Emerging Artist Forum: Thursday July 28 @ KWT

The Emerging Artist Forum

The Emerging Artist Forum invites current students, recent graduates and
emerging artists to join us for an artist talk moderated by William Huffman. The
panellists will share and discuss their own experiences of working toward their current positions as young arts professionals and about other potential
opportunities in the visual arts.

Panelists:

Lili Huston- Herterich and Brad Tinmouth

(Directors of Butcher Gallery),

Edward Kanerva 

(Programs and PublicationsCoordinator at The Power Plant),

and 

York Lethbridge 

(Director of Operations and Development at Mercer Union)

KWT Contemporary
Thursday July 28, 6-8pm

Please RSVP to:  info [at]  kwtcontemporary [dot]  com


(Photo Credit: Paola Savasta)

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!

Paola Savasta: Winner of 11th Annual William Huffman Award

Huffman Award Exhibition Reception: Thursday July 7 from 5 to 7 pm at KWT contemporary

The faculty of the Art and Art History Program - a joint BA offered by the University of Toronto and Sheridan Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning - is pleased to announce Paola Savasta as the 2011 recipient of the William Huffman Award for Excellence in Studio Practice. Savasta explores relationships and systems between people and their treatment of space. She is a recent graduate of the Art and Art History Program. Savasta will present a new body of work in a solo exhibition entitled "Couches for the Liberated" at KWT Contemporary.

Curator and arts administrator William Huffman created this award in 1999 to recognize an especially gifted student graduating from Art and Art History. Huffman has had an extensive involvement on both local and international cultural fronts and has worked with a number of arts organizations such as Blackwood Gallery, Arts Toronto, The Power Plant, A Space, Canadian Art Foundation and Art Gallery of Sudbury. He is currently Associate Director with Toronto Arts Council, a post he has held since 2004. Huffman is a 1991 Art and Art History Program alumnus.

Since its inception the award has recognized Sebastian Koever (2010), Jessica Vallentin (2009), Jaclyn Quaresma (2008), Marko Bursac (2007), Alison S. M. Kobayashi (2006), Tejpal Ajji (2005), Carolyn Tripp (2004), Jared Carlson (2003), Tannis Nielsen (2002), Erin Finley (2001), Amie Tolton (2000) and Heather Robinson (1999).

 With "Couches For the Liberated",  Savasta has created an installation of 69 minitare paintings of Ikea products, primarily depictions of couches and shelving units, for her exhibition at KWT contemporary. Savasta's installation is a smart and serious exploration of consumer culture and acquisitiveness, but is not without an underlying wickedly quirky sense of humour (talk about turning the dreaded "sofa painting" trope on its head!). We'll have installation shots posted later in the week.
Her statement follows below:

"The culmination of these 69 pieces is a result of four series of panel paintings that I have been working on – each series toying with my growing concern with the location of power in consumer culture. Each series function as proposals or “solutions” for maximizing the potential of a living space. (I would also like to note that my humour is in equal parts with my concerned and suggested analysis). I work with selected images from Ikea catalogues, where I model and manipulate the existing domestic structures. I transfer my constructed images on medium-density fibreboard, which references the material that most Ikea furniture is made of. I use couches in my first two series, as I find them to be most iconic of the living room furniture. My latter series use shelves as a way to employ excess, indecision and possibility.

My first series is a set of 3 tiered black couches, each in a different configuration, with negative space left to suggest the ability to plug in or accommodate existing living room fixtures (such as plants, windows, or television sets). This series explores a Do-It-Yourself aspect of customizing and maximizing the seating space of a living room to a point of absurdity. The shelving in my second and third series depict different configurations of the same subject – each pushing further ideas of combinations and the freedom of decision. My fourth series (the second couches series) allows for colour and pattern and leans towards the consumers and their lifestyles. It again pulls on the availability of too many possibilities and suggests consumer excess and perhaps even boredom or indifference."

Dignan Painting Selected by Canada Council Art Bank

 

Paul Dignan's painting, "Cota 1", has been purchased for the permanent collection at the Canada Council's Art Bank. There were 1875 submissions to the collection this year, with a mere 52 selected. 

Congratulations, Paul!

(Our Summer Group Show, opening Thursday, July 7, will contain Dignan's recent work, as well as work from an earlier period, making for an interesting comparison in his evolution as a hard-edge abstractionist.)

Terence Dick reviews Johnson's "Prom Storm"

"To paraphrase Mike Kelley, “an adolescent is a dysfunctional adult and art is dysfunctional reality”: an equation that might explain something of our culture’s ongoing fascination with things teenage. There is a certain appeal to the heightened emotions of youth; it certainly makes for good melodrama; though, having spent the last couple years working with living, breathing young folk, the reality is nowhere near as entertaining as the finely crafted version we are exposed to in films and on television. This Platonic Ideal of adolescence sets the standard even in its carefully scripted failures. For those of us realists, however, who can’t abide by such groundless conceptions, our only recourse is to the material truths of our own past. The trials and tribulations (and sometimes triumphs, but mostly trials and tribulations) of our high school years feed the pool in which we reflect, looking for some clue to our adult selves."

"Kirsten Johnson’s series of prom-themed paintings at KWT Contemporary are rooted in such a return. The short video that accompanies the exhibition is essential viewing for those of us who didn’t peak at graduation. Her refusal to succumb to nostalgia is the first step in a critical, rather than celebratory take on that fraught party at the precipice of adulthood. Intercut with footage of Johnson from the past and a present-day soliloquy on that past are scenes from the photo-shoot that resulted in the paintings. The models she chose to play the part of the revelers seem a tad old to me, but they manage to get the moves of a dancing mass down pat, and the artist does a swell job of capturing those gestures and expressions on canvas. The puzzle is completed with the background newspaper images of storm damage. Without the video, this conflation of two forms of disaster is too simplistic, so even though she distances herself from the autobiographical elements of the project (having the models read her diaries, instead of revisiting them herself), the specific circumstances of Johnson’s past are the real story here."

Read the rest of Terence Dick's column here

A brief trailer of Johnson's short film can be seen here

Paul Dignan at Thames Gallery, Chatham

Paul Dignan will be exhibiting several new paintings in "Systems Check",  curated by Jordan Broadworth at the Thames Gallery in Chatham. The exhibition runs from June 10 to July 24, 2011, with an artist reception coming up this weekend, on Saturday June 18.

Paul Dignan "Cota 1", 2011 acrylic on canvas 48" x 48"

Paul Dignan "Cota 3", 2011 acrylic on canvas 48" x 48"

About the exhibition:

"There is a form of abstraction that is born from the knowledge that painting is process and that paint, like print, television, the Internet – is not simply a conveyor of content but is in-itself the stuff of thought. The artists in Systems Check: Lowell Bradshaw, Mathew Bushell, Ingrid Calame, Paul Dignan, and Angela Leach have each created their own idiosyncratic, methodological approaches to painting. These artists, from Canada and the United States utilize a wide variety of sites, systems and tools in shaping well-defined and deliberate frameworks; each one incorporating varying degrees of chance, mystery and the matter-of-fact. As divergent as their work may appear the artists featured in Systems Check share a common sense of clarity and economy. This is work that avoids painterly pratfalls and bluster while contributing to an expanding vision of painting’s potential."

Yvonne Singer: Installations at KWT

We are pleased and privileged to present the work of Yvonne Singer, a distinguished Canadian artist who is respected for her contributions as both a practicing artist and educator. In her current exhibition at KWT, Singer presents two neon installations ("IIIII wawawawant " and "if only ")  as well as two versions of an editioned installation in plexi, an homage to Louise Bourgeois: "I  do, I undo, I redo".  Singer's exhibition was installed at the gallery on May 31, one year to the day from Bourgeois' death in 2010 at age 98.

"I I I I wa wa wa want"  is an installation with neon letters, mounted on a pair of opposite-facing mirrors. The self-reflecting mirrors create the illusion of repeating the words to infinity as well as implicating the viewers who are also reflected in the mirrors. The work speaks to our desires.  Neon signs are familiar signifiers of commerce in our urban setting and the media advertising that surrounds us promotes our endless desiring. Who doesn't want something? Who hasn't looked longingly at a shop window?

..."if only" is an excerpt from a longer neon work with 3 other phrases; I should have, I could have, I would have... ...if only. The phrases are a lament that references regret and longing for unfulfilled desires as well as a response to social expectations. By reading the words, the viewer is at once in both a public and private space.

...."I do, I undo, I redo" is a phrase borrowed from the title of Louise Bourgeois' site specific installation at Tate Modern in 2000.  For Singer, the phrase succinctly describes the creative process and also functions as a metaphor for the endless routine of our daily life. It can be interpreted pessimistically as a dead end or optimistically as the opening of creative possibilities. The script version (a rendering of Singer's own quirkily charming handwriting) of this plexi/acrylic installation is presented as a multiple, in an edition of three in each of several colours. The typographic version of the same phrase consists of Singer's modification of classic Helvetica, presented in three one-off plexiglass renderings in red, blue or black.

Can't resist ending this post with Mapplethorpe's 1982 portrait of Louise Bourgeois and her sculpture, "Fillette (1968)".

(For more information about Yvonne Singer, visit her CCCA pages.)