Brendan Fernandes
Encomium
26 November 2011 to 7 January 2012
Opening + Performance Saturday 26 November from 3 to 6

In this new body of work, Fernandes draws on his background as a dancer to further develop his interest in codes of language as they relate to cultural modalities. He has created a performance piece inspired by Plato's Symposium, a classical text in which love is examined through a sequence of Encomium, or speeches of praise. In a display of physicality and prowess, two men perform a dance as described and instructed by three narrative texts written by the artist that refer specifically to the speech of Phaedrus, in which he describes the asymmetrical love between a man and a boy.

On the floor, serving as a stage for the performance, and bringing in a motif found in much of Fernandes' work, are three words translated into Morse code: love, eros and desire. The choreographic patterns recall the movement of the dancers and lead the viewers through the space, as the dancers are lead by the text. The text itself is printed on posters, which sit like artifacts on plinths. They are meant to be taken away by viewers, so that one can leave with the possibility of re-performing the gestures described, but in another form and place, reinterpreted and reconsidered.

In this exhibition, Fernandes explores the way in which codes of language are articulated through classical ballet, and the way dance acts like any other language form, creating barriers that allow for understanding within specific groups and communities. The various layers of code and text that run through the space, and the bodies that animate it, serve to complicate our perceptions of how we read and reproduce cultural forms, and how we might reassess our relationships to them. Based on his training in ballet and modern dance techniques (Limón and Graham), Fernandes explores movement and language through the dynamics of power, particularly with regard to gender and sexuality.

The performance will occur once at the opening and again on the last day of the show, Saturday, 7 January, 2012. It will be represented in the space during the rest of the show through video documentation and the written instructions.

Fernandes completed the Independent Study Program of the Whitney Museum of American Art, and earned his MFA from The University of Western Ontario and his BFA from York University in Canada. Recent solo exhibitions include until we fearless at the Art Gallery of Hamilton (catalogue) and From Hiz Hands at Art in General in New York City (catalogue). Recent group exhibitions include Found in Translation at the R. Solomon Guggenheim Museum, NY, and Barroco Nova at McIntosh Gallery, The University of Western Ontario, London. He recently collaborated with Danish artist Nanna Debois Buhl on In Your Words at the Karen Blixen Museum in Denmark. He is based between Toronto and New York.

Young & Giroux
Andersson
26 November 2011 to 7 January 2012
Opening Saturday 26 November from 3 to 6

In celebration of Young & Giroux winning the 2011 Sobey Art Award, we are pleased to present Andersson.

Andersson is a series of 13 individual sculptures, in which a standard IKEA step stool is divided into 12 spatial sections, with each stool receiving 3-5 of these sections as formed powder coated aluminum components. The works are a compositional play between an everyday household object and the reminiscent modernist content of IKEA's designs.

Andersson is part of a larger body of work loosely titled 'Boole', in which Young & Giroux created sculptures from precision fabricated sheet metal forms developed in a formal dialogue with pieces of IKEA furniture that are modified with industrial cutting processes. The resulting works are hybrid forms that collide objects from the domestic realm with an industrial mode of manufacturing, exploring the implications of these processes on our relationship with our material surroundings.

Daniel Young and Christian Giroux have been making art together since 2002. They produce sculpture, public art and film installations. Their work is the product of an ongoing conversation concerning the modernity of the mid-century, and the production of space. Young and Giroux rework modernist forms of abstraction using consumer goods and industrial prototyping methods, construction systems and componentry to produce sculptural objects that partake in contemporary material discourse. Their film works constitute a form of research on sculptural form in the built environment from the architectural to the domestic scale.

Their work is currently on view at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia as part of the Sobey Art Award exhibition. Recently, their work has been shown at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal (2011); the Southern Alberta Art Gallery (2010); Mercer Union, Toronto (2010); the Akademie der Kunst through Forum Expanded, at the Berlin Film Festival (2010); Prefix ICA (2009); and The Museum Fur Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg (2009).

This year, the Southern Alberta Art Gallery also published a catalogue of their work, entitled Young & Giroux. Their first in-depth monograph, it provides a career overview as well as an exploration of their project 'Beta Boole', and features essays by Kenneth Hayes, Jesse Huisken and Mark Lanctôt. Young & Giroux have an upcoming solo exhibition at Oakville Galleries in September 2012. Daniel Young is currently the Canada Council Artist in Residence at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin.

For more information please contact:

Colleen O'Reilly
colleen@diazcontemporary.ca

Diaz Contemporary
100 Niagara Street (at Tecumseth)
Toronto, ON M5V 1C5
416.361.2972
www.diazcontemporary.ca

Gallery Hours: Tuesday to Saturday 11 to 6, or by appointment