Author: artoronto

October 27 ­ – November 26, 2011
Artist talks: Thursday, October 27, 6-7 pm
Opening: Thursday, October 27, 7-9 pm
Open Studio Gallery Print Sales Gallery
401 Richmond Street West, Suite 104
Toronto ON,  M5V 3A8
T/F: 416-504-8238
E-mail: sara@openstudio.on.ca
W: http://www.openstudio.on.ca

2010-11 Scholarship/Fellowship Exhibitions

Each year, Open Studio awards three scholarships/fellowships,
providing artists working in print media with both professional support and
access to studio facilities to create new work during a one-year period. All
three artists will give illustrated talks about their work and the progress
of their projects over the year on Thursday, October 27 at 6 pm at Open
Studio, followed by an opening reception. As London, ON-based artist, writer and academic Patrick Mahon points out the common thread between these three exhibitions is that all three artists are engaged in complex practices of making art generated in response to living/thinking experiences, which ultimately point to the artists themselves.

Lauren Nurse’s “There’s always room on the broom” (Print Sales Gallery)
synthesizes the artist’s interests in the modern separation and opposition
between culture and nature, and in locating the mythological/uncanny in
evocations of the  wild. Cultural perceptions of nature have always held a
certain amount of anxiety, and have spawned numerous myths, legends and
fables. These narratives expose culture’s uneasy relationship with the
natural world.  In viewing the monstrous body as a metaphor for the cultural body, Nurse considers the mythic as a symbolic expression of the cultural unease that pervades a society and shapes its collective behavior. Her work has revolved around the idea of collisions between nature and culture passing comment on some of the ways in which we see nature as existing outside of culture and society, yet simultaneously influencing the ways in which we live.

Open Studio thanks The Catherine and Maxwell Meighen Foundation and the
Donald O¹Born Family for their kind support of the 2010-11
Scholarship/Fellowship Program.

Open Studio gratefully acknowledges the support of The City of Toronto
through the Toronto Arts Council, The Canada Council for the Arts and the
Ontario Arts Council. Open Studio also acknowledges the generous support ofits members and numerous foundations, corporations and individuals.

November 1 – 13, 2011  
Opening:Friday, November 4, 7-9pm 
COBALT GALLERY 
870 A Kingston Rd
Toronto, ON
T: 416-568-2477
cobaltgallery@sympatico.ca  
 Hours: Wed – Sat 11 -6 pm.

Brent Boechler, Mirror

November 5 -19, 2011
Opening: Saturday, November 5, 2-4 pm
BAU-XI GALLERY
340 Dundas St. West
Toronto, Ontario M5T 1G5
T: 416.977.0600
E: toronto@bau-xi.com
www.bau-xiphoto.com

Bau-Xi Gallery is pleased to be holding a two-artist exhibition, which will feature new work from abstract painter Brent Boechler, and sculptor Paul Vexler.

Vexler’s delicate knotted wood sculptures have evolved from his understanding of geometry in the natural world, and his technical practice as a woodworker.

Boechler creates luminescent paintings using layers of colour on wood panels. His work aims to free the eye from its continual attempt to recognize, and acts as an invitation to allow an unobstructed gaze.

Both artists skillfully exemplify structural beauty, abstract forms, and restrained elegance in their respective media.

Rita Letendre, ‘Adieu Sésame’, 1955, oil on board, 24″ × 32″

October 15 – November 4, 2011
Opening: Saturday, October 15, 10-6 pm
GALLERY GEVIK
12 Hazelton Ave
Toronto, ON M5R 2E2
T: 416.968.0901
Hours: Tues – Sat 10-6
E-mail: info@gevik.com
www.gevik.com

The exhibition is a collection of artworks by French Canadian artists.

Featuring works by:

Paul Vanier Beaulieu,

Léon Bellefleur,

Pierre Gauvreau,

Jéan-Paul Jérôme,

Henry Wanton-Jones,

Rita Letendre, 

Serge Lemoyne.

October 28 – November 27, 2011
Opening October 27, 6 -9 pm
PENTIMENTO FINE ART GALLERY
1164 Queen Street East
Toronto, Ontario M4M 1L4
T: 416-406-6772
Email: rockinrolland@sympatico.ca
Hours: Wed – Sunday 12 – 6  pm

The new series entitled “Colossus” is based around the poetry of Sylvia Plath and the oil on canvas images are all portraits of women.  As Troy states, “I am a painter of women’s stories and each painting in this series is a character that surfaces for me in the lines of her poetry.  Each is a distinctly different character, but the through-line is that these are all women who have built a passionate choreography out of dancing with their demons.  Another interesting element of these characters is the conflict of identity.  They are the persona of a delicate young blonde woman in simple settings but wrestling with a savage intellect riddled with complex dark ruminations at a time when young women were supposed to be demure and uncomplicated.  They are at once expanding and in the process of imploding.”

In an August 2010 review, R.M. Vaughan of The Globe and Mail stated that “Troy Brooks’s gender-questionable, powdery oil paintings of pin-thin (and pinch-faced) “ladies”, are malicious matrons who appear to have walked out of an Edward Gorey illustration after raiding Johnny Depp’s Alice in Wonderland costume rack.”

Troy Brooks inspiration may be the writing of Sylvia Path but his talent lies in the way he is able to work the fine details using watercolour brushes within the oil on canvas.

Boys’ Change Room Nelson High School

November 5-19, 2011
Opening: Saturday, November 5, 2-4 pm
BAU-XI PHOTO
324 Dundas St. West
Toronto, Ontario M5T 1G5
T: 416.977.0400
E: info@bau-xiphoto.com
www.bau-xiphoto.com
Hours: Mon-Sat 10-5:30, Sun 11-5:30

Born in Grimsby, Chris Shepherd started off his artistic career as a painter, and turned to photography as a means to familiarize himself with Toronto, a city he initially felt very separate from. It was this process of exploration that piqued Shepherd’s interest in urban landscapes and led to a long-running fascination with the often passed-over or under-appreciated tableaus of metropolitan life. The serenity and reserved nature of Shepherds photographs are a sharp juxtaposition with the locations they are depicting. Shepherd captures fleeting moments in time, whether a brief moment of tranquility in the perpetual cycle of arrivals and departures on the Toronto Subway system, or the period of time between tenants in commercial buildings. 

In his new series, Shepherd has turned his lens on the school system, showing gyms, classrooms, lockers and science labs, many of which have not changed in appearance for generations.

Curated by Sarah Quinton.

Veiled focuses on three contemporary artists, whose work includes video, performance, sculpture and installation, building on the Textile Museum’s investigations of the flow of contemporary expression in a globalized context.

Andrew McPhail, Grace Ndiritu and Tazeen Qayyum use the idea of a veil as a poetic device for the investigation of public vs. private space, protection and intimacy. Together, their work examines the act of veiling the body not only as a material and physical gesture, but also as an emotional and personal process. 

Grace Ndiritu makes ‘hand-crafted videos’ and ‘video paintings’ that articulate the power of a small piece of cloth as the artist wraps it around her body in movements that transform it into a turban, a burka, a scarf, a shawl, referencing a 1950s housewife or a 21st-century rap artist or Egyptian belly dancer. The veil can preserve modesty or it can claim erotic connotations, and Ndiritu directs the transformative capacity of cloth to both conceal the body and make it visible.

Andrew McPhail has spent over 4 years making a lace-like veil titled all my little failures out of thousands of systematically stuck-together Band-Aids. The artist’s obsessive assemblage of ordinary first aid supplies creates a heartrending yet humourous ‘second skin’ – a massive, flesh-like body covering that might be seen as a visualization of chronic disease such as HIV, which McPhail has been living with since 1993. all my little failures calls attention to the healing capacity of touch, protection and personal safety. 

Tazeen Qayyum is a contemporary miniature painter. She paints on rubber hot water bottles and canvas ice bags – mass-produced objects that are designed to tend to the distressed body. Subtly altered and embellished with culturally symbolic hand-painted designs that respond to stories of migration, class and race shared with her by women from around the world, these objects are turned ‘inside-out’ to portray intimacies that were once veiled and protected. 

A series of related programs including a seminar, workshop and curator’s tour will be held throughout the duration of the show.  For more information, visit www.textilemuseum.ca