In 1984 conceptual artist Sophie Calle started a journey that would take her from Moscow to New Delhi, where she was to meet up with a lover. Little did she know that her lover would not show up, thereby ending the relationship. Calle happily recorded her trip in photos and collected travel mementos along the way, letting the excitement build. Alas, in retrospect, it was a countdown to despair. Eventually Calle got over the devastation and the phoenix derived from it was in the form of an exhibition called Exquisite Pain, made up of the photos, each one rubberstamped to denote how many days were left until the no-show. The exhibition would also become a book of the same name.
Hardcover, 232 pages, 130 illustrations, 71 in colour, $26.37 at Amazon.

+ Exquisite Pain at Amazon

Kate Shepherd is a master of geometric screen prints and carbon transfers, clean lines and sparsely-filled spaces. There is no visual clutter in Shepherd’s work, which is largely based on monochromatic components with the subtlest of linear overlays. The viewer is able to concentrate on light, space and colour without narrative distraction. Shepherd’s reductive paintings most often capture empty containers, boxes and blocks, and her most recent exhibition saw the inclusion of puzzles and cards as well.

Artist: Kate Shepherd
+ barbarakrakowgallery.com

Celeste Najt is a Buenos Aires artist whose collages are lively and humourous. Un dia de la semana is a sepia-toned flashback from her Stones series where pebbles are integrated into the collage work, giving heft. Also from that series is Puentes del Mundo Moderno which equates bridges and kisses to contemporary connection. More traditional collages are shown in the Cut & Paste series, but do not expect tradition to be synonymous with the mundane, as you spy Jimi Hendrix peeping out from one.

Artist: Celeste Najt
+ celestenajt.com.ar

Canadian blood artist Istvan Kantor is at it again. Banned from the National Gallery of Canada for painting a large blood x on a gallery wall in 1991, Kantor has come up with a project for the transformation of the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto – adding his own blood to the concrete to ensure that the museum truly contains artists’ blood. In doing so the building itself becomes the art and the title of this piece is Invisible Gift. While Kantor’s Blood Campaign series has been going on for years, Kantor is also busy with other areas of his performance art, especially as far as furthering the cause of neoism is concerned. The AGO has in no way given Kantor the green light, but he is ever the optimist and will reveal more at a press conference at Toronto’s Drake Hotel on Aug. 2.

Artist: Istvan Kantor
+ ccca.ca

California artist Ivan Morley is a great storyteller who bases his works on fictional worlds of his own making or his take on Californian historical events. Morley’s works combine a variety of media to carry out his narratives. Thread on fabric is a recurring combination, as is the use of K-Y jelly, but in spite of Morley’s penchant for patterning, his body of work is full of surprises. Don, George, Diane , an oil painting on glass, is a depiction of a baker’s dozen donkeys out at sea, but a related piece From Don, George, Diane is a colour-saturated mass of floral shapes. True Tale has cats on the high seas in one mixed media version, but the thread on canvas option is much more abstract, picking up on the sails of the ship.

Artist: Ivan Morley
+ bernier-eliades.gr

American painter Ena Swansea plays with an absence of light and colour, mixing oil and graphite to create layers of grey. Swansea’s dark grounds serve as a base to the strokes of white that offer a sort of inverse depth. World Headquarters depicts a feminine world of gossip and party lines, serious in shading, but teasingly quirky thanks to the trio of girly phones. Luncheon on the Grass comes across as a very private picnic, perhaps an updated version of the Manet’s Dejeuner sur l’herbe and Fall is a portrait of 1930's star Louise Brooks. Swansea reaches into the past to update her eerily compelling style. And the pink phones don’t hurt, even though one of them should have been rotary dial.

Artist: Ena Swansea
+ saatchi-gallery.co.uk

The cachet of owning or creating original artwork has always been sought after, but now the non-artist can readily combine true ownership and authorship by having one-of-a-kind pieces of art produced from his or her DNA, thanks to DNA11, a unique company offering portraits taken from clients’ DNA. DNA11’s official launch took place on Friday with the unveiling of a piece commissioned for Absolut Vodka. DNA was taken from the fruit used in five different flavours of the Absolut Vodka and the resulting DNA prints were incorporated into a spectacular fifteen-foot light box housed in the disco of Ottawa nightspot Helsinki Bar & Lounge.

Artist: Adrian Salamunovic/Nazim Ahmed/Sacha Leclair
+ dna11.com

While wallpaper may have fallen out of favour once everyone tired of the bordello effect of deep red brocade or became smothered by lusciously chintzy florals, MoCo enthusiasts are trying to track down vintage wallcoverings for a little something different. Off The Wall by Lena Lencek and Gideon Bosker takes a look at wallcoverings of the twentieth century, culled from the fantastic and extensive collection housed at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. Prints range from narrative wallpapers featuring accordion-playing sailors making music for Mexican girls on the beach or the social life of the well-heeled, well-dressed poodle to funky op-art and abstract graphics. This book is a must for all wallpaper enthusiasts who simply don't have the time or occasion to study the Cooper-Hewitts microfiche collection. Paperback, 120 pages, 109 colour images, $15.61 at Amazon.

+ Off the Wall at Amazon

Graphic designer by day, sculptor by night, Argentine Julieta Rodrigue creates delightful ceramics that are colourful organic shapes under an urban influence. Think ‘nature in the city’ suggested by a cosmopolitan bumblebee a la Rodrigue, or a funky half-fish/half-artichoke (to reflect the artist’s tastes), or maybe a strawberry-flavoured mango-scented bibelot. These pieces are made to be held, touched, felt – a feast of tactility, in a citified fruit basket where the contemporary blackberry can meet the ladybug as sophisticate. Fresh.

Artist: Julieta Rodrigue
+ ette.com.ar

Rik Catlow is an artist much inspired by urban scrawl, having grown up a stone’s throw from NYC. Graffiti tags or flyers plastered on lampposts are a source of creative provocation, and so it follows that Catlow’s works have a graffiti feel to them. Catlow uses found bits of paper and scraps of junk mail within his compositions, relying on the randomness of these bits and pieces to result in a satisfying final product. The kewpie-faced subject of Tentacles puts a comedic spin on an already humourous creature, while Gap is a cry for urban dentistry. But it is the slap depicted in Dead Bird that appeals the most because we all know there are moments when it is safer to allow art to speak for the way we are feeling.

Artist: Rik Catlow
+ rikcat.com

Canadian diptych painter Nathan Birch serves up Canadian landscapes in a slightly unconventional manner: by splitting the composition into two halves, Birch plays one canvas off the other. He uses the words ‘comparative’ and ‘relational’ to describe his works, as each half needs the other to be complete. Birch wants the viewer to see more than a simple landscape, indeed, to view the painting as an object rather than a representation of a scene. By inserting the space between the paintings, Birch’s goal is to pull a visual prank on the viewer. Nice twist – it just wouldn’t be MoCo without it.

Artist: Nathan Birch
+ nathanbirch.com