Posted on

The Unfinished Conversation: Encoding/Decoding at The Power Plant, Toronto

UNFINISHED-CONVERSATION-1-564px
John Akomfrah, still from The Unfinished Conversation, 2012. Collection of the Tate: Jointly purchased by Tate and the British Council, 2013. Courtesy the artist; Smoking Dogs Films; and Caroll/Fletcher, London.

THE UNFINISHED CONVERSATION:
ENCODING/DECODING

23 January – 18 May 2015
The Power Plant, Toronto

ARTISTS: Terry Adkins, John Akomfrah, Sven Augustijnen, Shelagh Keeley, Steve McQueen, and Zineb Sedira
CURATERS: Gaëtane Verna and Mark Sealy MBE

The Power Plant presents The Unfinished Conversation: Encoding/Decoding in partnership with Autograph ABP. The winter exhibition takes cultural theorist Stuart Hall’s (1932 – 2014) essay “Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse” as its point of departure, exploring how meaning is constructed, how it is systematically distorted by audience reception and how it can be detached and drained of its original intent to produce specific or slanted narratives.
Continue reading “The Unfinished Conversation: Encoding/Decoding at The Power Plant, Toronto”

Posted on

Art Marathon: Feature Art Fair [Slide Show]

Divya-Mehra-GeorgiaSchermanProjects-TO
Ulysses-Castellanos-GeorgiaSchermanProjects-TO
Jacynthe-Carrier-GalerieAntoineErtaskiran-MTL
Raphaelle-de-groot-graff
DavidHanes-BirchContemporary-TO
JessicaGroome-ErinStumpProjects-TO
Mark-Igloliorte-DonaldBrowne-MTL
ColleenHeslin-MonteClark-Toronto
EtienneZack-EquinoxGallery-VA
Beth-Stewart-Battat-Contemporary-MTL
TonyRomano-ClintRoenisch-TO
LizMagor-SusanHobbs-TO
Andrew-Wright-PatrickMikhailGallery-Ottawa
Caroline-Cloutier-NicolasRobert-MTL
Trevor-Gould-Galerie-Hughes-Charbonneau
GillesMihalcean-Statue-2014-LarocheJoncas-MTL
MilutinGubash-GTP-MTL
Jon-Sasaki-JessicaBradley-TO
OlgaChagaoutdinova-GTP-3
Feature-Fair-view

Divya Mehra, The Bitch Blues (where does the divide begin?) 2014 at Georgia Scherman Projects, Toronto

Ulysses Castellanos, SN393 (Frances Farmer) 2014 at Georgia Scherman Projects, Toronto

Jacynthe Carrier at Galerie Antoine Ertaskiran, Montreal

Raphaëlle de Groot at Galerie Graff, Montréal

David Hanes, Aware No 453 (that room), 2014 at Birch Contemporary, Toronto

Jessica Groome at Erin Stump Projects, Toronto

Mark Igloliorte, Untitled (Bird Cage) 2010 at Galerie Donald Browne, Montreal

Colleen Heslin at Monte Clark Gallery, Vancouver

Etienne Zack, Units, 2014 at Equinox Gallery, Vancouver

Beth Stewart, Interior (V.S.); Interior (F.S.); Interior (I.C.) 2014 & Untitled, stanchion, 2014 at Battat Contemporary, Montreal

Tony Romano, Tear at the Party, 2014 at Clint Roenisch, Toronto

Liz Magor, Mademoiselle Raymonde, 2014 at Susan Hobbs, Toronto

Andrew Wright, Disused Twin Lens Camera (crack missing), Sepia Version, 2014 at Patrick Michail Gallery, Ottawa

Carolin Cloutier at Nicolas Robert, Montreal

Trevor Gould, Pierrot, 2014 (left) & A Trick of the Eye, 2014 at Galerie Hugues Charbonneau, Montreal

Gilles Mihalcean, Statue, 2014 at Laroche/Joncas, Montreal

Milutin Gubash at Galerie Trois points, Montreal

Robb Jamieson, Failed Art, 2011 at Laroche/Joncas, Montreal

Fair view (Olga Chagaoutdinova at Galerie Trois Points, Montreal)

View from the fair

Divya-Mehra-GeorgiaSchermanProjects-TO thumbnailUlysses-Castellanos-GeorgiaSchermanProjects-TO thumbnailJacynthe-Carrier-GalerieAntoineErtaskiran-MTL thumbnailRaphaelle-de-groot-graff thumbnailDavidHanes-BirchContemporary-TO thumbnail
JessicaGroome-ErinStumpProjects-TO thumbnailMark-Igloliorte-DonaldBrowne-MTL thumbnailColleenHeslin-MonteClark-Toronto thumbnailEtienneZack-EquinoxGallery-VA thumbnailBeth-Stewart-Battat-Contemporary-MTL thumbnail
TonyRomano-ClintRoenisch-TO thumbnailLizMagor-SusanHobbs-TO thumbnailAndrew-Wright-PatrickMikhailGallery-Ottawa thumbnailCaroline-Cloutier-NicolasRobert-MTL thumbnailTrevor-Gould-Galerie-Hughes-Charbonneau thumbnail
GillesMihalcean-Statue-2014-LarocheJoncas-MTL thumbnailMilutinGubash-GTP-MTL thumbnailJon-Sasaki-JessicaBradley-TO thumbnailOlgaChagaoutdinova-GTP-3 thumbnailFeature-Fair-view thumbnail
right

All photos by M-KOS.

Posted on

Feature – A new OFF fair for Toronto

Feature_VIP_1
Feature Art Fair, VIP opening on 22 October 2013. Photo by M-KOS

Feature premiered its four-day fair on 23 October, as a somewhat smaller yet more sophisticated alternative to the Toronto International Art Fair (TIAF). The TD Bank sponsored event showcased no more than two dozen Canadian galleries, cherry picked by Montreal based AGAC (Association des Galeries d’Art Contemporain) to present some of the most forward thinking artists in the region. Inside the main rehearsal spaces of the Canadian Opera Company – a free-standing 10,000 square feet interior in a historic building of downtown Toronto – each exhibitor presented a maximum of three artists, laid out within wide-angled walls that blurred the threshold between the fair corridors and gallery booths. Feature’s limited selection did however reflect the country’s main cultural hubs by keeping to contemporary galleries from Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, with the exception of Patrick Mikhail in Ottawa.

Continue reading “Feature – A new OFF fair for Toronto”

Posted on

Art Marathon: Scotiabank Nuit Blanche 2014, Toronto [Slide Show]

Dress_reheasal_nbto_cbracmort_564
nbto_halflife_cbracmort_564
nbto_betweendoors_cbracmort_564
nbto_brightbundle_cbracmort_564
nbto_walkamongtheworlds_cbracmort_564
nbto_shylight_cbracmort_564
nbto_globalrainbow_cbracmort_564
nbto_Silent_Rise_cbracmort_564
nbto_sunriseandfall_cbracmort_564

Tor Lukasik-Foss (Hamilton,Canada), Dress Rehearsal, 2014. [Exhibition: PERFORMANCE ANXIETY curated by Heather Pesanti. ©Cécilia Bracmort

Shasti O’leary-Soudant (Baffalo, USA), Halflife, 2014. [Exhibition: PERFORMANCE ANXIETY curated by Heather Pesanti] ©Cécilia Bracmort

Labspace Studio ( John Loerchner & Laura Mendes, Toronto, Canada) Between Doors, 2014 [Exhibition: BEFORE THE DAY BREAK curated by Magda Gonzalez-Mora] ©Cécilia Bracmort

Bruno Billio (Toronto, Canada), Bright Bundle, 2014 [Exhibition: BEFORE THE DAY BREAK curated by Magda Gonzalez-Mora] ©Cécilia Bracmort

Maximo Gonzalez (Mexico city, Mexico), Walk among Worlds, 2014 [Exhibition: BETWEEN THE EARTH AND THE SKY, THE POSSIBILITY OF EVERYTHING curated by Dominique Fontaine] ©Cécilia Bracmort

Urban Vision/Nathan Whitford (Toronto, Canada), Shy lights, 2014 [Exhibition: BETWEEN THE EARTH AND THE SKY, THE POSSIBILITY OF EVERYTHING curated by Dominique Fontaine] ©Cécilia Bracmort

Urban Vision/Nathan Whitford (Toronto, Canada), Shy lights, 2014 [Exhibition: BETWEEN THE EARTH AND THE SKY, THE POSSIBILITY OF EVERYTHING curated by Dominique Fontaine] ©Cécilia Bracmort

Yvette Mattern (NY/Berlin), Global Rainbow, 2009-2014 [Exhibition: BETWEEN THE EARTH AND THE SKY, THE POSSIBILITY OF EVERYTHING curated by Dominique Fontaine] ©Cécilia Bracmort

Glenda Leon (Havana, Cuba), Silence Rise, 2012 [Exhibition: BETWEEN THE EARTH AND THE SKY, THE POSSIBILITY OF EVERYTHING curated by Dominique Fontaine] ©Cécilia Bracmort

Derek Liddington (Toronto, Canada), The Sun will always rise and fall from east to west, 2014. [Exhibition: THE NIGHT CIRCUS, curated by Denise Markonish] ©Cécilia Bracmort

Dress_reheasal_nbto_cbracmort_564 thumbnailnbto_halflife_cbracmort_564 thumbnailnbto_betweendoors_cbracmort_564 thumbnailnbto_brightbundle_cbracmort_564 thumbnailnbto_walkamongtheworlds_cbracmort_564 thumbnail
nbto_shylight_cbracmort_564 thumbnail thumbnailnbto_globalrainbow_cbracmort_564 thumbnailnbto_Silent_Rise_cbracmort_564 thumbnailnbto_sunriseandfall_cbracmort_564 thumbnail
right

All photos by Cécilia Bracmort.

Read the interview with Dominique Fontaine, one of the four guest curators of Scotiabank Nuit Blanche Toronto 2014.

Posted on

In conversation with Dominique Fontaine, guest curator for Scotiabank Nuit Blanche Toronto 2014

Global-Rainbow-(Exhibition-A)-7x5_300dpi_featured_800wide_564
Yvette Mattern, Global Rainbow, 2009-2014 | Courtesy the artist and Scotiabank Nuit Blanche 2014

Dominique Fontaine is an independent curator based in Montreal, and amongst the four guest curators (Fontaine, Denise Markonish, Magda Gonzalez-Mora and Heather Pesanti) organizing this year’s Scotiabank Nuit Blanche in Toronto, kicking off at sunset this 4th October. Fontaine discusses her experience with M-KOS.

MKOS: How did you get involved with this year’s event?

Dominique Fontaine [DF]: A couple of years ago, I was invited to submit a proposal for Nuit Blanche. So, I submitted my proposal to the committee in Toronto who reviewed it and luckily it was accepted for this year’s event. That was a year and a half ago, and since then I’ve been working on the exhibition.

MKOS: Does Nuit Blanche have an overall theme? How did you fit your own curatorial project into this?

DF: Nuit Blanche is simply a celebration of contemporary art. Each curator proposed a project related to the specificity of Nuit Blanche, a 12 hour, overnight event attracting a massive number of Torontonians and outside visitors. My part of Nuit Blanche is entitled “Between the earth and sky, the possibility of everything” but it is not constructed like a traditional thematic exhibition. It’s rather a framework that creates a context for the audience to experience art. Continue reading “In conversation with Dominique Fontaine, guest curator for Scotiabank Nuit Blanche Toronto 2014”

Posted on

Christopher Kulendran Thomas “When Platitudes Become Form” at Mercer Union, Toronto

When_Platitudes_Become_Form_1
Christopher Kulendran Thomas, When Platitudes Become Form. Courtesy the artist and Mercer Union

Christopher Kulendran Thomas
When Platitudes Become Form
6 September – 12 October 2013
at Mercer Union, Toronto

Through his ongoing enterprise When Platitudes Become Form Christopher Kulendran Thomas reconfigures artworks by some of Sri Lanka’s most celebrated young artists purchased through the new contemporary art gallery scene in Colombo. The dislocation of artworks from one context to another, rather than operating as a seamless transition, is problematised by Thomas who mobilises current aesthetic tropes to translate contemporary art’s mimetic forms from the West. Contemporary art rather than universal becomes a language as material form translated from one context to another.
Continue reading “Christopher Kulendran Thomas “When Platitudes Become Form” at Mercer Union, Toronto”

Posted on

Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin “To Photograph the Details of a Dark Horse in Low Light” at Gallery TPW, Toronto & on billboards across Canada

Broomberg-&-Chanarin-bilboards_564
© Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin. Courtesy the artists and Galery TPW

Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin
To Photograph the Details of a Dark Horse in Low Light
29 April – 2 June 2013
National Billboard campaign, Canada
11 May – 8 June 2013
Gallery TPW, Toronto

* Presented in partnership with Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival, Toronto

Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin’s To Photograph the Details of a Dark Horse in Low Light presents a national billboard campaign that depicts glamorous Caucasian women in high-contrast dress posed in front of neutral grey backgrounds. Collectively known as “Shirleys,” the portraits are culled from an archive of Kodak “norm reference cards,” historically used to calibrate skin tone in a photograph. French director Jean-Luc Godard made Kodak’s apparent predilection for white skin famous by refusing to use Kodak film on assignment in Mozambique in 1975. Kodak film, he insisted, was “racist.” Responding primarily to the confectionary and furniture industries’ complaints that they could not properly render dark chocolate or dark wood, Kodak chemists developed an emulsion that more accurately depicted darker colours: Gold Max, the first popular consumer film to address this problem, was initially described by Kodak as able “to photograph the details of a dark horse in low light.”
Continue reading “Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin “To Photograph the Details of a Dark Horse in Low Light” at Gallery TPW, Toronto & on billboards across Canada”

Posted on

Niall McClelland “The Nature Of Your Oppression Is The Aesthetic Of Our Anger” at Clint Roenisch Gallery, Toronto

Niall_McClelland_image1
Niall McClelland, We Lost The War, 2013. Metal, plastic, rubber and fabric. Courtesy the artist and Clint Roenisch Gallery, Toronto

Niall McClelland
The Nature Of Your Oppression Is The Aesthetic Of Our Anger
8 March — 13 April 2013
at Clint Roenisch Gallery, Toronto

Over the last five years Niall McClelland has built up a diverse body of work that mines the veins of arte povera, punk rock and urban minimalism. It is just as often started outdoors, left on a fire escape all winter, baked on a dock all summer or folded into his pockets, nabbed through a 3am hole in a fence, as it is made in the studio in explosive clouds of mercury dust and flying glass. There is certainly an alchemical aspect involved: from the crudest materials comes beauty and elegance, hungover on the surface, left like scars. Texture reigns. And process. Both run through his various series, the Tapestries, Skins and Stains to name a few. Often economic circumstance begats the best results, like the thrown-out toner cartridges scavenged from the back of Dufferin Mall. Continue reading “Niall McClelland “The Nature Of Your Oppression Is The Aesthetic Of Our Anger” at Clint Roenisch Gallery, Toronto”

Posted on

Melanie Authier “Jostling Pictorial Oppositions” at Georgia Scherman Projects, Toronto

Over Eons 56 x 66 Authier 2013
Melanie Authier, Over Eons, 2013. acrylic on canvas. 56 x 66 inches. © Melanie Authier. Courtesy of Georgia Scherman Projects, Toronto

Melanie Authier
Jostling Pictorial Oppositions
7 February – 16 March 2013
at Georgia Scherman Projects, Toronto

[…] in my painting practice, I’m referencing the histories of abstraction but I’m utilizing strategies of representation. So within my painting there are elements of traditional Landscape painting: foreground, middle ground, background, atmospheric space, texture, variety of texture, scale of the formal elements. These things I’m playing around with but I’m translating them through an abstract language. I think that allows for some really dynamic opportunities to take place. Continue reading “Melanie Authier “Jostling Pictorial Oppositions” at Georgia Scherman Projects, Toronto”

Posted on

Opportunities: Call for writers – C Magazine New Critics Competition

C New Critics Competitions

Submission deadline: Friday 19 April 2013

The C New Critics Competition is designed to help develop and promote the work of emerging art critics. Writers are asked to submit a review of an exhibition, performance, or site-specific intervention of between 800 and 1,000 words in length, by Friday April 19, 2013.
Continue reading “Opportunities: Call for writers – C Magazine New Critics Competition”