Category: LISTING ARCHIVE

Kevin Schmidt, Epic Journey, 2010. Single channel HD video with stereo sound, 11hr 30min. Courtesy of Catriona Jeffries Gallery, Vancouver

June 8 – August 20, 2011
Justina M Barnicke Gallery
(Hart House), University of Toronto
7 Hart House Circle.
Toronto, Ontario M5S 3H3
T: 416-978-8398
Hours: Mon-Wed & Fri 11-5,Thur 11-7,Sat-Sun 1-5 pm

Curated by Barbara Fischer

Including several recent conceptual and cinematic installations, the exhibition offers a concise introduction to Schmidt’s ongoing interests. In particular, the exhibition brings together works that share the tropes of the solitary epic quest as narrated in popular science fiction, spiritual discovery, scientific expedition, and music.

Kevin Schmidt first came to international attention with his single-channel 2002 video work “Long Beach Led Zep” featuring the artist’s studied solo guitar performance of Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” staged against the setting sun of Vancouver Island’s mythic Long Beach. Since then, the combination of sublime settings and heroic, DIY or amateur quests have been a recurrent element in his installations, such as in the works in this exhibition. Taking their point of departure in a wide array of generation-defining cultural referents and re-enactments – Tolkien’s famed trilogy “Lord of the Rings”, the song” Angel of Light” by the Rock group Petra, as well as expeditions such as Franklin’s failed search for the Northwest Passage, among others – Schmidt’s interests in the epic quest expresses the desire to go beyond the limits of knowledge and to chart the more ethereal territories of other non-rational worlds.

If the expression of this desire often finds form in manufactured spectacle or sublime nature, Kevin Schmidt’s appropriations and enactments of these are tempered by skepticism. His work counters the traps of blind acceptance using the visible reminders of handy-man construction and theatrical devices – smoke machines, generators, stage lights and even a DIY video projector – all the while seeking to produce experiences that exceed common cause or practical reason. Adapting the title of the American rock band Journey’s 1981 hit single, “Don’t stop believin’ ” for the exhibition, Schmidt’s interest in the classic, modern tension between doubt and faith appears as a constant balancing act in his works. Particularly, the artist’s work suggests that this productive pulse inheres in the very purpose and possibility of art as it constantly reconsiders conviction while critically reflecting on the apocalyptic proclamations of religion, the manufactured seductions of spectacle, or the romance of scientific expeditions’ search for the truth.

The exhibitions and programs of the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery are generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts. The Gallery is wheelchair accessible.

June 11 –  September 11, 2011
ART GALLERY OF ONTARIO
317 Dundas Street West,
Toronto, ON M5T 1G4
T:416-979-6648
www.ago.net
Hours: Tue & Thurs – Sun 10 – 5:30, Wed 10 – 8:30

Toronto-based artist Libby Hague’s new installation at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) extends beyond gallery walls and onto the AGO’s Dundas Street façade. Libby Hague: Sympathetic Connections,  is part of the AGO’s Toronto Now series of rotating contemporary projects by Toronto artists. The installation transforms woodblock prints into paper sculptures that connect across the walls, ceiling, and external windows of the AGO’s Young Gallery. 

Sympathetic Connections combines representational and abstract forms in a room-spanning three-dimensional installation. Colourful sculptural forms crafted from Japanese paper fill the gallery, dangling from walls and cascading down from the ceiling, while a wall-mounted print of a nuclear power plant looms in the periphery, an image inspired in part by the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan earlier this year.  

“Libby Hague’s playful, yet foreboding narratives give physical form to fictional worlds that simultaneously mirror and manipulate reality,” says Michelle Jacques, the AGO’s acting curator of Canadian art. “Sympathetic Connections provides a timely exploration of our problematic relationship with the natural environment, invoking universal themes of responsibility and dependency, vulnerability and rescue, and risk and luck.” 

Toronto Now is generously supported by The Contemporary Circle. Contemporary programming at the AGO is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts.

August 6, Saturday 2 – 6 pm
ANTIX – Centre for Art Crime and Neoism
276 Crawford Street, Toronto
through drive way towards garage
www.istvankantor.com
http://home.interlog.com/~amen/
http://www.hungarianpresence.ca/Culture/Media/kantor-215.cfm

ANTI-X is Istvan Kantor’s storage space and summer gallery, archive of Kantor’s life and crimes, a meeting place for secret conversations, future projects, conspiracy plans, also amazing deals on bloody canvases and many other beautiful Neoist Monty Cantsin artifacts! Come with a juice or beer, bring your friends, look around, sit down, have a great afternoon…while the Rentagon is out on vacation, we R right into revolution!

Istvan Kantor’s artistic practice incorporates robotic sculpture, video, performance, mixed-media installation, painting, sound, and various other action-based social-mediums like the open-pop-star movement of Monty Cantsin and the world wide network of Neoism. Neoism is a transmission interface and revolving platform to gain public support and media attention for its users.
Kantor employs all his skills and talents to constantly surprise and fascinate. “I swear to God, I’ll never make any boring art!” he declares with bold determination, irony and wit, holding up a picketing sign.
His main interest lies in creating work that establishes a discussion within and around the conflicting territories of institutional authority and cultural gentrification. In this regard Kantor’s work investigates the revolutionary and scientific aspects of artistic practices that attempt to surpass the conventional models of creative experience.
Istvan Kantor is Hungarian-born, Toronto-based artist. Recent and upcoming solo exhibitions include: Monty Cantsin Was Here, Jogja National Museum, Yogyakarta, Indonesia, febr/2011; Made in Estonia, installation, Tallinn, may/2011; Selected works, St.Istvan Museum, Szekesfehervar, Hungary, oct/nov 2011 Upcoming group exhibitions include: Interakcje Festival, Piotrkow, Poland, may/2011; WRO Biennale, Wroclaw, Poland, may/2011

Joshua Jensen-Nagle, Versailles Gardens II, 2011, archival inkjet print facemounted to plexiglass, 43×43 inAugust 6 – 2 0,  2 0 1 1
Opening: Saturday, August 6, 2 – 4pm                    
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

Contending Spaces, oil on canvas, 30 x 30 in.

August 6 – 2 0,  2 0 1 1
Opening: Saturday, August 6, 2 – 4pm                    
BAU-XI GALLERY
340 Dundas St. West
Toronto, Ontario M5T 1G5
T: 416.977.0600
E: toronto@bau-xi.com
www.bau-xiphoto.com
Hours: Mon-Sat 10-5:30, Sun 11-5:30

The Bau-Xi Galler y in Toronto is pleased to be exhibiting the new work of established Canadian painter, John Barkley, in a solo-exhibition entitled Contending Spaces . This is Barkley’s first exhibition with the Bau-Xi Gallery. Barkley’s paintings explore humanity’s relationship to nature and his existential concerns while experimenting with paint application.

As a boy, John Barkley’s father, an ar tist as well, encouraged him to draw and paint, and eventually took him to paint on sojourns into the country. As a young man, he returned to Ottawa to study. In addition to painting, he is also a dedicated scholar, whose studies and interests factor significantly in his ar t work. His degrees include a Master of Ar ts in Religion, from Carleton University (2001); a Bachelor of Fine Ar ts, Visual Ar t, Magna Cum Laude, Universityof Ottawa (1996); Bachelor of Ar ts, Honours, Psychology, from Carleton University (1989); and a Bachelor of Arts, Law and Psychology, Carleton University. In 2000, he wrote a Master’s thesis which created a new hermeneutic of art, based upon the work of Jung, Tillich, and Heidegger, it was subsequently applied to the work of Roland Poulin.

 John Barkley is an experimental painter living in Chelsea, Quebec. Barkley has been pursuing a professional ar tistic practice since 1996. In the last seven years he has been able to work in his studio, in Wakefield Quebec, as a full time ar tist. Barkley’s works have been exhibited extensively and have been reviewed in LeDroit, The Ottawa Citizen, and The Globe and Mail. His paintings are par t of numerous private and corporate collections

 Untitled (Near North #84-90), 1990, watercolour on paper, 22.5 x 30 inches 

August 6 – 2 0,  2 0 1 1
Opening: Saturday, August 6, 2 – 4pm                    
BAU-XI GALLERY
340 Dundas St. West
Toronto, Ontario M5T 1G5
T: 416.977.0600
E: toronto@bau-xi.com
www.bau-xiphoto.com
Hours: Mon-Sat 10-5:30, Sun 11-5:30

Frederick Hagan’s (1918-2003) upcoming exhibition at Bau-Xi Gallery offers the unique opportunity to experience some of the earliest watercolour paintings produced by this important Canadian artist. These watercolour paintings are vivid, colourful works painted with the fluidity and fascination of Hagan’s talented hand.

 ‘The Near North’ complements two other significant exhibitions taking place in Ontario public gallery institutions this Summer and Fall. FIGURE IN PLACE / FIGURING THE LANDSCAPE: These two exhibitions, to be held at the MacLaren Ar t Centreand the Georgian College Campus Galler y respectively, are an intimate look at how the regional landscape of Muskoka Ontario has played an important role in the landscape and figurative paintings of ar tist Frederick Hagan. Selected landscape paintings dating from the 1940s to the 1990s within the context of his figurative work will establish the importance of “place” and “identity” that underpin the conceptual premise and interest with his use of the figure, establishing a “humanist” trajector y for his highly personalized and innovative compositions in oil and acr ylic painting. Regarding these impor tant exhibitions, Dennis Reid states, “I have every confidence that one day the significance of [Hagan’s] contribution, as celebrated here and in a small handful of earlier exhibitions, will be widely acknowledged, and more to the point, deeply understood. We will all be better for it.” – Dennis Reid, Professor of Ar t Histor y, University of Toronto

Born in 1918 in downtown Toronto, Frederick Hagan exhibited with the Royal Canadian Academy by the age of twenty-one, and taught at the Ontario College of Ar t for thir ty seven years. Hagan’s long career as a printmaker and painter has awarded him placement in the National Galler y of Canada and the Ar t Gallery of Ontario, among many other important collections.

 

A Photographic Narrative of Cuba

July 28 – September 3, 2011
Opening and book launch: July 28,  5–9 p.m.
Toronto Image Works Gallery
80 Spadina Avenue, Suite 207,
Toronto, ON,  M5V  2J4
T: 416-703-1999
gallery@torontoimageworks.com
Hours: Mon – Frid 8:30 – 7 , Sat 1 – 3pm.

“This project is a visual exploration of the Cuban dance of life. Cuba is a movement of great hardship and joyous celebration. For 50 years, Cuba’s reality has been dominated by a revolutionary dream of creating a more just society and the crippling economic isolation that has resulted from US policies towards Cuba.”

The focus of this project, however, is not the political. My purpose is not to judge the revolutionary experiment.
But in Cuba, this political reality permeates everything. It is the canvas for every image. And yet, these pictures reflect the fierce independence and enduring exuberance of the Cuban people, and the music and rhythm of the island nation that continues to define the Cuban experience above all else. It’s what keeps drawing me back. It is in this spirit that I share these images with you.

June 3 – August 21, 2011
Chalmers Design Centre/Teknion Lounge
Toronto Dominion Centre
234 Bay St.
Toronto, ON M5K 1B2
Tel : 416-216-2126
Email: laura@dx.org
website: www.dx.org

Curated by Noa Bronstein

Catalyst of change, instrument of power and often the basic currency of shared human experience, the book is a pivotal artifact. Out of Sorts explores the various elements of book design, from typography to cover art and features recognized Canadian book designs. The exhibit traces the history of the book and considers the future of the printed page in the wake of digitization and shifting paradigms.