Make Me Famous, having its Canadian premiere at Toronto’s Hot Docs Cinema Jan. 20 through Feb. 1, is an investigation into the life and apparent death of Detroit-born Edward Brezinski, a charismatic Lower East Side painter on the fringe of success, who thwarted his career with antics that roiled NYC’s art elite. 

Described as a madcap romp, the film provides a unique snapshot of the 1980s art explosion while focusing on the truth of Brezinski’s mysterious death in the Cote d’Azur. It was filmed in NYC, Detroit, San Francisco, Ireland, Berlin and France. Make Me Famous  has screened worldwide on the festival circuit, including NY, LA, and Ireland, Poland, Australia and South Korea but Toronto is the first stop in a World Theatrical run

Curators are endlessly creative in searching their collections for themes, as the National Gallery of Canada shows in its latest exhibition collated to “celebrate the expressive energy of the human body.” Movement – Expressive Bodies in Art – runs through Feb 26, 2023. (Photo credits at end of post)

“From 17th Century prints to contemporary performance, paintings, photographs and videos, the show demonstrates how the body endures as a subject for artists wishing to explore issues of social concern, or express the many possibilities of human contact and interaction,” the gallery says.

(Top of Post: Leidy Churchman, Disappearing Acts, 2019. Oil on linen, 142.2 × 177.8 × 3.2 cm. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Purchased 2020 (49086). © Leidy Churchman, courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery. Photo: NGC)

(Second image) Kent Monkman, still from Dance to Miss Chief, 2010. Colour, English and German with English subtitles 4:49 min. Vtape, Toronto. © Kent Monkman. Photo: Courtesy the artist

(Third image) Brian Jungen, Performance Bonnet, 2019. Nike Air Jordan athletic shoes, 87.5 × 76 × 67 cm. Purchased 2021. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. © Brian Jungen Photo: Rachel Topham Photography, Courtesy of Catriona Jeffries, Vancouver.

One of U.K. artist Luke Jerram’s enormous sculpted moons is up for exhibition at Toronto’s Bentway, a 1.75-kilometre public space and outdoor gallery running under the city’s downtown Gardiner Expressway.  Museum of the Moon is a group of touring works by Jerram, already presented in dozens of cities and arts and cultural festivals, with more scheduled over the coming years.

One of his moons was in an exhibition just ending at Toronto’s Aga Khan Museum (See the previous Art Junkie post, here). The show at the Bentway opens today through Sept. 15. There’s a version on display through Oct. 25 at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa, and (below) another typical installation at the train station in Lille, France.

At the Bentway, the giant balloon is seven metres in diameter, built to a 1:500,000 scale using NASA imagery. Jerram has become an international sensation and some of his installations attract 10s of thousands of viewers. Over 200,000 people visited the artwork when it was presented in the Beijing Olympic Swimming pool.

Luke Jerram’s moon site, here.

His website, here.

The Bentway, Toronto event, here.

Other sites and versions on Luke Jerram’s Instagram, here.

Istanbul-based artist Aylin Bilgiç has a facility for ceramic people, along with her more traditional works. She is a Fine Arts graduate of Marmara University in Ceramics and Glass.

Aylin Bilgiç on Behance, here.

Her Instagram, here.