Author: artoronto

November 12 – 20, 2011
THE POWER PLANT CONTEMPORARY ART GALLERY
231 Queens Quay West
Toronto, Ontario M5J 2G8
T: 416.973.4949
E: info@thepowerplant.org
thepowerplant.org
Hours: Tues-Sun 12-6, Sat 12-8, Open holiday Mondays

Established in 1999, the RBC Canadian Painting Competition, with the support of the Canadian Art Foundation, is a unique initiative that helps to nurture and support promising new artists in the early stages of their careers, a time when they need both recognition and financial support.

One national winner and two honourable mentions will be awarded purchase prizes of $25,000 and $15,000 respectively. With a total of $55,000 in prizes, the RBC Canadian Painting Competition offers one of the highest awards of any painting competition in Canada.

Semifinalists in this year’s RBC Canadian Painting Competition are: Rebecca Brewer (Vancouver), Thomas Chisholm (Victoria), Jessica Groome (Guelph), Adam Gunn (Halifax), Daniel Hutchinson (Toronto), Krisjanis Katkins-Gorsline (Winnipeg), Bitsy Knox (Vancouver), Tristram Lansdowne (Toronto), Deirdre McAdams (Vancouver), Kim Neudorf (London), Jared Peters (Saint John), Ianick Raymond (Montreal), Amy Schissel (Gatineau), Beth Stuart (Toronto), and Julie Trudel (Montreal).

On  28 October, RBC has named Vancouver artist Rebecca Brewer the national winner of the 13th annual RBC Canadian Painting Competition. Rebecca was awarded a $25,000 purchase prize for her original work, entitled Beuys painting.

November 12 – December 4, 2011
Opening: Saturday, November 12, 2-5 pm
Q&A: Sunday, December 4, 1 pm
Loop Gallery
1273 Dundas Street West
Toronto, ON, M6J 1X8
T: 416.516.2581
E-mail:loopgallery.patricia@gmail.com
http://loopgallery.blogspot.com
www.loopgallery.ca
Hours: Wed-Sat 12-5pm, Sun 1-4pm

In Shelf Life Jane LowBeer’s creative work continues to be inspired by the household objects that surround her every day. LowBeer uses handmade boxes that are also shelves, with cranks and painted paper scrolls; a kind of medieval TV. As the viewer turns the crank (hence the name ”crankees”), hand-printed images of jars, tubes and tape, string and thing a-ma-jigs roll.
Jane LowBeer started her artistic career as a printmaker studying at Atelier 17 in Paris. As artistic director of the multi-media theatre company, The Crankee Consort, she designed and constructed puppets and sets for almost twenty years. During her career she has exhibited in New York, Montreal and in Europe. Her works have granted her prizes, are included in private and public collections, and can be viewed at Loop Gallery, Open Studio and the Nikola Rukai Gallery.

November 12 – December 4, 2011
Opening: Saturday, November 12, 2-5 pm
Q&A: Sunday, December 4, 1 pm
Loop Gallery
1273 Dundas Street West
Toronto, ON, M6J 1X8
T: 416.516.2581
E-mail:loopgallery.patricia@gmail.com
http://loopgallery.blogspot.com
www.loopgallery.ca
Hours: Wed-Sat 12-5pm, Sun 1-4pm

The Honourable Blood of Mr. E. Pussy is the latest installment in Mark Adair’s ongoing series of over seventy tiny charcoal drawings entitled Death Drinks. In these new drawings we see a marriage fall apart and our hero Death fails as a family man. Nonetheless, there is a happy ending of sorts in this near-to-last chapter of the saga about which Peter Goddard of The Star writes ‘Adair’s genius is to frame Death’s progress as if it were a TV sitcom…”.

Mark Adair is a Toronto artist who does both charcoal works on paper and makes sculpture. His work was recently featured in the Spring 2010 Vie des Arts (English) and was the subject of Patrick Jenkins’ 2007 documentary Death is in Trouble Now. Adair is a graduate of York University, Toronto (BFA 1979) and the University of Victoria (MFA 1982). He is a founding member of The Torontoniensis Collective with whom he exhibited for over a decade.

Adán Calderòn, Esto me pone nervioso…, 1973. Acrylic on Canvas. Detail. Courtesy the F.E.K. Archives, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

November 11 – December 10, 2011
Opening: Friday, November 11, 7 pm
Artist’s talk: Wednesday, November 16, 7 pm
Mercer Union,
A Centre for Contemporary Art
1286 Bloor Street West
Toronto ON, M6H 1N9
T: 416.536.1519
E-mail: sarah@mercerunion.org
www.mercerunion.org
Hours: Tues-Sat 11-6

Alex Wolfson: The F.E.K. Archives: This is making me nervous….

Fernanda Eva Karon (1885-1938?) was an Argentinian philosopher and writer. A friend and contemporary of Heidegger and Arendt, Karon’s work concentrated primarily on phenomenological questioning. Her doctoral thesis, awarded by the Sorbonne, was on the “terror of history”, specifically addressing Schelling’s The Ages of Man, and Hegel’s Philosophy of History. Karon’s long- term collaborator (and lover) was the celebrated Portuguese artist Felipe Calderòn (1895-1982), famed now predominantly for his abstract expressionist phase, but during his lifetime more widely known for his collaborations with other artists, writers, and intellectuals, most frequently F.E. Karon.

In 1927, Karon was appointed the chair of philosophy at the University of Buenos Aires. As the years went by and Karon’s prestige grew, she began to experience an internal crisis. She grew progressively disassociated from herself and her surroundings. By the mid 1930’s her friends and colleagues were seriously concerned for Karon’s state of mind.

In the winter of 1937, Karon decided to spend the winter alone in an isolated cabin in the mountains to complete a mysterious work that even those closest to her knew very little about. When winter was over, and the path to the cabin had thawed, Calderòn went to the cabin. Karon was gone, along with her mysterious, unknown text. All that remained was a note that read: “I am going to the trees to be like Clorinda and rest among the leaves. Look for me there, sprouted anew.” Calderòn claimed he saw in the woods surrounding the cabin a new tree, it’s leaves turned towards the heavens.

Deep in grief, Calderòn spent years deciding on an appropriate memorial to his collaborator and lover. In 1973, he opened in Buenos Aires the F.E.K. Archives, dedicated to the life and works of Fernanda Eva Karon. Not a traditional archive, Calderòn created each room as a site-specific installation, that would compliment and interact with the content that was exhibited within it.

In 2002, in response to the Argentinian financial crises and waning interest in Karon and Calderòn, the F.E.K Archives was closed down by its custodians. A room from the archive dedicated to the last years of Karon’s life will be recreated and exhibited by Alex Wolfson at Mercer Union. 

November 11 – December 10, 2011
Opening: Friday, November 11, 7 pm
Artist’s talk: Saturday,November 12, 2 pm
Mercer Union,
A Centre for Contemporary Art
1286 Bloor Street West
Toronto ON, M6H 1N9
T: 416.536.1519
E-mail: sarah@mercerunion.org
www.mercerunion.org
Hours: Tues-Sat 11-6

The Call Is Coming from Inside the House is comprised of a series of text-based sign paintings (50 in total), to be presented within a functional workspace as thinkspace or constructed installation.

This installation includes an elaborate workstation, unfinished works, the attendant runoff of this work, alongside a 70s faux baroque sofa covered in vintage bed sheets. The signs are casually mounted on the wall as though they were ideas still in the process of being organized. The signs convey various themes and ideas pertaining to philosophy or art criticism, all veering towards occasionally extreme positions in one form or another. The accumulation and juxtaposition of these ideas gradually come across as more unhinged and hopeless when taken in context with one another. When taken cumulatively and in sequence, these signs can be read as a disjointed painted archive featuring original writing, found language, quotes and misquotes. Certain references will be apparent to certain readers as direct quotes or detourned slightly towards new meanings, while much of the original text and blatant misquotes are presented through contemporary colloquial diction popularized by teenaged girls. The end result is the conflation of informal and colloquial voices mixed with material culled from monumental thinkers of highly determined thoughts including Engels, Nietzsche, Breton and Debord with highlights from Kant and Adorno. These signs project something that is highly dissimilar to the more familiar, professional and fit for the public voice that is usually presented around artwork or criticism.

Originally from Vancouver, Tricia Middleton lives and works in Montreal. Tricia Middleton is the 2010 winner of the Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award in the visual arts category.

The Light Keepers

November 17 – December 11, 2011
Opening:  Thursday, November 17, 6 -9 pm – Artist in attendance
Thompson Landry Gallery
The Distillery District
55 Mill Street, Building 5, #102
& The Cooperage Building #32
Toronto, Ontario, M5A 3C4
Tel: 416-364-4955
E-mail:info@thompsonlandry.com
www.thompsonlandry.com
Hours: Tues – Sat 11-6, Sun 12-5

On November 17th, the Thompson Landry Gallery invites you to experience Feedback, a solo exhibition of high-realism oil paintings that instantly catch the eye of viewers as their incredible closeness to reality approaches a visual illusion.
 
The hands are one of the most expressive parts of the human body. Zekoff has mastered the ability to capture what is the mood of his subject by simply portraying the hands. Their imaginative positions have an incredible emotive power and can conjure a range of states of mind such as anxiety, concern, protection and love.
 
The artist is a master chiaroscurist, using the effect of bright lights and dark shadows to create such strong depth that the subjects seem to reach out of the canvas towards the viewer.  The simplicity and purity of these stimulating images exude a soothing calm as they contradict the overwhelming influx of images that saturate and convolute our everyday lives in modern society.

November 8 – 27,  2011
Opening, Saturday, November 10,  7-10 pm
HANG MAN GALLERY
756 Queen Street East (at Broadview Avenue)
Toronto, ON M4M 1H4
T: 416-465-0302
hangmangallery@gmail.com
www.ArtistsNetwork.ca.
Hours: Tues to Sun 12 – 5 pm

Hang Man Gallery is proud to announce CHINA’S DESIGNER WARRIORS, Margie Kelk’s photo based images depicting ancient Chinese warrior Zhong Kui, a spiritual guardian of high valued goods, as a modern-day Beau Brummel sporting designer duds in a world where fashion makes a man.

World over, designer fashions are social status identifiers in the public’s conscious. The perceived winners of China’s fashionable consumer class are chasing these ideals to become the new breed of warriors.

Kelk’s adjunct mix of iconic labels and classical figure is humorously poking at the paradox of the rising warrior class acquiring power for the status markings that its own underclass counterfeits.

This is an antidote to any hangover from Toronto’s fashion week event.

Street Party: Friday, October 21, 7 – 11pm
The Junction, at Dundas and Keele
On display: October 18 – 30
www.mason-studio.com/showoff/

Christine Kim and Lesley Look Hong, Pandemonium, 2011.

Christine Kim and Lesley Look Hong, Pandemonium, 2011.

Amanda McCavour, Scribble, 2011.

Amanda McCavour, Scribble (detail), 2011.

Studio 1:1 and Eclectic Revival, Deflect, 2011.

Studio 1:1 and Eclectic Revival, Deflect (detail), 2011.

Nivek Remas, Opticianado, 2011.

Julia Vandepolder & Brian Harvey, Telephone Booth Gallery, 2011.

Jenn Hannotte and Micah Lenahan, Russet & Empire, 2011.

Photo: Mauricio Contreras-Paredes

Highway 69 Construction Cutline, Killarney, Ontario, 2008

November 3 –  26, 2011
Opening: Saturday, November 5, 2-5pm
STEPHEN BULGER GALLERY
1026 Queen Street West
Toronto, Ontario M6J 1H6
T: 416.504.0575
E: info@bulgergallery.com
www.bulgergallery.com  

The gallery is pleased to present our first solo exhibition of work by Joseph Hartman.

“The Road North” features work from Hartman’s two recent series “Highway 69” and “Collins and Heron Bay”, both of which explore notions of memory, the environment and our relationship to the landscape. Hartman’s “Highway 69” examines the interaction between humans and landscape, and the influences each has on the other. This work was inspired by the artist’s connection to this particular region as a result of travelling through it his whole life. Hartman documents this landscape in transition as it goes through a state of deconstruction and reconstruction via the longstanding expansion project of the highway.

“Highway 69” is also the first leg of a journey that leads to two small native communities in Northern Ontario, Collins and Heron Bay, where Hartman spent the first three years of his life. Although he had no real memories of those early years, his first conscious memory being the day his family moved from the north to the house that his family still inhabits in southern Ontario, he did have images of those early years in his mind.

Hartman’s first year psychology course at Laurentian University, taught him that the mind has the ability to create personal memories from stories heard repeatedly, and that these memories feel as genuine as a memory created from an actual experience. He felt that the images in his mind’s eye of those early years in Collins and Heron Bay were most likely created after listening to the stories that his parents told over the years.

Floating through his thoughts just like concrete memories, made it hard to distinguish fabrications pasted together from stories and old photographs, with other memories and thoughts from his subconscious. Hartman’s series “Collins and Heron Bay” culminated out of a trip to the area 30 years after having left, to determine if his memories were fictional or concrete. Hartman made photographs of places that felt familiar to him, places that he had no doubt passed through 30 years earlier, yet he had no memory of having been there before.

After receiving a Master’s degree in Kinesiology at the University of McMaster in 2004 and being accepted into Medical School, Hartman decided to pursue a career as an artist. He is a self-taught photographer and apprenticed with Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky for over five years.