Author: artoronto

September 14 – September 30, 2011
Opening: Wednesday, September 14,  7 – 11pm
Steam Whistle Gallery
255 Bremner Ave
(just south of the CN Tower)
Toronto, ON
416-362-2337 ext.246
info@steamwhistle.ca
www.steamwhistle.ca
Hours: Mon – Thurs 12 – 6, Fri – Sat 11 -6, Sun 11 – 5pm

Successfully envisioned, promoted and created this very well received, original photographic/multimedia documentary project, with a budget of $120K, exhibited in regional museums, prominently featured many times in national news and commended in the Ontario Legislature, May 4, 1993. www.hurmuses.com/exhibsite

Employed several assistants in the organization of exhibition openings, most notably the Scarborough Civic Centre reception on May 5, 1995, with a team of eight, organizing an all-day media event attended by 1000, featuring political speakers, including the Mayor of Scarborough and the Ontario Minister of Culture and three musical acts, including Big Rude Jake and Jughead and staffed with a volunteer crew of 15.

Exhibited in major institutional galleries and museums, including: The London Regional Museum, The Art Gallery of Windsor and The Robert McLaughlin Gallery

This exhibition is a tribute to that community, to my “Extended Family.” Drawing mainly on the van plant photographs, it also includes others, which were shot on earlier occasions, at parties, pares, and events. Its purpose is to give a human face to the jobs that were lost, to present the intangible losses that cannot figure in economist’s charts. Most important to me is that this plant closure be seen not as a displacement of 2800 jobs, but as the displacement of the 2800 people who worked them. It is also important that attention be paid not only to the economic tragedy, but also to the disruption and loss of the community, which was so important and vibrant a part of our lives. As Glen Seidman remarked to me on May 5, 1993 “I keep remembering that a while after I first started here, my girlfriend and I broke up. I was pretty upset about it, and one of the older guys that I worked with said, ‘don’t worry, after 20 years you might be with your 2nd or 3rd wife, but you’ll still have the same co-workers. And I keep thinking, he was right, I’ve worked here for 19 years, and there are guys that I’ve worked with all of that time that are with their 2nd or 3rd wives, but they still have the same co-workers, in fact, I still work with that same guy. Tomorrow, it’s over.”

Academy Animals 2004 from Animal Logic-Ed. Of 5 + 2 AP chromogenic print 20 X 24 in.

Bau-Xi Photo
September 10-24, 2011

Have you ever wanted to know what is happening in the rooms marked Closed for visitors in the museums? Internationally known, award winning artist Richard Barnes spent ten years in those rooms, and through his lens we can see that there is actually nothing natural in a natural history museum.

The restoration team’s effort to create reality is unrealistic. In order to capture the typical landscape they generalize it, creating a fake one. The sky is either too bright or too watery and seems already dusty the moment it is painted. A caretaker is vacuuming the snowy ground beneath the feet of a buffalo while other animals become surrealistic ghosts in their plastic wraps. The habitats are alienated from real life and preserved in order to illustrate nature, a contradiction that creates a “morte vita”, a dead life.

Emese Krunák-Hajagos

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

 

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.

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.

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.