APR 9 - MAY 31
AWASHAWAVE: LOUIS FORTIER, ANTONIA HIRSCH, YOUNG-SUP KIM, ARNOLD KOROSHEGYI, DIANE LANDRY, MICHAEL SNOW, KELLY WOOD
BLACKWOOD GALLERY
Awashawave, with an alliterative title that slips by, examines (conceptually, phenomenologically, politically) the fruitful tensions between the still and moving image. This group exhibition presents figurative and literal interpretations of inundation and the perceptual tensions that result from being one amongst the many.
Examining facets of the concept of being flooded, awashawave presents a selection of works that embodies the shift from the single image to the series, from a discernable point to a dense mass: a washing machine turned into a praxinoscope (Landry); an audio work utilizing shortwave radio signals (Snow); ceramic objects made of white speaker wire that emit sounds of washing (Kim); images produced by a home-built scanner-camera that fuse digital technology and 19th-century photographic techniques (Koroshegyi); audio tracks converted into dense black and white “sonic” images (Wood); a video projection of someone doing the “wave” in an empty stadium (Hirsch); and a series of abject self-portraits rendered in wax (Fortier). By engaging in seemingly anachronistic investigations, these artists offer fresh contemporary perspectives on the significance of image production, perception and reception. Curated by Christof Migone.
Image by Arnold Koroshegyi, Rupture 1, 2008
3359 Mississauga Road N, (Offices CCT Building 3021), Mississauga
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
APR 18 - MAY 30
RAFAEL GOLDCHAIN
O BORN CONTEMPORARY
At first glance, Rafael Goldchain’s photographs appear to be traditional family portraits from the early 20th century. However after closer inspection, we discover that our expectations have been surreptitiously subverted. The products of considerable research and conceptual rigour, Goldchain’s photographs are self-portraits: detailed reenactments of his familial and cultural history. They begin to take form as the artist poses for the camera in full costume and makeup. Using digital technology, he seamlessly manipulates DNA and history to present us with a gallery of rogues, beauties, geeks and philosophers. Looking at his avatars and digital revenants, we barely recognize the slightest trace of the self he has chosen to portray.
Connecting fragments of information gathered about the lives of his Eastern European Jewish grandparents and their families, while acknowledging the impossibility of reconciliation, I Am My Family reflects a way of both mourning and remembering. In a further act of transformation, as if to fill a great void of information, Goldchain has created additional members of a chosen family who are completely fabricated. Prompted by the artifice used in his invocation of bloodlines, we are left to ponder our collective history of fragments. Curated by P. Elaine Sharpe.
710 Yonge Street, Upstairs
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
APR 29 - MAY 31
DONALD WEBER: THE DRUNKEN BRIDE, RUSSIA UNVEILED
PIKTO
The Drunken Bride, Russia Unveiled, a series of photographs captured during the last three years by Donald Weber, reveals the enduring tragedy that has resulted from Stalinist-era corrective labour camps known as Gulag. At the time of the Russian Revolution in 1917, approximately 16 thousand people lived in Czarist prisons. Two years later, an estimated 70 thousand men, women and children had been sentenced to live in the labour camps under the Bolsheviks. While estimates vary, it is said that as many as 40 million people were absorbed into the Gulag system before it was abolished in 1960. Today, many Gulag survivors and their descendants still maintain a bleak existence in remote wastelands.
Weber documents the complex aftermath of the Gulag: the beautiful forested sites where prisoners were shot and disposed of; the forgotten, aging survivors who continue a daily struggle for survival; the network of prisoners, known as Zeks, that flaunt elaborate tattoos whose symbology dates back to the early 19th century.
Originally from Toronto, Donald Weber is an award-winning photographer currently dividing his time between Moscow and Kiev. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2007 and a World Press Award, he is represented by VII Network. Curated by Johan H. Campbell.
55 Mill St Building 59 -103
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
APR 30 - MAY 26
ANDREW WRIGHT: STILL WATER
PEAK GALLERY
Multimedia and photographic artist Andrew Wright creates a particular kind of imagery that both identifies and challenges conventional uses and understandings of photographic practice. In Still Water, his new photo-sculptural series, he continues his interest in probing the way in which imaging technologies mediate meaning. Wright has explored antique optical devices, such as the camera obscura, as well as contemporary electronic strategies to question conventional approaches to image making and interpretation. Wright’s subjects vary, but they often take on traditional tropes (landscape, portraiture, the natural world, the cinema) to create perceptual bridges that examine the very conditions of image production. The artist sees the seemingly inevitable demise of traditional photographic techniques as problematic, and the beginning of a void. Therefore, photographic “blackness” has become increasingly important in his investigations.
Using images of an endless waterfall at night, Wright’s new work posits an experience of the photographic that sits mid-way between picture plane and object in the round. The photographs are simultaneously recognizable representations that make use of perspectival space, and two-dimensional images of pattern and hue that occupy the real space of the viewer. They become forms of the here and now while referring to an uncertain elsewhere.
23 Morrow Ave
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MAY 1 - 20
SUSAN DOBSON: RETAIL
THE DEPARTMENT
Susan Dobson’s recent body of work, Retail (2008) continues her exploration of architecture and land use in the suburban landscape. In this work, she examines the makeshift nature of retail architecture and consumer culture’s dependence on the automobile. The series of large, colour inkjet prints depict franchise retail outlets set against optimistic blue skies and vast, deserted parking lots. The structures are digitally masked with an asphalt colour. The resulting large gray boxes highlight the unimaginative and provisional designs of big retail stores, while the empty lots, stripped of cars (and hence of purpose), are transformed into urban wastelands. Dobson’s images foreshadow the future of temporary architecture and of rampant consumerism during a time of economic uncertainty and growing environmental awareness. Seen within this context, writes Robin Metcalfe, “Dobson’s ghostly big-box stores glisten like a digital mirage, prescient images of a doomed landscape.” The photographs describe the future perfect – that which will have been – an ominous future, cast back in time.
1389 Dundas St W
