Marina Black: virtual tour of "14 Metres to the Daylight Surface"

 A virtual tour of Marina Black's recent exhibition, " 14 Metres to the Daylight Surface". The exhibition ran from Oct. 20 to Nov. 24, 2011, and chronicles some of her experiences at her recent residency in Donetsk, Ukraine. For further information, check her artist pages on our website, here.

Opening this evening

This evening, from 5 to 7:  the opening reception for Paola Savasta's William Huffman Award Exhibition and our Massive Summer Group Show.

Savasta's "Couches for the Liberated" wraps around three walls of the Mezzanine Gallery...69 miniature paintings of Ikea furniture meticulously installed on a field of green. More is definitely more!

Two large paintings by Kelvin Britton and Kai McCall in the front windows of the gallery set the tone for our Summer Group Show:

The gallery is a blooming, buzzing profusion of colour (with apologies to William James) for our Massive Summer Group Show, featuring paintings, drawings, prints, photography and sculpture by 22 gallery artists.

Moving from front to back through each of our three gallery spaces there are works by Kelvin Britton, Kai McCall, Jan Ollner, Pearl Van Geest, Moira Clark, Paul Dignan, Lauren Nurse, Alex D'Arcy, Svava Juliusson, Jay Wilson, Yvonne Singer, Dagmara Genda, Daryl Vocat, Cheryl Ruddock, Liz Parkinson, Fiona Crangle, Kirsten Johnson, Paola Savasta, David Frankovich, Caroline DeMooy, Heather Nichol and Kieran Brent.

A garden of earthly delights!

Frankovich and Cronenberg: Opening Thurs. May 5, 2011

KWT Contemporary is pleased to present two exhibitions in association with the

Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival

 

OPENING RECEPTION: Thursday May 5, 2011 from 7:30 - 9 p.m.

David Frankovich: Plus de Deux 

KWT Contemporary is very pleased to announce our first presentation of time-based work, as we continue to unroll our new curatorial mission following our re-launch in February.

Starting Thursday, May 5, and running through to May 28th, KWT Contemporary will mount a continuous screening David Frankovich's remarkably beautiful 13 minute single channel video, "Plus de Deux". Frankovich, a very talented young experimental film maker, is a recent  graduate of the Experimental Film program at York University. "Plus de Deux" is inspired by, and a tribute to, Norman MacLaren's classic short film, "Pas de Deux,".

Frankovich has used digital compression artifacts to open up possibilities for representation. A technique called "datamoshing" is used to edit the video, which allows for the composition of one shot to be carried over to the next, and transformed by that shot's movement.  The image becomes unstable and littered with digital artifacts and traces of previous shots. Colours are swept across the frame by the dancers' movements, like the stroke of a paintbrush, and bleed into one another. The dancers' bodies themselves become transformed, and gender becomes unstable as they transition between male and female forms. A rigid gender binary gives way to a fluid spectrum of possibilities, lying just beyond the represented. The dancers' bodies become increasingly abstracted. All that remains is form, colour and movement.

The film will be available for purchase as a special signed and numbered DVD, edition of 10.
  

Preview the video here.

Also included in the exhibition are archival pigment prints, (selected stills from the video, edition of 5 each, image size 47" x 20"). Printed on fine art paper, these prints have a dynamic and painterly quality.  Figures are captured mid-transition, in between states of maleness and femaleness, in a state of motion between two states of rest. In contrast to the video, in which these moments are fleeting, as prints, they become frozen in time. Consequently, our attention becomes drawn away from the figure as male or female, towards gender as a field or landscape through which these bodies move.

Caitlin Cronenberg "RED: Selections from the New York Times Canadian Archive"

Christopher Bratty, co-founder of TOROmagazine.com and Black Angus Media, purchased the New York Times Canadian Archive with a goal of both preserving this remarkable historical record in it's intact form, but also to use as a jumping-off point for an ongoing artistic project. It is Bratty's intention to invite Canadian artists to select images from the Archive and to provide their own unique interpretations of this historical record. Emerging photographer Caitlin Cronenberg is the first artist to have been invited by Bratty to participate in this multi-year project.

Caitlin Cronenberg's "RED" features interventions and re-imaginings of eight images selected from the New York Times Canadian Photography Archive. Using digital alterations, salvaged barnwood frames, and remote-controlled lightboxes, Cronenberg has produced a dramatic and cinematic narrative, resulting in a succession of revealing glimpses into how Americans have historically viewed Canadian culture, and how Canadians in turn view themselves. Dating back to 1910, the Archive consists of 24,000 images taken by New York Times photographers forming an invaluable cultural record that traces the evolution of Canada as a nation.

In addition to Cronenberg's interventions, framed reproductions of the 8 original images she selected from the Archive will be on display and available for purchase.

Publications for Marina Black

Marina Black's work is included in "Burn O1 Magazine" a collector's edition representing some of the best photographic essays from the Burn Magazine website, edited and published by David Alan Harvey. The publication includes 25 photo essays and various texts, and was printed in Italy (1000 copies). More information, including how to order, here.


Black was also among the 118 photographers from around the world personally invited by James Whitlow Delano to “share with me one photograph that says to 
you, ‘MERCY’” The result is a beautiful book, "The Mercy Project/Inochi".

"The Mercy Project Inochi" is a charity 
photo book project featuring the work 
of  photographers 
from Magnum, VII Photo, Noor, and National 
Geographic, coming 
together to create awareness and raise 
funds for hospice and palliative care.


The book has now been released and can be purchased through Amazon (Japan).


From Niko Koppel's recent  NY Times Lens Blog article:


"Mercy is commonly defined as compassion, forgiveness, kindness or an act of piety. But photographs of prisoners reaching through bars, a wrestler being contorted by masked men and an infant dressed for burial are among the many interpretations of the word in the book “The Mercy Project/Inochi,” created and curated by James Whitlow Delano.
Mr. Delano’s sister, Jeanne, had terminal renal cancer in 2007 and spent her last months in hospice care. “I felt she got merciful care,” he said “Humane care. She was treated like Jeanne.”

With his emotions still raw from that experience, Mr. Delano set out to draw attention and funding to hospice and palliative care. He reached out to other photographers, asking them to submit work for a book based on the concept of mercy. The response was overwhelming.

And it was frequently surprising, sometimes even a bit confounding. “Everyone’s interpretation is absolutely different,” Mr. Delano said. “I didn’t challenge. I didn’t ask. If you say that’s mercy, that’s all I need to know.”



 
See more of Marina Black's photography here.

Art Fair Week in New York: Lauren Nurse at Armory Show

Two of Lauren Nurse's provocative  self-portraits have been chosen by the Art Dealer's Association of Canada for at their pavilion at the Armory Show  (March 2-6, 2011, Pier 94, # 1511)

"Twigs" and "Horns" were most recently exhibited at KWT  in Nurse's solo show, "you are my mirror", which closed this past weekend. These archival pigment prints were produced in an edition of 5 on Hahnemuhle paper. We have one set, available for viewing by appointment at the gallery.