MAY 7 - JUN 23
PAUL DE GUZMAN: PARASITE PARADISE: 1999-2009
BIRCH LIBRALATO
OPENING MAY 7, 5 - 8PM
Parasite Paradise: 1999-2009 presents two bodies of work Paul de Guzman produced at opposite ends of a decade, each an aspect of his investigations into forms of artistic quotation and parasitism. In de Guzman’s cut-up, altered magazine pieces produced in 1999, the printed content is subjected to a controlled form of physical deconstruction. In his current body of photographic work, early 20th-century architectural postcards are juxtaposed with corresponding architectural models rendered in Lego building blocks. Although most architectural photographs are intended to record the monumentality of human achievement, de Guzman’s photographs offer a different conceptualization of buildings as temporary and transient.
129 Tecumseth Street
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MAY 7 - JUN 13
JAMES NIZAM: ANTEROOM
BIRCH LIBRALATO
OPENING MAY 7, 5 - 8PM
In his series Anteroom, James Nizam has turned the interiors of abandoned, soon-to-be-demolished homes into room-sized camerae obscurae. He achieves this by fitting a makeshift lens to a hole he made in a wall, or attached to a hole in garbage bags covering a window. He then photographs the results with a 35mm camera, creating chaotic-looking images that presage not only the photographed structures’ imminent destruction but also the tenuous future of analogue photography itself. Nizam’s work in this series suggests reasons for the pinhole camera’s increasing popularity: it’s a format that looks to the past as a way to consider the state of the medium today.
129 Tecumseth Street
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APR 30 - MAY 30
STILL MOTIONS: GWENËL BÉLANGER, ELINA BROTHERUS, LUCIA FEZZUOGLIO, BETTINA HOFFMANN, KEN JACOBS, KARL LEMIEUX, TUOMO RAINO, JUTTA STROHMAIER
GLADSTONE HOTEL 3 & 4 FLOOR
OPENING MAY 7, 6 - 10PM
Still Motions traces the tension between the still and the moving image, presenting works that critique the logic of traditional photography via its successor media, film and video. Each work contains a degree of stillness that is in some way destabilized to disrupt the notion of a photograph as a suspended moment in time. The interaction of the three media allow for hybrid forms of moving images to emerge, generating the uncanny within the familiar while adding a sensorial – even visceral – dimension to our appreciation of the still image.
Jutta Strohmaier and Ken Jacobs combine traditional image-making with new editing capabilities. Strohmaier creates a time-lapse out of single stills; Jacob scans old stereographic images to bring them, flickering, to life, animated by nonlinear editing software. Gwenael Belanger inverts the process, re-editing single-channel footage into a spiraling animation of stills. Tuomo Rainio recontextualizes the materiality of film by using computer software to capture the process of celluloid as it is exposed. Karl Lemieux and Lucia Fezzuoglio use a classic film processing technique to create an interactive piece that renders the projected light as material to be moved through. Curated by by Mark Andre Pennock, coordinated by Karen Kraven.
1214 Queen St W
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MAY 7 - JUNE 6
M + M: GOOD TIMING / BAD TIMING
LAUSBERG CONTEMPORARY
OPENING MAY 7, 6 - 9PM
In Good Timing / Bad Timing, photographs and films take form as sequential compilations of many thousands of still images. For the series in front (2002), the German artist duo M + M (Marc Weis and Martin de Mattia) dissected television news reports and political broadcasts, such as Vladimir Putin’s 2007 speech at the Munich Conference on Security, to create works spanning the media of photography and film. What at first glance appears to be a complicated pattern of horizontal stripes is revealed to be the authority of television as a matrix of miniature stills upon closer inspection. Incorporating newsworthy spectacle from the last nine years and mixing military coverage with individual acts of violence, a magnitude of images reflecting the horrors of life every day are transformed into abstract images of colour and form.
In the series kurz vor fünf (shortly before 5) (2007), shimmering horizontal rows of still photographs are composed of M + M’s three-minute-long films made shortly before 5PM European Central Time. Capturing day-to-day activities in typical urban settings around the world, the works reflect the increasingly global flow of information and the limited ability of the individual to comprehend the whole. In a network of fleeting picture associations, M + M create an unnerving psychological commentary on contemporary urban life.
880 Queen St W
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MAY 1 - 31
ELI PALMER, MIKE ROBINSON
FIRST REVOLUTION, 1839: DAGUERREOTYPES AND THE INTIMATE GAZE
CAMPBELL HOUSE MUSEUM
OPENING MAY 7, 7 - 9PM
First Revolution, 1839 brings the experience of the original “still revolution” to a public immersed in widespread technological and social change.
Daguerreotypes, the first publicly available photographs, were invented before the advent of electrical illumination and had revolutionary social consequences. Exposed on silvered copper plates, daguerreotypes are small in scale, yet powerful in effect. Best seen in the low light of interior spaces, this exhibition within the oldest remaining brick home from the Town of York recreates the intimacy of daguerreotypes’ original surroundings.
The exhibition features rare early daguerreotypes made in Toronto, from the collection of Steven Evans, and a selection of new daguerreotypes by Mike Robinson, the only photographer practicing this technique in Canada today. Robinson has produced new daguerreotypes especially for the exhibition. Displayed within the authentic surroundings of Campbell House – on a mantelpiece, by a bed, in a traditional wooden cabinet – the exhibition highlights the intimate relationship that occurs between the viewer and the photographic object. As daguerreotypes were sometimes viewed in stereoscope, there will be a reproduction stereoscopic machine for viewing a specially selected image. An exhibition in the19th-century ballroom explains the medium’s origins and celebrates the story of Eli Palmer, Toronto's first known daguerreotypist. Lecture by Mike Robinson, May 14, 8 pm, "Daguerreotypes, Past and Present." Curated by Liz Driver, Curator of Campbell House, in partnership with Mike Robinson.
160 Queen St W
