ArtToronto

Category: Uncategorized

  • Judith Geher: Courage

    November 10 – December 4, 2011
    Opening: Thursday, November 10, 7-9 pm
    PARTS GALLERY
    1150 Queen Street East
    Toronto, ON M4M 1L2
    T: 416.465.8500
    Hours: Wed–Sat 12–6, Sun 12-5 pm
    info@partsgallery.ca
    www.partsgallery.ca

    Judith Geher’s paintings explore contemporary images of an idealized feminine aesthetic. Working within the parameters of commonly held notions of beauty, she collects images from various fashion magazines and similar internet sites.

    This vehicle carries her impressions, thoughts and desires toward these images. Judith Geher lives and works in Toronto, Canada, and holds a Bachelor of Architecture with honours from the University of Toronto. Her practice includes

    drawing, painting, and sculpture, as well as designing thoughtful and considered architecture. Her work has been exhibited nationally

  • Gregory Scott

    Gregory Scott
    Art Toronto, 2011
    October 28 – 31, 2011

    This year’s Toronto’s International Art Fair was a great success. Filled with works of different media, one was constantly turning his head in order not to miss out on anything. My favorite pieces for this year’s art fair are Gregory Scott’s mixed media works at the Catherine Edelman Gallery: Dialogue, 2011; Construct, 2011; Attemptuous, 2008; Thanks for the Scribbles, 2011.

    Dialogue, 2011. from Catherine Edelman Gallery, Chicago on Vimeo.

    Often using himself as the model, Scott explores the idea of making still images move. His method is incorporating photography, painting, and video together in a seamless manner so that none of the mediums are distinguishable from another. His narrative works break the boundaries between the static and time-based media of representation, expanding the discourse between the media. These works also deal with the concept of pictorial illusionism, challenging the viewer’s perception of photographic truth. In a way, they could be seen as modern versions of the traditional trompe l’oeil illusionist paintings of the past.

    Humorous, witty, and a commentary on the art world, Scott’s works generate a viewing experience that fools the eye and plays with the mind.

    Michelle Lun

  • Ineffable Plasticity: the experience of being human

    Sherri Hay, What Dreams Become Amongst our Accumulated Daylight (detail), 2010. © Sherri Hay.

    November 18 – December 31, 2011
    Opening: Friday, November 18, 8-11pm
    MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY CANADIAN ART
    Main Space
    925 Queen Street West,
    Toronto,ON M6J 1G8
    T: 416-395-0067
    www.mocca.ca
    Hours: Tues – Sun 11-6

    Curated by Camilla Singh
    Mat Brown, Sherri Hay, Faith La Rocque, Jordan MacLachlan, Anders Oinonen, Susy Oliveira

    Taking shape according to the most current work within each artist’s practice, Ineffable Plasticity considers the idea that all human attributes and activity are an expression of nature. The exhibition looks at nature as an unstoppable force that governs and defines us, challenging the notion that anything, whether psychological or physical, could be construed as unnatural.

  • Flora Shum: “RLPA2011THF”

    October 27 ­– November 26, 2011
    Artist talks: Thursday, October 27, 6-7 pm
    Opening: Thursday, October 27, 7-9 pm
    Open Studio Gallery
    George Gilmour Members 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.

    Flora Shum’s “RLPA2011THF”, an acronym for The Rules of Life ­ Project A: To Have Face, 2011 (George Gilmour Members Gallery), explores identity and the need to save face and conceal personal weakness. The work reflects the artist’s compulsion to dissect and analyze identity. While science allows us to split something open and magnify it to find answers which are understood as facts, in matters of identity, we are left to explore the confusion of boundaries we are given, the expectations of others and of oneself, the scramble to always advance and the desperation of finding a sense of belonging.

    This series of etchings explores the possibilities, blurring the boundaries, creating new bodies, new bones, new organs, new tissues, new cells, inserting information into nuclei.  The idea is to create, alter, clone and construct new super-cyborgs ‹ technology fixing what technology created.

    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.

  • re:encounter

    October 31 – November 6, 2011
    Opening: Thursday, November 3, 6 – 9pm
    Artscape Triangle Gallery
    38 Abell st, Toronto
    (just south of Queen Street West)
    Hours: Mon- Sun 11 – 6 pm

     Artists:
    Michelle Haines
    Corrie Jackson
    Amy Jenine
    Katika Marczell
    Jenny Pham
    Cailleah Scott-Grimes
    Vjosana Shkurti
    Polina Teif

    re:encounter surveys the abyss of time’s passing and how the complete is never resolved. The group exhibition investigates impermanence through the potential found in revisiting finished ideas, in writing alternative narratives and in furnishing a place for the past. The temporality in each artist’s work underlines a need to mark the transitory or more importantly to mark one’s presence. We challenge perceptions of the past, allow viewers to influence and retell, play with the tension between deception and actuality, fiction and fact, and harness ghostly bodies that once existed, exist momentarily or never existed at all.

  • Adrienne Fonda: Personal Diaries

    October  19 – 30, 2011
    Opening: Thursday,  October  20th,  6pm
    GALLERY 1313 Process Gallery
    1313 QUEEN STREET WEST,
    TORONTO, ON M6K 1K8
    T: 416 – 536-6778
    E mail: director@g1313.org
    www.gallery13131.org
    Hours: Wed – Sun 1- 6

    Personal Diaries are oil on canvas works by Adrienne Fonda.

    “These very large and very small paintings form a visual  diary of the painting problems that I have been trying to resolve in the past few months. The text and language in them is part of my thought process as I try to construct the picture plane for the viewer’s eye. Titles like “Oil Spill”, and Velasquez- Massacre of the Innoncents, are attempts that I have made to try to situate myself in an art historical context. It  also ties in to what the world subjects  me to today. The bright “in your face” coulours are nonetheless my way of offering beauty to the spectateur, for whom I paint.” – Adrienne Fonda

  • Rhythms of the Earth

    Alex Flores , Peace Brings Happiness, acrilyc on canvas

    October  19 – 30, 2011
    Opening: Thursday,  October  20th,  6pm
    GALLERY 1313 Main Gallery
    1313 QUEEN STREET WEST,
    TORONTO, ON M6K 1K8
    T: 416 – 536-6778
    E mail: director@g1313.org
    www.gallery13131.org
    Hours: Wed – Sun 1- 6

    Curator: Alejandro Freeland

    Artists’ List:
    Jesus Mora, Hugo Arias, Alex Flores, Lucero Milchorena, Paula Gonzalez-Ossa, Dax Vorona, Aramika Kliavin, Adrion “Mowse” Charles, Eshan Rafi, Gomo George, Richard Noel, Debbie Fisher, John Nobrega
    Music: Bruno Capinan (Brazilian Music)
    Dance: Zahira (Bellydance)

    The Rhythms of the Earth Festival is a contemporary multi-disciplinary arts festival presented by the Latino Canadian Cultural Association, CANORAA and ROZINA KAZI that shows the fusion between the different cultures and roots of the Latin American, African, South Asian artists and artists from other parts of the World and the influence of the multicultural society where they work and reside. The artists’ starting point is their own cultural background and experiences, going through the discovery first, and then the sharing of other cultures, to finally, develop and transform them into a new and original product.

    This multidisciplinary festival presents high quality artists within their different disciplines. This   Festival will include Music, Dance, Video and a Visual Arts Exhibition.

    This Festival is about the interaction and influence of the Culture and Art of the communities involved by using Music, Dance, Video and Visual Arts, trying to find elements in common.

     

                              

  • Heather Gentleman and Maihyet Burton: “Nibiru”

    October 26 – November 6, 2011
    Opening: Thursday, October 27, 7 – 10pm
    Propeller Centre for Visual Arts
    Main Gallery
    984 Queen St. W.
    T:416 504 7142
    www.propellerctr.com
    rejected@torontorejects.com
    Hours: Fri – Sat 12 – 6, Sun 12-5pm

    “Nibiru” is based on the apocalyptic predictions set to occur on December 21, 2012. The show explores predictions, global chaos and the emerging spiritual awakening that is gripping our planet.

    We are living in interesting times. We are seeing catastrophic changes to our environment: tsunamis, earthquakes, wars and uprisings, birds and fish dying in scores, to name a few. Many are living in a state of fear and uncertainty. These stories, both reality based an myth based, are enhancing the global fear that we are in the throes of the end times. The Internet has been a catalyst for such beliefs through its far reach.
    Pseudo science has been used to support various and disparate sources such as Revelations in the Bible, Hopi Indian prophesy, the writings of Nostradamus and the Mayan Calendar to validate and promote the story of the Apocalypse on December 21, 2012. Nibiru is said to have occupied the passageways of heaven and earth based on the writings in Akkadian, an extinct Mesopotamian language. The pseudo science interpretation is that it is a planetary object in a  3600 year orbit around the sun. Its impending arrival is predicted to create a disastrous encounter with the earth.
    At the same time, there is a shift occurring in the spiritual consciousness of many throughout the world.
    The current spiritual viewpoint is that emerging from the chaos is a new era of peace and harmony, with each other and the planet. The exhibit explores the role of the Great Mother/Black Madonna arising from the earth and seas who is calling upon our human/animal selves to bring forth the new paradigm and heal our planet and ourselves.
    Artist website: http://www.hagatelier.com

  • Nuit Blanche 2011

    Murray Whyte published an article about Nuit Blanche 2011 and its future in The Toronto Star on Monday, October 3, 2011.

  • Nuit Blanche 2011

    Usman Haque and Natalie Jeremijenko, Flightpath Toronto, 2011. Photo by Mauricio Contreras-Paredes

    October 2011’s Nuit Blanche was chilly indeed, but Murray Whyte’s aptly titled article seems to express a misdirected sense of frustration. Criticizing the fact that Nuit Blanche seems to dissolve into late-night, often dangerous revelling rather than focused engagement with contemporary art works, Whyte, suggests that this ungainliness is foreshadowing the end of Toronto’s all night happening. Ominous as his tone is, Whyte draws attention to important factors such as the declining financial assistance from the city of Toronto leading to a reliance on corporate sponsors, and the disinterested approach taken up by the many individuals whose attendance results from an attraction to the seemingly illicit roaming of the streets. But, while the unruly crowd lends a feeling of the carnivalesque, this level of attendance at an arts-based event is inimitable. Contending with boisterous crowds, especially when comprised of individuals taking advantage of a provided space in which to stay up late and party, is an inherent aspect of popular events. Attending a beloved band’s concert or an NFL football game involves a comparable atmosphere. While this can often compete with one’s enjoyment or appreciation of the event, bidding the whole production adieu doesn’t need to be the response. Nuit Blanche, while sharing the characteristics of other entertainment-based events, is particular in that it is intended to be a showcase of contemporary art; a conceptualized occurrence in which one can experience our urban space in an altered state. Rather than dismissively bid farewell, it seems as though the most productive outlook would be to find a way in which to positively channel the established energy and interest that Nuit Blanche has garnered so far.

    Questions which need answering are abundant. How does a spectacular art event such as Nuit Blanche maintain itself as a dynamic exhibition of contemporary art works? How can the event manage a huge influx of people in the downtown core, throughout the wee hours of the night in a safe and conducive way? Comparing Nuit Blanche to other contemporary events proves that this collective and interactive manner of exhibiting and experiencing contemporary art has become firmly established. Contemporary works, many of which are intrinsically connected to the notion of participatory interaction therefore necessitate the involvement of lots of people. Yet how does an artwork, and an artist negotiate the precarious balances that are involved- are works created for such circumstances? Are they designed for the purpose of drawing a crowd, as, Natalie Jeremijenko and Usman Haque’s amusement park-esque attraction “Flight Path” seemed to do  with its laser light show and promises of flying with wings (and a zip-line) through the air above Nathan Phillips square. Negotiating the benefits and disadvantages involved in the spectacularization of an impermanent art exhibition is ultimately going to be a constantly fluctuating challenge.

    My own Nuit Blanche experience involved staying up the entire night and while it was much more positive than the night Whyte writes about, I was still left with the feeling that the timeframe provided an unrealistic space in which to experience art. For those who are less inclined to lose a full night’s sleep, the stress of negotiating the throngs of people that swarm the downtown core between 6pm and 3am, can diminish the effect of the art. Perhaps more guidance could be provided in the form of maps that not only describe the art works themselves, but define the atmosphere of different areas of the city, in order to direct those attempting to enjoy a night of art, or those who prefer a night of partying. Again this idea of presenting concept-based maps draws attention to the dilemmas provoked by this event: how do we deal with such a highly attended spectacular event, experience contemporary art in a tight time-frame, negotiate the theories and concepts in question, maintain criticality, and avoid the feeling that the experience is being fabricated and then simply consumed.

    Miriam Arbus

    Note: Murray Whyte published an article about Nuit Blanche 2011 and its future in The Toronto Star on Monday, October 3, 2011.