Our Current Issue [Toronto Exhibitions Calendar] Weee! It's summertime! Toronto is splitting its sides with exhbitions and events to keep your eyes popping until the leaves fall off the trees. Check out what's going on around town: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ALLIANCE FRANCAISE DE TORONTO Pierre-Leon Gallery 24 Spadina Road Toronto ON 416.922.2014 x35 Hours: Mon: 9:30am to 9:30pm, Tue to Thu: 9:30am to 6:30pm, Fri & Sat: 9:30am to 4:00pm, Sun: closed January 23 to March 28, 2013 Brian Damude: A Journey With Phantoms Opening reception: Wednesday January 23, 6:30 pm Curator: Dominique Denis The narrow strip of highway cuts an endless line through the northern Chilean desert towards the village of San Pedro de Atacama and the Bolivian border. For what seems like hundreds of kilometers there are no curves, no communities or crossroads. No speed limit need be recognized, since the road is rarely if ever patrolled by police. The only traces of humanity are the detritus of tragedy and the handcrafted monuments dotting the roadside. This is the setting of Brian Damude's new photography exhibition, A Journey With Phantoms. Stories told by a shoe half buried in the crust of the desert, a strip of tire tread lying like a sloughed-off snake skin in a ditch, a weather-beaten coat, folded and left under a pile of stones. Then there are the makeshift markers: a wooden cross, canted at a strange angle, decorated with plastic flowers and broken Ray Bans; an oil drum overflowing with pieces of a wrecked automobile and garnished with the passengers' personal possessions; jerry rigged markers of piled stone and scavenged wood, emblazoned with Christian and Inca symbols. Most affecting are the carefully constructed shrines describing the sense of loss and history that resides in these places of rupture, somehow made sacred by a loved one's evidence of devotion. Miniature handmade churches and chapels appear by the roadside, tiny jewels of faith in an endless, featureless universe. They allow us to contemplate the fate of an unknown traveler, or perhaps the fragility of one's own moment on earth - and the brief spark of history we represent as we speed along on our own metaphorical blacktop in the desert. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ART GALLERY OF MISSISSAUGA 300 City Centre Drive, Ground floor, South East corner Mississauga, L5B 3C1 Hours: Mon - Fri 9 am - 5 pm, Sat & Sun Noon to 4 pm January 17 - March 2, 2013 Visual Arts Mississauga 35th Annual Juried Show of Fine Arts The AGM has hosted the annual VAM Juried Art Show for the last 25 years. This year's exhibition includes photography for the first time. Please contact Visual Arts Mississauga at 905-277-4313 or email for information on the call for entry. March 7 - April 19, 2013 Roots and Branches ARTISTS Immony Men, Meghan Broadhurst, Karen Maze, Faisal Anwar, Christopher Pandolfi, Simon Rabinyuk Roots and Branches connects diverse groups together through art & literature as a shared experience to enrich community building. A collaboration by the AGM and the Mississauga Library System. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ANGELL GALLERY 12 Ossington Avenue Toronto, M6J 2Y7 Tel: 416.530.0444 Hours: Wed - Sat 12pm - 5pm January 19, 2013 to February 23, 2013 STILLS: Moments of Extreme Consequence Opening reception Saturday January 26, 1-4 pm Artist Talk Saturday January 26, 3pm STILLS: Moments of Extreme Consequence, a solo Exhibition at the Angell Gallery Toronto, includes recent pieces created during the artist's residency as part of the renowned International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) in New York. Continuing her investigation into the nature of existence, Perunovich focuses on the concept of life-defining moments, which she invites us to experience as "stills" -- moments in between movement and immobility. Significant events are emblematically represented on canvas, paper and film as splashes, spills, enclosures and entrapments. Figurative, abstract and text imagery is linked through Perunovich's reduced, yet dramatic and sensual palette of black, white and, her signature color, blood red. With a visceral edge that pokes at the body while provoking the mind, Perunovich infuses her thoughtful meditations on the human condition with irony, humor and beauty. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ART GALLERY OF YORK UNIVERSITY Accolade East Building 4700 Keele Street Toronto T: 416.736.5169 E: emelie@yorku.ca Mon to Fri, 10 am-4 pm; Wed, 10am-8 pm; Sun from noon-5 pm; and closed Sat. Jan 16 - Mar 17, 2013 Deanna Bowen: Invisible Empires I had crossed the line, I was free but there was no one to welcome me to the land of freedom. I was a stranger in a strange land. - Harriet Tubman Deanna Bowen: Invisible Empires is a bold exhibition that presents a view on the Ku Klux Klan both during the American Civil Rights Movement era and its century-long history in Canada. Yes, in Canada. This radical new project stems from Toronto artist Deanna Bowen's inquiry into her own ancestry of Black pioneers who emigrated from Oklahoma to northern Alberta in the early twentieth century, a crossing mirrored by the Klan themselves. Her autobiographical approach and archival investigations, though, deviate in this exhibition. Documents no longer serve the purpose of memorializing a traumatic past experience by means of an empathetic act of witnessing in the present, working through the traumatic archives of memory. Instead Bowen "crosses the line" into enemy territory by working with an "archive" of Klan material. "Working through" takes on a whole new dimension when the archives that supposedly are memorialized are those of the KKK, and when these documents and scenarios are re-enacted in the present for us to witness, and re-live. Laying it on the line, she in fact creates the KKK's archive, memorializing it to another purpose and implicating us as spectators. In this endeavor, she, furthermore, "crosses the line" in what is expected or "permitted" of a Black artist by, in effect, reversing her area of concern from Black Studies to White Studies. This pioneering new work painfully breaks open the polarizing positions of racist ideologies embedded in the Klan's history, as well as the discourses that evolve out of them by placing us squarely at the centre of the debate today: a line to be crossed or a line to be drawn? The exhibition opens on Wednesday January 16, 6-9 pm with a commissioned performance re-creation of a twenty-minute October 24, 1965, CBC television interview between Calvin Craig, Grand Dragon of the Georgia Realm of the United Klans of America and the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan; his fellow Klansman George Sleigh; Civil Rights activist Reverend James Bevel; and This Hour Has Seven Days host Robert Hoyt. The exhibition continues through to Sunday, March 17, 2013. The (Performance) Buses Are A'Comin' The Performance Bus departs OCADU (100 McCaul Street) on Wednesday, January 16 at 6 pm sharp, tracing a route through history into the present as Shelly Hamilton, Reena Katz, and Archer Peckawis take you on a ride to and from the opening reception of Deanna Bowen's exhibition opening at AGYU. The Performance Bus returns downtown at 9 pm. This freedom ride is free. AGYU Vitrines Once you've crossed the line, there's no turning back. This iteration of AGYU Vitrines is part of Deanna Bowen's exhibition and intimately connected to its strategies of presenting KKK material without necessarily revealing a critical context. Here the banners of Klavern Number 10 of Red Bank, New Jersey, with their kitschy symbolism, are reproduced as backlit advertising in the public spaces of York University, beyond the symbolic and critical space of the gallery: perhaps a line that shouldn't be crossed? Crossing the Line: a Symposium on Difficult Images How does one confront images of racism on the same order as those of violence and the atrocities of genocide? Can we begin to read images differently other than archiving them as memorializations of past traumas to be worked through? Crossing the Line addresses issues of difficult knowledge, difficult histories, and difficult images in a free, public one-day symposium to be held on Thursday, February 28 in room W132 Schulich School of Business, York University. Visit www.theAGYUisOutThere.org for further details and list of participants. Leading up to the symposium, AGYU has partnered with TPW R&D for a series of difficult discussions around the difficult image. This series of intimate discursive sessions attempts to expose and examine methods of artistic production surrounding trauma history and difficult knowledge. The Art Gallery of York University is a university-affiliated public non-profit contemporary art gallery supported by York University, The Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the City of Toronto through the Toronto Arts Council, and our membership. Deanna Bowen: Invisible Empires is produced with the generous financial support of Partners in Art. Crossing the Line is generously sponsored by Partners in Art and produced with the assistance of the Ontario Arts Council Investment Fund. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- BLACKWOOD GALLERY at the University of Toronto 359 Mississauga Road North Mississauga, ON L5L 1C6 T: 905.828.3789 Gallery Hours: Mon - Fri, 11 - 5pm; Sun, 1 - 4pm September 4, 2012 - May 1, 2013 Dorothy Foster Chubb Head William Davis Building Bernie Miller Billboard/Lightbox, UTM campus Every Fall the Blackwood Gallery commissions an artist to produce a work for the Bernie Miller Lightbox, a billboard sized (268.0 cm x 176.5 cm, 108" x 72") venue installed on the outside of the William Davis Building (formerly known as South Building) where the two wings of the building meet at the end of "Five Minute Walk". The commissioned work stays throughout the school year. In the summer, the Lightbox displays the original work by Bernie Miller, 5-Minute Mirror (2001), which inaugurated the site. CURATORIAL STATEMENT Maria Wishart's establishment in 1925 of the Department of Medical Art Service at the University of Toronto remains a pioneering initiative. Most significantly, the updated program - now called Biomedical Communication - facilitated by contemporary technologies, has an unbroken history to this day. In 1941, Dr. J.C.B. Grant from the University of Toronto approached the Philadelphia publisher Williams and Wilkins to initiate the publication of the first North American anatomical atlas. A team of highly skilled, predominantly women artists including Maria Wishart, Eila Hopper-Ross, Nancy Joy, Elizabeth Blackstock, Marguerite Drummond and Dorothy Foster Chubb became major contributors to Grant's Anatomical Atlas first published in 1943. Dorothy Forster Chubb's illustrations were renowned and were commissioned by many outstanding surgeons of the time. Chubb's artwork presented here on the billboard is rooted in classical traditions and is situated at a boundary between the history of anatomical depictions and contemporary representation. Grant was the editor for the first six editions, the Atlas is currently produced under the editorship of Prof. Anne Agur. The artworks illustrating these publications have changed the context in which anatomy has been perceived and taught since the middle of the 20th century. On one hand, the works belong to the realm of medicine; on the other hand, the illustrators were trained artists whose drawings deserve attention in an art historical context. These artists used their underlying knowledge of art and science to achieve a balance between realistic rendering and an artistic vision. The works also provide a glimpse of a time when the opportunities for women in medical study and practice were severely restricted. The essential beauty of the original artworks remains elusive and practically impossible to faithfully reproduce, thus the collection and history of these marvelous artworks housed at the University of Toronto has become an irreplaceable national treasure. The reproduction of this drawing is Blackwood Gallery's 2012 Commission for the Bernie Miller Lightbox. It is also part of the exhibition SPLICE: At the Intersection of Art and Medicine on display at the Blackwood Gallery from October 24th to December 1st 2012. The primary aim of this exhibition is to make visible the artists who created these magnificent original artworks. - Nina Czegledy, guest curator -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CAMPBELL HOUSE MUSEUM 160 Queen Street West Toronto, ON M5H 3H3 E: campbellhouse@bellnet.ca Gallery Hours: Tuesday to Friday, 9:30 am - 4:30 pm; Saturday, noon - 4:30 pm Sunday, 12:00-4:30 pm, between Victoria Day in May and Thanksgiving Day in October May 3, 2013 Opening of Occupational Portraits by The Tintype Studio A "feature exhibition" for Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival Tintype events through May. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIAZ CONTEMPORARY 100 Niagara Street Toronto, ON M5V 1C5 416.361.2972 E: laura@diazcontemporary.ca Gallery hours: Tuesday to Saturday 11 to 6, or by appointment 15 November 2012 to 12 January 2013 Opening Thursday 15 November from 6 to 8 Karin Davie Shadows, Liquids & Life: New Works on Paper An exhibition of recent works on paper by Karin Davie. This will be the artist's first solo show with the gallery and in Toronto. Davie, a leading contemporary abstract painter, introduces two new series of gouache drawings, Liquid Life and Shadow Days. Both series continue Davie's exploration of abstraction, perception and process. Karin Davie is best known for her sensual 'stripe' abstractions and hyperbolic compositions. Her contemporary practice has been viewed in context with the ideas of painting-as-performance from 1950s Abstract Expressionism and the optical endeavours of 1960s Op Art. Yet Davie departs from these formalist and largely masculine painting traditions, rejecting the notion of a pure abstraction for a more referential and representational approach. Davie utilizes the language of abstraction as suggestive curvature and energetic forms to create unexpectedly psychologically charged images. While earlier movements in abstraction have often emphasized the painted surface, Davie's more recent works evoke great depth and psychic space. Backgrounds of neon-like colours simultaneously hide and reveal themselves amidst a field of velvety black brushstrokes in Shadow Days, conjuring nuances of an ominous urban environment at night. These dense compositions tempt the viewer to wonder what exists behind and beyond. The drawings of Liquid Life consist of layers of overlapping and undulating brushstrokes that graduate in colour around the edges of subtly shaped paper. The images are strangely reminiscent of internal, visceral spaces, as well as viscous fluids or supernatural waves of energy. Davie's forms hover between the physical and metaphysical, push the boundaries of the paper's edge and invite the viewer to imagine their performative creation Karin Davie was born in Toronto and is currently based in New York, NY and Seattle, WA. She holds a BFA from Queens University in Kingston, ON and an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, RI. Davie has an extensive exhibition history, including solo shows at Mary Boone Gallery in New York, NY, SITE Santa Fe, NM, Agnes Etherington Art Centre in Kingston, ON, Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, NY, Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art in Ridgefield, CT, the Project Space at MOMA, NY, White Cube in London, UK, and Wetterling Gallery in Stockholm, Sweden. In 2006, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery presented a major career retrospective of Davie's paintings, sculptures and drawings. Her work is held in many public and private collections including: Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Seattle Art Museum, the Oppenheimer Collection at the Nerman Museum in Kansas City, MO, the Rubbell Family Collection in Miami, FL, the Maramotti Museum in Reggio Emilia, Italy, the Norton Museum in West Palm Beach, FL, the Marx Collection in Germany and the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GALLERY WEST 1172 Queen Street West Toronto ON M6J 1J5 T: 416.913.7116 E: info@gallerywest.info Gallery Hours: Tue-Sat 1:00pm - 7:00pm February 7 - 28, 2013 Jaimie Cooper: Whitney's Biennial Opening Reception: Thursday, February 7 from 7-10 PM It is only one year since Whitney Houston's life was tragically ended. gallerywest is transformed into a fictional biennale exhibition of works inspired by Victoria-based artist Jamie Cooper's ardent admiration for pop icon Whitney Houston. Star performers have long been an integral component of subjectivity, a resource for survival, as well as a source of inspiration for generations of queer children, adults and artists. Tracing the aesthetic lines that connect and separate kitchen-table craft projects and art, decor from installation, artifice and reality, Cooper's project is equal parts collage, shrine, scrapbook, installation and assemblage. Through critical exploration of the tropes and conventions of both "high" and "low" cultural production, Cooper's homage to legendary diva Whitney Houston moves beyond irony and towards the sphere of the intimate and subjective. Originally from St. Johns and currently based in Victoria, Jamie Cooper's creative practice spans a broad range of media and exhibition practices from performance, writing, collage and installation to designing for numerous theatre and film productions. He holds a BFA in theatre design, and earned an MFA in interdisciplinary studies from the University of Regina in 2012. Current research interests include, the artist as an identity, cultural agency, dance moms, divas, and gayness as cultural practice. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I.M.A GALLERY 80 Spadina, Suite 305 Toronto, ON 416.703.2235 Gallery hours: Wednesday - Saturday, 12 - 5 p.m. Stephen Broomer & Dan Browne: Superimposition January 9th - February 2nd, 2013 Opening Reception: Thursday, January 17th, 6 - 9 p.m. RSVP: facebook.com/events/364574373638892/ Stephen Broomer and Dan Browne met in 2009 as members of the Loop Collective, an experimental film group started in 1996 at Ryerson University, where both are currently pursuing PhDs in the Communication and Culture program. This show emphasizes an aesthetic characteristic their work shares: the superimposition of diverse images within a single pictorial plane. Stephen Broomer's photography draws from diverse influences such as the calligraphic palimpsest paintings of Cy Twombly and the avant-garde films of Bruce Baillie. As in Twombly's late polaroids, Broomer's work is also committed to eternal and mythological themes: Midland has its origins in his film Brebeuf, shot at sites in Midland, Ontario that were central in the missionary and ethnographic work of Jean de Brebeuf, who, along with Gabriel Lalament, was martyred by the Iroquois at St. Ignace II in 1648, a consequence of their mission to convert Hurons to Christianity. The images originate on 16mm motion picture film, and then through a series of chance operations, are combined digitally to create densely layered collages. The resulting images combine landscapes with other photographic subjects and solid colours, creating collisions between forms. Dan Browne's memento mori is a multimedia project generated from a digital archive of images gathered over a decade of working as a photographer, and re-contextualized through experimental image processing into a multi-layered time-lapse to generate an accelerated and intentionally distorted personal history recorded at the junction of technology and internal perceptual experience. Through multiple layering, traditional spatial and temporal modes are remapped within a manifold complexity involving as many as a dozen or more individual photos within a single frame, pulsating at 24 frames per second, de-familiarizing objects and generating innovative visual forms. Browne's work aims to generate open-ended poetic forms without closure or specific end--viable to continue within new contexts and subject to a potentially indefinite number of remixes and permutations. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- KOFFLER CENTRE OF THE ARTS 4588 Bathurst Street Toronto ON M2R 1W6 T: 416.636.1880 x 269 January 10 to March 3, 2013 Koffler Gallery Off-Site at General Hardware Contemporary 1520 Queen St. West, Toronto Clint Neufeld: Pipe Dreams of Madame Recamier Curator: Mona Filip The Koffler Gallery Off-Site presents the first solo exhibition in Toronto of Saskatchewan-based artist Clint Neufeld, comprising recent sculptural works and light-box vinyl drawings. Starting from personal recollections, Neufeld mines his regional prairie past and relationships with male figures in his life, articulating an investigation of masculine/feminine dichotomy and notions of beauty, labour, and materiality. For the past few years, Neufeld has been working with mechanical equipment and tools, casting them in delicately painted ceramic, porcelain or wax and staging them on domestic furniture and parlor accoutrements. The fanciful car engines, transmissions, valves, and excavating buckets role-play as dandies and socialites, transposed to materials and settings traditionally associated with fine dinnerware and tea parties. Divested of their functionality and steely power, the fundamental nature of these utilitarian devices shifts as they become strange objects of beauty meant for contemplation. Engines hold a significant place in the collective memory of our car-centric society, evoking inherited perceptions of masculinity. By altering their materiality, Neufeld subverts their masculine character and the inherent connotations they hold as meaningful cultural objects. Furthermore, the mechanical parts the artist selects predominantly date from the 1950s and 60s, a time when nothing was yet digitally controlled and everything could be fixed with the right knowledge and a few tools. Triggering private associations, the sculptures allow for a moment of unlikely intimacy, becoming vessels of memory connecting personal and collective histories. For full exhibition and program details, please visit: www.kofflerarts.org For more information on Clint Neufeld, please visit: www.clintneufeld.com Clint Neufeld: Pipe Dreams of Madame Recamier is generously supported by: Tamara and Gary Fine, and Tippet-Richardson. EXHIBITION HOURS: Wednesday to Sunday, 12 - 6 PM PUBLIC PROGRAMS: UP CLOSE WITH ARTIST CLINT NEUFELD Sunday, January 13, 2013, 4 PM General Hardware Contemporary, 1520 Queen St. West Open to Koffler Centre of the Arts Envision Members and New Art Insiders Meet Saskatchewan artist Clint Neufeld; he works with engines, excavating buckets, and other mechanical equipment to make his lovingly handcrafted sculptures from delicate materials such as painted ceramic, porcelain and wax. Beautiful and meaningful, Neufeld's objects speak to notions of art making, aesthetics and identity politics on both a national and regional level. Co-Chairs: Jenn Broadlieb and Martha Simmons | Envision Chair: Jill Reitman To RSVP: Rachel Anne Farquharson | 416.638.1881 x4016 | rfarquharson@kofflerarts.org CERAMIC WORKSHOP WITH CLINT NEUFELD Monday, January 14, 2013, 10 AM - 3 PM Prosserman JCC, 4588 Bathurst St. $75 | To register: 416.638.1881 x4333 Clint Neufeld will provide hands-on insight into the creative process of mold-making for his spectacular sculptures. ENGAGING WITH CERAMIC PROCESSES IN CONTEMPORARY ART Monday, January 14, 2013, 6:30 - 8 PM The Gardiner Museum, 111 Queen's Park $15 General | $10 Members The Koffler Gallery and the Gardiner Museum present a panel discussion examining current ceramic-based practices in the context of contemporary art. Panelists include Saskatchewan sculptor Clint Neufeld, artist and Head of Ceramics at the Sheridan School of Craft & Design Linda Sormin, and Rachel Gotlieb, Senior Curator, Gardiner Museum, moderated by Mona Flip, Curator, Koffler Gallery. CONTEMPORARY ART BUS TOUR Sunday, February 10, 2013, 12 - 5 PM | FREE Tour starts at the Koffler Gallery Off-Site at General Hardware Contemporary (1520 Queen St. West), then departs for Blackwood Gallery, AGYU, and Doris McCarthy Gallery, returning to Queen St. West at 5 PM. RSVP by Friday, February 8, 5 PM: 416.736.2100 x44021 or scarte@yorku.ca -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- RYERSON IMAGE CENTRE 33 Gould St, Toronto, ON M5B 2K3 T: 416.979.5164 Hours: Tue: 11am - 6pm, Wed: 11am - 8pm, Thu: 11am - 6pm, Fri: 11am - 6pm, Sat: 11am - 5pm, Sun: 11am - 5pm January 23 - April 14, 2013 Main Gallery Human Rights Human Wrongs Curated by Mark Sealy Using the 1948 Universal Declaration as a point of departure, HUMAN RIGHTS HUMAN WRONGS examines whether images of political struggle, suffering and victims of violence work for or against humanitarian objectives, especially when considering questions of race, representation, ethical responsibility and the cultural position of the photographer. WARNING: Please be aware, this exhibition contains photographs that may be disturbing to viewers due to the graphic or violent nature of the subject matter. Viewer discretion and parental guidance are advised. January 23 - April 14, 2013 University Gallery Alfredo Jaar: The Politics of Images Curated by Dr. Gaelle Morel Focusing on human rights, the Chilean-born, New York-based artist addresses political concerns and the relationship between ethics and aesthetics. His oeuvre highlights ignored contemporary tragedies, such as genocides, epidemics and famines, and promotes cultural change. January 23 - April 14, 2013 Salah J. Bachir New Media Wall Clive Holden: un-American Unfamous Curated by Dr. Gaelle Morel Is it un-American to be un-famous? Are Americans failures if they die without fame? Drawing from the Black Star Collection at Ryerson University, Clive Holden creates UN-American Unfamous using the "un-famous" as an organizing principle in his selection of one hundred image details and faces. January 23 - March 10, 2013 Student Gallery Dominic Nahr: Captive State In August 2011, Dominic Nahr travelled to Mogadishu with Alex Perry (TIME's Africa Bureau Chief) to document the famine in Southern Somalia. They found overwhelming suffering and death. Around 150,000 of the 2.8 million Somalis affected eventually starved to death. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- STEPHEN BULGER GALLERY 1026 Queen St W Toronto M6J 1H6 T 416.504.0575 F 416.504.8929 E info@bulgergallery.com Hours: Tues - Sat, 11 am - 6 pm As well as by chance and by appointment. January 26 - February 23, 2013 Zhang Yaxin: Model Opera Opening Reception: Saturday, January 26, 2-5 pm The gallery is pleased to present the first North American exhibition of Zhang Yaxin's photographs of the Model Operas. In China, the model operas were planned and engineered during the Cultural Revolution by Jiang Qing, the wife of Chairman Mao Zedong. As Communist Party-sanctioned operas, they were considered "revolutionary" and modern in terms of thematic and musical features when compared with traditional Peking operas. Originally, a total of eight productions were made; six operas and two ballets. During the latter part of the Cultural Revolution, several other productions were completed. According to some sources, they were the only forms of artistic expression allowed in China at the time. Traditional Peking opera was considered bourgeois and had been banned. The operas were made in accordance with Mao's provision that "art must serve the interests of the workers, peasants, and soldiers and must conform to proletarian ideology." Zhang Yaxin is a Chinese photographer, born in 1933. He graduated from the photography department of Changchun Film Academy and joined the Xinhua News Agency as a staff reporter in 1963. This exhibition highlights the still photographs he made of the revolutionary model operas from 1969 to 1976. The plots of these operas are based on stories of labouring people struggling and fighting for happiness. They were made into films for promotion nationwide. Yaxin's still photographs of the characters and scenes were printed on posters, stamps and craftworks. It was a mass commercial campaign even though people did not understand it in such terms. As the dominant art form in people's lives for approximately ten years, the revolutionary model operas and their impact on society are now the subject of much analysis from a pop culture perspective. Yaxin was chosen as the chief photographer by the Party Leaders and he worked under the close scrutiny of Jiang Qing. He used one of only three Hassleblad cameras in China at that time and had an unlimited amount of colour KODAK film at his disposal, whereas other photographers in his agency were allotted only three rolls of colour film per year. Working with a stage carpenter, he fashioned a box to encase the camera so that he could photograph during performances without interrupting the sound recording. He devoted eight years of his life photographing the model operas, which assembled China's best playwrights and performers -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TORONTO IMAGE WORKS GALLERY 80 Spadina Ave., Suite 207 T: 416.703.1999 ext 0 E: gallery@torontoimageworks.com To February 16, 2013 Radha Chaddah: Awakening The beauty and complexity of the cellular world is explored in Radha Chaddah's photographs. By growing, lighting and imaging stem cells, she combines the power of art and scientific discovery to challenge viewers to see the unseen. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- VTAPE 401 Richmond St., Suite 452 Toronto, ON M5V 3A8 T: 416.351.1317 E: info@vtape.org Gallery Hours: Tuesday-Friday 11am-5pm, Saturday 12-4pm January 26 - February 23, 2013 Jorge Lozano: Splintering Time, Fragmenting Space Opening Screening: Saturday January 26, 2-5pm Curated by Deborah Root for the 2012-13 Vtape Curatorial Incubator(TM) programme 3pm, Saturday, January 26, 2013 Jorge Lozano in conversation with Deborah Root The first major survey exhibition of the video works of Jorge Lozano. A key figure in the independent media arts scene in Toronto and Canada for several decades, Lozano's narrative and experimental works have shown in many prestigious festivals including the Toronto International Film Festival and Sundance. A founder of aluCine: Toronto film + media arts festival, Lozano has mentored scores of young artists, providing an exhibition platform for their highly experimental works as well as conducting workshops for marginalized youth in Canada and Latin America. All the while he continues to develop and expand his own practice which circles the deeply associative relationships between people of different cultures and classes as they intersect in the realpolitik of daily life. v With an eye to representing the broad range of Lozano's prolific - often collaborative - practice, Root has assembled an impressive cross-section of works that includes his long-form magical narrative The Three Sevens (1993) as well as the recent impressively philosophical tour de force, Stratigraphies (2012), shown as a single-channel HD projection. Additional installations include the sensuously beautiful 2-channel Kuenta (2012) made in collaboration with Alexandra Gelis and Situations (2012) a 3-channel reconstitution of decades of Lozano's footage recorded on the streets during a variety of public actions and demonstrations. And finally there is Watch My Back (2010) which documents Lozano's work with youth groups in Toronto and Colombia. All of these are complemented by a 6-title compilation reel featuring works from 1984 to 2009. Deborah Root is a well-published writer and critic, author of numerous articles and reviews as well as a seminal text on colonial power and cultural exchange, Cannibal Culture: Art, Appropriation and the Commodification of Difference. This exhibition, Jorge Lozano: Splintering Time, Fragmenting Space, is her first foray into curating. Her monograph essay on Lozano's work is available in printed and on-line form through Vtape and the Vtape website. Splintering Time, Fragmenting Space is the 10th edition of Vtape's Curatorial Incubator(TM), an award winning mentorship program providing support to emerging curators of video art. Applications to this competitive program are carefully juried - this year by me and Assistant Curator at the Power Plant Julia Paoli - and the award reflects not only the quality of the proposed project but, in this case, the crucial nature of the proposal. The jury felt that the time was absolutely right for a major exhibition of the work of Jorge Lozano. The Exhibition (in Vtape and VMAC Gallery) Stratigraphies (with Alexandra Gelis) - 48:35; projected HD video; 2012 Kuenta - 19:15; 2 channel HD installation; 2012 Situations - 34:45; 3-channel HD installation; 2012 Watch My Back - 10:00; 4 channel HD installation; 1992-2003 The Three Sevens Produced and directed by Jorge Lozano, Co-director Alejandro Ronceri - 21:00; single channel video; 1993