We are pleased to launch our newest initiative in support of emerging artists and curators: Summer Sessions, a program through which we are making free space and staffing support available to graduates of local and regional colleges and universities to present their thesis exhibitions in downtown Toronto.
We’ve just posted a list of six (!) upcoming events for The Lowest Relief | Maria Flawia Litwin, including this Saturday’s Afternoon with the Artist — drop in anytime from 12–5 pm for refreshments and casual conversation with Maria, who will be at the project space to discuss her exhibition and answer questions about her art and process.
Details on the other five events, including our Fall Kickoff Celebration and Catalogue Launch, Scissors+Blades papercutting workshop series with Maria Flawia Litwin and Annyen Lam co-hosted with Paperhouse Studio, Art Bus tour with Koffler Gallery, artist’s talks for Culture Days, and Canadian Art’s Gallery Hop can be found on the exhibition page (scroll down and click on each event title to view information), or check out our Facebook Events page (where you can also RSVP).
It’s going to be a fun and busy fall — hope to see you at the project space for one or more of these events, workshops, or afternoons soon.
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image: Maria Flawia Litwin, être ma proper cause (detail), 2014
TYPOLOGY is pleased to launch its third year of programs with The Lowest Relief, an intimate solo exhibition of art by Maria Flawia Litwin, curated by Katherine Dennis. In this new body of work, Litwin uses wycinanki (pronounced vih-chee-nahn-kee), a Polish paper cutting tradition, to weave stories layered with personal memories, social history, symbolism and mythology. Each work stems from a significant autobiographical detail in the artist’s life. Yet the illustrations are stripped of overt personal narrative. The focus instead is on quintessential life experiences — those as simple and complex as birth and death, and as fleeting or all encompassing as love, alienation, pain, fear or passion — that transcend gender, geography and culture.
Whimsical but touched with dark humour, the complex cuts, colours and patterns draw the eye in. Through these intricate details we are eased into the absurdity of memory, a space where the recollections of the artist become a jumping off point for the experiences of the viewer. The fantastical vignettes, filled with elaborate costumes from Polish folk to Canadian plaid, and animal and human actors ranging from a murder of crows to an armed attacker or gentle lover, unsettle and disturb as much as they delight.
We were thrilled to launch our guest curating program with Heather Nicol’s wonderful and intimate exhibition, A Riveder le Stelle | Mary Hambleton and Sara MacLean, and we are now equally excited to present the accompanying catalogue. Packed with images of the show and all the works in it, plus four texts exploring various forms of correspondence between Nicol, Hambleton, MacLean, and their works, this catalogue-as-conversation will be available for sale online and in the project space soon.
If the image from our last email seemed strangely familiar, it’s because we neglected to swap out the previous exhibition shot with an image for the new one. Arrgh – sorry about that!
To make amends, we are taking this opportunity to share a few bonus photos of some of Mary Hambleton’s wonderful work in the show. The exhibition will feature 20 of her works on paper, plus a large painting also by Hambleton, and an immersive video installation by Sara MacLean.
Hope to see you at the opening next Thursday! A Riveder le Stelle, curated by Heather Nicol, runs January 22–February 22, 2015.
TYPOLOGY is thrilled to announce the launch of our guest curating program with A Riveder le Stelle, a two person exhibition. Featuring rarely seen works on paper by the late New York painter Mary Hambleton, and a video installation by Toronto-based Sara MacLean, the exhibition is curated by interdisciplinary artist and independent curator Heather Nicol.
Taking its name from the final line of Dante’s Inferno (1314), A Riveder le Stelle, “to gaze once more upon the stars,” is conceived as a virtual conversation between two artists, separated by time, place, and practice, whose work nevertheless manifests striking formal and conceptual correspondences. Among the many such convergences are a mutual interest in the body, the scientific gaze (particularly as it relates to diagnostic medicine), relationships between the infinitesimal and the celestial, and the sense of wonder such scrutiny engenders.