Author: artoronto

Reception: Thursday, January 5th, 7pm
GALLERY 1313

This group exhibition of over 45 emerging artists from across the country had a jam-packed reception as friends and art-lovers tried to get a glimpse of some future art stars’ work. Throughout the evening, over 500 people attended. The eclectic exhibit included sculpture, photography, painting, printmaking, mixed-media works and drawing.

This is the first exhibit of an annual series of exhibitions that are meant to showcase emerging artists’ talent from across the country. Some artists such as Cam Reid of Vancouver and Jinny Yu of Ottawa came specifically to attend the exhibition reception.

Cam Reid

Jinny Yu

Media coverage of the exhibition to date includes coverage in the Parkdale Villager, a profile of artist Fernanda Figueroa mentioned online in the Sunday Globe and Mail – a weird refer to Alfred Hitchcock’s film, Lifeboat (perhaps R.M. Vaughan should actually make an effort to see the exhibition) and coverage in Downtown Snap (appearing in early Feburary). Also in attendance were writers from Artoronto.ca

Tara Krebs

Eli Kerr

Response to the exhibition was very positive with everyone being impressed with the range of works and the diversity of the exhibition.

The exhibition continues until January 22 and already artists are inquiring about next year’s exhibit.

Text and Photo: Phil Anderson

Ernest Concepcion, Power Nap, 2011

January 12 –  February 19, 2012
VIP Sneak Peak: Wednesday, January 11, 6-8 p.m
Opening: Thursday, January 12, 6–8 p.m
Fran Hill Gallery
285 Rushton Road
Toronto, Ontario, Canada M6C 2X5
Tel: 416-363-1333
Email: franhillgallery@bellnet.ca
Hours: Fri – Sun 11-6 p.m or by appointment

Fran Hill Gallery is pleased to announce a new exhibition entitled “In The End A Good Story Is All That Remains  Eight New York Artists Figuratively  Speaking.

Curated by Edward Rubin.

The exhibition features the recent work of eight “story telling” New York City based artists, each one unique in their focus, concerns, and manner of presentation. While much art on view today is about spectacle and requires 3 seconds to both digest and forget, the art and artists in “A Good Story” linger lovingly, as well as imaginatively, on the wonders of everyday life, the so-called intricate workings of the world around us. The age of the artists in this exhibition range from the young and emerging, to mid-career and old master, the latter in a neo classical sense.

A few of the highlights are Ernest Concepcion’s conflict-based World War ll paintings. Which bring to mind early black and white war films from the late 40s, the twist being the addition of Max Ernst-like surrealist interventions mixed with scenes from the artist’s own life.

Mary Hrbacek’s anthropomorphic tree-portraits, from her series Entwined, fuse human and tree anatomy into a hybrid essence whose varied tree forms – hollowed out, hallowed, haunted, and inhabited – accentuate the unity of all life.  

Rendered in Dutch Baroque style, Heidi Johnson’s paintings are filled, from top to bottom, with the visual history of just about every species and specimen imaginable. Her work parodies the anxiety, as well as the exhilaration that is triggered by an overabundance of information that comes to us through the computer, the print industry and media.  

Lori Nelson’s narratives, with their mixture of fairytale magic and psychological facts, are miniature worlds. No unlike Balzac’s La Comédie Humaine, Nelson’s figurative paintings  consist of a solitary person, deep in thought, surrounded by a world that is too much for them. 

The intimate paintings of Jason Stopa depict landscape as a site of mysterious and phenomenal occurrences. His enigmatic washed out scenes, which focus on a time of day or season, mine the intersection between memory and reality.

Scott Walden’s color photographs, in shades of Caravaggio, document the architecture as well as the people who frequent the bars, legion halls, and community centers in a once wealthy but now economically depressed region of rural Newfoundland.

Underscoring the fragility of the oceans’ half-billion year old ecosystem, Ejay Weiss’ series of seascape paintings, taking us back to our very beginnings, as well as our possible ending, express how paint both mirrors and recapitulates the evolving world as a harmonious and self-sustaining idea.

Combining gestural marks with a unique type of curved perspective, Steve Zolin’s work investigates the structure of space and reality. His explorations flow from painting to drawing and back again, in an ongoing process of artistic evolution.

Edward Rubin (Curator) is a New York based writer, curator, visual artist, and consummate world traveler covering art news here and abroad. His writings have appeared in such magazines as Art & Antiques, ArtUS, dART International, Canadian Art, ArtNexus, Flash Art, Hispanic Outlook, NYArts, and Sculpture Magazines, as well as online at www.artesmagazine.com and www.HUMA3.com. His photographs and collages have been exhibited at the Contemporary Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland, Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art in Ridgefield, Connecticut, and at numerous New York City art galleries. Currently his work, part of an exhibition titled NYC/International Perspectives, has been traveling throughout Russia, Germany, Hungary and France for the past two years. He is an active member of the prestigious International Association of Art Critics.

Special Thanks to Fran Hill, Steve Rockwell, Leon Rooke, Barbara McGivern, dART International Magazine, The Lab Gallery (New York City), Rupert Ravens Contemporary (Newark, New Jersey), Dinter Fine Art (New York City), and www.artists-studios.com the only existing, artist based, website founded and run by real live art critics.  

Arthur Desmarteaux & Allison Moore, Micropolis (detail),
screen & digital prints on cardboard, 112 x 427 cm, 2010.

January 12- February 18, 2012
Opening: Thursday, January 12, 6:30-8:30 p.m.
Artists will be present at opening
Open Studio Gallery
401 Richmond Street West, Suite 104
Toronto ON,  M5V 3A8
T: 416.504.8238
E: sara@openstudio.on.ca
 http://www.openstudio.on.ca

Open Studio is pleased to present Micropolis 2.0, an exhibition by Montréal-based collaborators Arthur Desmarteaux and Allison Moore from January 12 ­ February 18, 2012. The exhibition is accompanied by a text by Banff-based artist and writer Lisa Borin.

Arthur Desmarteaux and Allison Moore’s Micropolis is an ever-expanding and evolving installation comprised of collaged screen and digital prints, assembled so they evoke a busy modern commercial street with pedestrians,
creatures and vehicles passing by. The installation has an anthropological character inspired by the cityscapes of Québec City, Montréal and Toronto. The installation is “2.5D” or two-and-a-half dimensions- a modular diorama of cardboard figures and shapes placed at different levels on wooden shelves, covering the perimeter of the gallery walls, including printed elements hanging from the ceiling and the bottom of the shelves. This eclectic installation also includes sections of woodcuts and LCD video screens in the “building windows” showing animated loops and an accompanying soundtrack.  The installation explores urban life and the relationships between people and large cities. The enchanted universe presented by Desmarteaux and Moore conveys a sense of wonder, awe and contemplation. Looking though the microscope, viewers are drawn in, entering a strange theatrical dimension that evokes a childhood world filled with twisted dreams and figures.

Arthur Desmarteaux obtained a degree in Visual Arts at the University of Montreal and UQAM in 2003. He is an active member of Ateliers Graff in Montreal and has exhibited his work internationally as an invited artist to
contemporary printmaking biennales in Trois-Rivieres, Quebec; Guanlan, China; Italy, Denmark and Sorcelles, France and has participated in residencies at Martha Street Print Studios in Winnipeg, Queen Street Studios in Belfast, and Engramme in Quebec City. He is a member of the Association of Puppeteers of Quebec [AQM]. He is represented by La Petite Mort Gallery, Ottawa.

Allison Moore is an artist, educator and cultural operator. Based in Montreal, she has produced projects in Ecuador, Brazil, the United Kingdom and Europe. She achieved a BFA in Interdisciplinary Arts at Concordia University in 2005. She is an active member of Ateliers Graff and has developed new projects in video, animation and interactive computing as an invited artist at Studio XX, Oboro New Media Labs and the Society of Arts and Technology in Montreal.

Together, Moore and Desmarteaux co-founded Egotrip Productions, collaborating together since 2006.

To download a copy of the essay, including full artist and author biographies, visit http://www.openstudio.on.ca/images_site/desmarteaux-moore-brochure.pdf.

December 10, 2011–March 4, 2012
THE POWER PLANT CONTEMPORARY ART GALLERY

The winter season at the Power Plant opened with “two major exhibitions that delve into a wellspring of cultural history and the archive of the social.”

Stan Douglas’s photographs fill the two large halls on the right side of the gallery. His Entertainment: Selections from Midcentury Studio continues the artist’s practice of re-examining the past by recreating site-specific events. His staged photographs look like journalists’ shots of baseball games and other sport events from the 1950’s. In reality, the artist used actors and reconstructed the events to create “fake documentaries” in his studio in 2010. The sixteen black-and-white “portraits” of Malabar people were also staged using actors posing as patrons of an imaginary bar: elegant ladies wearing long gloves, dancers with pretty décolletages and waiters ready to serve. The large, noir-style images radiate a kind of dark charm from the postwar years.

Stan Douglas, Malabar People: Waitress II, 1951, 2010. Digital silver print mounted on Dibond aluminum. Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner, New York.

On the left side of the gallery there are more intimate places, mainly projection rooms, leading into the other exhibition, Coming After. Currently, there is a renewed interest in the 1980’s and the birth of “queer” culture. The recently closed show, Haute Culture: General Idea, at the AGO focused on how three gay artists changed the art world and made their works recognized and collected internationally. Coming After is the art of the next generation, those born after 1970. As artist Sharon Hayes notes, “It wasn’t my friends who were dying [from AIDS]. It was people I was just beginning to model myself after, people I longed to become.” The works in Coming After offer a different, new queer sensibility as the artists all feel that they arrived too late, missing the heroism of the fight for human rights, and that, therefore, all that’s left for them is nostalgia. Susanne M. Winterling’s room initially appears empty, but as you move your shadow reveals words from funeral speeches.

Adam Garnet Jones, Secret Weapons, 2008. Digital video, 5:30 min. Commissioned by Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre (CFMDC) ReGeneration. Courtesy the artist.

Adam Garnet Jones’s video, Secret Weapons (2008), simultaneously shows images of a guy being beaten up, falling and standing up again; an insignia being tattooed onto someone; and a man talking. The man speaks about the importance of a unified group whose members must support each other—when someone falls the next person will always replace him. This video is very dramatic and reminds me that even if the days of heroic fights for gay rights may be over here, they are still going on in other places.

Dean Sameshima, Gauntlet II (LALC), 2003. C-Print. Courtesy the artist and Peres Projects, Berlin.

Seeing a series called Gauntlet II reminds me of when, in the summer of 2011, the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art saluted Cameron House with an exhibition called This is Paradise. Cameron House was not only a bar but a communal meeting place, a theatre and a gallery where gay culture was welcomed in the 1980’s. Dean Sameshima’s photographic series entitled Gauntlet II (2003) shows an empty bar that has seen better days and happier times. The artist creates a cold, sad atmosphere, but at the same time the warm light of the lamps give a little hope that someone might suddenly come in.

In Christian Holstad’s installation, The Road to Hell is Paved (2009), discarded shopping carts, ramps and wrapping materials stand as archaeological reminders of consumer culture, wished dead by the artist.

Emily Roysdon, untitled (David Wojnarowicz project), 2001–07. Twelve black-and-white photographs, two embroidered. Courtesy the artist

On the second floor I found Emily Roysdon’s untitled collages (David Wojnarowicz project, 2001-07) very disturbing. In these pieces, Roysdon honours her teacher, Wojnarowicz, who taught her the meaning of queer culture through his art and personal example, by identifying with him through role playing. A female figure wears a mask of a young man in different situations—in bed, in a crowd, in a group of her friends—all with a sad expression, showing the enormous pain of being different.

Then there are Danny Jauregui’s three monumental paintings depicting the bath houses, one of the most important scenes of early gay culture. I remember artist Alex Liros talking about the early 1980’s bath houses in Toronto, the active life in those meeting places, the danger of police raids, and the beatings that followed. Jauregui’s paintings show the now closed down and abandoned bath houses, Hyperion Health and Basic Plumbing (2010), as mementoes of an era that has disappeared.

Glen Fogel’s movement-activated neon installation, Glen from Colorado (2009), ignored me and didn’t start at first but then began to flicker and talk about identity. Unlike the other more nostalgic pieces in this show, Fogel’s work brought us back to the present.

Emese Krunák-Hajagos

Sasha Pierce, Vary (detail), 2011. Oil on linen. 21 x 16 inches

January 14 –  February 11, 2012
Opening: Saturday, January 14,  4 – 6 pm.
Jessica Bradley Art + Projects
1450 Dundas Street West (near Gladstone)
Toronto, ON, M6J 1Y6
T: 416-537-3125
E-mail: info@jessicabradleyartprojects.com
www.jessicabradleyartprojects.com/
www.sashapierce.ca
Hours: Wednesday-Saturday 12-5pm or by appointment

Paint As Object brings together the work of two emerging painters who are reconsidering the possibilities of abstraction through inventive approaches to their material. Both Jeremy Hof and Sasha Pierce employ a laborious and repetitive process, using paint as a sculptural material that can be in turn, routed, sanded or as it appears, woven. Hof methodically applies hundreds of layers of acrylic paint, which he then routs into to expose brilliantly hued gradations. Pierce meticulously lays multi-colored lines of oil paint onto canvas in thread-like uniform rows, creating vibrant and ilusory compositions to resemble textiles or tapestries. Existing between painting and sculpture, here paint performs a double role; as a surface that produces trompe l’oeuil-like optical effects and as a solid material – an object.

Based in Vancouver and a graduate of the Emily Carr University of Art + Design, Jeremy Hof won the prestigious RBC Canadian Painting Competition in 2008. Recent solo exhibitions have been held at Blanket Contemporary Art, Vancouver and Helen Pitt Gallery, Vancouver. His work was included in ‘Enacting Abstraction’ at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 2009.

Toronto-based artist Sasha Pierce holds an MFA from the University of Waterloo. She has exhibited at ACME, Los Angeles; Susan Hobbs Gallery, Toronto; Cambridge Galleries; and Macdonald Steward Art Center, Guelph. Pierce was awarded Honorable Mention in the RBC Canadian Painting Competition in 2009.

L.A.C. Panton, “Untitled, No. 4″, 13″ x 16 3/4”, oil on board

January 7  –  January 27, 2012
Opening: Saturday, January 7, 10-6 pm
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

 Featuring works by

J.W. Beatty, Paul V. Beaulieu, Alan Collier, F.S. Coburn, Charles Comfort, Daniel Fowler, Albert Franck, Hilton Hassell, Frank Johnston, Elizabeth A McGillivray Knowles, Arthur Lismer, Manly MacDonald, J.W. Morrice, Rita Mount, L.A.C. Panton, Goodridge Roberts, Homer Watson, Peter Haworth, Wilfred Forbes Withrow and Mary Wrinch.

January 12 – February 26, 2012
Opening: Thursday, January 12, 6 – 9 p.m.
PENTIMENTO FINE ART GALLERY
1164 Queen Street East
Toronto, Ontario M4M 1L4
T: 416.406.6772
Email: rockinrolland@sympatico.ca
Hours: Wed–Sunday 12–6  p.m.

This exhibition celebrates the lifelong relationship of two incredible artists, Hadyn Llewellyn Davies and Eva Koller Davies.  Theirs is a love story like many others, but with the addition of a lifetime of creative energy that intersected popular culture, fine art and public art.  Their interactions as artists are responsible for the education of many others in the fields of display, sculpture and colour-use.

On exhibit are the original maquettes created by Hadyn Llewellyn Davies, ranging from the Stonehenge-inspired “Hommage,” the subject of a controversial lawsuit with Lambton College, to small sculptures created in his final days, Adam and Eve.  The colourful works and collages created by Eva Koller Davies reinforce an aesthetic shared by these two and generations of Canadians.

Please visit the artists’ websites www.evakollerdavies.ca and http://haydndaviessculptor.ca/ to view works by these artists.

January 7–March 31, 2012
Opening: Friday, January 6, 8–10 p.m.
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

Horwood developed this series of screenprinted one and two-off pieces with little emphasis on design. He wishes to demystify the idea that in screenprinting, a piece of art is first designed in its entirety and then produced. The execution of the work and its composition are completed almost entirely in the studio by the artist. This stresses the practice itself, relying on trial and error, as well as colour harmony to create new work. This series is a more spontaneous practice, and utilizes as little source material as possible.

Jacob Horwood is a Toronto-based visual artist who works in printmaking, publishing and sound art. In 2004, he co-founded the experimental sound art record label Beniffer Editions. It has released over 110 hand-made artist multiples on various formats, including LPs, books, box-sets and cassettes. Horwood is the administrator of Punchclock Printing and works as a specialty screen printer, assisting other artists and designers interested in the full realization of their ideas. He is also one half of music concrete duo Gastric Female Reflex, who have released music and toured internationally. Horwood’s work is informed by process-based painting techniques applied to screenprinting, visual afterimage demonstrations, re-appropriation, and artist multiple presentation.

January 7–March 31, 2012
Opening: Friday, January 6, 8–10 p.m.
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 her first solo exhibition in Toronto, Julie Lequin presents a selection of chapters from a new multidisciplinary video installation, which condenses each year of her life. Effervescent with humor, storytelling, error and wordplay, Top 30 weaves the line between autobiography and fiction.

Julie Lequin is a French Canadian artist. She received a BFA from Concordia University and an MFA from Art Center College of Design. In 2007, 2nd Cannons Publications published Lequin’s first book and DVD project The Ice Skating Tree Opera – Director’s Cuts. Her work has been screened and exhibited internationally at venues such as the Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum in California, La Centrale Powerhouse in Montreal, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Art in General and White Columns in New York City. Lequin is the 2011 recipient of the Joseph S. Stauffer Award, an honor given by the Canada Council for the Arts. Lequin is happily living and working in Montreal.

January 7 – March 31, 2012
Opening: Friday, January 6, 8–10 p.m.
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

You Can’t Go Home Again will explore various facets of science fiction fan culture as it intersects with personal utopias. The project will critique the utopian gesture of the lone male seeking out places of isolation, away from the civilizing impulses of society, conjuring up a period of creativity, as well as loneliness, alienation and moral disintegration. Merging sci-fi references with documents that chronicle a solitary sea voyage and personal revelation, this installation will complicate assumptions about what it means to be “a fan” across disciplines. Employing new theories of fandom, the exhibition will open up a range of possibilities in regards to consumption, production, criticality, and play.

Keith Langergraber received his BFA from the University of Victoria and his MFA from the University of British Columbia. He has exhibited extensively in solo and group shows in Canada, the United States, and Asia since 1995.  He has received many grants and awards for his work, including making the long list for the Sobey Award in 2009. Langergraber’s work grows from an interest in social, cultural, and political change found through scrutiny of a selected site. His research allows for an understanding of the shifts that have taken place at a location over time. His exhibitions consist of the accumulation and reconstitution of information through the peeling back of layers of the vernacular landscape. Langergraber is currently teaching at Emily Carr University (BC).

January 11 – 29, 2012
Opening: Wednesday, January 11, 2012, 7:00–11:00 p.m.
STEAM WHISTLE GALLERY
255 Bremner Ave.
(just south of the CN Tower)
Toronto, ON
T: 416.362.2337 ext.246
E: info@steamwhistle.ca
www.steamwhistle.ca
Hours: Mon–Thurs 12–6, Fri–Sat 11–6, Sun 11–5 p.m.

Steam Whistle Brewing will be hosting a “Staff & Friends Charity Art Show” in collaboration with The Toronto Humane Society to celebrate the organization’s 125th anniversary.

All of the art displayed will be donated from Steam Whistle Brewing staff, and the Humane Society staff and volunteers.

There will be also be a silent auction held, for which 100% of the proceeds will go directly to The Toronto Humane Society. The opening reception will take place on January 11th, 2012, from 7:00–11:00 p.m. at Steam Whistle Brewery with a special guest speaker, Toronto Humane Society CEO Dr. Jacques Messier.

About Steam Whistle Gallery:

Steam Whistle Brewing hosts monthly art exhibitions in their Retail & Hospitality area to showcase local creative talent.  Although many exhibitors are established artists, some are showing for the first time.  Steam Whistle does not charge rent for their gallery space, nor is a commission earned on any works that are sold.  At the close of each show, one piece from the show (of the artist’s choice) is donated to their permanent collection, bringing further profile to artists through the thousands of visitors to the brewery annually.