Mike Nelson: Amnesiac Hide
At the Power Plant 231 Queens Quay West
Friday January 31st 8-11 TONIGHT
Curated by Julia Paoli
The Power Plant presents the first solo exhibition in Toronto of work by the renowned British artist Mike Nelson. Entitled Mike Nelson: Amnesiac Hide, the exhibition comprises the large-scale installation Quiver of Arrows (2010) and new significant commissions; including the sculptural work Gang of Seven, produced in partnership with The Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver, and a new photographic work Eighty Circles through Canada (The Last Possessions of an Orcadian Mountain Man), produced by the Contemporary Art Gallery in association with the Walter Phillips Gallery in Banff.
Nelson is best-known for his labyrinthine architectural installations that unfold as narrative structures, where the viewer moves through rooms like a reader turns pages in a novel. These immersive environments are often seemingly abandoned, devoid of figures, yet imagining the unseen occupants of these intricate spaces is central to the viewer’s experience. For instance, Nelson’s work Quiver of Arrows is constructed from four travel trailers soldered together to form an enclosed customized space that viewers may enter and explore. While the exterior of the trailers signify a distinctly North American design for leisure and travel, Nelson renders the vehicles inoperable, removing their wheels and sections of their bodies. Audiences navigate the interior of the work, passing through the rudimentary spaces of the ‘wagons,’ where objects and tableau suggest cultural and ideological others; perhaps these are the targets of what an idea of North American liberalism could suggest for the latent arrows in their quiver. Nelson’s first interest in these once gleaming aluminum visions of the future was their resemblance to the early covered wagons of the first pioneers – not an unreasonable comparison when you realize that the oldest within the contruction dates back to 1939. Given the size and scope of this installation, The Power Plant is the second gallery to ever exhibit Quiver of Arrows.
Click Link for Complete Information : http://www.thepowerplant.org/Exhibitions/2013/Winter/Mike-Nelson.aspx
Oh, ou, ohh, o, By Tessar Lo and La Brosse du Peintre by Ted Gahl
At Cooper Cole 1161 Dundas St. W
January 31st 7:00 TONIGHT
COOPER COLE is pleased to announce a solo exhibition from Tessar Lo and Ted Gahl
Tessar Lo (b. 1984, Jakarta, Indonesia) graduated from Sheridan Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning, in Toronto. He has exhibited internationally at Jaski Art Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Door Studios, Paris, France; Japanese American National Museum, Los Angeles, USA; and Atticus Gallery, Barcelona, Spain. Most recently he was included in the group show One, and Two, and More Than Two curated by Micah Lexier at The Power Plant in Toronto, Canada. Tessar Lo currently lives and works in Toronto, Canada.
Ted Gahl (b. 1983, Connecticut, USA) creates intuitive paintings and objects of varying scale, embedding and juxtaposing personal imagery of the present alongside art historical influences of the past. Gahl’s paintings often read as elements of subconscious activities – reveries, dreams, and memories, while being firmly grounded in the act of painting itself. Gahl’s work has been shown at Queens Museum of Art, Halsey McKay, and Storefront Bushwick, as well as at Green gallery in Milwaukee, Middlemarch in Brussels, Dan Graham in Los Angeles, and Cirrus in Los Angeles. Gahl is represented by DODGEgallery, NY, and lives and works in Connecticut, USA.
Facebook link for Tessar Lo https://www.facebook.com/events/647078162005787/?
Facebook link for Ted Gahl https://www.facebook.com/events/450264981766123/?
Jeannie Thib | Imprint
At Katzman Contemporary at 86 Miller Street
Saturday February 1st 3- 6 pm remarks at 4:30
With additional works by Randy Grskovic, Shelley Miller, Meghan Price, Pete Smith
Jeannie Thib led an outstanding career. She was an integral part of the Katzman Contemporary roster, an inspiration and influence to the artistic community, and an irreplaceable friend to many. In the spirit of her remarkable artistic contributions, Thib’s career will be celebrated at the inaugural exhibition of Katzman Contemporary on February 1, 2014.
Accompanying Thib’s work will be artistic responses by four contemporary artists, Randy Grskovic, Shelley Miller, Meghan Price, and Pete Smith, as a tribute to her artistic legacy.
Imprint features seminal works from multiple eras of Thib’s career to offer a holistic instance of her practice and artistic ethos. Many of the included sculptural and wall works have not been shown in Toronto, and never together in this context.
Facebook Event https://www.facebook.com/events/1433478186884691/?
Another Dark Day Passes
At OCADU Student Gallery at 52 McCaul Street
Thursday February 6th 7:00 to 11:00
Another Dark Day Passes’ is an exploration of psychedelic landscapes and alternative realities. This show invites viewers to experience the gallery as a portal to an altered psychological state. The works presented oscillate between material reality and dream-like illusion. The holographic and iridescent aesthetic that runs through the show is meant to communicate optimism by transforming the gallery into an ethereal environment. Conversely, dissonant elements have been incorporated with the intent of disarming the viewer to release meditative energy and open up the imagination. It is a psychological mirage, where confusion and darkness give way to possibility and hope.
Curated by Diana Lynn VanderMeulen and Julia Dickens
Featuring work by: Robin Clason, Sarah D’Angelo, Julia Dickens, Melissa Fisher, Inez Genereux, Eunice Luk, Felix Kalmenson, Nicholas Robins, Mark Sommerfeld, Diana Lynn VanderMeulen, Vince Vining
Facebook Event https://www.facebook.com/events/215491485321440/?
Push and Pull By Bridget Moser, Michael Vickers and Nikki Woolsey
At Mercer Union, a Centre for Contemporary Art at 1286 Bloor Street West
Friday February 7th 7 – 10
Push and Pull presents a series of new works by artists Bridget Moser, Michael Vickers and Nikki Woolsey. The exhibition title refers to a constant tension, a position between moving in one direction, and into another; a perpetual state of struggle.
Bridget Moser’s performance and video work is suspended between internally voiced conundrums, stand-up comedy, experimental theatre, performance art, and prop comedy, with a continuous slippage from one state to another. In this in-betweenness a certain absurdity materializes, questioning a world of assumptions and belief systems.
Michael Vicker’s works sit between painting and sculpture, in prioritizing their object-hood physical struggle becomes manifest, highly industrialised materials are folded, pushed and beaten into other forms acknowledging the precarity of their formation and labour.
Nikki Woolsey coalesces distinct everyday found materials into sometimes seamless yet habitually unfamiliar forms. Broken vases, glass panels, and other quotidian objects seep into abstraction, questioning how we perceive objects and place value, and disrupting existent systems of knowledge.
Curated by Georgina Jackson
Facebook Event https://www.facebook.com/events/510113575768503/?
Misled by Nature: Contemporary Art and the Baroque
At Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (MOCCA) 952 Queen Street West
Saturday, February 8, 2:00-5:00 pm Opening Reception
Feb 08, 2014 – Apr 06, 2014
David Altmejd/ Mark Bradford/ Lee Bul/ Bharti Kher/ Tricia Middleton/ Yinka Shonibare, MBE
Misled by Nature: Contemporary Art and the Baroque showcases a selection of works by contemporary artists that draw upon aspects of the historical Baroque: material excess, accumulation, bravado, theatricality and the construction of immersive, emotive environments. This presence of what could be called the ‘neo-baroque’ has, in recent time, been a recurring facet of contemporary art in Canada and around the world.
Upcoming MOCCA Talk
Saturday, February 8, 1:00 pm – National Gallery of Canada Curator of Contemporary Art Josée Drouin-Briseboisand exhibiting artist Tricia Middleton will present free public talks on the work in Misled by Nature.
Click Link http://www.mocca.ca/exhibitions/upcoming-exhibitions/