatre of cruelty. And there is indeed a cruelty within all of us. However paradoxically, it is in this search to shatter and thus exceed “false reality” that there rests a kind of grace. Fantasy, illusion, and theatre are only as real as permit them to be.  - Written for LPM Gallery by Adam Barbu, 2013 - Exhibition Curated by Guy Berube, LPM - See more at:La Petite Mort Gallery: Aleks Bartosik aleks bartosik ART website FACEBOOK ART PAGE: AleksBartosikART desolate paper queen (2013) performance and installation by aleks bartosik

Mimic Magazine also covered this show:

http://mimikmagazine.com/brainwaves/aleks-bartosik-her-theatre-of-cruelty/

Friday, August 16th at 10pm at the Tranzac, Toronto.

"lightsweetcrude [...] just released its debut album, "Listen to the Colour" come out on August 16th and hear their sound! Luke Vajsar Music opens and I will be doing the art projections for Lightsweetcrude.  

Enjoy some photos from the concert:

photo credit: Oliver Da Silva, 2013

photo credit: Oliver Da Silva, 2013

photo credit: Oliver Da Silva, 2013

photo credit: Michael Chelin, 2013

my Art Catalogue in Bookstores NOW!

! NOW AVAILABLE !

A Requiem for Passion : Portraits by Aleks Bartosik 

essay by James D. Campbell  

NOW at the TORONTO WOMEN'S BOOKSTORE ($20 + tax)

 

 art catalogue by Headbones Gallery

© Rich Fogg Publishing, 2011

Solo Exhibition at Headbones Gallery generously supported by:

To view the catalogue on-line, click on: 

http://www.headbonesgallery.com/Aleks%20Bartosik/Aleks%20Bartosik%20A%20Requiem%20For%20Passion%20ebook.pdf

Also, you can purchase catalogue directly from HB, contact the gallery at:

phone:  250-542-8987

email:   info@headbonesgallery.com

interview

Check out the interview I had with a fellow artist and friend, Karen Miranda Augustine: "Possession, all that is sacred in contemporary art: Aleks' Wonderland." (2010) http://www.possessionsessions.com/

Dark Karma: Uncensored Thoughts on the art of Aleks Bartosik An Essay by James D.Campbell to read the essay, please follow this link: http://www.headbonesgallery.com/Spunky%20Rooms?Aleks%20Bartosik%20Commentary%20by%20Campbell.htm

face II (chestnut lady) oil + charcoal on canvas, 2005. ●
(private collection)

LFDM MONTREAL MAGAZINE

Hi Everyone! I am pleased to announce that the new issue of Les Fleurs Du Mal is out on the stands in Montreal. Please pick up your copy! I am happy to be part of the featured artist articles!

HORSES on Carlaw, review

featured artists : aleks and sylwia bartosik written by Jen McNeely, President of She Does the City on-line magazine. 11/28/2007

When I saw an image of artist Aleks Bartosik and her sister Sylwia holding hands emerging from an alley clad in dainty dresses and adorned with HORSE HEADS I was immediately struck with the beauty of this image.

For those of you with siblings, their performance art will likely conjure up images of childhood when playing little people, lost orphans or backyard pioneers was so powerful that any sense of reality was thwarted by an overwhelming imagination. Everyday problems like parental fights, looming homework or schoolyard bullies could be conquered with an escape through play.

One memory that particularly comes to mind is when, for what seemed like days, my sister and I created an entire community of families with magazine cut outs. The naming process, breakdown of ages and relationships was so thorough that we felt like Gods. In one fell swoop I decided a tornado would hurl through the village strewn across the bedroom floor.

The organized imaginary world was ruined instantaneously and all our efforts to create a cohesive environment vanished. Being the older sister, I had control over these Mother Nature catastrophes, and my poor younger sister was left crying and deflated feeling like her careful hours of time devoted to these paper people was for nothing. GAME OVER.

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These major decisions then were indicative of an age where play began to disappear. Being ten or so at the time, I had grown sick of the village and decided that I'd rather wander downstairs and watch TV. However, for the younger sibling this was devastating, as she was nowhere near the end of the game.

How do we as adults return to this world where reality is frozen and play dominates our mind and spirit completely?

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As adults we drink, dance and screw to have fun. This is how we remove ourselves from the routine of hard work, difficult times and stress. Perhaps if we adorned ourselves in costume, and held hands through the streets or tapped into our inner child more often we wouldn’t require so many vices, and would return to a spot in time where things stood still and closet doors led to magical worlds. It’s difficult to do this for several reasons, but perhaps the scariest being that if we try we may fail and be struck with how distanced and jaded we’ve become since childhood. .

I asked Aleks what inspired her and she responded sincerely: People. I'm inspired by the particularities, delicacies, sensitivities, beauties and obsessions held within relationships between lovers, siblings/twins, friends, strangers, or themselves. I like to observe the visible (and accessible) interactions between people and the situations they are placed in and re-create my own scenarios and my own environments and narrations.

If people were to walk away and express your Horse Head art in a few words, what would you want them to say? What is the thought that you want people to leave with having seen this work? I want the viewers to have experienced some sort of a visual pleasure. Entered some sort of an imaginary land or situation. I am not particularly sure what I would like them to say, but I know what I would like them to experience. Perhaps they may say something like: "That was strange." in a delightful sense or a frightened sense. The Horse Heads (a work in progress) are rooted in a larger and deeper narrative, but I purposefully want them to appear playful and child-like.

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Unlike most of the Featured Artists, I found it very difficult to sit down and write about the HORSE HEADS. The sight of them swarmed me with memories, feelings and emotion; the fragility of childhood, power of the imagination, and preciousness of magic.

Some art is difficult to verbalize yet makes us feel completely alive. I have described the HORSE HEADS performance as best I can and can only hope that if you are walking down Queen Street one day and are greeted by two sisterly mares, that you become overwhelmed with soft childhood memories – the kind that pull at your heart.

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Beyond cavorting through the streets with this enchanting performance piece, Aleks Bartosik is also an accomplished painter. You can view her work at:

http://www.aleksbartosik.com/