Century Exhibition
Category : Exhibitions
Curated by Leo Babsky
EXHIBITION: 15TH MARCH – 15TH MAY
CENTURY
61-63 Shaftesbury Ave,
London W1D 6LQ,
United Kingdom
I hope to see you at the opening on September 11 from 6 – 9pm at Katzman Contemporary! Cheers and thank you for your support!
Pins & Needles
September 11 – October 11, 2014
Opening September 11 from 6 – 9pm
Katzman Contemporary, Toronto
Pins & Needles is decorative, playful, and obsessive, with a hidden sinister edge. Sam Mogelonsky’s painstakingly constructed sculptures use embellishment to speak to notions of craft production and decoration. Her work references ostentation and design, the dual nature of bodily pleasure and pain, and at the same time initiates a dialogue between the mass-produced and the hand-made.
Mogelonsky’s biomorphic forms draw the eye, reflecting changing light and colour. While these surface qualities entice viewers to approach for a closer look, upon inspection, their decadence is revealed as façade – the captivatingly vibrant forms conceal sinister undertones. The sequins, systematically hand-pinned to these styrofoam figures, remind the viewer of the intense process of the physical acts of labour – and the resulting pain – involved in their creation.
Mogelonsky also encases document tubes with sequins, secured with long, sharp pointed pins. The spiraling interior view produces a kaleidoscopic effect that speaks of extravagance and decoration, while also calling attention to the dual nature of pleasure and pain. These objects reveal a studded interior core of methodically placed pins whose deliberate labour results in a threatening spiral arrangement; an intoxicating aesthetic that solicits further investigation.
Mogelonsky’s sculptural practice focuses on the manipulation of light hearted, naïvely seductive, artificial surfaces to reveal narratives that oppose the materials used in the creation process. Her obsessive repetition of decorative elements and process-driven labour challenges the limits of adornment, as well as contemporary consumption and its tendencies towards the ominous consequences of excess.
Presented in the project room at Katzman Contemporary in tandem with Sugar Won’t Work, the most recent and perhaps radical iteration of John Kissick’s painterly approach.
Above: Installation shot with ‘Bent Spiral’, ‘Pins & Needles’ and ‘Harvest Moon’, all works 2014.
Katzman Contemporary
86 Miller St, Toronto, ON, M6N 2Z9
Tel: 416 654 9515
Email: info@katzmancontemporary.com
Hours:
Tuesday – Thursday 11am to 5pm
Friday – Saturday 11am to 6pm or by appointment
To get to the gallery via TTC, take the 168 Symington bus north from Dundas West Station to the stop at Osler and Davenport, the gallery is one street west of the stop.
A small piece made in collaboration with Steven Beckly and Ellen Bleiwas will be on display Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (MOCCA) in September for TBD!
TBD – Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art
SEPTEMBER 6 – OCTOBER 26, 2014
The exhibition title TBD, most typically used as an acronym for ‘to be determined’, proposes that the definition of a contemporary art gallery is not fixed. TBD exposes the defining factors of contemporary art galleries for scrutiny and examines the institutions’ effects on communities in order to imagine possible futures and new approaches.
Curated by Su-Ying Lee, Assistant Curator, MOCCA
ARC Gallery and Educational Foundation
With the Red Head Collective
2156 N. Damen Avenue, Chicago, IL
June 25 – July 16, 2014
Opening: Friday, June 27 from 6-9 pm
What is the meaning of a box? In their exhibit, Inside, Outside, created by 16 Toronto artists, the essence of the “box” is explored. Boxes protect and contain a precious item within which is usually something of personal significance. The shape and function is archetypal and has existed since the dawn of mankind. This three-dimensional structure becomes the perfect metaphor for understanding our personal relationships with the “other” that surrounds us.
Artists of The Red Head Gallery, Toronto: Mathew Borrett, Gabrielle de Montmollin, Tonia di Risio, Teri Donovan, Peter Dykhuis,Gillian Iles, Lynn Christine Kelly, Margie Kelk, Nina Leo, Ian Mackay, Sam Mogelonsky, Matthew Schofield, Peggy Taylor Reid, Sally Thurlow, Elaine Whittaker, and Xiaojing Yan.
Making Methods at the JNAAG
Category : Exhibitions
June 6 – August 10, 2014
First Friday’s Event
Judith & Norman Alix Art Gallery
147 Lochiel Street, Sarnia ON
With Mark Stebbins and Becky Ip. Curated by Darryn Doull. Circulated by The Robert McLaughlin Gallery
The works in Making Methods focus on concepts of repetition, detail, and labour as a means of production. Stebbins, Mogelonsky, and Ip each produce rich, multi-faceted artworks steeped in themes of translation and absence, traditional craft practices, and a commitment to repetition and process.
While at first glance the artworks in this exhibition may not appear to have much in common, each artist’s deliberate engagement with material invites viewers to question the role of hand-rendered art in an increasingly digitized society where non-physical experiences are commonplace. Through the juxtaposition of these unique artistic processes, chance, memory, experimentation, and a wide range of references from popular cultural coalesce in inherently transformative and unpredictable ways.
Image – with paintings by Mark Stebbins
Toronto based artists Sam Mogelonsky and Becky Ip will join us for a presentation on their works in our new exhibition, ‘Making Methods.’
Becky Ip’s video and sculptural work is informed by personal narrative. Through meticulous research of her own history, she engages in the process of memory to create graphite drawings and paintings. By means of an almost compulsive process, the artist records her paintings into a dream-like video work her family’s past.
Through the repetition of decorative elements and process-driven labour, Samantha Mogelonsky attempts to challenge limits of adornment, contemporary consumption and excess. Her sculptures are truly experiments in material and labour.
Becky Ip holds a BFA in Interdisciplinary Studies from Concordia University and has participated in residencies at The Banff Centre and Plug In ICA (Winnipeg).
Sam Mogelonsky is an emerging Toronto-based artist. She holds a BFAH from Queen’s University, (Kingston, Ontario) and an MFA from Central Saint Martin’s College of Art (London, UK). Her work is held in Canadian and international collections and she is the recipient of a 2013 emerging artist grant form the Toronto Arts Council.
To register your seat click the link: http://jnaag.ca/
Thursday, June 5 at 7:00pm – 8:30pm
Judith & Norman ALIX Art Gallery, 147 Lochiel Street, Sarnia, Ontario N7T 7B4
For this year’s Platform Projects @ Art Athina, LUBOMIROV-EASTON has invited a large number of international artists to send a letter to Greece. The only restriction on artwork is that it must fit inside an A5 envelope – a size which represents a single fold in the standard A4 letter size. Rooted in a tradition of postcard shows, such as the annual ‘Secrets’ at the Royal College, as well as referencing mail art and the New York Correspondence School, this format has the advantage not only of simplifying freight, but crucially of allowing a larger number of artists to be shown together. Thus the show is conceived as a kind of communal artwork, a joint letter from one community of artists to another, to be assembled on site from hundreds of individual pieces. It is the nature of Platform Projects, as a gathering of international artist-led organisations, which are each other’s audience as much as the visitors to the fair, that makes this form of address to other artist communities possible.
The participating artists have complete freedom to interpret the 148×210 mm envelope space and there are no restrictions made on contents: whether the work is a postcard, a letter, or poster; whether painting, drawing, or sculpture; any object is allowed, including digital media such as a CD, DVD, or memory stick, or anything else that can be mailed and survive the postal journey there and back. There are no thematic restrictions either, and the resulting collection is intended as a broad snapshot of practices and ideas. It is then the role of the curator and the viewer to search out signs of a common language, which may perhaps exist, or be perceived to exist.
The artists are, however, invited to consider the wider implications of the A5 format, such as for example its geometric properties, its history, its ubiquitous circulation. The A0 to A10 series of paper sizes have been used as an international standard throughout Europe and most of the world for nearly a hundred years. They were invented by a German scientist in the 18th century and first used officially in France during the Revolution. Their especial genius is the simple and elegant concept of creating a rectangle which preserves its width-to-length ratio when folded in half. For this to work, it can be shown that the sides of consecutive A sizes must be reduced by roughly 29% ( a scale factor of 1/√2 ). The largest size in the series, A0, has an area of 1m^2, and this basic unit of scientific measure is folded in half up to 10 times to create all the other sizes.
Because every fold doubles the number of sheets, a single square meter can accommodate up to 32 A5 sheets. Hence the standard walls in Platform Projects give LUBOMIROV-EASTON ample scope to represent a significant range of artists at the fair.
Artists:
Bonita Alice, Brandon Alvendia, Ralph Anderson, William Angus-Hughes, Rachel Ara, Akiko Ban, David J Batchelor, Richard Bateman, Michael Boffey, Juan Bolivar, Vivienne Boucherat, Jane Boyer, Joanna Brinton, Samuel Capps, Thomas C. Chung, Carlos Correia, Cecilia Costa, Deb Covell, Amelia Critchlow, John Crossley, Amy Cunningham, Karen David, Bella Easton, Liz Elton, Holly Frean, Cadi Froehlich, Mikey Georgeson, Henk Gieskens, Alison Gill, Alison Goodyear, Maria Gouveli, Fiona Grady, Oona Grimes, Seth Guy, Kirsty Harris, Chris Hawtin, Jane Hayes Greenwood, Brian D Hodgson, Phill Hopkins, Laura Hudson, Mandy Hudson, Hannah Hughes, Julian Hughes-Watts, Lisa Ivory, Karin Janssen, Evy Jokhova, Katherine Jones, Young Joo Kim, Tabitha Knight, Hiroe Komai, Maggie Learmonth, Maria Letsiou, Rachel Levitas, Katherine Lubar, Iavor Lubomirov, Lee Maelzer, Colin Maitland, Enzo Marra, Sam Marshall, Zoe Martin, Nigel Massey, Michael McNamara, Sam Mogelonsky, Satoshi Nakajima, Valeriya N-Georg, Sarah Pager, Seung Ah Paik, James Petrucci, Carolina Piteira, Gareth Proskourine-Barnett, Quinn and Harvey, Frances Richardson, Pippa Ridley, Greg Rook, Steve Rosenthal, Laura Smith, Elli Sou, Aaron Steed, Joseph Stokes, Dolly Thompsett, Albeiro Rojas Tomedes, Claude Vergez, Marianne Walker, Grant Watson, Alice Wilson, Dan Wray, Margita Yankova
For more info: http://www.lubomirov-easton.com/Art-Athina-2014
On her last day in gallery, Forest City Gallery’s 2013-2014 Intern, Emily Simpson wrote a responsive article regarding the exhibition Extra Ordinary. This exhibition was curated by FCG’s current Director Jenna Faye Powell, and features three emerging artists Matt King, Sam Mogelonsky and Bree Zorel. Emily elaborates on some of the shared aesthetics, themes and concepts that run throughout the exhibition.
Tactile and Transformative
Written by Emily Simpson
Forest City Gallery’s show Extra Ordinary is a refreshingly accessible exhibition. Featuring the works of Matt King, Sam Mogelonsky and Bree Zorel, the gallery space tends to its viewers offering different instances of reinterpreted familiarity. Though striking visual temptations activate initial viewer interest, deeper meanings of the works speak to violence and mass production, social storytelling and the peculiarities of life. Curator Jenna Faye Powell states, “The artists chosen for this exhibition have crafted objects that may seem too ubiquitous, too shiny, or too humourous to hold any other agenda than to entice and tempt” (Jenna Faye Powell, Extra Ordinary, 2014).
Extra Ordinary is curated by Forest City Gallery’s director Jenna Faye Powell. This opportunity is given to the person in her position every two years and for Powell, this will be her first solo-curated exhibition. Bringing three artists together in a similar spacewhile maintaining flow and thematic clarity is no easy feat, but Extra Ordinaryaccomplishes just that due to the conscious, careful decisions made by Powell during the past two years of its process.
The space of the gallery mimics the contemporary and minimal features of the unremarkable objects. Preconceived expectations of a common art gallery accurately describe the space for this exhibition, however because everything is curated to expose that which lies beyond the usual, the space itself becomes of greater importance. The stark white walls are under-covered, therefore greater exposing their mere purpose and existence. The walls appear on display, as do the objects presented on them. In this sense, the exhibition presents as awaiting viewer inspection and interpretation.
Each artist uses different tactics to transform ordinary objects. Sam Mogelonsky’s works showcase the artistic process involved in their making – a form of fascinating seduction that comes across as assertive in nature. The objects do not offer anything other than their basic form and creation and yet it is hard to look elsewhere. Mogelonsky’s shiny objects recall ideals of mass production. Her works visually reference children’s art projects that are professionally done. Highlighting the mechanics of the human ability, these works speak to the self-destructive, cyclical nature of mass production.
Making Methods at the JNAAG in Sarnia
Category : Exhibitions
Making Methods: Becky Ip, Samantha Mogelonsky, Mark Stebbins
Judith & Normal ALIX Art Gallery
147 Lochiel Street, Sarnia, Ontario, N7T 0B4
June 6 to August 10, 2014
The works in Making Methods focus on concepts of repetition, detail, and labour as a means of production. Arising in an era when rapid digital and non-physical experiences are commonplace, each artist’s engagement with materiality highlights a potential modernization of craft-based practices and as a result, an increased focus on hand-rendered art. Through the juxtaposition of these unique artistic processes, chance, memory, experimentation, and a wide range of references from popular cultural coalesce in inherently transformative and unpredictable ways.
Opening June 6, 2014
“Extra Ordinary” at Forest City Gallery in London, ON, with Matt King and Bree Zorel, curated by Jenna Faye Powell is getting some great feedback and also is accompanied by this awesome essay by Jenna! Check it out.
Great opening at Forest City Gallery
Category : Exhibitions
Thanks to Jenna Faye Powell and everyone at Forest City Gallery in London, ON, for the fabulous opening on Friday night! The show with Bree Zorel and Matt King continues until May 10.
Vu d’Ici in Montreal
Category : Exhibitions
Thank you so much to Studio Béluga for the great show in Montreal. Vu d’ici continues until Friday. (Image courtesy of Bernard Ionescu)