Despite its universal connotations, Secret Citadel, a mixed-media installation and video projection by Canadian artist Graeme Patterson, explores the nuances of male bonding and friendship from an intensely personal perspective. The narrative of the exhibition, currently on view at the Art Gallery of Hamilton, unfolds in four parts featuring two distinct characters—a bison dressed in blue and a cougar dressed in orange—at seemingly disparate stages[…..]

I first came across Montréal artist duo Séripop (Chloe Lum and Yannick Desranleau) a number of years ago when I was more embedded in the indie music scene here in Canada. In this sphere, the pair are known for their layered, DIY gig posters and refreshingly offbeat graphic design work. Despite their disregard for the formal rules of graphic design, Lum and Desranleau possess an intuitive[…..]

There’s something dark and morose underlying Luke Painter’s surreal, methodical drawings installed at Le Gallery on Toronto’s Dundas Street West. While the compositions and their titles are playful in their kitschy pop-cultural references, the flattened perspective field, broken architectural fragments, and dampened chromatic tones create a sense of uneasiness within the viewer. Painter is traditionally trained as a printmaker, though over the last number of[…..]

Ontario College of Art & Design’s professional gallery space, Onsite [at] OCAD U, is raw and industrial. Its warehouse-like ambiance is enhanced by the cinder block walls, industrial piping crisscrossing the ceiling, and bank of floor-to-ceiling windows facing the street. These features present a number of restrictions when mounting an exhibition, a challenge for artists and curators in this unconventional gallery setting. In No Dull[…..]

Upon entering Toronto’s Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery to see Postscript: Writing After Conceptual Art, the viewer is immediately confronted by a raucous wash of sonorous elements. Over fifty artists and conceptual writers occupy the gallery space; canonical works from Andy Warhol, Sol LeWitt, Marcel Broodthaers, Carl Andre, and Dan Graham are nestled among pieces by contemporary practitioners, contributing to the sense of saturation. Originally curated[…..]

A distressed pair of white porcelain shoes with red soles and a cast golden index finger seductively beckon you upon first entering Elizabeth Zvonar’s exhibition Banal Baroque at Daniel Faria Gallery in Toronto. The heels of the shoes are warped, the feet inside almost brainy in texture. Sawed off abruptly at the base of the ankle, the feet, shoes, and the vibrant red soles are[…..]

Although difficult to generalize, a common theme ties together the exhibitions currently on view at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (MOCCA) and the Art Gallery of York University (AGYU). “At the Far Edge of Words” and “Imaginary Homelands” engage on some level, with the complex reflections of the artists cultural identity in relation to their exchanges with western culture, concepts of otherness, and navigating the[…..]