ArtToronto

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  • TRICHOPHILIA by Francis Luta

    Sunday, November 6, 2011
    starting at 7pm
    Wayla Bar
    996 Queen St East
    (Queen & Carlaw)
    Toronto, ON
    http://fmmlcollection.wordpress.com/

    An emerging Toronto artist, Francis Luta works in a wide range of media.

    He has developed a distinctive figurative style and his new works shows its refine version with a thematic focus on hair obsession and fetish.

    Please join us for a Sunday night at this fabulous venue with a great environment to view and celebrate the new work of Francis Luta.

    To learn more about Francis and his artwork, check out this link:
    http://fmmlcollection.wordpress.com/

  • ¡Patria o Libertad! Johanna Reich: ‘Monument’

    Johanna Reich, ‘Monument,’ 2009, video projection, 5:45. Courtesy of the artist

    September 9–October 30, 2011
    MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY CANADIAN ART

    Nationality has many faces in the show at Mocca. It can be tormenting, paralyzing, aggressive; it can overtake your life, turn you into a killer, make you a victim, or it can make you proud and happy.
    In Johanna Reich’s video installation, a young woman paints a wall with a huge brush, applying generous amounts of paint from large containers. She puts many layers of paint on it really quickly. She starts the painting at the bottom with yellow then moves up and applies a big area of red. Now the painting is getting larger and she has to reach up, even standing on a stool to continue. The next wide stripe she paints is black.
    That is the moment we recognize that the colors she is painting are of the German flag. We also start to grasp that her dress might not be as weird as it seems. There might be a reason she is wearing yellow plastic boots, red pants and a black sweater.
    She finishes her work as suddenly, as fast, as she started. She steps back, looks at it for a moment and then steps up on the stool and disappears into the painting.

    Watching the ending of this video, I couldn’t help envying anyone who was born into a democratic country, like Reich, who grew up enjoying freedom and the choice to blend in.

    Emese Krunák-Hajagos

  • Troy Brooks: Colossus

    Originally published in Xtra:

    Troy Brooks’  Colossus / Taking inspiration from Sylvia Plath / Toronto / Thursday,
    October 13, 2011. Xtra.ca  (http://xtra.ca/

    “I have always loved loud women,” says painter Troy Brooks, “women who are authoritative, dynamic, bold, not a product of their time.”
    Troy Brooks, Lady Lazarus
    So when Brooks happened to stumble onto an online documentary about the famously defiant author Sylvia Plath, he knew he had found the muse for his next project. After spending his summer holed up in a Hickory Grove cabin in southern Ontario, he emerged with his series Colossus, which will open at Toronto’s Pentimento Gallery on Oct 27 and run until Nov 27.
    “I think a lot of gay men feel the way I do about loud women,” he continues. “When you spend part of your life repressing a big part of you, or your feminine side, you take pleasure in watching a woman act out.”
    And Plath is, in many ways, this kind of rogue. Her oeuvre, especially her well-known novel The Bell Jar, painfully unwraps the rigid social norms for women of her era and the severe damage that results from them. Having taken her own life at 30, Plath’s legacy is a dark one, marked by anger, depression and a struggle against chauvinism. She has been taken up posthumously as something of an icon for feminists and smart women everywhere.
    Troy Brooks, All The Dead Dears
    “[Plath’s] was a time when women were encouraged to be demure and uncomplicated, and she was the antithesis of that. She was dark, she was brooding, she was ambitious,” Brooks explains. “With this particular series, I was interested in the idea of a woman who is much bigger than her surroundings, much bigger than the definitions imposed on her.”
    Like Plath, the women depicted in the series do seem to have a sort of eerie magnetism. Long and pale faces with crimson lips look outward from simple, but often bizarre, surroundings. In Lady Lazarus, a vampy redhead stares emptily into space as she tightly grips a ceramic lamp to her cheek, oblivious, or perhaps indifferent, to the scorpion just behind her elbow. In Arrival of the Bee Box, a calm blonde looms upright in a generic bedroom and glares knowingly at the viewer through a veil covered in bees.
    Troy Brooks, Arrival of the Bee Box
    Although such spectral characters are primarily inspired by Plath’s work (each painting’s title is taken from different Plath poems), Brooks does not intend them to be definitive portraits of Plath or her work. “I had my peripheral knowledge about Sylvia Plath, but I didn’t want them to be manifestations of her and the poems,” he emphasizes. “I had my own impression of her and I built from that.”
    The paintings, thus, serve as a sort of translation of, even departure from, the texts they reference — projecting them onto a surreal yet strangely familiar time and space. Some of them contain imagery directly related to a single poem: Plath enthusiasts will immediately recognize the black shoe and telephone poles in Daddy. But others create whole new sets of symbols and stories. All of them invite interpretation from the audience regardless of their familiarity with Plath’s work.
    Troy Brooks, Daddy
    “I’m really only painting her archetypes,” Brooks explains. “I used pieces of her to make my own characters.”
    Jonathan Valelley

  • Janet Bellotto: “The Lure”

    View the video clip
    This video clip requires installation of Quicktime. If you do not have the application installed, please download it here.

    November 3 –  November 27, 2011
    Opening: Thursday, November 3,  6 – 9 pm.
    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

    The The Lure emerges from olfactory investigations borrowing from fact and fiction. Inspired by the mirage of aromas from perfume salons that attempt to seduce passers-by, Janet Bellotto entertains the gallery with an installation of illuminating and fragrant objects and scintillating video. At a time when illnesses travel instantaneously around the globe, scent emerges and vanishes like a mirage, and yet resonate memories and emotions. The objects in Bellotto’s work acts in the tradition of aromatherapy while entertaining how certain smells can conjure up memories of place. The Lure attempts to tap into the history of per fumum (Latin) – which translates as “through the smoke”, where aromatic smells have been used for medicinal and cosmetic purposes.

    Janet Bellotto is an artist from Toronto, who splits her time teaching in Dubai at Zayed University. She graduated from the Sculpture/Installation program from the Ontario College of Art & Design, Toronto, and received an MFA in Sculpture/Studio Arts from Concordia University. Her practice encompasses sculpture, installation, photography, video and performance. She continues to write and curate, while exhibiting both locally and internationally.

    Recent exhibitions include: 2011 Untitled Original, CDA Projects, Istanbul Contemporary Crosscurrents: Portraits and Electronic Arts, Streaming Museum in Dubai  (www.streamingmuseum.org); A Cozy Lie, Redhead Gallery, Toronto; 2010 – 12th Cairo Biennale, Cairo, Egypt; Drowning Ophelia, Stratford Gallery, Stratford; 2009 – Point of Encounter, Tashkeel, Dubai; 2008 – In-Situ, The JamJar, Dubai; WAVE, The LAB, New York City; 2007 – Dehisce, kkprojects, New Orleans, USA.

    De Luca Fine Art | Gallery, established in 2004, is now located at 217 Avenue Road. The gallery represents and introduces 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.   For more information regarding this event and/or our services, consultation, and art rental program please visit www.delucafineart.com

  • Black & White Fundraising Gala


    Saturday, November 12th, 2011
    VIP RECEPTION: 6:00PM
    VIP Dinner: 7:00-9:30PM
    BINARY PARTY: 8:00PM – 2:00AM
    Design Exchange
    234 Bay Street,TD Centre,
    Toronto. ON
    dx.org/gala


    DESIGN EXCHANGE (DX) TO HONOUR CANADIANS BEHIND TWO UNIQUE GLOBAL PRACTICES, DESIGNER KARIM RASHID AND ASYMPTOTE ARCHITECTURE: HANI RASHID AND LISE ANNE COUTURE AT ANNUAL BLACK & WHITE GALA NOVEMBER 12th, 2011 

    Design Exchange (DX) is proud to announce its 2011 Canadian Honourees, Karim Rashid, Hani Rashid and Lise Anne Couture, whose works and achievements will be celebrated at Binary, the Design Exchange’s annual Black & White Fundraising Gala being held on November 12, 2011 at the DX. Each year the Design Exchange honors exceptional Canadian designers who are advancing the world of design.

    Karim Rashid is recognized as one of the most accomplished Industrial Designers in the world. Karim has over 3,000 projects in production in over 35 countries and his work is featured in 20 permanent museum collections. In addition to being a prolific industrial designer, Karim has participated in various design fields including interior, fashion, exhibit and urban design, and has published many successful books including I Want to Change the World (Rizzoli 2001.) Karim has been profiled in thousands of articles and was named the most famous industrial designer in the world by Time Magazine. He has received over 300 prestigious awards for his creativity and innovation in the design field.

    Architects and professional partners Hani Rashid and Lise Anne Couture founded Asymptote Architecture (ASY), and have produced powerful and innovative architecture around the world. Projects range from experimental spatial installations and digital architecture, to some of the world’s newest iconic buildings such as the HydraPier in the Netherlands and the 85,000 sqm YAS hotel in Abu Dhabi. Hani Rashid and Couture have also explored art installation, object design and master planning. Works include master plans for the center of Prague and the Yongsan district in Seoul, Korea, as well as special edition art and design works for Knoll, Meta (London) and Phillips de Pury and Company in New York.

    “Design Exchange has chosen to honour these three Canadian designers for their individual and collective achievements that have propelled them to international acclaim and helped brand Canada as a design-led nation,” says Design Exchange Chairperson, Tim Gilbert. He also notes that “Karim, Hani, and Lise Anne are role models for all aspiring young architects and designers, but especially to young women and newcomers to Canada.”

    The Design Exchange opens its doors to four lavishly decorated rooms inspired by the word BINARY and the works of the Honourees. The gala will also host the Ontario launch of Dan Aykroyd’s much anticipated Crystal Head Vodka, known for its trademark skull bottle design.

    Proceeds from the annual gala raise funds for DX youth programs. For more information visit www.dx.org/gala

    ABOUT THE DESIGN EXCHANGE
    Design Exchange (DX) is Canada’s Design Centre and Museum with a mission to promote the value of design. We are an internationally recognized non-profit educational organization committed to promoting greater awareness of design as well as the indispensable role it plays in fostering economic growth and cultural vitality. We improve communication between various design disciplines, educators, businesses and the general public through programs, exhibits, lectures, and workshops. For more information visit www.dx.org

    INFORMATION TO THE PUBLIC
    Event: 2011 DX BLACK & WHITE FUNDRAISING GALA
    VIP RECEPTION: 6:00PM
    VIP Dinner: 7:00-9:30PM
    BINARY PARTY: 8:00PM – 2:00AM
    Location: Design Exchange, 234 Bay Street, TD Centre, Toronto Canada
    Date: Saturday, November 12, 2011
    Honouring Karim Rashid, Hani Rashid, Lise Anne Couture
    Proceeds Support Youth Programs

    GALA WEBSITE
    dx.org/gala

    TICKETS
    Exclusive VIP Reception and Dinner
    Platinum Tables – $7,500
    Gold Tables – $5,000
    Individual Tickets – $500
    DX Members receive a 10% discount

    BINARY PARTY
    DX Member – $150
    Non-Member – $175

    TO PURCHASE TICKETS
    dx.org/gala, 416.216.2119 or tickets@dx.org

    SPONSORSHIP and DONATION INFORMATION
    Cindy Grenke
    Director of Development
    cindy@dx.org
    416.216.2134

  • Get Contemporary

    Saturday, October 5, 6 – 10pm
    The Hoxton
    69 Bathurst St., Toronto

    On Wednesday October 5th, the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (MOCCA) celebrated the launch of its new advertising campaign at Toronto hot spot, The Hoxton. The new campaign — created by Cossette with Mark Zibert — presents a vibrant, engaging, and visually simplistic celebration of the human form. In a series of photographs and video installations, the beautiful subtleties of human interactions become visible through the uniform application of colour. Individuals drenched in pepto-bismol-like-pink paint perform simple actions like holding hands or hugging which, against a stark white background, creates an effect that is visually simplistic, satisfying, and oh so very contemporary.

    Text and Photo: Katherine Porter

  • Art for Tibet

    Saturday, October 15, 6 – 10:30pm
    Gallery 1313
    1313 Queen St. West, Toronto
    Gallery Show: October 5-16, open to the public
    www.artfortibet.com

    Photo: Phil Anderson

    The evening was successful in raising funds and awareness for the organization and its cause. Bidding was online as well as at the event. The organizer Teuzin Nawang Tekan got the idea for the Toronto event after attending a similar event in New York. The group is looking at a larger event in 2012. This year’s event managed to attract a lot of the local Tibet community in Parkdale as well as others interested in the cause.

    Photo: Phil Anderson

    More than 20 acclaimed and emerging artists exhibited artworks together for the first ever Art for Tibet (A4T) Canada, annual art show, cultural exhibition and fundraiser at Gallery 1313 in Toronto. Art for Tibet featured leading contemporary Tibetan and international artists, including Tenzing Rigdol, Chungpo, Ang Tsherin Sherpa, Brian Harris, UIla Djelweh, and many more.

    Photo: Phil Anderson

    Since protests swept across Tibet in March 2008, the Chinese government has arrested and imprisoned numerous Tibetan writers and artists for criticizing its policies in Tibet. Despite this escalated repression, we are witnessing a cultural renaissance in Tibet, with an endless stream of poems, essays, songs and paintings flowing out from beyond the Himalayas. Over 50 Tibetan artists and writers have been arrested, tortured and imprisoned in the past two years. This year’s Art for Tibet drew attention to their persecution by honouring Tibetan artists in Tibet and in exile for their contribution to Tibetan contemporary culture. All proceeds from the event will benefit SFT Canada, a non-profit organization with international headquarters in New York.

    Photo: Mauricio Contreras-Paredes

    Photo: Mauricio Contreras-Paredes

    Photo: Mauricio Contreras-Paredes

    Photo: Mauricio Contreras-Paredes

    Photo: Mauricio Contreras-Paredes

    Photo: Mauricio Contreras-Paredes

    Photo: Mauricio Contreras-Paredes

    Text: Tenzin Nawang Tekan, Art For Tibet Canada Coordinator

  • Tara Coopers “Weather Girls Field Guide to Lightning”

    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.

    Derived from true stories documenting recent encounters with lightning, Tara Cooper’s “Weather Girls Field Guide to Lightning” (Open Studio Gallery) depicts a myriad of subject matter from meteorological equipment, weather patterns and cloud formations to the quotidian ‹ a light bulb, a metal chair, a bottle of Jack Daniels and a lottery ticket.

    Combining print with film and sculpture, the exhibition conflates the impersonal language of the statistic with the impact of the personal experience, a place where both the weather and the viewer share the role of witness, impartial bystanders to the events of everyday.

    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

  • 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.

  • ¡Patria o Libertad! ANTUAN:‘Left or Right’

    ANTUAN, ‘Left or Right’, 2010 Video, 5:00. Courtesy the artist
     
    September 9 – October 30, 2011
    MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY CANADIAN ART

    Eight red punching bags are hanging from metal hooks, each wearing the portrait of a politician. The background suggests a poor neighbourhood where working class people live. The artist ANTUAN is from Cuba where most buildings are badly maintained. So it could be anywhere, in Havana, in any town or in the countryside. The colours of the bags refer to communism, the red flag of the Soviet Union, and the countries it dominated, Cuba being the last one standing.

    The politicians painted on the bags come from the left and the right (as the title of the video hints) representing the people’s options. A man comes into this arena and starts to punch the faces on the bags. He punches and punches them harder and harder until sweat is running down his face and his knuckles become red.

    Coming from a communist country I know this feeling of anger from experience. I tried the punching too. But still my question remains: after all this fighting, who is getting hurt?
    Emese Krunák-Hajagos