Artoronto

Category: FEATURES

  • DENNIS BURTON / Word Magic – Toronto 1970’s

    by Ashley Johnson A sign of cultural maturity in developed societies is the wholehearted support and celebration of its artists. Their contribution is recognized as ‘cultural capital’, to be nurtured and exported, whether as art objects or social ideas. Value is attached and upheld by institutions that generate knowledge and shows about that product.

  • Through The Lens. A Photographic Journey with Vincenzo Pietropaolo

    by Phil Anderson Upon meeting with documentary photographer , Vincenzo Pietropaolo at Toronto‘s De Luca Fine Art/Gallery, on Queen St. West, he explained of how he captured images of the Italian community as a young boy, an immigrant child. The camera allowed him access to another world. As a young man he played pool in…

  • This is Paradise | Place as state of mind:The Cameron Public House and 1980s Toronto

    By Rae Johnson Upon opening its doors under the new ownership in October 1981, the Cameron became a magnet for the most talented and ambitious in the ‘hood. It came together as a kind of social experiment in the form of a hotel, similar to hotels like the Chelsea in New York, but fundamentally different…

  • ISTVAN KANTOR and the DENTAL TROPE

    By Gary Michael Dault I came into the Drake Hotel coffee shop a couple of weeks ago and there was anarchist-wildman-artist Istvan Kantor at a window table in the sunlight and when he smiled a greeting—for we hadn’t seen one another for a couple of years—there was suddenly a visionary gleam in the coffee shop,…

  • Staged Photography

    By Emese Krunak-Hajagos Looking at the exhibitions of Contact always remind me of my childhood. My relationship with photography started at a very early age since my mother was a professional photographer. She had a portrait studio from the 1950th for 40 years in Budapest. Through her work staged photography filled my life and as…

  • Illuminated Manuscript

    By Matt Macintosh “Illuminated Manuscript”, a site-specific installation curated by Bonnie Rubenstein at The Coach House as part of this years CONTACT festival themed, “Figure + Ground” is part of Robert Bean’s ongoing research project on Marshall McLuhan, technology and obsolescence. With access to the back-rooms of the Canadian Science and Technology Museum in Ottawa,…

  • BEST BEFORE

    By Von Bark The art of eating is the very substance which gives us life. The art of preparing food for consumption is an alchemical/transformative process which simmers our cultural influences in complex ways. ‘Best Before’ is a group show of Aboriginal artists that bites into this feast. There is a light-handed but sharp sense…

  • Sound Before Sight

    By Amanda Pignotti As visitors walk toward the blackened room of the E-Gallery located on the UTM (University of Toronto at Mississauga) campus, sound before sight entices the crowd. One by one, visitors unconsciously emerge as “listeners” of a work of art, prior to becoming the “viewer”. Intimidating and boisterous tones stampede out from the…