Drawing on personal experience and memories, the initial installation, The Mountain, traces Patterson’s relationship and his longing to reconnect with his first true friend, Yuki, whose family moved out of town when the artist was nine years old. Patterson represents himself as the blue bison throughout the exhibition, while the orange cougar stands in for Yuki, or later, the idea of Yuki as an idealized, platonic male companion. The Mountain depicts these childhood friends’ homes in rural Saskatchewan with reverence for memory, with the mountain serving as a childlike, mythical representation of the large hill that separated their houses. Fort-like in appearance, the mountain is built on a tabletop and covered in blankets that mimic snow. Inside the mountain, we see the parallel narrative of Patterson struggling to reconstruct these memories; his studio, in various stages of disarray, is laid out before us. In addition to various stop-motion scenes, the houses on either side of the mountain contain slow-motion reenactments of the artist participating in various sports as an adult. These videos, combined with the adjacent installation Grudge Match, perhaps mine the idea that physical manifestations of platonic male friendships are often relegated to sports or other socially accepted activities after a certain age within patriarchal society.

Graeme Patterson. Camp Wakonda, mixed media installation, 2013. Image courtesy of the Artist.

The most arresting installation in the exhibition, and the one I keep returning to, is Camp Wakonda. Bunk beds set the stage for a disturbing, fiery crash between a car and a school bus, flanked on the top bunks by three scenes within skeletal, house-like structures. Above, shrouded in melancholy and boredom, Cougar chops wood on an endless loop, while Bison somewhat sadistically melts orange and blue plastic figurines with an aerosol can and lighter. To the left, the two figures take turns practicing archery in an abandoned room. Bison is a good shot, while Cougar eventually misses, embedding an arrow in the wall next to the target. When the arrow is removed, Cougar kneels down to look through the hole created in the wall, while Bison goes back to shooting practice. With a growing sense of unease, the viewer becomes aware that Bison’s arrows are slowly straying from the target until he eventually kills his friend Cougar. Behind the crash below, in empty clearings shrouded in fog, Cougar and Bison battle their animal counterparts with crude weapons, and despite their valiant efforts, eventually lose. The emotional resonance of this particular installation is profound. It points to that decisive moment in adolescence where the innocence of childhood and almost all of its associations are lost forever as we succumb to the pressures of the adult world.

Graeme Patterson. Secret Citadel, animation still, 2013. Image courtesy of the Artist and the Art Gallery of Hamilton.

The final installation, Player Piano Waltz, sits alone, centered in an adjacent room. The maquette above the piano features an empty bar with a combination of animated and live-action scenes projected through the windows. When you insert a dollar into the piano, two projections of Cougar and Bison start up on either side of the room, and a solemn waltz composed by Patterson begins to play on the piano. Bison and Cougar jump up and down on small trampolines, recalling a projection in The Mountain in which they did the same as younger incarnations of themselves on much larger trampolines. This time, rather than limbs flailing with glee, the characters appear tired, and even have to stop and catch their breath. Within the vignette, Bison and Cougar aimlessly move through separate modest apartments and the bar below, cloaked with an air of isolation. Despite their close proximity, they never seem to meaningfully connect again as they did in the earlier installations.

Graeme Patterson. Secret Citadel, animation still, 2013. Image courtesy of the Artist.

Secret Citadel captures the moments of innocence, longing, and disassociation associated with male bonding and platonic friendships, while also thoughtfully reflecting on how close relationships fluctuate as we mature and navigate different stages of life.

Curated by Melissa Bennett, Secret Citadel is on view at the Art Gallery of Hamilton until January 5, 2014. It will be touring extensively across Canada beginning with the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia in 2014.

Séripop (Yannick Desranleau and Chloe Lum), Looming, screen printed paper, polyurethane foam, wood, paper mâché, felt-backed vinyl, fabric, paint, pantyhoses, fiber glass insulation batts, cardboard, plaster, hooks, pulleys, rope, found objects, 2013. Photo: Allan Kosmajac.

The duo’s playful, instinctual style is on full display in Looming, their current site-responsive installation at YYZ Artists Outlet in Toronto. While Lum and Desranleau both briefly attended art school, they left to pursue other interests (primarily their noise band AIDSwolf), enabling them to develop an aesthetic unconstrained by the pretensions of academia. Their works still conceptually draw from contemporary art tropes such as architectural theory and Bruce Nauman’s process-based approach, but they never lose their sense of wonder and playfulness, allowing for an immediate, visceral reaction. In recent years, Séripop have managed to carve out a respectable niche for their practice both within Canada and abroad, yet, as they note in an interview accompanying their piece Hoarding Skin (2011), they’re still “in it for the shits and giggles.”

Séripop (Yannick Desranleau and Chloe Lum), This Particular Bias Will Nonetheless Set Up a Vast Field For The Unforeseen, Screen printed paper, wood, chairs, stool, spools, polyurethane foam, tempera, c-clamps, PVC shrink wrap, fabric, rope, rubber, 2013. Installation view at Galerie Hugues Charbonneau, Montréal, Canada. Photo: Éliane Excoffier. Image courtesy of the artists.

While recent installations such as This particular bias will nonetheless set up a vast field for the unforeseen (2013) and Uncountable (not comparable) (2012) are similar in their exploration of the materiality of paper as a sculptural medium, Looming marks one of the duo’s first forays into a completely immersive environment. YYZ’s unconventional space is covered from floor to ceiling with bright swatches of screen-printed paper—almost every inch is activated. Some are block colors, while others display patterns that mimic the gallery’s floors and ceiling. The loud colors and patterns compete optically in a way that creates a synesthetic reaction; for brief moments viewers may feel disoriented as the space almost absorbs them. Existing architectural elements in the gallery blend with the work. The only textual marker—a large gradient swath of paper to which the “balls” are fastened—references the gallery’s dimensions, highlighting the artists’ move towards site-responsive, rather than site-specific, installations, while ironically calling attention to the physical shortcomings and irregularities of this seemingly typical white cube.

Séripop (Yannick Desranleau and Chloe Lum), Looming, screen printed paper, polyurethane foam, wood, paper mâché, felt-backed vinyl, fabric, paint, pantyhoses, fiber glass insulation batts, cardboard, plaster, hooks, pulleys, rope, found objects, 2013. Photo: Allan Kosmajac.

I hesitate to conflate Séripop’s poster practice with their installation practice, but there are connections that are relevant. In their posters, Séripop are known for making detailed images that they then bury under successive layers of pigment and imagery. It could be construed that while in the installation, the viewer is invited to physically occupy one of their poster worlds—the flat imagery, layering and psychedelia are made dimensional through the voluminous folds, precarious structures, and bold use of color. Similarly, the work embraces the ephemerality of paper and the gig poster itself. In their natural environment, affixed to bus stops, hoarding and telephone poles, posters eventually degrade and are destroyed by the elements. Séripop highlight this impermanence literally by tearing and layering the paper in the gallery space, but also by integrating notions of failure and chance into the very core of their recent practice. The duo has largely abandoned the hybrid, constructed forms that defined their previous work in favor of an improvisational, gestural approach to materials that celebrates both the failure and success of experimentation. As the installation evolves, the voluminous paper masses gradually deflate, and the large sheets of printed paper spilling across the floor become torn and dotted with footprints. This intentional ‘letting go’ leads to an entropic reading of the work in which the viewer becomes an integral component of this immersive, looming environment. A 2-D reading of this installation doesn’t do it justice; this work should be experienced in person.

Séripop (Yannick Desranleau and Chloe Lum), Looming, screen printed paper, polyurethane foam, wood, paper mâché, felt-backed vinyl, fabric, paint, pantyhoses, fiber glass insulation batts, cardboard, plaster, hooks, pulleys, rope, found objects, 2013. Photo: Allan Kosmajac.

Looming continues at YYZ in Toronto until November 30, 2013

Luke Painter, Modern Art Sculpture Garden, ink on paper, 2013 17 1/2  x 21 in. Image courtesy the artist and Le Gallery

Painter is traditionally trained as a printmaker, though over the last number of years his practice has transitioned to focus on drawing and painting with a compulsive—at times almost neurotic—attention to detail. These compositions are rooted in a pastiche appropriation of historical patterns and architecture beginning with the Arts and Crafts movement. In Rebound, his current solo exhibition at Le Gallery, Painter turns to the 1980s, pinpointing revivalist trends in the decorative arts: Louis Comfort Tiffany, Art Nouveau, Memphis design, Art Deco, and neo-Gothic architecture.

Luke Painter, The Two Towers of William Morris 2, Colored and India ink on paper, 2012. 36 × 48 in. Image courtesy the artist and Le Gallery

This body of work seems to mark a transitional period for Painter. Previously, a number of his works included surreal, anthropomorphic topiaries. Intricately articulated fauna and lush domesticated landscapes still dominate in the current body of work, but their anthropomorphic qualities are more refined; they breathe and move in the compositions, but this movement is more tied into the repetition and movement intrinsic to pattern making. Similarly, there is a break in Painter’s use of architecture in this series; in the past, architectural buildings were rendered whole; now he is beginning to deconstruct these structures. Greenery organically seeps in and takes over the interiors of these spaces, suggesting an underlying sentience. Drawings such as Self Aware Plant and 1980’s Vanity (Michael Graves) (2013) allude to the ruinophilia that romanticizes the utopic vision of futuristic 1980s decorative movements.

Luke Painter, Self Aware Plant and 1980’s Vanity (Michael Graves), ink on paper, 2013. 12 x 12 in. Image courtesy the artist and Le Gallery

Using 3-D software and deliberately muted tones in order to reference early chromolithographic printmaking, Painter, despite his adherence to historical referents, approaches the works in Rebound with a refined sense of humor. Cathedral (Neon Gothic), one of the larger works in the show, wittily pokes fun at neo-Gothic architecture by inserting swatches of pink neon on the façade of a classic Gothic edifice.

Luke Painter, Cathedral (Neon Gothic), ink on paper, 2013. 60 x 45 in. Image courtesy the artist and Le Gallery. Documentation by Darren Rigo

PoMo Reno (Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Beetlejuice) takes some of the over-the-top design elements from the Deetz family’s renovated home in Tim Burton’s 1988  film Beetlejuice, including the frame of the house itself, and combines them with what could perhaps be read as a comment on anti-climactic dissolution with the abrasive, hard edges found in 1980s architecture and industrial design. Despite these rectilinear details, the house appears to be in transition, returning to nature.

Luke Painter, PoMo Reno (Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Beetlejuice), ink on paper, 2013. 18 x 15 in. Image courtesy the artist and Le Gallery

Painter juxtaposes the cold, hard edges of early postmodern design with the organic warmth of Tiffany’s classic, cascading Art Nouveau patterns. While most compositions in the exhibition juxtapose these competing aesthetics so that the Tiffany-inspired elements almost melt into the deconstructed architectural backgrounds, Cavern (Tiffany Wysteria) brings the exhibition full circle. In this piece, the decorative organicism of the Tiffany-inspired wisteria swallows the skeletal architectural remains.

Luke Painter, Cavern (Tiffany Wysteria), ink on paper, 2013. 56 x 43 in. Image courtesy of the artist and Le Gallery; Documentation: Darren Rigo

The selection of Painter’s new work in the show led me to read the exhibition as a comment on modern and postmodern architecture’s rejection of everything that came before it. The tension in the show lies in his illumination of postmodern architecture’s absurd extremism and round rejection of the decorative, humanist, and organic qualities in the movements that preceded them—a sophisticated critique of the cyclical nature of nostalgia within the decorative arts. As Svetlana Boym posits in her theorization of ruinophilia, “The ruins of 20th century modernity, as seen through the contemporary prism, both undercut and stimulate the utopian imagination, constantly shifting and deterritorializing our dreamscape.”

Rebound is on view at Le Gallery, Toronto, through September 29, 2013.

Jillian McDonald, Valley of the Deer, 2012. High-definition video still courtesy of Onsite [at] OCAD U

Jillian McDonald, Valley of the Deer, 2012. High-definition video still courtesy of Onsite [at] OCAD U

Karen Lofgren, Pole Extrusions #1, #2, #3, #8, #11 (family portrait), 2012. Installation view courtesy of Onsite [at] OCAD U

Karen Lofgren, Stabilizer #3, 2012. Installation view courtesy of Onsite [at] OCAD U

Vanessa Maltese, Primary Track, 2013. Installation view courtesy of Onsite [at] OCAD U

Vanessa Maltese, Installation view of Variation of a Baseboard-Pipe Track, 2013. Image courtesy of the artist. Photo: Jimmy Limit

While each of the works in the show is site responsive in some way, the connection is subtle, particularly in the instance of Maltese’s installation. In order to fully appreciate the exhibition, visitors should move through the space at an unhurried pace, allowing the nuanced complexities within these highly resolved pieces to reveal themselves.

No Dull Affairs, curated by Lisa Deanne Smith is on view at Onsite [at] OCAD U, in Toronto, through October 12, 2013.

Installation view of Postscript: Writing After Conceptual Art. Courtesy The Power Plant. Photo: Toni Hafkenscheid

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 by Nora Burnett Abrams and Andrea Andersson for the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, the exhibition is divided into five sections—appropriation, transcription, translation, redaction, and constraint—modestly readapted to suit the gallery’s layout.

Pavel Büchler, Studio Schwitters, 2010. Sound installation, loudspeakers, table and computer. Courtesy the artist and Max Wigram Gallery, London. Installation view courtesy of the Power Plant. Photo: Toni Hafkenscheid

Falling under the subtext of translation, Pavel Büchler’s Studio Schwitters (2010) is one of the raucous audio elements first encountered in the exhibition: a captivating visual and auditory anchor spanning one of the gallery’s main walls. A response to dadaist Kurt Schwitters’s nonsensical sound poem, The Ursonate (1922–32), a “sonata” predicated on the absence of language, Büchler’s sound installation uses a single laptop and seventy-five horn speakers to distort Schwitters’s poem. Using German text-to-speech software, the poem is translated from text to soundscape. The effect creates further distortion as the sounds are continually fed through the series of speakers; the resultant cacophony emulates a muddy symphony removed from a humanist dialogue through the insertion of the machine, yet it remains oddly warm and melodic.

Fiona Banner, 1066, 2010/2012. Indian ink on wall. Courtesy the artist. Installation view courtesy The Power Plant. Photo: Toni Hafkenscheid

Another large-scale installation, located adjacent to Büchler’s piece, is the transfixing 1066 (2010/12) by Fiona Banner. Banner’s piece is a converse to Büchler’s; it translates the visual narration of the Battle of Hastings depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry into text. Handwritten in India ink and spanning two main walls in the gallery space, the piece is a captivating visual representation of a textual narrative. Viewed aesthetically, the composition of the piece—the weight of the letters fluctuating with each line, the spacing between the lines methodically decreasing as the text progresses, the winding  italics creating rhythmic markers on a background of “ghost text” from the same selection peering through a thin overcoat of white paint—encourage appreciation of the textural qualities of the written word. The content of the text points to the propagandistic nature of medieval tapestries, especially when compared to the reality of the gruesome violence of the Battle of Hastings. However, the sheer scale of the work likely prevents all but the most committed viewers from reading the entire piece.

Sol LeWitt, The Location of Lines, 1974. Artist’s book. Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry. Installation view courtesy The Power Plant. Photo: Toni Hafkenscheid

Both Büchler’s and Banner’s works connect with Sol LeWitt’s The Location of Lines (1974), one of the canonical works used to illustrate the concept of translation (one of the curatorial subcategories). LeWitt’s artist’s book playfully highlights the difficulty, perhaps absurdity, of translating between verbal and visual fields. Jonathan Monk is the most playful with this concept in his piece What is Seen is Described, What is Described is Seen, Version IX (2010). Monk asked the collective Art & Language to translate a painting into text, which he then translated back into a “painting.” The final work—a sculptural sandwich made up of paint, pillows and scraps of material—is accompanied by Art & Language’s translation.

Jonathan Monk, What is Seen is Described, What is Described is Seen, Version IX, 2010. Oil and acrylic paint on cotton. Collection of Helyn Goldenberg. Installation view courtesy The Power Plant. Photo: Toni Hafkenscheid

One section of the exhibition features works done in response to Marcel Broodthaers’s use of redaction in Un Coup de Dés Jamais N’Abolira Le Hasard (1969). In this work the artist blacked out the lines of Stéphane Mallarmé’s eponymous poem to create a purely aesthetic form of concrete poetry. While a number of artists in the exhibition engage directly with Broodthaers’s piece, Eric Zboya’s The Depths of a Shipwreck (2012) was one of the most captivating. Zboya’s piece translates Mallarmé’s poem using algorithmic graphic imaging software that converts text to pure image. The result is quite different from Broodthaers’s work; hauntingly beautiful crystalline forms fan out across a piece of glass suspended from the ceiling of the crowded room. The piece could be read as a reference to the pervasive influence of digital technologies in our contemporary society, providing an eloquent contrast to Jen Bervin’s The Composite Marks of Fascicle (28 & 40) (2006). In this large-scale hand-embroidered fiber installation, Bervin has redacted all of the words from Emily Dickinson’s original manuscripts, leaving only the author’s “field markings.” Renderings of Dickinson’s personal editing syntax and punctuation marks are all that remain among the negative spaces.

Eric Zboya, The Depths of a Shipwreck, 2012. Laminated glass. Courtesy the artist. Installation view courtesy The Power Plant. Photo by Toni Hafkenscheid

Dan Graham’s Poem Schema, a piece published in a variety of magazines between 1966 and 1972, presents a formulaic, almost scientific approach to conceptual writing, enabling the author to code and decode the publications in which the piece appeared by tracking statistics such as the number of verbs, adjectives, and nouns; typefaces; font size; and even the stock of the paper. This work is included in the “constraint” section, which the curators have broadly defined to include implications of coercion and compulsion as well as the more common definition of confined action. These associations highlight the creative potential inherent in Graham’s methodical approach. Despite the banality of the data that he gathers, the compulsive nature of his work renders it captivating.

Jen Bervin, The Composite Marks of Fascicle, 2006. Each work: cotton and silk thread batting backed with muslin. Courtesy the artist. Installation view courtesy The Power Plant. Photo by Toni Hafkenscheid

Christian Bök engages with the notion of constraint through a similarly obsessive approach to manipulating and transcribing data. Protein 13 (2012) consists of a large sculpture of a protein juxtaposed with a poem descending down the wall. To create the work, Bök first wrote a poem (not the poem on the wall), which he translated into a DNA sequence. He then implanted the DNA sequence into a microbe that effectively “read” the DNA, leading to the production of the protein the sculpture is modeled after. The result, Protein 13, was similarly read by the software to produce a new poem that has been transcribed on the wall behind the sculpture. I am not a scientifically inclined person, but the concept is quite fascinating, particularly the notion that this process could be repeated infinitely.

Christian Bök, Protein 13, 2012. Plastic components. Courtesy the artist. Installation view courtesy The Power Plant. Photo by Toni Hafkenscheid

In the space’s main two-story hallway, respectively under the subheadings of transcription and translation, were two other stand-out pieces: Stuxnet (2012), by James Hoff, and Soliloquy (1996), by Kenneth Goldsmith. Hoff’s audio piece is influenced by the concept of distribution and the artist’s immersive understanding of the history of conceptual writing on a number of platforms (I encourage you to view the artist talk he gave to accompany the exhibition at MCA Denver). Like other artists in the show, Hoff uses this piece to highlight the limited ability of translation to accurately represent an original text. Hoff coded the now infamous computer virus used to target an Iranian nuclear facility in 2010 to correspond with piano keys assigned to his computer keyboard. The result was run through a simple synthesizer, and the end product is a melodic, droning soundscape that fails to communicate the destruction and political fallout associated with the virus.

James Hoff, Stuxnet, 2012. Audio, 11: 21 min. / Stux Score, 2012. Ink on paper. Courtesy the artist. Installation view courtesy The Power Plant. Photo by Toni Hafkenscheid

Hoff’s piece provides a mellow backdrop to one of the exhibition’s other large-scale installations, Kenneth Goldsmith’s Soliloquy. Goldsmith’s piece responds to Andy Warhol’s a, A Novel (1968), on view in the next room. In both works, the artists transcribe their day-to-day actions and conversations, down to the most mind-numbing minutiae. Goldsmith’s piece, a book laid out page for page, is installed from floor to ceiling. An artist, writer, and curator, Goldsmith is possibly best known for the emphasis on appropriation and plagiarism in his conceptual writing practice. As an advocate for “uncreative writing,” Goldsmith has published book-length  transcriptions of weather reports, a volume of the New York Times, and traffic reports.

Kenneth Goldsmith, Soliloquy, 1996. Laser print on paper. Courtesy the artist. Installation view courtesy The Power Plant. Photo by Toni Hafkenscheid

What makes Soliloquy so interesting aside from its sheer presence is the piece’s ever-changing conceptual spin since its initial release in 1996. Soliloquy can be found in paperback, but it also resides online, where it was originally published, to account for the way that we consume and interact with writing after the emergence of the internet as a ubiquitous source of information. Just as painters had to adapt to the advent of photography, Goldsmith posits that writers must adapt to the rise of the internet as a locus for the consumption and distribution of literature.

Ryan Gander, A Phantom of Appropriation, 2006. Broken neon sculpture. Courtesy the artist. Installation view courtesy The Power Plant. Photo by Toni Hafkenscheid

I leave off on Goldsmith’s piece because his ruminations on conceptual writing provide a useful framework for analyzing the exhibition’s curation. As the title’s phrasing suggests, Postscript: Writing After Conceptual Art addresses the intersection of conceptual art and writing from a unique perspective. The use of the term after in the title does not necessarily reference a chronological narrative in which conceptual writing emerged from post-conceptual art. Instead, it may signify the relationship between the two practices as responses to modernist ideologies and, from a contemporary standpoint, the need to remain relevant while still pushing boundaries in the interest of creating new and exciting work. The early text-based conceptual works featured in the exhibition operate in tandem with the emergence and continual exploration of conceptual writing, blurring the lines between the visual and the textual.

Postscript: Writing After Conceptual Art continues at the Power Plant until September 2, 2013.

Elizabeth Zvonar, Cummy Loubous, 2013. Porcelain. Courtesy of Daniel Faria Gallery

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 covered in glossy dribbles and splatters, alluding to the title of the piece, Cummy Loubous. Despite the obvious connotations inherent in the title, the piece acts as a clever reference to the intellectual undercurrents of the exhibition. One of the most familiar phrases that features the Latin word cum, cum laude, connotes distinction, just as the red sole of a Louboutin heel serves as a mark of distinction, stressing the status of the owner as well as the brand. Used conjunctively cum can refer to a person or thing with dual roles or natures, an idea Zvonar toys with throughout the exhibition, particularly in reference to gender performativity.

Elizabeth Zvonar, Harry Elephant, 2013; Sunset, 2013. Photo paper mounted on dibond and framed. Courtesy of Daniel Faria Gallery

In her first solo show in Toronto, Vancouver-based artist Elizabeth Zvonar presents a complex, seductive, tongue-in-cheek exploration of the performative nature of the feminine persona. Her work mines both societal and self-imposed constructs of femininity, while also delving into broader conversations about metaphysics, consumption and identity. Zvonar’s hand-cut collages use images appropriated from the 1970s Parisian luxury goods magazine Connaissance des Arts, and have been digitally manipulated and reprinted on photographic paper in order to introduce a sense of scale. They are presented alongside sculptural casts of various components of the female form, such as elbows and feet in high heel shoes, as well as index fingers and hands—forms that are often repeated in her other bodies of work due to their communicative abilities and their iconographic ties to art historical works.

Elizabeth Zvonar, Marcel Meets Judy, 2013. Readymade ceramic candy dish. Courtesy of Daniel Faria Gallery

In an art historical vein, Marcel Meets Judy, a rose-hued, conch shell-shaped candy dish mounted to the wall weaves a tacit dialogue between art history and feminist iconography, nodding to Marcel Duchamp’s readymades, as well as Judy Chicago’s feminist dinner party. Elsewhere in the exhibition, truncated and idealized sculptural casts rest in various stages of adornment. A painted golden halo surrounds stacked hands, cast elbows are tipped in gold, and a disfigured combination of feet and index fingers holding up a collage are fully gilded nodding to the precarious balance between late-Baroque and Rococo, the thin line between excess and banality. Harry Elephant and Sunset, two lone collages on the east wall, evoke a sense of tension, while also arguably referencing some of Zvonar’s previous collage work touching on the fourth dimension, spacetime, and the role of the artist.

Elizabeth Zvonar, Clusterfuck, 2013. 6 life-size porcelain cast elbows, drip glazed with clear and white, then tipped gold. Courtesy of Daniel Faria Gallery

A fan of using wordplay in the titles of her exhibitions and installations, Zvonar’s choice of title for the exhibition, Banal Baroque, critically connects this body of work to Baroque art—known for its plump, erotic, writhing ladies, religious symbolism, and decorative excess—while alluding to the advertising images used to construct the collages. While the exhibition itself is not excessive, it invites reflection on the superficial excess of adornment within a contemporary feminist dialogue, tracing the push and pull between first and third wave feminist ideals as they relate to the trivialized nature of outward appearances and societal expectations of femininity.

Elizabeth Zvonar, Hands Across the Universe, 2013. Life-size woman’s mannequin hands x 4. Courtesy of Daniel Faria Gallery

Elizabeth Zvonar’s Banal Baroque runs through June 15^th at Daniel Faria Gallery, 188 St Helens Avenue, Toronto, ON.

FOREGROUND: Angélica Teuta, The Language of Birds, 2012. Installation with audio. Dimensions variable. Commissioned and produced by AGYU. Wooden platform ‘wave,’ designed and fabricated by Brian Davis. Animal drawings by Lena Suksi. 2012 residency supported by AB Projects, Toronto. BACKGROUND: Mateo Rivano, Micro-Mundo / Micro World, 2012. Mixed media: wood, cardboard, lithographs, and found objects, 9 meters. Commissioned and produced by the AGYU. Wooden armature designed and constructed by Brian Davis. Residencies supported by AGYU in 2010 and Fundación Gilberto Alzate Avendaño, Bogotá in 2011 & 2012. Photograph courtesy: Art Gallery of York University. Photography: Michael Maranda

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 hybrid spaces between while defining ‘home’. Rather than allowing these notions to become static, absolute, or restrictive, the artists invoke politics, humour, and nostalgia as a means to mediate their competing definitions of identity.

Perhaps the most political of the exhibitions, Jamelie Hassan’s retrospective “At the Far Edge of Words” traverses almost forty years of the artist’s practice. The title of the exhibition is an excerpt from poet laureate Mahmoud Darwish’s piece, “I am from there.” While researching the poem, I found a great quote from the poet, that really seems to speak to one of the main underlying themes of Hassan’s work, or at least the one I took the most away from; that of coming to terms with her identity as both being Canadian born, and of Lebanese descent. The quote is as follows, “I am from there. I am from here. I am not there and I am not here. I have two names, which meet and part, and I have two languages. I forget which of them I dream in.” –not to be read as a direct comparison, but the quote reverberates with the ongoing complex relationship she tends to investigate with regards to her competing identities, never seeming to feel wholly satisfied with the preconceived definitions of either, often forced by society to choose.

Ů, 2009 neon, black ceramic tile mounted onto plywood Collection of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver. Image courtesy of the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art

Highlights of the show included her neon work tied into manuscript pages from the Quran such as “Ů” (pronounced ‘noon’), “Dar’a”, “Manuscript Page” and the installation, “Slippers of Disobedience” commenting on the disconnect between her first language (English), and her parents language, Arabic. Similarly, the photographic prints of the manuscripts these neon Quran symbols are superimposed on are all well worn and used, fragile and delicate, perhaps further alluding to the fragile relationship between these two cultures.

Souvenir of Lebanon Made in Canada, 2009. Carved cedar. Collection of the Artist. Image courtesy of the author.

Another piece that stood out was “Souvenir of Lebanon Made in Canada,” originally commissioned for the show “Home/land Security” in 2009. Made from Canadian cedar, the piece mimics traditional hand carved souvenirs from fallen cedar trees in Lebanon. The intricate images depict the cedar itself, the national symbol of Lebanon, but at first glance could also be likened to the graphic portraits of jack pines popularized by the group of 7.

Mateo López, Casa desorientada / Disoriented House, 2012. Installation with vitrines, wood, paper, drawings, found and imaginary maps. Commissioned and produced by the AGYU. Wooden vitrines fabricated by Brian Davis. Residency in 2011 supported by Fundación Gilberto Alzate Avendaño, Bogotá. Photograph courtesy: Art Gallery of York University. Photography: Michael Maranda 

Mateo López, Casa desorientada / Disoriented House, 2012. Installation with vitrines, wood, paper, drawings, found and imaginary maps. Commissioned and produced by the AGYU. Wooden vitrines fabricated by Brian Davis. Residency in 2011 supported by Fundación Gilberto Alzate Avendaño, Bogotá. Photograph courtesy: Art Gallery of York University. Photography: Michael Maranda

At the AGYU, the artists in Imaginary Homelands similarly interpret the Canadian landscape as icon. Mateo Lopez (recently selected by William Kentridge as his protégé through the Rolex Arts Initiative) found his inspiration on a recent trip to San Andres (Columbia) through houses constructed of imported Canadian wood. Inspired by this iconography in addition to seminal Canadian artists, Lopez invokes his interest in process and architectural theory with “Casa Desorientada/ Disoriented House”, a proposition/ machete of a floating structure, made to coexist in Canada’s multitude of waterways. For me, the installation, and its inspiration, such as a log driving down the Saint Lawrence River, brings to mind another sort of idealized conceptualization of Canadiana—The Log Drivers Waltz. The proposed wooden structure, is modular, as echoed through the excessive amount of process drawings, some abstracted, and some quite formal; all incredibly detailed and reminiscent of the formalist qualities in his work.

María Isabel Rueda, Experiments in Long Distance Influence, 2012. Video transferred to 16 mm film. 00:01:00 on loop with sound. Commissioned and produced by AGYU. Residency in 2011 supported by Fundación Gilberto Alzate Avendaño, Bogotá. Photograph courtesy: Art Gallery of York University. Photography: Michael Maranda

Maria Isabel Rueda’s “Experiments in Long Distance influence,” an ethereal video shot behind Niagara Falls on her cell phone before being transferred to 16mm film, romanticizes this landmark, removing it from any distinct moment in time or space. Conversely, “Remote Vision” a video of the no longer extant, but iconic, Puerto Columbia Pier, creates a similarly ethereal environment, heightened by the sublime repetition of its architecture and delicately swaying mossy sea-grass as it stretches towards the edge of the frame. This delicacy and serenity is contrasted by the juxtaposition of the sound of violently crashing waves and howling wind, signaling the demise of this once great feat of engineering, trade artery, and point of first contact for many immigrants to Columbia after the Second World War.

Angelica Teuta’s installation, “The Language of Birds” creates an immersive environment in the gallery using old overhead projectors, cut up pieces of acetate, and kinetic mechanisms to create a moving landscape, in addition to a large wave-like platform from which to contemplate the space. The monumental projection’s saturated imagery is a hybrid of both the forested landscapes in Columbia as well as Canada. Accompanied by a soundtrack of human interpretations of bird songs, the soundscape nods to Tueta’s experience as an ESL student here, and the poetic way she encountered the multiplicity of languages surrounding her on the streets of Toronto. (To get a feeling of how the installation functions, and the intricacy of her work, refer to this clip of the installation, “Decoración para espacios claustrofóbicos” )

Miler Lagos also chooses to engage with the Canadian landscape; perhaps the most identifiable, but also most mythicized – that of the Arctic. The majority of the installation is an aerial view shot from the bottom of a small aircraft. Weaving in and out of clouds, the resultant ground imagery is hyper-real; reminiscent of the satellite imagery we see from google earth, but likewise, eerily still and suspiciously flat; it almost feels as if the viewer is still imagining this landscape, or perhaps is denied, especially through the lens of the gallery, the connection they look to obtain. When contextualizing this in relation to some of Lagos’ other work, I get the impression that he is challenging the romanticized view Canadians have of the north and how closely we relate it to how we try to aesthetically conceptualize our identity as such. We are so far removed from this in the urban/colonized setting we actually inhabit; yet this is an identity we hold on to.

In the end, what had the most resonance in both exhibitions, and is perhaps most apt considering the multi-cultural milieu of Toronto, was how the artists navigated the balance between their personal and cultural identities, referencing the intangible space in between where they come from and how their experiences and understanding of such have affected how they contextualize and aestheticize the present.

Angélica Teuta, The Language of Birds, 2012. Installation with audio. Dimensions variable. Commissioned and produced by AGYU. Wooden platform ‘wave’ designed and fabricated by Brian Davis. Animal drawings by Lena Suksi. Residency in 2012 supported by AB Projects, Toronto.Photograph courtesy: Art Gallery of York University. Photography: Michael Maranda

Jamelie Hassan, At the Far Edge of Words continues to October 14 at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, 952 Queen Street West, Toronto, Ontario.

Imaginary Homelands, featuring the work of Carlos Bonil, Nicolás Consuegra, Miler Lagos, Mateo López, Mateo Rivano, María Isabel Rueda, Daniel Santiago, Angélica Teuta, and Icaro Zorbar continues at the Art Gallery of York University until December 2, 2012. Accolade East Building, 4700 Keele Street Toronto.