WINTER 2010
January 26, 2010
The season began with Jon Sasaki’s Unabashed Optimism, a critically acclaimed exhibition including a selection of Sasaki’s bound-to-fail but wryly up-beat works in various media (on view until February 9).
2010 brings a host of exhibitions and opportunities for gallery artists, among them the following highlights over the next few months:
Pascal Grandmaison’s new body of work, entitled The Inverted Ghost, is on view until February 6 in his first New York solo exhibition at Jack Shainman Gallery (513 W 20th). The exhibition includes several large-scale diptychs and two films. As the exhibition title implies, Grandmaison highlights the polarization between fiction and reality with the ghost alluding to the hidden or invisible in the photograph. In 2011 Grandmaison will have a major solo exhibition at the Casino Luxembourg – Forum d’art contemporain.
Gwen MacGregor is currently participating in the Audio Out series at the Art Gallery of York University with a new collaboration with Lewis Nicholson entitled New Time. (January 9th to February 24th). Her work is included in Natural. Disaster curated by Jessica Wyman for the McIntosh Gallery, University of Western Ontario, London (March 4th to April 25th). MacGregor has been invited to participate in Manif d’art, the Quebec Biennial curated by Sylvie Fortin in Quebec City, May 1st to June 13th.
Zin Taylor’s work is discussed in the winter issue of BorderCrossings in a feature article by Toronto and Rotterdam based author Eric Woodley. Taylor’s The Bakery of Blok project premiered at Jessica Bradley Art + Projects last April and was seen in a subsequent version in his first solo exhibition at Miguel Abreu gallery, New York, in June. Taylor, whose work explores the many layers of growth involved in the development of forms, will mount a new installation in the Front Room series at the St. Louis Museum of Contemporary Art, February 3rd to 14th. Curator Anthony Huberman, formerly of the Palais de Tokyo, comments: “The Front Room allows the museum to reflect the urgency of art-making in our contemporary moment and serves as an always-active curatorial sketch-book.”
Kristan Horton is participating in Days of Eclipse, at Mercer Union, Toronto, opening January 22nd (on view until March 6). The inaugural exhibition at Silver Flag Projects in Montreal features Kristan Horton in a show of new work entitled The Echo Chamber, on view from March 6 to April 3. (http://silverflag.org).
And in case you missed it, check out the November/December issue of Frieze magazine to read Dan Adler on Kristan Horton’s Orbit series of photographic works shown at Jessica Bradley Art + Projects last September and currently featured in Beautiful Fictions at the Art Gallery of Ontario (ending this Sunday, January 24).
Luanne Martineau’s work will be featured in a solo exhibition at Montreal’s Musée d’art contemporain opening February 3rd (through April 25th). The exhibition is accompanied by the artist’s first comprehensive catalogue, with essays by Lesley Johnstone, Shirley Madill and Dan Adler.
Nicolas Baier’s major traveling exhibition of recent work, Paréidolies opens at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa on February 11th (on view until April 25th). The accompanying catalogue will be launched at this time. Baier has begun work on a major corporate commission in Toronto to be unveiled in the spring.
Hadley + Maxwell’s first large scale solo exhibition in the Netherlands opened at SMART Projects on January 16th. The exhibition title “Improperties” refers to the artists’ love of making new, ‘improper’, use of objects, concepts, gestures and ornamentation - as well as their fascination with the role that aesthetic constructions play in our simultaneous resistance to and longing for the seduction of images. Hadley + Maxwell are currently participating in An Invitation to an Infiltration organized by guest curator Eric Fredericksen for Vancouver’s Contemporary Art Gallery for the 2010 Cultural Olympiad (until February 28th). Their second solo exhibition opens at Jessica Bradley Art + Projects on February 13 and they open a solo exhibition at Samsa gallery in Berlin on February 26th. Last summer Hadley + Maxwell’s showed their multi-media installation project 1 + 1 -1 in Nomads, an exhibition of West Coast artists at the National Gallery of Canada. Several works from this project were subsequently acquired by the museum.
Jason McLean has been invited to participate in Endlessly Traversed Landscapes, a public poster project featuring 21 artists from across Canada whose works will be featured throughout the city of Vancouver on billboards, bus shelters and public transportation. Among those who have been commissioned by the Vancouver Cultural Olympiad for this project are Dana Claxton, Robin Collyer, Garry Neill Kennedy, Kevin Schmidt, Adad Hannah and Geneviève Cadieux. Their projects will be seen in various locations as part of the Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad until March 21st.
Daniel Barrow will show two new projection installations in a solo exhibition curated by Philip Monk for the Art Gallery of York University, opening March 31st (on view through June 6th, including publication). Barrow’s beautifully designed and illustrated hardcover book No One Helped Me, designed by Circle Square, Brooklyn, is on its way to press (essays by Stephen Matijcio and Jon Davies, published in collaboration with Video Pool Inc., Platform Gallery and Pug-in ICA, Winnipeg).
2010 promises to be another big year for Shary Boyle: Louise Dery, Director of the Galerie de L’UQAM, Montreal and Canada’s Commissioner for the 2007 Venice Biennial, has announced her next major monographic project will be an exhibition of Shary Boyle’s work with a comprehensive publication, opening in October 2010. Plans are now in motion to tour this exhibition to other institutions. Also in October, Shary Boyle will participate in Splendeurs barbares / Barbaric Splendours, with Valerie Blass and Nathalie Djudberg, curated by Nathalie de Blois at the Musee de Quebec, Quebec City, and Breaking Boundaries, with Brendan Tang, Marc Courtemanche and Carmela Laganse, organized by chief curator Charles Mason at the Gardner Museum, Toronto.
Winter-Spring 2010 Exhibition Schedule
Jon Sasaki Unabashed Optimism, until February 6
Hadley + Maxwell February 13 to March 13
Jason McLean March 20 to April 17
Barbara Probst April 24 to May 22
Sara MacKillop June 5 to July 3