Art Metropole

The Centre de recherche urbaine de Montréal is a pseudo-arts organization, an independent publisher, an idea, an article of faith, but above all an artists’ collective dedicated to making art projects happen in the urban environment. The CRUMmies have come together because of shared interests and a belief in working collaboratively within the competitive and impersonal environment of the city. We all work within the identity of CRUM but we all also work without it, in our own personal practices and professional activities.

The CRUM is a shape-shifting, symbiotic (parasitic), self-sufficient and auto-financing model. When we work collaboratively with artists outside the organization it is because these artists and their projects share our values. The Centre de recherche urbaine de Montreal (CRUM) is a parasitic research group with no exhibition space of its own. It uses the pre-existing exhibition network to present diverse projects. We offer them the conviction that working together and pooling resources is a positive experience. We offer them exchange in kind of our combined professional experience in research and information services, writing, sound recording, and institutional, commercial and not-for-profit art systems.

In 2007 the CRUM adopted the Creative Commons licensing system for intellectual property produced through the collective. This is in keeping with our belief in shared resources and a free culture.

Anadama is Dana Dal Bo and AN Soubiran.

As physical avatars , they stage relationships defined as Positions.

position (puh-zish-uh n) n
1. A location in a coordinate system, usually in two or more dimensions. 2. A state of Entanglement. A phenomenon in which two subjects have to be described with reference to each other. 3. The result.

John Latour has a BFA in Studio Art (University of Ottawa), a MLIS (McGill University) and a MA in Art History (Concordia University). Solo exhibitions of his work have been held in Ontario and Quebec, and he has participated in group exhibitions in Canada and abroad. He has received artist grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Conseils des arts et des lettres du Québec and the Ontario Arts Council. His work is found in numerous private collections as well as the Hallmark Fine Art Collection (Kansas City), the Fine Art Collection of the City of Ottawa, and Le Méridien Versailles (Montreal).

A fraternal-twin of Irish and Italian descent. Born in Saint Catharine’s, Ontario (1970). Christopher has studied at both Sheridan College, and the Ontario College of Art and Design University under celebrated mentors, contemporary artists Rae Johnson, jim Tiley, Ian-Carr Harris, and John Scott. Confidently sculpting and abstracting charcoal on paper, Christopher has romanticized a type of Pyscho-Mytho figurative landscape for over a decade now.

Christopher has participated in several group shows with strong growing galleries such as Pierre-Francois Ouelette Art Contemporain of Montreal and Gallery Poulsen of Copenhagen, Denmark.

Having representation with Galeria Begona Malona of Madrid, Spain since 2007, Christopher has successfully shown at internationally celebrated art fairs, such as, Scope Miami, Scope New York, Art Toronto.

Christopher Lori currently lives and works in Toronto.

Ed Pien is a Canadian artist based in Toronto. He has been drawing for nearly 30 years. Born in Taipei, Taiwan, he immigrated to Canada with his family at the age of eleven. He holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from York University in Toronto and Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Western Ontario, in London, Ontario.

Ed Pien has exhibited nationally and internationally including the Drawing Centre, New York; La Biennale de Montreal 2000 and 2002; W139, Amsterdam; Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; Middlesbrough Art Gallery, the UK; Centro Nacional e las Artes, Mexico City; The Contemporary Art Museum in Monterrey, Mexico; the Goethe Institute, Berlin; Bluecoat, Liverpool; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; as well as the National Art Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.

As an art instructor, Ed Pien has taught at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and the Ontario College of Art and Design.

He currently teaches part-time at the University of Toronto.

1984 Master of Fine Arts, York University. Toronto, Ontario.
1982 Honours Bachelor of Fine Arts, University of Western Ontario. London, Ontario.
1981 Queens University, Art and Architecture. Venice, Italy.

David Poolman was born in Wallaceburg, Ontario. He is an MFA graduate from the University of Windsor, and a graduate of the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design. Working in drawing, video, print media, and installation, Poolman has exhibited in art galleries and screened in festivals both nationally and internationally. Poolman currently lives in Toronto and is a professor of Drawing at Sheridan Institute and Visual Arts Editor of The Rusty Toque. His video work is distributed through VTape and Ouat Media in Toronto.

Born in Poland in 1947 and educated at Sir George Williams University in Montreal, Canada; Mark has been the recipient of numerous honors and awards including the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship (1978) and seventeen Canada Council Grants (to name just two examples.) He was honored in 1975 with an invitation from the Deutsche Akademischer Austauschdienst Guest Artist in Berlin Program, and spent nearly two years in Germany. His work has been exhibited extensively all over the world, and his solo shows have been featured at such prestigious institutions as the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Holland; the Akademie Der Kunst in Berlin, Germany; and the Musee d’art contemporain in Montreal, Canada.

Three documentary films have been made in Canada about his work, as well as volumes of newspaper and magazine articles, catalogues and commentaries. He has lectured and taught workshops in hundreds of institutions over the years and continues to do so. Back when workshops were offered at the bi-annual Sculpture Conferences of the International Sculpture Center, he routinely presented the life-molding workshop.

In the early 1980′s Prent moved with his wife to the U.S. and settled in the beautiful Champlain Valley of Vermont where they developed Pink House Studios Inc. as a way of marketing his technical expertise and providing the superior products and customer support that he knew, from his own experience, was so badly needed in the field of life-molding.

Felicity Tayler is an FAS Post Doctoral Fellow in the History of Art at the University of Toronto. Her SSHRC-funded PhD research at Concordia University focused on counter-national narratives in conceptual bookworks and artists’ magazines from the early 1970s. She also holds an MLIS from McGill University and has experience as an art librarian. In each of these roles she is concerned with media and cultural infrastructure as the material substrates for social imaginaries. Both her artistic practice and curatorial work has been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec. She has written reviews for C Magazine and Ciel Variable, and her scholarly writing is featured in the Journal of Canadian Art History, International Journal on Digital Libraries, Art Documentation and Art Libraries Journal.

Toronto-based Johannes Zits works across many disciplines with a focus on the body and the many meanings it engenders. His work draws attention to conventional image-making processes as well as the ways images from mass media are disseminated and consumed. In his work with the natural environment Zits aims to extend the notion of the performer to include nature itself. Considering nature as a body and as an active participant ensures that it cannot be construed as a passive prop or backdrop; nor adored and fixed in the realm of the sublime. He has presented work across Canada as well as internationally.

Matt Killen is an artist and musician. He received a BFA in art education from Concordia University and an MFA in visual arts from l’Université du Québec à Montréal. He is a founding member of the Centre de recherche urbaine de Montréal, a Montreal-based artist collective and publisher. In his visual art practice, he works principally in painting and sound installation. In 2008 he was featured in the Magenta FoundationÂ’s publication, Carte Blanche Vol. 2: Painting. His work has been presented in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, and Pittsburgh. He currently lives and works in Toronto.