Drake Hotel
Its Time: Gao Brothers, Osheen Harruthoonyan, Anne Arden McDonald, Elaine StockiOpening Apr. 30, 6 - 8PM
Photographs by their very nature alter our perception of time. Snatched from the narrative of our daily lives, photographic moments allow viewers to step outside themselves, pause and contemplate an image in their own time. This exhibition considers the push and pull of time within the context of photography by examining a variety of photographic practices, past and present.
Elaine Stocki’s portraits capture just a fraction of a second from a sitting that stretched on for hours. Brooklyn-based artist Anne Arden McDonald augments her photochemistry with household solutions such as bleach, aspirin and lemon juice to create contact prints that appear more painterly than photographic. Digital tools enable the Gao Brothers from China to seemingly stretch time in their monumental piece, the Forever Unfinished Building, while Osheen Harruthoonyan’s installation turns the camera obscura inside out, with realtime images projected into the Drake’s entrance. The exhibition continues on the front of the building where a dynamic slide show of archival photographs flows like a stream of consciousness every night in May. Curated by Mia Nielsen and Catherine Dean.
APR 20 - JUN 1 - 1150 Queen Street W
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Nicholas Metivier Gallery
Jeff Bark
Opening Apr. 30, 6 - 8PM
Jeff Bark’s work epitomizes photography’s return to pictorialism, a movement which first arose in the second half of the 19th century when the novelty of photographic accuracy began to fade. Macabre, voyeuristic and intimate, Bark’s works are constructed fictions reminiscent of painting (Ingres, Fischl and Carravagio’s opulent dramas of light and tone), fairy tales (the Brothers Grimm) and film (David Lynch). These elaborate mise-en-scènes explore contemporary urban themes such as the trials of adolescence and consumerism’s emotional debris. The luminous and dream-like qualities of Bark’s images draw you in, yet close inspection reveals his subjects to be engaged in ominous or perverse actions.
Bark hints at our interior worlds of fractured identities, the result of disharmony between nature and culture. He does this by juxtaposing the illusion of painting (perception) with the reality contained in the photograph (document) and by highlighting human instinct and vulnerability. These images are a celebration of ritual and the hidden states of being – mysterious scenes with mythic themes and subtle sexual undertones. Bark’s use of allegory to explore desire, isolation and greed produces a profound sense of the uncanny. Jeff Bark (born 1963) lives and works in New York. This is his first exhibition in Canada.
APR 30 - MAY 23 - 451 King Street W
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Olga Korper Gallery
Lynne Cohen
Opening Apr. 30, 6 - 9PM
For almost forty years, Lynne Cohen has photographed fragments of the real world, transforming them into found installations. Cohen’s background in sculpture may have intensified her interest in space itself, specifically the space in the surreal, claustrophobic places she photographs that have no way in and no way out. Devoid of human presence, her photographs of strange interiors, lobbies, laboratories and military installations suggest deception, manipulation and control. She is fascinated by the absurdity of modern existence with its camouflage of man-made materials, strange lights, doors that defy entry, threatening instruments left behind and spas that bring to mind anything but healing. Cohen’s interest in social justice lies beneath the surface of much of her work, underneath the layers of contradictions that make it almost impossible to determine the site-specificity of her images.
Using a large-format view camera, Cohen’s recent work includes the results of a first trip to Cuba. Combining analogue with digital scanning technology, her images appear more lifelike than reality itself and reveal startling similarities across time and space. One should not be deceived by the ostensible neutrality of Cohen’s formal devices; her work is as beautiful as it threatening and as much about social situations as about the politics of space.
APR 30 - MAY 30 - 17 Morrow Ave
