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Katie Bethune-Leamen, Broadbent Sisters, Daniel Griffin Hunt, Sanaz Mazinani, Sandy Plotnikoff, Mary Pratt, Cole Swanson, Catherine Telford-Keogh, Xiaojing Yan

Curated by: Ruth Jones and Sam Mogelonsky

May 12 – September 9, 2018
The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa

Opening Reception: Friday, June 1, 7-10pm. Register for a free bus from Toronto.
Catalogue Launch: Saturday, June 9, 2-4pm. Register for a free bus from Toronto.

What happens when surfaces glitter, gleam, sparkle, and shine? In Glimmers of the Radiant Real, radiance, that quality of projected light we associate so often with the marvelous and the modern, is subverted by the relationship between the quality of a surface and what it covers, reflects, or contains. Surface is the point of contact for the body, it’s skin and texture and touch. The glistening, shining surfaces of works by Katie Bethune-Leamen, the Broadbent Sisters, Daniel Griffin Hunt, Sanaz Mazinani, Sandy Plotnikoff, Mary Pratt, Cole Swanson, Catherine Telford-Keogh, and Xiaojing Yan manipulate the viewer’s perception of dimension through reflections and refractions, thereby un-forming the object and making the familiar strange.

The artists and works featured in the exhibition use a variety of materials to generate these surface effects, from glass to gold, foil, plastic, and pearls. Each material has its own qualities of shine and reflection, and each combination of qualities reacts with a work’s source and subject to yield a different effect: gilded insect wings sketch a house’s morbid geography, material treatments upend expectations of form and colour, and dollar-store detritus, sunk in resin, seems to glow behind glass. For the viewer, the result is a combination of material familiarity and perceptual distortion.

In video, sculpture, photography, and installation, these works invite us to transform as they do, through interactions with surfaces that dazzle, using light to obscure or fracture the images and clarity we expect. They answer a craving for radiance, a desire to be like them, shining and seemingly limitless. They offer the promise of the object made new, but even if they speak in the same material language of the glittering and the precious, the modern, and the transcendent, they speak its opposite, too, a language of obscurity and disappearance, complicating the shining and ideal. They layer the surface substances that gloss the world we know, offering glimmers of a radiant reality where light becomes, not truth illuminated, but something else.

Fore more information, please visit glimmersoftheradiantreal.ca or rmg.on.ca
Special Events Celebrating Glimmers of the Radiant Real at the RMG:

Exhibition Opening during RMG Fridays: Pride

June 1, from 7-10pm
Celebrate Durham Region Pride Week and join us for a night of live music, film, art, and more that celebrate the vibrancy and resilience of queer creatives. Fronted by transgender LatinX songwriter Carolina Brown, I. M. Brown & The Transcendents fills out any room with their spacey experimental post-rock music. We’ll celebrate the opening of Glimmers of the Radiant Real and get creative with ALL the colours of the rainbow in the studio. Free to attend, cash bar.

Coming from Toronto? A free bus will depart from Mercer Union at 5:30pm and return to Mercer Union at 10pm following the event. Seating available by reservation, on a first come, first served basis. Book your spot today!

Catalogue Launch and Artists’ Talk
June 9, from 2-4pm (with ASL interpretation)

Join the artists and curators for a discussion surrounding the works and exhibition themes as we launch the catalogue for Glimmers of the Radiant Real. The full colour catalogue will include essays from curators Ruth Jones and Sam Mogelonsky, as well as guest contributor Vanessa Nicholas.
Coming from Toronto? A free bus will leave from Mercer Union at 1pm and return to Mercer Union at 5pm following the event. Seating available by reservation, on a first come, first served basis. Book your spot today!

Note: Mercer Union is located at 1286 Bloor St W, a short walk from Lansdowne Subway Station.

The Art of Gold: A Workshop with Cole Swanson

June 10, from 12-3pm
Exhibiting artist, Cole Swanson will introduce you to the historical process of gilding using gold leaf. With both traditional materials and fresh techniques, you will make metal gold leaf designs based on insect patterns and motifs. All materials included, no drawing skills required. $45 Members | $55 Non-Members. Register today!

OPG Second Sundays: Shiny not Grimy

June 10, from 1-3pm
An event for family fun! This month the art is going to sparkle. Create dazzling collages using the exhibition Glimmers of the Radiant Real for inspiration. OPG Second Sundays are made possible with the support of Ontario Power Generation.

Exhibition Tour for Glimmers of the Radiant Real:

Art Gallery of Peterborough: October 6, 2018 – January 6, 2019
McIntosh Gallery: January 17 – March 16, 2019

Please visit glimmersoftheradiantreal.ca or follow the exhibition on Instagram @radiantreal for more information about the artists, events and the tour.

We thank our sponsors, partners and donors for their continuing support and help in making the exhibition programming and this catalogue come to life. We are grateful to our sponsors Partners in Art, Burgundy Asset Management, and Ridgewood Capital Asset Management and to our media partner Akimbo Art Promotions, and our generous donors. We also acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.

The Robert McLaughlin Gallery
72 Queen Street, Civic Centre, Oshawa, Ontario
905 576 3000 ex 109 | rmg.on.ca

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Opening Hours:
Monday to Friday 10am – 5pm
Thursday 10am – 9pm
Saturday 10am – 4pm
Sunday 12pm – 4pm

The Role of the Media – Saturday, May 20 at 1-2PM, PLUS Art Fair, Cotton Factory, Hamilton

Being an artist is one component of a larger equation, which includes the media. What role does it play in the artist’s career? From print to online, we explore the minds of those who see what others will see.

Sam Mogelonsky: AKIMBO
Mogelonsky specializes in promoting the visual arts, combining her art-world wisdom with her marketing and sponsorship acumen. She is presently the Director of Sales and Business Development for Akimbo Art Promotions – a Toronto-based online company that promotes contemporary visual art, video, new media and film locally, nationally and internationally. She has worked with arts organizations including The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Mercer Union, the Canadian Friends of the Israel Museum, the Red Head Gallery, the Union Gallery and Rearview Project(s). Sam is also a practicing artist and holds an MFA from Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and a BFA from Queen’s University, with exhibits across Canada and internationally.

Sky Goodden: Editor MOMUS
Goodden is the founding editor of Momus, an international online art publication that stresses a return to art criticism. It has attracted over 500,000 readers, and regularly publishes some of the world’s most highly-regarded critics. Momus has been praised by peer publications and institutions including Frieze, The New Inquiry, artnet News, the College Art Association, and the LA Times. Goodden was the founding editor of BLOUIN ARTINFO Canada, which she ran from 2011 to 2014. She has written for Modern Painters, Art + Auction, Canadian Art, the National Post, Art21, artnet News, and C Magazine. She holds an MFA in Criticism & Curatorial Practice from OCAD University, which recently presented her with an Alumni of Influence Award, the “Trailblazer”.

FREE with admission – http://www.plusartfair.com/programming.html

Kind of forgot to update this news feed for the past 2 years apparently… Last night I told a few stories at Katzman Contemporary for the comedy event Contemporary Fart – thanks to all who came out and laughed!

Curated by Leo Babsky
EXHIBITION: 15TH MARCH – 15TH MAY

CENTURY
61-63 Shaftesbury Ave,
London W1D 6LQ,
United Kingdom

Pretty excited to be in the CeRCCa catalogue with my ‘Furnish Me’ project from back in the day in 2009. Great memories of Barcelona!

“Sam Mogelonsky’s equally anti-social but far more subdued sculptures are also on view. Their sequined surfaces are inviting but they hide an army of pins that threaten to draw blood with just a touch, which is a bit of a bummer after Kissick’s rollercoaster ride. I lean more to the works here that are just surface. I don’t need danger with my delight.” – Terence Dick

Read the full review here – http://www.akimbo.ca/akimblog/?id=918

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

The CFIM Associates visited Caviar20 in Toronto this past week and it was a great summer kick-off event!

The Associates is a Toronto-based group in our 20′s and 30′s interested in engaging with the local and international art world through arts-based programming.

Our goal is to raise funds and awareness for the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, an institution with outstanding and broad-ranging collections, from archaeological works to cutting-edge contemporary art. The Museum aims to create cross-cultural dialogues within Israel and abroad, and CFIM’s efforts support the free admission and programming for Israeli children of all religions and ethnicities.

I recently helped the lovely Su-Ying Lee and Jennifer Davis with their curatorial initiative – Rear (View) Projects as the Marketing & Communications Manager (so lots of Facebook-ing, Tweeting, Instagramming and print/web stuff). The project was a great success with a hue turn out for the opening!

Flipping Properties was commissioned by Rear View (Projects) for an unconventional exhibition platform – a laneway in Toronto’s Little Portugal neighbourhood.  The project is a continuation of an ongoing study of super-furnitures by Lai, an architect, and the team of Bureau Spectacular.  The installation takes the familiar house icon, the pentagon, as its formal starting point.  Lai denatures this symbol of domesticity, converting it into super-furniture which is ‘too big to be furniture and too small to be architecture.’  This intervention in Toronto’s urban fabric provokes us to reconsider the potential uses for overlooked spaces in the city and question typical modes of interaction between art, place and audiences.

During the opening event on July 11, 2014, pieces of the installation will tumble and relocate within the laneway, creating a place for neighbours to gather and imagine an architecture that can reorient infinitely.  Join us for a lively talk with Lai and CBC host, Britt Wray, who will discuss the topic of ‘rotation’ from the varied perspectives of architecture and science.

Flipping Properties is free and open for view anytime from July 11, 2014 to September 14, 2014 in the laneway at Sheridan Avenue & Gordon Street

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.

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