November 23 – December 4, 2012
Opening Reception: Friday, November 23, 7 – 10 p.m.
GLADSTONE HOTEL ART BAR
1214 Queen West.
Toronto, ON, M6J 1J6
The second solo exhibition by Nicholas Jianhong Liang, a Los Angeles-based artist and current Masters student at California Institute of the Arts.
“Something Has Not Essentially Changed” is his most recent work. It shows his interest in investigating how materialism and consumerism impact on the lives of contemporary people.
November 14 – 25, 2012
Opening Reception: Thursday, November 15, 7 – 10 p.m.
GALLERY 1313 Cell Gallery
1313 Queen St. W.
Toronto, ON, M6K 1L8
T: 416.536.6778
E: director@g1313.org
www.g1313.org
Hours: Wed – Sun 1 – 6 p.m.
Contemporary Portraits inspired by Kathe Kollwitz; acrylic works by Gwen Tooth
Gwen has always practiced drawing portraits. She paints to express energy, soul and mood. She draws in black and white with acrylic media to express various life situations and emotions.
Recently, she completed a series of drawings (blurring into paintings) which emerged from her subconscious first in pen and ink sketches and later appeared on nineteen canvases as abstracted black and white portraits. Having recently read the diary and letters of the German artist, Kathe Kollwitz, she was so moved by the grief and sadness in her life that she was inspired to create a series of sketches and drawings/paintings.
For more information please visit gwenartist@uniserve.com
November 14 – 25, 2012
Opening Reception: Thursday, November 15, 7 – 10 p.m.
GALLERY 1313 Process Gallery
1313 Queen St. W.
Toronto, ON, M6K 1L8
T: 416.536.6778
E: director@g1313.org
www.g1313.org
Hours: Wed – Sun 1 – 6 p.m.
“My art practice is autobiographic in nature carrying with it the paradox of a Chanel – out of the spark and clutter of my own psychic (soul) and a tunnel – into a deeper seemingly endless unconscious sea within (me).
Drawing is the nerve center of this practice – a search light – an undersea lantern illuminating amorphous, partial and distinct objects – the detritus of memory its joys, terrors and continual layering through time. All of it I find, moving on a risky surface of paper, charcoal, acrylic and most fragile, pastel. Each work finds clarity, full or partial resolutions – making sense in the moments of its making.” Jerome McNicholl
For more information please visit www.Jerome mcnicholl.com
Nahed Mansour, Archiving Voice
November 14 – 25, 2012
Opening Reception: Thursday, November 15, 7 – 10 p.m.
GALLERY 1313 Main Gallery
1313 Queen St. W.
Toronto, ON, M6K 1L8
T: 416.536.6778
E: director@g1313.org
www.g1313.org
Hours: Wed – Sun 1 – 6 p.m.
Curated by Farah Yusuf
Babel on Rosetta Stone is an exhibition about translation and technological mediation.
Featured artists:
Rob Bairos
Michelle Gay
Simon Glass
Nahed Mansour
Sam Pelletier
Norman White
Alize Zorlutuna.
The multidisciplinary show explores the borderlands between media where translation is used as a vehicle to expose the constructedness and incommensurability of meaningacross systems of codes, whether literal, symbolic, performative, cultural, or executable.
Artists Talk, Wednesday, November 21, 7 – 9 p.m: The Poetics of Mistranslation – Jessica Wyman in conversation with Simon Glass, Norman White and Farah Yusuf.
This exhibition is supported by the Toronto Arts Council.
Garbologic Assemblage (Moss Sole): Domestic Dumpsite, Clayton, Ontario, 2012, giclee print on platine paper, edition of three, 20 x 30 inches
November 16 – December 22, 2012
Opening Reception: Friday, November 16, 7 – 10 p.m.
PAUL PETRO CONTEMPORARY ART
980 Queen St. W.
Toronto, ON, M6J 1H1
T: 416 979 7874
E: info@paulpetro.com
www.paulpetro.com
Hours: Wed – Sat 11 – 5 p.m.
Maura Doyle
Garbologic Objects
Using her own domestic space as basis for Garbologic Objects, Maura Doyle has been collecting and studying the stuff around her to create a series of ceramic sculptures and two photo-based works. At her family farm property she sifted the contents of a private dumpsite and collected sticks from the pet cemetery. In her home studio she recreated the things around her in clay. This exhibition reflects her research about our social relationship with nature (through what we consume and what we leave behind) and the history of the medium of clay and its ties to archeology.
Maura Doyle holds a BFA from the Emily Carr Institute in Vancouver and an MFA from the University of Guelph. Her work is interdisciplinary with a focus on sculpture, ceramics, video, drawing, artist’s books and multiples. A consistent theme throughout her practice is the use of nature as a lens through which to view culture (and vice versa).
Her most recent bookwork is titled Guide to the History of Beaver Architecture: Sticks and Mud Reconsidered (Paul Petro Contemporary Art 2009).
Exhibitions include Bone Dump Scotia Bank Nuit Blanche, City of Toronto (2011); 5th KW/AG Biennial, Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery (2011); Sometimes we make it, Remo (Osaka 2006); GLN – Spaceship Earth, Club Transmediale (Berlin 2006); Dedicated to you, but you weren’t listening, Power Plant (Toronto 2005); The Cave and the Island, White Columns (New York 2004). She lives and works in Ottawa, Ontario.
The artist wishes to acknowledge the support of the Ontario Arts Council.
Head Descender, 2012, acrylic, glitter and glue on canvas board, 40 x 30 cm
November 16, 2012 – January 12, 2013
Opening Reception: Friday, November 16, 7 – 10 p.m.
PAUL PETRO CONTEMPORARY ART
980 Queen St. W.
Toronto, ON, M6J 1H1
T: 416 979 7874
E: info@paulpetro.com
www.paulpetro.com
Hours: Wed – Sat 11 – 5 p.m.
Robin Fry
A Midnight Scumbler
“These recent paintings explore optics, color relationships and surface quality while forming loose narratives within exotic and impossible mindscapes. In a trance state of intuitive drawing/painting, imagery is built up and disfigured, buried, recycled, reworked, excavated and defaced until a satisfying emotive presence and compositional balance is achieved. Close attention is put on differentiating between “good” and “bad” intuition – the faint voices that may or may not lead to the right path. Together the paintings have conversations and the suggested space in-between them may exist only in the viewer’s mind. Shining black clouds of dirt are pitted against slime green skylines, blockheads run wild in poly-dimensional bliss. Beneath the sublime canopy of a post-nuclear paradise time bends over and cheap sunglasses abound. Hard focus makes grass grow. Painting as cremation of an idea. Cracking statues waiting patiently for sunrise. Asphalt purring, pink triangles floating and a lonely can of jungle paint rolling down the horizon.” Robin Fry, November 2012, Berlin
Robin Fry was born in 1976 in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He studied painting at Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design (1996-1997) and the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (2001-2002). He lived in Toronto from 2002-2009 where he focused on producing and exhibiting painting and sculpture as well as a variety of music projects. He has had solo exhibitions with Helen Pitt Gallery, Paul Petro Special Projects Space and Hunter and Cook Gallery. In July of 2012 he had a solo exhibit with Hiromart Gallery in Tokyo, Japan. He is currently based in Berlin and has been pursuing his music as well as painting.
November 14 – December 22, 2012
Opening Reception: Friday, November 16, 6 – 9 p.m. Artists Present
TELEPHONE BOOTH GALLERY
3148 Dundas St. W.
Toronto, ON, M6P 2A1
T: 647-270-7903
E: sharlene@telephoneboothgallery.ca
www.telephoneboothgallery.ca
Hours: Wed – Sat 11 – 6, Sun 12 – 4 p.m.
& by appt.
Interlace, deconstruct, the spaces in between
Fibre works by Lizz Aston, Noelle Hamlyn, Pam Lobb
The three artists in this exhibition use and manipulate fibre in different ways, creating textile patterns deconstructed to reveal single lines that trace points of intersection between a thread and a surface.
Lizz Aston manipulates photographs of her own textile work, expanding upon these predetermined patterns. By altering line, shape, volume, repetition and scale she deconstructs these formal patterns in unexpected ways, creating a body of prints and 3D framed works.
Noelle Hamlyn has washed and exposed many works in this collection to saline solutions to encourage the formation of salt crystals. These crystals are like the sweat and tears of the seamstress – a gentle meditation on the loss of traditional hand skills.
Pam Lobb references imagery from Victorian dinnerware and narrative-themed plates in her monoprints on fine Japanese papers, which are combined with fabric to build layered, porcelain-like framed sculptures.
VIDEO INSTALLATION, 30 x 35 inches
Artist Camal Pirbhai re-imagines Eames-style chair for the Textile Museum of Canada (TMC)’s signature fundraising event and gala, BMO Financial Group reDesign 2012.
Virtual Texilology is Camal’s interpretation of the chair. There is no explanation to the piece as the artist challenges the audience to ask only one question after watching the video. Since everyone has a different way of seeing a work of art, an explanation from the artist can sway the audience’s interpretation. At first site it is just a bunch of small people sitting. Then they start moving as if trying to find a more comfortable position, shifting they weights, lifting their legs and waving their arms. These multiplied mini movements create a strange choreography that keep us looking closer and longer at the piece.
Camal Pirbhai exhibits conceptual works and collaborations with other artists through his haute couture label called Gallery Bespoke. He is highly respected for his craftsmanship, vision and flair.
by Inyoung Cho
November 8 – December 8, 2012
Opening Reception: Saturday November 10, 4 – 8 p.m.
ROBERT KANANAJ GALLERY
1267 Bloor St. W.
Toronto, ON, M6H 1N7
T: 416.289.8855
E: info@robertkananajgallery.com
www.robertkananajgallery.com
Hours: Tues–Sat 11–6 p.m.
NAPOLEON BROUSSEAU
Returning – Le Fantome de la Memoire
Portraits traditionally portray a subject. At the outset of this series I named my portraits Anybody, Somebody, Everybody first and then went looking for subjects I didn’t know in the process of my painting.
The Method Meditative Rolling, Reckless Grinding, Poetic Brushing
These paintings are created mainly through a random system of rotary painting. I hand cut the rollers to rotary print a repetitive pattern. This style of working, I call RGB- Roll, Grind, Brush. Repeat, until the subject revealed itself.
In a shamanic-like meditative process I simply keep rolling layers of paint using multiple colors at once until a face or scene emerges. At this point I seal the surface with epoxy. The next stage is searching for details using a grinder which is more random and chaotic. The roller sets a representational space in a forward and backward motion, the grinding accesses lost areas in a left to right reckless chaotic motion. It is alternatively static then chaotic, a particle then a wave. The subjects themselves can be elusive shape shifters. Searching for the subject in the painting can take a long time, such as Lady RGB which took over three years to complete.
Le Fantome De La Memoire
The paintings portray apparitions, chimeras, real fragments from the imaginal realms; waking dreams, spectre’s, phantasms, nebulous recollections, ghost portraits dancing between dimensions and meanings. In a world of hyper real imagery, they are the world view of people with facial blindness. They are portraits of eidolons- spirit images of living persons. The titles simply set a mood too begin the search for the subject. The works are titled with a subtitle that gives you an insight into what motivated the meditative rolling search.
Napoleon Brousseau
November 7 – 18, 2012
Opening Reception: Thursday, November 8, 6 – 9 p.m.
PROPELLER CENTRE FOR THE VISUAL ARTS
984 Queen Street West
Toronto, Ontario M6J 1H1
T: 416-504-7142
E: gallery@propellerctr.com
Hours: Wed – Sat: 12 – 6, Sun: 12 – 5 p.m.
November 7 – 18, 2012
Opening Reception: Thursday, November 8, 6 – 9 p.m.
PROPELLER CENTRE FOR THE VISUAL ARTS
984 Queen Street West
Toronto, Ontario M6J 1H1
T: 416-504-7142
E: gallery@propellerctr.com
Hours: Wed – Sat: 12 – 6, Sun: 12 – 5 p.m.
“Nothing evokes more storytelling and dreaming than boats. Each story touches our hearts. My excitement over boats is no doubt in my DNA as my Scottish surname “Murdoch” means Sea Warrior (probably Pirate!).
My enjoyment of working-class boats in Toronto Harbour – including tugboats, fireboats and icebreakers – reflects my past in the labour movement. Also close to my stories and my heart – and love of colour – are fishing boats on Lake Erie and canoes on Lake Winnipeg”. Jane Murdoch Adams
For more information please check www.janemurdochadams.com
Shelled, 2012, acrylic on canvas with the addition of a small 7″ LCD flat
screen TV behind the black hole on the bottom right corner, 24 x 48 inches
November 22 – December 2, 2012
Opening Reception: Thursday, November 22, 7 -10 p.m.
ARTSCAPE TRIANGLE GALLERY
38 Abell St.
Toronto, ON M6J 0A2
T: 416.419.5830
E:info@virginialeeart.com
www.virginialeeart.com
Hours: daily 12 – 6 p.m.
“After All” / The End of the World is just a new beginning
The famous Mayan calendar predicted the end of the world to fall on December 21st 2012; shortly after this exhibition!
This latest series of paintings by Virginia Lee explores the thematically charged “end of the world” notion, through a painterly introspection about the origins of life and our symbiotic evolution with our environment, from the beginning of times to the hereafter. Far from doom and gloom, this multifarious imagery re-examines the life cycle of its subjects in intricate details, and organically rearranges the universe into timeless compositions of nowhere-lands we intuitively recognize, and gradually reconsider.
Julie Weismann the Director of Infinity Art Gallery so aptly wrote the following award statement which could easily apply to this whole collection: “Virginia Lee is a master of layering stories. Each and every time I view this piece, I see another piece of the puzzle, another story of our past, another dream for our future. As the SunDial shows the ticks of time, so this piece expresses the moments in our lives; an entire movie in one frame.”
This exhibition exhorts the viewer to reassess reality, to connect the dots where no paths were previously thought possible, and to enjoy the perspective of a world in constant mutation, one that might never end…
