Akimblog
Toronto
posted by Terence Dick - April 5th, 2007.
Earlier this week, I was picking up some newly framed paintings (artist = my daughter) at Akau Inc. and lingered, as I always do, over their small exhibition space. Curated by Cheryl Sourkes, this large alcove of a gallery is one of the little secrets of Queen West. Currently on view are a couple works each by Gwen MacGregor and Flavio Trevisan. She contributes an entrancing little video animation that traces out daily peregrinations through both New York and Toronto. The result is a constantly changing abstract line drawing that breaks free of geography, hinting at its origins, alluding to the vicissitudes of daily life, but finally and simply floats into space. It is one of the few instances where I could imagine art on a flat screen monitor in my home.
Flavio Trevisan, installation view
Trevisan makes paper constructions that mould the air, sculpting mysterious (because they are largely inaccessible) spaces, leaving only the scaffolding in view. You’re left with an intricate geometry of miniature struts and spars. By hanging a large piece from the ceiling and displaying a selection of smaller works on a light table, he makes an efficient and enveloping use of the space. Combined with MacGregor’s videos, the exhibition feels substantial, especially for such an out-of-the-way place.
Gareth Lichty maps out space on a larger scale with his airy structure now on view at the Red Head Gallery. From the outside, his spruce and insulation sculpture is an interior wall that’s been made to ripple like a bed sheet hung out to dry. Stepping inside is like hiding beneath the folds of a gigantic dress. Following its undulation through the gallery’s columns, one forgets how solid the planks of wood are, how these same materials are behind the walls of our homes, and instead gets carried away by the soft pink fluff of the insulation.
Boja Vasic and Vessna Perunovich, Invisible City: Architecture of Survival, 2006, photograph
Doing research for a tour I’m giving this Saturday for the Images Festival (meet at the Images office at 1:30), I zipped through some of the participating galleries at 401 Richmond. I found more homes are on display at A Space, this time they were Boja Vasic and Vessna Perunovich’s photographs of a Roma refugee shanty town built out of recycled materials on Belgrade’s city dump. The numerous images are fascinating and depressing. My awe at the creativity on display was quashed by the abject poverty that motivates such work. Vasic’s photos are paired with an installation by Manuela Lalic that repurposes gallery materials (tables, chairs, packing tape) for an intentionally artistic phantasm that suggests the mire of bureaucracy (in a good way!).
Nicole Raufeisen and Ryan Witt, Bedroom, from the series Defenders of the Faith, 2005, single channel video
More homes appear at Gallery 44. Richard Hines’ striking photographs set theatrically posed family dramas in domestic spaces. The art duo of Nicole Raufeisen and Ryan Witt use a recently abandoned house as the location for a series of ritualistic exercises that play out on video like the adventures of a couple kids raised on Fluxus interventions and performance art. Maureen Anderson has nothing to do with homes…unless you consider a prison a home, which it is in a way. Her video portraits blend hundreds of mugshots of incarcerated drug law offenders in a blurry collective portrait that, while well meaning, might be less than the sum of its parts.
I ended off my research trying to calculate the sum of Carolee Schneemann’s parts in her massive exhibition at the MOCCA. One half of a collaborative survey that can also be found at the CEPA Gallery in Buffalo, Toronto’s contribution to Split Decision has a number of recent works, including one major multi-channel video that looped heavily processed images of violence and nature, birth, death, shaving, and cats. I spent a while wondering why any video artist these days would rely on washed out analogue tape and then tried to piece together the fragments into some sort of thematic whole. Then I realized that was the wrong strategy and just went with the flow.
Carolee Schneemann, detail from Portrait Partials, 1970, self-shot photographic grid
Skipping past the photographs of her kissing her cat (huh?), I spent the most time in a back gallery full of works on paper, a number of which referred to Scheemann’s seminal work in the 60s. Just like the videos, they were collages, sampled from personal and collective history, a mash-up critique that challenged you to make sense of the images we’re inundated with (not simply as regular folks but as art people too). I tagged along with an art history class as they wrestled with the dense works, wondering what the YouTube generation thinks of media art (is okay to drop the “new”?). They were having a hard enough time discussing vaginas, so I left it for another day and headed home.
Terence Dick is a freelance writer living in Toronto. His art criticism has appeared in Canadian Art, BorderCrossings, Prefix Photo, Camera Austria, Fuse, Mix, C Magazine, and The Globe and Mail. He is the media columnist for This Magazine, music editor at Broken Pencil and editor of Akimblog
Akau Inc.: http://www.akau.ca/
Gwen MacGregor & Flavio Trevisan ongoing.
Red Head Gallery: http://www.redheadgallery.org/
Gareth Lichty: Frames continues until April 21.
Images Fetival: http://www.imagesfestival.com/
A Space: http://www.aspacegallery.org/
Boja Vasic & Manuela Lalic: Aberrations (ex situ) continues until April 28.
Gallery 44: http://www.gallery44.org/
Exhibitions continue until April 14
Carolee Scheemann & Garry Neill Kennedy continue until April 22.
Comments (newest first)
Posted by Vera, 1205 days ago on April 12th, 2007
That's Cheryl, not Cheryk ...
Posted by Vera, 1205 days ago on April 12th, 2007
That's Cheryl, not Cheryk ...
Posted by Vera, 1205 days ago on April 12th, 2007
Hi Terence,
My last comment just disappeared so I'm trying again ... Pplease excuse duplication if both notes appear.
Despite a mega-pass to the Images Festival and promises to Carolee and Garry to see their exhibitions (and despite last fall's 'flu shot),I'm confined to quarters, struggling with the first 'flu I've had in years and missing all sorts of good things, including the big CCCA auction this evening, hosted by Randy and Berenicci. And what Cheryk Sourkes manages to do at Akau is always remarkable. So it's good in the meantime to have your take on it all: Surrogate art-cruising for shut-ins. Thank you!