FALL 2011 AT THE POWER PLANT OPENS WITH A PARTY

The Power Plant opens three new exhibitions, unveils a new commissioned artwork, and presents outstanding programs this fall season, all kicking off with a free opening party on 23 September, 8–11 PM.

DEREK SULLIVAN: ALBATROSS OMNIBUS
24 September – 20 November, 2011

The Power Plant's 2011 commission Albatross Omnibus by Toronto-based artist Derek Sullivan involves new artist books, and a drawing and installation project. The commission's core is a series of 52 limited edition books produced through print-on-demand technology. One full set of books is displayed in a grid-like formation hanging from wires at a height that visitors must use a stepladder to reach. Fourteen copies of each book will be available for purchase in the gallery shop, with each title exclusively available for a single day of the 52 days of the exhibition.

Mutability, a characteristic of Sullivan's practice, is deepened in this exhibition, with different forms and ideas folding into one another in a way that tests the boundaries of the finite. The project draws on the history of artists' book production to examine its relationship to the larger art economy, while also exploring an interplay between book, furniture and garden design; concrete poetry; minimalism and conceptual art; authorship and appropriation; and the idea of reading as a stand in for interpretation. Ultimately the physical form of the book both supports and is the artwork.

Presenting Sponsor: RBC Wealth Management
2011 Commissioning Program Supporters: Aastra Technologies Ltd.; Thomas H. Bjarnason; Michelle Koerner & Kevin Doyle; Nancy McCain & Bill Morneau; Margaret C. McNee; and Samara Walbohm & Joe Shlesinger.

SIMON FUJIWARA: WELCOME TO THE HOTEL MUNBER
24 September – 11 November, 2011

Through performance, short stories, installation-sets, lectures, and novels, British-Japanese artist Simon Fujiwara scripts and performs his own biography as fiction. Often weaving his own personal history into broad historic social events, Fujiwara constructs parallel histories that he presents through his roles as raconteur and dramaturge. Playing multiple and often conflicting roles – from archaeologist and eroticist to architect – Fujiwara's seemingly multifarious identities both establish and erase themselves within his shadowy narratives, forming a complex, fleeting portrait of the contemporary individual.

Welcome to the Hotel Munber (2010) is a multi-layered installation that sets the stage for his parents' lives during the Franco era in Spain. The work is a reconstruction, based on photographs and oral histories, of the bar in his parents' hotel during the 1970s. Fujiwara's narrative installation reveals a complex research into identity and cultural heritage as an open-ended process of investigation.

THE PLOT: KEREN CYTTER, JOS DE GRUYTER AND HARALD THYS, ISABELLE PAUWELS
24 September – 6 November, 2011

Artists working in film and video have long engaged questions of narration and structure, truth and fiction. The Plot brings together the work of artists who share approaches to non-linear narrative. They use structural breaks, an economy of means and the employment of film as a stage upon which amateur actors consider history, human relationships and the space created by the camera. The Plot explores film and video not only as a tract upon which scenes are enacted, broken and re-spatialized, but as a scenario, a deception and a scheme.

The Plot includes Avalanche (2011) by Berlin-based Keren Cytter, whose films often present characters acting out complex and alienated relationships. Her scripted work offers an instability that references direct experience and personal observation, as well as calling upon popular cultural forms (film, television, theatre, and literature). Unstable notions of identity, memory and relationships are also found in the work of Vancouver-based Isabelle Pauwels. Pauwels' innovative approach to shooting, editing and installation draws attention to authorship and spectatorship as a process. Brussels-based collaborators Jos de Gruyter and Harald Thys create films and installations, such as Das Loch (2010), that focus on issues of thwarted communication and defensive interiority. Revealing the absurdity of the world we live in, their work questions individual power and proposes a schematic equivalency between individuals and objects. Together, these works test claims to territory and storytelling.

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The Power Plant has an outstanding lineup of associated
SPECIAL EVENTS to kick of the fall season:

LECTURE: Stuart Bailey and David Reinfurt of Dexter Sinister
Friday, 20 September / 7:30 PM / FREE
The Drake Hotel, Underground, 1150 Queen Street West
Doors open at 7 PM
Dexter Sinister was originally set up to model a "Just-In-Time" economy of print production, counter to the contemporary assembly-line realities of large-scale publishing. This involves avoiding waste by working on-demand, utilizing local cheap machinery, considering alternate distribution strategies, and collapsing distinctions of editing, design, production, and distribution into one efficient activity. Since then, their work has branched (pragmatically) into many different contexts and venues.
Co-presented with C Magazine / C School

SUNDAY SCENE: Corinn Gerber
Sunday, 25 September / 2 PM / FREE with admission
Our popular Sunday Scene series continues throughout the fall. Every Sunday, speakers from the world of art and beyond offer their responses to the current exhibitions. 25 September will feature Corinn Gerber, the new Executive Director of Art Metropole.

LOUNGE: Book Club
Wednesday, 5 October / 7 PM / $4 Members, $6 Non-Members
Join us underneath the hanging installation of Derek Sullivan's newly commissioned artist books for the first public get-together of Book Club. Since 2009, a group of local conceptual artists, writers, curators, and others interested in artists' books have gathered as Book Club: Bill Clarke, Dave Dyment, Wendy Gomoll, Michael Klein, Micah Lexier, Derek McCormack, Roula Partheniou, Sarah Robayo Sheridan, Derek Sullivan, and Paul Van Kooy. Visit thepowerplant.org or call the Harbourfront Centre Box Office at 416.973.4000 to purchase tickets.

For information on these events and the rest of The Power Plant's public programming for fall 2011, visit our website.

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Institutional Donor: Nancy McCain & Bill Morneau
Primary Education Sponsor: CIBC Wood Gundy
Corporate Leaders: BMO Financial Group, Manulife Financial, Rogers, TD Securities
Government Funding: Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council

GALLERY ADMISSION:
FREE Members
$6 Adults
$3 Students / Seniors
BMO FREE Wednesday Evenings 5 – 8 PM

GALLERY HOURS:
Tuesday to Sunday 12–6 PM
Wednesday 12–8 PM
Open holiday Mondays

Media Contact: Robin Boyko, +1.416.973.4927, rboyko@thepowerplant.org

The Power Plant
231 Queens Quay West
Toronto, ON Canada M5J 2G8
+1.416.973.4949
thepowerplant.org

Image: Derek Sullivan, detail from Persistent Huts, 2008. Accordion-fold artist's book published by Printed Matter Inc. from edition of 500 copies. Courtesy the artist and Jessica Bradley Art + Projects, Toronto.