On October 28th, 2015 OCAD University’s Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences and School for Interdisciplinary Studies presented a public lecture by Dr. Claire Bishop, art historian, critic, author, and professor in the History of Art Department at CUNY Graduate Center, New York. Entitled “Déjà Vu: Contemporary Art and the Ghosts of Modernity,” Bishop’s lecture critiques themes of the failure and ruin of modernity and utopia that she believes have persisted in contemporary art since the 1990s.
We are thrilled to welcome Katelyn Gallucci to TYPOLOGY as our curatorial intern for Fall 2015. For her first exhibition review, she visited Erin Stump’s new location on Dupont Street to see their inaugural exhibition.
Past present FUTURE is a three-part exhibition co-curated by Kristen Weckworth and Erin Stump at ESP’s new 1558 Dupont Street location. The first exhibition, FUTURE, (closing October 10th) is a group show featuring work by Katie Bethune-Leamen, Fastwürms, Maggie Groat, Cameron Lee, Annie MacDonell, and Susy Oliveira.
The summer edition of Xpace Cultural Centre’s annual program is on view for just a few more days, until August 22nd. The main space exhibition, curated by Emily Gove, features four artists whose work bridges worlds of idealized femininity with re-imagined universes of great complexity, charm and disorder. The show’s name references early the 1990s feminist zine Girl Germs, a publication whose poems, stories, and mix tape listings fostered the expansion of the Riot Grrrl movement across Canada and the United States.
TRAPPED is a solo exhibition of the emerging sculptural artist Nicholas Crombach at Angell Gallery, running July 25th to August 15th. Presenting Crombach’s clay-built resin-cast sculptures with accompanying two dimensional scenes on embroidered lead, the exhibition represents a significant and accomplished body of work by this emerging artist.
On view at The Power Plant until September 7th, The Mouth Holds the Tongue is an exhibition which brings together three emerging Toronto artists, Nadia Belerique, Lili Huston-Herterich, and Laurie Kang. Invited to work collectively, the artists have taken over the space of the upper floor gallery.
THE NEW GODS (installation view) featuring Destiny by Alejandro Garcia Contreras, porcelain, 7.875 x 6 x 4 inches.
It’s been a while since we last posted, and that’s actually good news because we’ve been overwhelmed by the amazing response to THE NEW GODS! Take a gander at our Press page, which has seen more action over the past few months than the entire previous year. Thanks to everyone who has supported and attended the show, especially the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival, NOW Magazine, Artoronto.ca, and of course the artists, Alejandro Garcia Contreras and Josée Pedneault, for their wonderful collaborative project.
This weekend is your last chance to see it during regular gallery hours if you haven’t already — we’re open Friday thru Sunday from 12–5 pm. (Note: As we are at the end of our 2014–15 program year, the show will actually remain up for a bit longer, so those who can’t make it this weekend are welcome to get in touch and make an appointment.)
The exhibition will also live on through its documentation in the catalogue, which is forthcoming. Preorders are accepted at the project space or via email to info (at) typology (dot) ca, as well as through our online shop soon. The catalogue and the fantastic limited edition archival digital print (see below) are $25 each.
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THE NEW GODS (cardboard man), 2014. Archival inkjet on Hahnemühle FineArt Baryta paper. 6 x 9 inches. Edition of 20, signed and numbered by the artists.
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handmade helmet of cut plastic straws from Chiapas
Recap: HEAD TRIP! Fantastical Masks, Helmets, and More with Paddy Leung
In the week leading up to and including Doors Open Toronto, we co-hosted a wonderful two-part workshop with Paperhouse Studio, making masks, helmets, and crowns inspired by the handcrafted costumes featured in THE NEW GODS. If you missed the photo postings on our Facebook/Tumblr/Instagram pages, we’ve included a few here for your enjoyment.
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The love continues for FLIGHTS & LANDINGS
A visitor to Artscape Youngplace photographed Tamara Gayer site-specific stairwell installation, 24 Hours Toronto, and his image was selected as one of the Top Ten photos of Doors Open Toronto! All three stairwell installations (including works by Janine Miedzik and Christine Gedeon) will remain on view for several more months. A limited edition archival digital print by Tamara Gayer is available (below), with the exhibition catalogue coming soon.
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24 Hours Toronto limited edition print by Tamara Gayer, 2015. Archival digital print, 6 x 9 inches. Edition of 20, signed and numbered by the artist.
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Thanks again for your interest and support in making this a great second year for TYPOLOGY. Stay tuned for exciting news regarding our program for 2015–16 and how you can participate in shaping our future mission and projects!
The next couple weeks will see the closing of two great exhibitions in the Toronto area; go see them soon if you can. Land|Slide: Possible Futures (closing October 14) is an ambitious curatorial project which transforms the historical buildings of the Markham Museum into an engaging and interactive contemporary art park. While beautiful by day, we’d recommend an early evening visit to experience some of the more subtle installations’ full effects. Favourites include Deirdre Logue’s multisensory, multichannel video installation, Euphoria’s Hiccups, which activates the walls, floor, and countertops of the Honey House, and Frank Havermans’ Untitled high-tension intervention which parasitizes the Strickler Barn to unsettling effect (both pictured below). Above, Martindale, Myers, and MacKinnon’s “refined and enriched” intervention within the Burkholder carriage house is a thought-provoking commentary on high art consumption.
Closing after this long weekend is the Power Plant’s sprawling summer exhibition, Postscript: Writing After Conceptual Art. Curated by Andrea Andersson and Nora Burnett Abrams, this multi-sensory feast for the eyes, ears, and mind is a testament to the variety and richness of artistic and poetic approaches to language undertaken by conceptual artists and writers since the 1960s.
Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook, Two Planets: Manet’s Luncheon on the Grass and the Thai Villagers, 2008,
digital pigment print, Tyler Rollins Fine Art, New York
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The Toronto International Art Fair is bigger and better than ever, having eclipsed Art Chicago (which was canceled earlier this year) as Merchandise Mart’s only North American art fair north of the border and not on the coasts. (In case you’re wondering, Merchandise Mart, which also runs The Armory Show, Volta Basel and NY, and Art Platform Los Angeles, was itself recently bought and renamed by Swiss media conglomerate, Informa Plc.)
With over a hundred exhibitors from 23 continents, more than 20,000 visitors expected to attend, and projected sales in excess of $20 million, Art Toronto 2012 set itself apart this year with a rich program of panel discussions and curator’s tours co-developed with the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), the Power Plant, and the Museum of Canadian Contemporary Art (MoCCA), a diverse selection of artists and galleries highlighted within the Focus ASIA area and exhibition, the AGO’s ongoing and very visible acquisition program, a capsule exhibition of the RBC Canadian Painting Competition finalists for 2012, and a focus on the fresh perspectives offered by newer galleries in the Next section.
The image arrives as so many do these days, in our News Feed, onscreen. Superimposed upon nondescript boxes, thick lines in contrasting colours cross over each other, canceling the underlying image in a graphically powerful act of negation — it grabs our attention immediately. At first glance, it could be the document of a tricky installation; lines or forms projected or assembled in dimensional space, then photographed from a precise vantage point so as to resolve the fragmented reality into a convincingly flat, yet altogether illusory image. But doubt creeps in upon closer inspection, as the interplay between surface, depth, and detail begins to open the image to all manner of interpretation: are we in fact looking at a photograph of an installation, a painting of a photograph, a photograph of a painting?