OPENING RECEPTION
FRIDAY 04 MAY 2012, 8PM – 10PM

Libby Hague’s installation is to be viewed as a psychological self-portrait that traces patterns of influence as they move between creative life and private life. The themes that often recur in Hague’s work –risk and luck, disaster and rescue– are transposed into an approximate timeline of the complicated and contradictory textures of her life. Here is the beginning; the forgotten things; the boredom; the family dynamics; the accidents; the patterns; the nightmares; the sex; the love; the fun.

The exhibition will consist of an immersive woodcut installation including the Toronto premier of Hague’s pleated paper structures. In addition, abstract puppet sculptures will be suspended from tracks on the ceiling. These puppets are to be reconfigured by the gallery audience, moving around but never going away, accumulating like our personal history.

Part creature and part object, the puppets are made to stand and sit. Then they stand and sit again, in a “lower-case” ideal of continued effort.  By moving them, we give them a half-life that engenders in us a strange empathy and impatience. They test our patience with their repeated and almost inevitable failures; they test our optimism with their inability to learn or show gratitude. Together they speak to the isolation and interconnection of beings.

As part of the YYreZidency program, the lengthy duration of the show will allow for several interventions and performances to take place within the gallery; the anticipated super-energy combo of sculptural drama and live human performance. The interventions/performances are scheduled for Saturday afternoons from 1:00pm-3:00pm with open rehearsals happening any time during regular gallery hours. A variety of documentation will be made and presented as a small video series through the social media outlet YouTube.

May 26 | Philip Anisman reads from Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace 
June 2 | Catherine Carmichael, experimental dance and performance artist
June 9 | Erica Iris – vocal (mezzo-soprano)    
June 16 | Andrea Cerswell – vocal (soprano)
June 23 | Zoja Smutny, experimental dance and performance artist
June 30 | Maev Beaty, performance with spoken word

LIBBY HAGUE is a Toronto-based visual artist who works primarily in print installation. She recently held solo exhibitions at the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto, ON), Galerie Circulaire (Montreal, QC),  La Centrale (Montreal, QC), the Durham Art Gallery (Durham, ON), and at the Art Gallery of Mississauga (Mississagua, ON). She has traveled internationally to install her work in the International Paper Art Exhibition and Symposium, Chung Shan National Gallery (Taipei, TW), Miner for a heart, curated by Yael Brotman for Impact 7 (Melbourne, AU), and for IPCNY’s New Prints 2011/Autumn (New York City, USA). Hague was the recipient of the 2009 Open Studio National Printmaking Award. She is represented in many public collections including the Musée du Québec , Confederation Center, Anderson Collection, University of Buffalo, Bank of Montreal and the Donovan Collection at the University of Toronto. www.libbyhague.com

JAIME ANGELOPOULOS | THE THIEF IN YOUR SLEEVE

Jaime Angelopoulos presents a new body of sculptures exploring figuration and gesture through abstract form. Angelopoulos’ sculptures are relational in scale to the human body, often evoking a figure in motion, or metaphorically, they allude to a heightened emotional state. Colour, texture, and form become emotive layers within each work, while narrative based titles invite the viewer’s participation, infusing ambiguous forms with personal meaning.

JAIME ANGELOPOULOS received her MFA from York University (2010), and BFA from NSCAD University (2005). She completed Post Baccalaureate studies at Meadows School of the Arts in Dallas, TX (2006-07), and an artist residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts (2006). Angelopoulos works primarily as a sculptor, but also creates large-scale drawings. Her sculptures are constructed primarily in fabric, plaster, and found objects. Angelopoulos has presented solo exhibitions at Parisian Laundry (Montreal, QC), Stride Gallery (Calgary, AB), Anna Leonowens Gallery (Halifax, NS), Meadows School of the Arts (Dallas, TX), and The Banff Center for the Arts (Banff, AL).  Her works are included in the collections of The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ALDO Group, York University, BMO, as well as private collections. Angelopoulos is represented by Parisian Laundry in Montreal. She lives and works in Toronto.

Jaime Angelopoulos gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Toronto Arts Council, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Canada Council for the Arts.

Read SHANNON ANDERSON‘S Jaime Angelopoulos: The Trickster Within, an essay about JAIME ANGELOPOULOS‘ exhibition.

Still On, JACOB HORWOOD: Detail Without A Drawing Board, show runs until July 21, 2012.

Location | 140-401 Richmond St. W Toronto, 0N M5V 3A8
Gallery Hours | Tuesday-Saturday 11:00am-5:00pm

OPENING RECEPTION | SATURDAY 14 APRIL 2012, 2PM-5PM
In partnership with the 25th Images Festival.

Strange Lines and Distances is a two-channel audiovisual installation focusing on Guglielmo Marconi’s first transatlantic radio broadcast. The work is inspired by Marconi’s belief that sound never diminishes, but rather grows incrementally fainter and fainter. He believed that with an adequately sensitive receiver, one could amplify the echoes of history. Strange Lines and Distances looks at and listens to the past, revisiting Marconi’s original transmission sites in order to explore the hauntological aspects of radio and landscape. The installation invites a consideration of the monumental impact of the first wireless transmission, and explores the medium’s potential to conflate and fragment both space and time. Strange Lines and Distances takes its title from a passage in Francis Bacon’s utopian text New Atlantis, in which Bacon imagines a futuristic society’s culture, politics, history and media. In contradistinction, Strange Lines and Distances moves backwards, retrospectively exploring the invention of radio while looking for echoes and historical intimations of the past within the present.

Strange Lines and Distances’ dual channels represent the transmission site in Poldhu Cove, U.K. and the receiving site at Fever Hospital, St. John’s, NL. Each historical site is documented using 16mm colour negative film. The sonic composition was created from site-specific field recordings, shortwave and longwave radio recordings and archival material. Mired in static and atmospheric interference, the recordings exist as fragmentary spectres of outport beacons, noise, musical passages and human voice. Visually, each channel contains imagery that resonates and rhymes with the opposing channel in terms of shape, line, colour, light and optical geometry. Through a visual examination of the sites’ topographical similarities, the work plays with the juxtaposition of landscape, architectural ruins, flora, and geological and meteorological phenomena. The images unfold as a series of long shots, and this play with duration creates a montage that asks the spectator to consider distance and the poetics of form.

JOSHUA BONNETTA is an artist working with film, video and sound in various modes of theatrical exhibition, performance and installation. His work has been shown within North and South America, the UK, Europe, Russia and South Korea. He is the 2009 recipient of the National Film Board of Canada’s Best emerging/mid-career Canadian filmmaker award from the Images Festival.

Location | 140-401 Richmond St. W Toronto, 0N M5V 3A8
Gallery Hours | Tuesday-Saturday 11:00am-5:00pm

OPENING RECEPTION | FRIDAY 06 JANUARY 2012, 8:00PM-10:00PM

For her first solo exhibition in Toronto, Julie Lequin presents a selection of chapters from a new multidisciplinary video installation which condenses each year of her life. Effervescent with humor, storytelling, error and wordplay, Top 30 weaves the line between autobiography and fiction.

JULIE LEQUIN is a French Canadian artist. She received a BFA from Concordia University and an MFA from Art Center College of Design. In 2007, 2nd Cannons Publications published Lequin’s first book and DVD project The Ice Skating Tree Opera – Director’s Cuts. Her work has been screened and exhibited internationally at venues such as the Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum in California, La Centrale Powerhouse in Montreal, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Art in General and White Columns in New York City. Lequin is the 2011 recipient of the Joseph S. Stauffer Award, an honour given by the Canada Council for the Arts. Lequin is happily living and working in Montreal.

Read JULIEN BOIS‘ Top 30: Souvenirs and Suitcases, an essay about JULIE LEQUIN‘S exhibition.

Location | 140-401 Richmond St. W Toronto, ON M5V 3A8
Gallery Hours | 11:00am-5:00pm

OPENING RECEPTION | FRIDAY 06 JANUARY 2012 – 8:00PM TO 10:00PM

KEITH LANGERGRABER | YOU CAN’T GO HOME AGAIN

You Can’t Go Home Again will explore various facets of science fiction fan culture as it intersects with personal utopias. The project will critique the utopian gesture of the lone male seeking out places of isolation, away from the civilizing impulses of society; conjuring up a period of creativity, as well as loneliness, alienation and moral disintegration. Merging sci-fi references with documents that chronicle a solitary sea voyage and personal revelation, this installation will complicate assumptions about what it means to be “a fan” across disciplines. Employing new theories of fandom, the exhibition will open up a range of possibilities in regards to consumption, production, criticality, and play.

KEITH LANGERGRABER received his BFA from the University of Victoria and his MFA from the University of British Columbia. He has exhibited extensively in solo and group shows in Canada, the United States, and Asia since 1995.  He has received many grants and awards for his work, including being on the long list for the Sobey Award in 2009. Langergraber’s work grows from an interest in social, cultural, and political change found through scrutiny of a selected site. His research allows for an understanding of the shifts that have taken place at a location over time. His exhibitions consist of the accumulation and reconstitution of information through the peeling back of layers of the vernacular landscape. Langergraber is currently teaching at Emily Carr University (BC).

Read ANA BARAJAS‘ The Consciousness of the Lake, an essay about KEITH LANGERGRABER‘S exhibition.

OPENING RECEPTION | FRIDAY 06 JANUARY 2012 – 8:00PM TO 10:00PM

JACOB HORWOOD | DETAIL WITHOUT A DRAWING BOARD

Horwood developed these series of screenprinted one and two-off pieces with little emphasis on design. He wishes to demystify the idea that in screenprinting, a piece of art is first designed in its entirety, and then produced. The execution of the work and its composition is completed almost entirely in the studio by the artist. This stresses the practice itself, relying on trial and error, as well as color harmony to create new work. This series is a more spontaneous practice, and utilized as little source material as possible.

JACOB HORWOOD is a Toronto-based visual artist who works in printmaking, publishing, and sound art. In 2004, he co-founded the experimental sound art record label Beniffer Editions. It has released over 110 hand-made artist multiples on various formats, including LPs, books, box-sets and cassettes. Horwood is the administrator of Punchclock Printing and works as a specialty screen printer, assisting other artists and designers interested in the full realization of their ideas. He is also one-half of music concrete duo Gastric Female Reflex, who have released music and toured internationally. Horwood’s work is informed by process based painting techniques applied to screen-printing, visual after image demonstrations, re-appropriation, and artist multiple presentation.

OPENING RECEPTION | FRIDAY 09 SEPTEMBER 2011, 8:00PM – 10:00PM

Canadians have an understandable fixation with surviving in the natural world. This is evident in cultural production ranging from Roughing it in the Bush, Susanna Moodie’s 1852 account of survival in Duro, Ontario, to Mimio’s own Survivorman. Foraging for edible and medicinal gems has, for most of Canadians, become quite removed from our actual means of survival, yet it persists as a pursuit for some, and part of a dream of self-sufficiency for others

Dubbed the «Foolproof Four» in 1943 by Professor Clyde Christensen, Morel, Shaggy Mane, Puffball and Sulfur Shelf mushrooms are the most common and easily identified edibles hunted by amateur mycologists. The term «Foolproof Four» led Dunning to consider mushrooms as actual superheroes of the natural world. Like all fungi, these mushrooms contribute to planetary survival by providing the imperative function of decay. Culturally, they are weighted with similar dark, mysterious and supernatural characteristics as bats, spiders and cats, on which popular comic book superheroes have been based.

Foolproof Four: Superheroes of the Forest Floor is an installation of four large ceramic sculptures of mushrooms, each sitting on its own plinth. On the walls are four different posters of blank, speech bubble templates: downloadable, freeware graphic tools for comic book designers. Around the base of each mushroom and on the floor are over 8000 custom-made buttons. There are three sets of buttons. One illustrates superhero logos for each of the mushrooms and another features empty speech bubbles in four different styles taken from comic book templates. The third set suggests possible «superpowers» of the Four with terms taken from scientific descriptions of the life-cycle of mushrooms: Autodeliquescence, Telemorph, Spore Liberation and Cytoplasmic Fusion. Perhaps Shaggy Mane with its curious character of autodeliquescence (self-digestion) is a force to be reckoned with. And surely they have the united power of spore liberation. The buttons themselves look like mushrooms multiplying and popping up from the floor, spreading and intermingling with the buttons of the other mushrooms. Viewers are invited to take a button, allowing the project to travel spore-like outside of the gallery to other locations.

ANNIE DUNNING takes a playful approach to nature and mystery. A curiosity for the overlooked and unconsidered leads her to deal with mostly common items as subject matter. With an aesthetic that is influenced by craft and DIY style, Dunning explores what greater possibilities common subjects might hold if released from their expected roles. She is interested in examining intersecting elements of culture and the natural world and in conflating various aspects of nature and culture to create new hybrids. Dunning often focus on rediscovering the potential of ordinary or common things, or viewing them from an off-center perspective to confuse conventional hierarchy.

Annie Dunning received an undergraduate degree in fine arts from Mount Allison University and a MFA degree from the University of Guelph. Her work has been exhibited across Canada and abroad in Japan, Germany and the US. Dunning’s practice includes collaborative projects, teaching, artist residencies and lectures, and has been funded by the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts.

The artist gratefully acknowledges the support of the Ontario Arts Council.

Read EMILY FALVEY‘S Autodeliquescent Superheores, an essay about ANNIE DUNNING‘S exhibition.

OPENING RECEPTION |  FRIDAY 09 SEPTEMBER 2011, 8:00PM – 10:00PM

For this, his first solo exhibition in Toronto, Dil Hildebrand presents a new body of work. Back to the Drawing Board represents a focal shift away from the photographic and toward a diagrammatic approach to the image; an incarnation that abandons the image altogether.

DIL HILDEBRAND was born in Winnipeg, Canada, and obtained his MFA at Concordia University, Montreal in 2008. In 2006 he won the RBC Canadian Painting Competition and has since participated in many exhibitions throughout Canada, the United States and abroad. Upcoming exhibitions include group shows at OBORO, Montreal (curated by David Elliott) and Espace Virtuel, Chicoutimi. In 2010, Hildebrand participated in the 4th Beijing International Art Biennale 2010 in Beijing, China, and produced Long Drop: The Paintings of Dil Hildebrand, a monograph by Anteism Press. With critical texts by Louise Déry, Richard Rhodes and Christine Redfern, Long Drop surveys a selection of Hildebrand’s paintings on canvas and paper from 2006 to 2009. His work has been collected by major museums throughout Canada, including the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, and the National Gallery of Canada.

Dil Hildebrand is represented by Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain. He lives and works in Montréal.

Read MARY REID‘S Dil Hildebrand: Going Back to the Drawing Board, an essay about DIL HILDEBRAND‘S exhibition.

We are excited to announce the launch of YYZ’s online exhibition «YYZ in the 90’s» which takes a look at our programming initiatives during our second decade. This exhibition is part of Virtual Museum of Canada (VMC), Community Memories program supported by Canadian Heritage.

VIEW THE EXHIBITION HERE.

Acknowledgements:


Archivist: Misty-Dawn MacMillan


Assistants: Sagan
MacIsaac and Mallory
Wilkinson


Note from YYZ: Every 
reasonable effort has been 
made to contact the copyright for images and texts reproduced in this archive. YYZ will gladly receive
information that will enable errors or omissions to be
rectified.

OPENING RECEPTION | FRIDAY 20 MAY 2011, 8:00PM – 10:00PM

One Another is a two-part sculpture created for the vitrine and the lobby of YYZ Artists’ Outlet. What choice could be more obvious – and apparently meaningless – than to place a storefront mannequin in a vitrine? And what does that object become when transferred from the usual storefront window to the vitrine of an art gallery?

Stéphanie Chabot’s deviant version of the mannequin deals with issues that are inherent to the familiar object: the manufacturing of better bodies, the morbid desire related to self-duplication, the strange force of the uncanny. In One Another, these issues expand and exceed themselves creating delirious new roles and perspectives for the large-scale doll.

STÉPHANIE CHABOT is a multi disciplinary artist that works primarily in painting, sculpture and installation. She received her Masters Degree from York University in 2008. Chabot’s work has been shown in many Canadian artist run centers including La Centrale Gallery Powerhouse and Clark Gallery in Montréal. Her work has also been presented in the United States, Spain (Sala Riekalde, Bilbao), England (Sassoon Gallery, London) and in Australia (H-Block Gallery, Brisbane). She is a member of the curatorial collective L’Araignée, and has been involved at La Centrale Gallery Powerhouse as both a member of the selection committee (2008- 2011), and the interim artistic coordinator (2010). Chabot currently lives and works in Montréal.

The artist gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.

Special thanks to Pierre Terzian, Yam Lau, Kristi Ropoleski, and Noémi McComber.

Read STÉPHANIE BERTRAND‘S The false prophecies of the false idols in the flesh, an essay about STÉPHANIE CHABOT‘S exhibition.

OPENING RECEPTION | FRIDAY 29 APRIL 2011, 8:00PM - 10:00PM

Lauren Hall’s sculptures and installations examine travel, wonder and wilderness through proxies of touristic sites. Her exhibition Sail Fast Cloud-Shadows and Sunbeams imagines coloured sand, soap, and gold lighting panels as sites of natural phenomena. Humour is important in her work, and confusing irony with earnestness seems to be a central problem. She considers stereotypes, clichés, and accepted ideas of the outdoors through sunsets, mirages, and the northern lights. Approaching her work the way one would tackle the set of a school play, game show, or diorama, Hall offers a view that is mostly synthetic, half real, and quite far from the awe-inspiring sites she signals to.

LAUREN HALL received her BA in Fine Arts from the University of Waterloo in 2006. She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally with recent exhibitions at Modern Fuel, Kingston; Peak Gallery, Toronto; Cambridge Galleries, Cambridge, and Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, Berlin. She is the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including an emerging artist grant from Ontario Arts Council. She was recently awarded a fellowship to attend the Vermont Studio Center and is a former artist in residence at Ox-Bow School of the Arts. Reviews of her work have appeared in Canadian Art Online, The Toronto Star, C Magazine, and The Globe and Mail.

Read WOJCIECH OLEJNIK‘S Sail Fast Cloud-Shadows and Sunbeams, An essay about LAUREN HALL‘S exhibition.

Read a review of Lauren Hall’s exhibition in the Summer 2011 issue of Magenta Magazine Online.