Blog

  • David Hockney’s Fresh Flowers: Drawings on iPhones and iPads

    October 8, 2011 – January 1, 2012
    Royal Ontario Museum
    Roloff Beny Gallery, Level 4
    100 Queen’s Park
    Toronto, ON, M5S 2C6
    T: 416-586-8000
    www.rom.on.ca
    Hours:Mon-Thur & Sat-Sun 10-5:30pm, Fri 10-8:30pm

    The Institute for Contemporary Culture presents the North American debut of this cutting-edge exhibition, which reveals David Hockney’s extraordinary use of this novel new artistic medium and its impact on shaping visual culture today. Hockney is one of the world’s most acclaimed contemporary artists, and Fresh Flowers is his first major show in Canada in over two decades. The exhibition features approximately 200 iPhone and iPad drawings displayed on 20 iPod Touches and 20 iPads.

    Hockney began working with the iPhone in 2008.  Since then, he has created hundreds of finger-drawn images, ranging in subject matter from flowers and self-portraits to landscapes and still life. More than 20 Hockney drawings in the exhibition will feature playback animations, allowing viewers insight into the artist’s creative process as they view the works being drawn from start to finish. Fresh Flowers will also feature two films featuring Hockney working on an iPad, eight large-scale animated projections of recent iPad drawings, and a nine-minute triptych slide show with an additional 169 images.

    Fresh Flowers marks the ROM’s first WiFi accessible exhibition, so visitors can share their experience online, in real time.

    Project initiated by the Fondation Pierre Bergé / Yves Saint Laurent, Paris.Charlie Scheips, Guest Curator. Ali Tayar, Exhibition Designer.

  • Eamon Mac Mahon: Islands in the Woods

    Alberta Forest Fog

    October 8 – 22, 2011
    Opening: Saturday, October 8, 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

    Toronto-based photographer Eamon Mac Mahon’s work has appeared in various publications including the Walrus, National Geographic, W and New York Magazine, as well as exhibition spaces such as The Power Plant, The Detroit Institute of the Arts, the Griffin Museum of Photography in Boston and Higher Pictures NYC. Mac Mahon’s photographs, on display for Contact, 2008 at Pearson International Airport, were described as  “magnificent and mysterious” by Kate Taylor for the Globe and Mail.

    Eamon Mac Mahon spent time during the spring/summer of 2011 working in the wilderness of northwestern Canada and Alaska.  Through his typical practice of journeying via bush plane, Mac Mahon intimately photographed remote landlocked communities, and the vast areas of uninhabited land surrounding them.

  • Mystical Endeavours

    OCAD U Student Gallery,
    100 McCaul Street, Toronto
    September 7 – 29, 2011

     Zine collective “Fantasy Camp” (comprised of Ted Gudlat and Eunice Luk) has joined forces with their friends and fellow artists (Joren Cull, Kaley McKean, and Nolan Pelletier) for the first gallery show of the 2011 school year at the OCAD U Student Gallery. Mystical Endeavours brings together the work of these artists in a spectacular display of mystical and fantastic proportions.

    Kayley McKean, Bug Juice, 2011

    On entering the gallery you are greeted by the collaborative chalk drawing by Fantasy Camp and immediately sucked into the psychedelic fantasy world of these young creative minds. The show is a veritable feast for the eyes; from Gudlat’s surreal animal illustrations and Luk’s grinning pottery to Cull’s tongue-in-cheek Swedish furniture critique. The viewer is invariably left stifling a giggle or nodding in appreciation.

    Each tantalizing piece is for sale and in the exhibition shop area posters and publications, including Luk’s irresistible hand-made Rugs, are for sale (between $10 – 35).

    Martina Wegener

  • “The Painter in the City” – André Krigar

    October 5 –  28, 2011
    Opening: Wednesday, October 5,  6 – 9 p.m
    De Luca Fine Art | Gallery
    217 Avenue Road
    Toronto, ON, M5R 2J3
    T: 416-537-4699
    E-mail: corrado@delucafineart.com  
    www.delucafineart.com.
    Hours: Tuesday-Saturday 11-5pm

    This show  marks the first exhibition at the De Luca Fine Art | Gallery new location, at 217 Avenue Road, Toronto.  

    With his canvas, brushes and oils André Krigar travels the world to capture urban- scapes and moments of life as he experiences them while portraying them. From Berlin, Germany André travels to Toronto, Canada for his first time.

    In this exhibition De Luca Fine Art | Gallery presents a series of works that depict our city through the eyes of this traveller artist. André Krigar is a contemporary painter, who is very comfortable in allowing the strong impressionistic influence in his paintings. They hide something magic. The longer one looks, the more difficult it becomes to turn away. André beautifully captures or even interprets (which gives it that magic touch of what it could appear “naïve” at first) that exact light of that exact moment when he was there painting.

    André’s use of colours and the Monet-like manner of conducting the brush on the canvas create a “real” feeling of being there, “inside the painting”. One can almost smell and hear the subject.

    De Luca Fine Art | Gallery, established in 2004, is now located at 217 Avenue Road, in the heart of the Yorkville Designer District steps away from the Designers Walk and is dedicated to representing and introducing Italian and International Artists to Canadian audiences. In collaboration with select Italian Galleries, De Luca Fine Art | Gallery introduces established and emerging Canadian Artists to Europe. De Luca Fine Art | Gallery’s mandate is “representing a bridge” between Cultures.  For more information regarding this event and/or our services, consultation, and art rental program please visit www.delucafineart.com.

  • The Kingston Project

    Pauline Conley,  ‘Seriously’ , mixed media on canvas

    September 24 – October 14, 2011
    Opening: Saturday, September 24, 10am – 6pm
    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

    Gallery Gevik is pleased to present an exhibition celebrating Kingston’s rich contribution to the Canadian art scene. The home of the oldest Arts Council in Ontario and one of the most notable public art collections at Queen’s University’s Agnes Etherington Centre, Kingston is a vibrant artistic hub.  Gallery Gevik is proud to exhibit the works of artists Diane Black, Jane Colden, Pauline Conley, Jane Derby and Lori Richards whose paintings and sculptures reflect the creativity and inspiration of this region.   

    Diane Black’s love of character and visual narratives are rooted in her early studies. In recent years, Black has developed her blacksmithing skills and has incorporated her own ironwork into her sculptures. Black draws her inspiration from the people and the environment of Kingston, where she has been a resident for twenty years.

     Jane Colden’s love of the natural interaction between organic and structured form inspires her artwork. By choosing paint as her medium, Colden is able to turn not only her subject matter but also the painting process into a method of understanding the world around her.

    Pauline Conley‘s paintings deviated from the non-representational when she began working with the idea of the horizon line as a friction point between the known and the unknown. Conley’s challenging abstract works use grids and patterns as evocative metaphors for our shared daily experience.

     Jane Derby’s art evokes the inspiration that she finds in cast off and undervalued items. Her fascination with surface textures and the physical properties of the objects she selects for her artwork reflect the landscape surrounding Kingston and enable her to create visually appealing relief works. 

    For Lori Richards, painting stems from the emotional connection that binds the artist, the landscape and the viewer. By experimenting with different media and colour, Richards creates works inspired by memory and imagination, which lead both viewer and herself on a journey of self-discovery.

     

  • Annie Dunning | Foolproof Four: Superheroes of the Forest Floor

    September 9  – December 10, 2011
    Opening:Friday, September 9, 8-10pm.
    YYZ Artists’ Outlet
    401 Richmond Street West, Suite 140
    T: 416-598-4546
    yyzartistsoutlet.org
    yyzbooks.com
    Hours: Tues – Sat 11 a.m. to 5 p.m

    Foolproof Four: Superheroes of the Forest Floor is an installation of four large ceramic sculptures of mushrooms, each sitting on its own plinth. On the walls are four different posters of blank, speech bubble templates: downloadable, freeware graphic tools for comic book designers.  Around the base of each mushroom and on the floor are over 8000 custom-made buttons. There are three sets of buttons. One illustrates superhero logos for each of the mushrooms and another features empty speech bubbles in four different styles taken from comic book templates. The third set suggests possible «superpowers» of the Four with terms taken from scientific descriptions of the life-cycle of mushrooms: Autodeliquescence, Telemorph, Spore Liberation and Cytoplasmic Fusion. Perhaps Shaggy Mane with its curious character of autodeliquescence (self-digestion) is a force to be reckoned with.  And surely they have the united power of spore liberation. The buttons themselves look like mushrooms multiplying and popping up from the floor, spreading and intermingling with the buttons of the other mushrooms. Viewers are invited to take a button, allowing the project to travel spore-like outside of the gallery to other locations.

    ANNIE DUNNING received an undergraduate degree in Fine Arts from Mount Allison University and a MFA from the University of Guelph. Her work has been exhibited across Canada and abroad in Japan, Germany and the United States. Dunning’s practice includes collaborative projects, teaching, artist residencies and lectures and has been funded by the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts.

  • Dil Hildebrand | Back to the Drawing Board

    Cranking, 2011, oil on canvas, 30.5 x 25.5cm. Photo courtesy of Pierre-Francois Ouellette art contemporain.

    September 9  – December 10, 2011
    Opening:Friday, September 9, 8-10pm.
    YYZ Artists’ Outlet
    401 Richmond Street West, Suite 140
    T: 416-598-4546
    yyzartistsoutlet.org
    yyzbooks.com
    Hours: Tues – Sat 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

    For this, his first solo exhibition in Toronto, Dil Hildebrand presents a new body of work.  Back to the Drawing Board represents a focal shift away from the photographic and toward a diagrammatic approach to the image; an incarnation that abandons the image altogether.

    DIL HILDEBRAND was born in Winnipeg, Canada, and obtained his MFA from Concordia University, Montreal in 2008. In 2006 he won the RBC Canadian Painting Competition and has since participated in many exhibitions throughout Canada, the United States and abroad.  Upcoming exhibitions include group shows at OBORO, Montreal (curated by David Elliott) and Espace Virtuel, Chicoutimi.  In 2010, Hildebrand participated in the 4th Beijing International Art Biennale 2010 in Beijing, China, and produced Long Drop: The Paintings of Dil Hildebrand, a monograph by Anteism Press. With critical texts by Louise Déry, Richard Rhodes and Christine Redfern. Long Drop surveys a selection of Hildebrand’s paintings on canvas and paper from 2006 to 2009.  His work has been collected by major museums throughout Canada, including the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, and the National Gallery of Canada.

    Dil Hildebrand is represented by Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain.  He lives and works in Montréal.

  • Location location location – Gallery Hop 2011

    September 24, Saturday
    All day, all free

    Location, location, location

    —it’s the recipe for success in real estate, and also to a large extent in the art world, a phenomenon we celebrate in the theme of this year’s Canadian Art Gallery Hop, Location3. Art worth knowing about is often intertwined with a thriving in situ scene, whether it’s in London, New York or Berlin, or Vancouver, Toronto or Montreal. Powerful art is also sensitive to place, bringing the conditions of its making and showing to the forefront. Likewise, a place—be it well known or not—lends unique flavours to art produced in its bounds. At its heart, Location3 is just another way of saying that art, like us, lives and thrives in three dimensions.

    Morning Panel / 11:00 a.m – 12:30 p.m
    Cinema 3/ TIFF BELL LIGHTBOX
    Reitman Quare, 330 King Street West

    Join Canadian Art editor Richard Rhodes and a trio of top artists—Winnipeg’s Sarah Anne Johnson, LA’s Jed Lind and Toronto’s An Te Liu—to discuss the power that place has on art and its creators.

    Afternoon Talks & Tours / 1:00 – 5:30 p.m.
    Various locations

    Evening Magazine Launch / 5:30 – 7:30 p.m.
    55 Mill Street, Building 2
    End the day with fellow art lovers at the launch of Canadian Art’s fall issue in the historic Distillery District. To attend, please RSVP to rsvp@canadianart.ca.

  • Gary Evans: spce invdrs

    “Courtyard”  2011  oil on canvas  36 x 60 inches

    September 9 – October 8, 2011
    Paul Petro Contemporary Art
    980 Queen St West
    Toronto, ON   M6J 1H1
    tel. 416 979 7874
    info@paulpetro.com
    www.paulpetro.com
    www.multiplesandsmallworks.com
    Hours:  Wed-Sat:  11 – 5pm

    On the occasion of our gallery’s tenth anniversary at our current location (eighteen years in all) we are pleased to present an exhibition of new paintings by longtime gallery artist Gary Evans.

    In part to honour this milestone we are also organizing a concise fifteen-year survey of his works on paper. Texts by Rosemary Heather and Nell Tenhaaf accompany the exhibition. 

    “As with all of Evans’ work, in this new series discreet points of interest vie across the flat plane of the picture for the attention of the viewer. Working within the landscape genre, Evans creates a space invaded by competing vistas of visual possibility: alternating coloured planes, small pictorial realms nestled within thickly inscribed circles or simply solid discs of colour or smudges of paint. Evans has long worked with an all-over compositional style. Pulling against this is the artist’s inclusion of definite structure in each work through the use of the receding sightlines of perspectival space. Typically, contrasting swaths of paint appear to billow out from the surface of the canvas; in Evans’ hands, pictorial disarray is animated to resolve into persuasive coherence.” – wrote Rosemary Heather

    Please visit http://www.paulpetro.com/exhibitions/61-Spce-Invdrs  for more information and for Rosemary Heather’s text.