On The Surface | Susana Reisman
May 7 – June 11, 2016
TYPOLOGY is pleased to present On The Surface | Susana Reisman, featuring the Toronto-based artist’s latest findings from her multi-year investigation into the nature of wood. Encompassing aspects of both drawing and painting even as it foregrounds relationships between sculpture and photography, the exhibition includes a selection of large-scale colour photographs and several freestanding wood sculptures.
In her surprisingly painterly photographs of industrial wood finishing rooms, Reisman makes visible, through the material’s apparent absence, the many layers, and intensive labour, that must be applied to re-surface wood products for commercial purposes. Conversely, her exquisitely tactile sculptures, left in various states of fabrication and finish, evince the vivid and varied marks of her experimental method of “drawing” into their surfaces with a table saw. Where the photographs speak to processes of surfacing in wood’s absence, the wood sculptures make present a new awareness of surface by virtue of the tangible marks made upon them, a visible index of the artist’s manual explorations on wood to varying depths and degrees.
As a meditation on both formal and conceptual interfaces between wood’s multiple planes, On The Surface is a visual delight which belies the artist’s deeper concern and ambivalence toward humanity’s desire for perfection as expressed in our fraught relationship with the natural world. The exhibition will be accompanied by a new catalogue featuring an original curatorial essay and full documenation of the show.
On The Surface is a Featured Exhibition of the 2016 Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival
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Please join us for a public opening reception with the artist on
Saturday, May 7th, from 6–9 pm
Refreshments will be served and all are welcome.
TYPOLOGY
No. 302, Artscape Youngplace, 180 Shaw Street, Toronto, ON M6J 2W5
See Google map of location
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About the Artist
Susana Reisman was born in Caracas, Venezuela in 1977. She received a BA in Economics from Wellesley College, Boston (1999) and an MFA in photography from the Rochester Institute of Technology (2005). After teaching photography for a number of years, Reisman now dedicates her time to making art and running Circuit Gallery. She lives and works in Toronto.
Recent solo and group exhibitions include Productive Displacement, a series of billboards curated by Bonnie Rubenstein for the 2015 CONTACT Photography Festival; Standardizing Nature: Trees, Wood, Lumber (2014) at Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography, Toronto; Unsettled Primaries (2014), curated by Mariangeles Soto-Diaz for the Torrance Art Museum, California; Immoderation (2014), curated by Megan Press for the Living Arts Centre, Mississauga; Micah Lexier: More Than Two (2013), curated by Micah Lexier for The Power Plant, Toronto; Flash Forward Festival 2013, outdoor exhibition at Fairmont Battery Wharf, Boston; Objects in Mirrors May Appear Closer (2013), UNO St. Claude Gallery, New Orleans; and Like-Minded (2012), curated by Micah Lexier for the Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art, Winnipeg, Manitoba.
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The artist wishes to acknowledge the support of the Ontario Arts Council for this exhibition.
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image: Susana Reisman, Respirator masks (Custom Prototypes), Toronto, 2015
Events
Please join us for the following exhibiton-related events. Click below for more info.
Opening Reception and Edition Launch : Saturday, May 7, 2016 from 6–9 pm
Please join us for a public opening reception and edition launch for On The Surface | Susana Reisman on Saturday, May 7, from 6–9 pm. Curated by project space Director Shani K Parsons, On The Surface will be accompanied by an exhibition catalogue featuring an original curatorial essay and artist Q+A, plus full documentation of the show (forthcoming). On the occasion of the exhibition, Reisman has created a special varied edition from ebonized wood veneer which we are thrilled to be launching at our opening reception.
The artist and curator will be in attendance and refreshments will be served. All are welcome.
Reception date and time
Saturday, May 7, 2016 from 6–9 pm
Event location
TYPOLOGY
180 Shaw Street, No. 302, Artscape Youngplace, Toronto, ON M6J 2W5
See Google map of location
We look forward to seeing you!
Afternoon with the Artist: Susana Reisman : Sunday, May 15, 2016 from 12–5 pm
Drop in anytime from 12–5 pm on Sunday, May 15th for refreshments and casual conversation with artist Susana Reisman, who will be at the project space to answer questions about her art and process.
Reisman is a photo-based artist who is deeply interested in questions of representation. Most of her work seeks to address the ways in which we experience and interpret what we see: how we encounter, read, construct, classify, categorize and evaluate our visual world, and how in turn, we are shaped by it. Despite a tendency towards formalist and minimalist expression, her work comes from a very personal place.
Born in Caracas, Venezuela, Reisman lives and works in Toronto. She received a BA in Economics from Wellesley College, Boston (1999) and an MFA in photography from the Rochester Institute of Technology (2005). After teaching photography for a number of years, Reisman now dedicates her time to making art and running Circuit Gallery.
Date and time
Sunday, May 15, 2016 from 12—5 pm
Event location
TYPOLOGY
180 Shaw Street, No. 302, Artscape Youngplace, Toronto, ON M6J 2W5
See Google map of location
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