Join us for the opening of the exhibition celebrating the the final theses of our fourth year undergraduate students in the visual studies program.

Curated by Liora Belford: Graduate student, Master of Visual Studies (Curatorial)

Opening reception: Friday, March 20, 6-8pm, UTAC (remarks at 7:00pm)
Erratum Musicale Performance: 6pm at the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery
(Shared Opening Reception with the Master of Visual Studies Studio Program Graduating Exhibition presented at UTAC)

Image Coming Soon #1 re-stages the late American composer John Cage’s groundbreaking composition for a museum, titled museumcircle (1989-1995). Informed by Marcel Duchamp’s first musical work Erratum Musicale (1913), Cage’s work entails the use of chance operations to determine the spatial composition of an array of objects borrowed from over thirty museums in the Greater Toronto area, and an assortment of rocks, plants, books, chess tables and pieces of ephemera.

Image Coming Soon #1 juxtaposes Cage’s historical project with unannounced performances of Duchamp's Erratum Musicale, to allow a contemplation of the two scores, and more specifically, the consequences of Cage’s spatial adaptation of sound composition principles. Performers of Erratum Musicale include Ido Govrin, Martin Arnold, Ryan Driver, Doug Tielli, Christine Duncan, Michael Davidson and Patrick O’Reilly.

Public Programming

• Image Coming Soon #1 includes unannounced performances of Erratum Musicale (1913) by Marcel Duchamp. Performers include Ido Govrin, Martin Arnold, Ryan Driver, Doug Tielli, Christine Duncan, Michael Davidson and Patrick O’Reilly.

• ARTbus Tour: Sunday, March 29, 12:00-5:00 PM. Tour to the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, University of Toronto Art Centre, Art Gallery of Mississauga, and Oakville Galleries. $10 donation. For reservations, contact artbus@oakvillegalleries.com or 905.844.4402, ext. 24 by Friday 27 March, 4:00 PM.

• Show and Tell: Conversation and Panel Discussion - Wednesday, May 6, 5:00 PM.

• 45’ for a Speaker (1954) by John Cage: Performer Martin Arnold - Wednesday, June 3, 7:30 PM.

For more information, visit http://jmbgallery.ca/ExImageComingSoon.html

Other graduating projects include:

You Speak / I Dance, curated by Nam-In Kim at the Doris McCarthy Gallery, University of Toronto Scarborough Campus.

2015 University of Toronto MVS Studio Program Graduating Exhibition at the University of Toronto Art Centre.

Curated by Nam-In Kim: Graduate student, Masters of Visual Studies (Curatorial)

Opening reception: Thursday, April 23, 6-8pm
Opening performance: Bona Park, I Tell What you Believe 1, 6-8pm

You Speak / I Dance is concerned with Homo loquens. Language, as the dominant medium for human communication, presumes the encounter and the interface of different subjectivities. You Speak / I Dance presents works that question the possibilities and the discrepancies of the way in which language functions. Particularly resonating with the situations of education, translation, and instruction, the artists’ works included in this exhibition reveal the way language plays between us and how it locates and dislocates what we believe to be communicated. Witnessing effects of inclusion, exclusion and alienation, this exhibition invites us to sense the tension of expectation and betrayal oscillating in our habitual use of language.

Works by Diane Borsato, Adam David Brown, Brendan Fernandes, Kim Beom, and Bona Park.

For more information, visit http://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/~dmg/html/exhibitions/upcoming.html

Other upcoming MVS exhibitions include:

Image Coming Soon #1, curated by Liora Belford at the Justina M Barnicke Gallery.

2015 University of Toronto MVS Studio Program Graduating Exhibition at the University of Toronto Art Centre.

The University of Toronto Art Centre is pleased to exhibit the thesis projects of the 2015 Master of Visual Studies graduate students: Roya Akbari, Jesse Boles, Ali El-Darsa, and Claudia Zloteanu.

Opening Reception: Friday, March 20, 6:00 - 8:00 PM at the University of Toronto Art Centre.

Roya Akbari was born in Tehran and has lived in Canada for more than a decade. She is a visual artist and the director of two short films: Dancing Mania (2012) and Only Image Remains (2014). Rooted in documentary as a form, her work creates resonances between visual art and cinema. Her interdisciplinary practice has been presented in both gallery and cinema settings. Recent screenings include Edinburgh International Film Festival in Scotland, Bristol Radical Film Festival in UK, Fribourg International Film Festival in Switzerland, University of California (UCLA) in US, and TIFF Cinematheque in Toronto. As part of her Master’s degree, Akbari received the David Buller Scholarship in Visual Studies Department at the University of Toronto. Other awards include Media President Award for the best video installation at Emily Carr University of Art and Design.

Jesse Boles is a Toronto based photo artist and educator. Born in Mongolia Ontario, he lived throughout York Region before moving to Toronto in 1997. He studied architecture at the University of Toronto and photography at Ryerson University. His work focuses on traces of human activity on landscapes, juxtaposing the subject matter with stylistic references to the traditions of 19th century landscape painters in large format prints. He is represented by the Edward Day Gallery in Toronto. His most recent work has been shot in and around Berlin. He most recently exhibited at the AGO in the exhibition "Songs of the future".

Ali El-Darsa, Beirut-born, is a Montreal/Toronto-based artist working in video, performance and installation. Stressing electronic media’s crucial part in creating networked, mediated memories and narratives, his recent work examines the notion of selfhood in the global context of present-day society, which involves confronting one’s self not only with temporal, but also with physical, political, affective, and ideological displacement. Recent solo exhibitions and performances include: 25/09/2001–Present at Espace Cercle Carré (Montreal); Entr’acte at Hart House co-presented by SAVAC (Toronto); Standing Still at Darling Foundry (Montreal). Group exhibitions and screenings include: No Place: Queer Geographies at Small Projects Gallery (Norway); Brooklyn Film Festival (New York); We Can’t Compete at University of Lethbridge Art Gallery (Calgary); Lite Side Festival (Amsterdam); (In)formal disclosures at Access Gallery (Vancouver);  Festival International du Cinéma Méditerranéen (Montpellier); Rendezvous with Madness Film Festival (Toronto); Galerie Sans Nom (Moncton); Festival Les Ecrans Documentaires, (Arcueil); III Festival Internacional de Videoarte Camaguey (Cuba); Theatre Centre (Toronto). He recently undertook a fellowship with Beirut-based artist, Akram Zaatari.

Claudia Zloteanu is currently a graduate student in Visual Studies at the University of Toronto and holds a MFA from the University of Fine Arts, Bucharest, Romania. In August 2014 she was an artist in residency at YYZ Artist Outlet, Toronto. Between 2010 and 2012 she was an artist in residency in Rome, Italy. Her work includes sculptures, drawings, and photography. Recent group exhibitions include Default Programming, North York Centre for the Arts, Toronto(2015), Spazi Aperti X, Romanian Academy, Rome (2012), The Dark side of the Soul, Museo Magma, Roccamonfina, Italy (2012), Edgardo Manucci, Arcevia, Italy (2010), and Body, Caminul Artei Gallery, Romania (2009). Zloteanu currently lives in Aurora, Ontario.

For more information, visit http://utac.utoronto.ca/index.php/future-exhibitions/290-2015-universit…

Other upcoming MVS exhibitions include:

You Speak / I Dance, curated by Nam-In Kim at the Doris McCarthy Gallery, University of Toronto Scarborough Campus.

Image Coming Soon #1, curated by Liora Belford at the Justina M Barnicke Gallery.

Cover image courtesy of Ali El-Darsa, Untitled (video still), 2015. Video.

Global Architecture: Brazil 2014 saw graduate students of the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design partake in a summer exchange course with Escola da Cidade University in the heart of São Paulo. Organized and taught by Alexander Pilis, the program immersed students in the metropolis — a multi-layer urban condition that is in constant flux and home to a staggering 21 million people. During their month-long stay, students were taken to Rio de Janeiro and were given the opportunity to discover the unique city of Brasilia.

This exhibition showcases their work and observations of these three cities. It includes multimedia "recordings" and final studio projects that addressed São Paulo's Minhocão, a 3.5 kilometer suspended highway that cuts through the city creating distinct urban and social conditions. These projects are but a glimpse into the possibilities that lay in re-thinking urban infrastructure.

The exhibition “Layered Landscapes” showcases select sketches and drawings by celebrated Canadian architect Arthur Erickson, revealing the creative process behind his work. 

Join us for the opening reception on Wednesday, February 4 from 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM.

Derived from an old parable, the term PARDES, meaning ‘orchard’ in Hebrew, has come to symbolize the realm of Jewish mysticism. In the legend entitled Four Entered the Orchard, four great sages who enter the esoteric practice meet different fates: one dies, one loses his mind, and one forsakes the Jewish tenets. Only one enters in peace and leaves in peace.

Developed by Toronto-based curator Liora Belford, PARDES brings together four Israeli sound and multi-media artists to investigate notions of mysticism, heresy and the occult from secular perspectives, as they relate to contemporary society. With new and recent works, they examine the mythological aspirations of military technologies, gender ideologies within ritual practices, the collapse of conventional social models, and the impact of marginalized voices on mainstream cultural traditions.

Drawing a parallel to the machine-like Ophanim angels, Nadav Assor examines the obscure undercurrents of drone development: ambitions of unbridled motion, omnipresent vision and remote-controlling power. Amnon Wolman explores gender in Judaism with a sound-embedded prayer shawl, while his sculptural audio book transcends language, lifting it to a different form of expression. Ira Eduardovna’s audio/visual piece juxtaposes chorus-sung reflections on the Apocalypse to a TV sitcom-inspired family scene – a comment on society’s decline and crumbling ideologies. Nevet Yitzhak’s audio/video installation processes archival recordings from the Israel Broadcasting Authority Arabic Orchestra (1948-1993), creating a new composition based on marginalized traditions.

Through a variety of media and artistic approaches, PARDES explores the myth of concealment and mystery that shrouds the path to spirituality, questions our search for heroic figures, and examines the individual’s need to relate to a collective intellectual realm.

Liora Belford is an MVS-Curatorial student at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design. As an emerging art curator who has had the opportunity to organize numerous exhibitions in both public and private institutions, Belford's curatorial practice spans the experimental sonic realm, where she investigates the relationship between sound and space.

Nadav Assor and Amnon Wolman will speak about their work on Sunday, September 21 at the Koffler Gallery at 2 PM. Nadav Assor creates videos, installations, performances, and objects. His work deals with the performed mediation of cities, bodies and personal narratives via appropriated military-industrial technologies. Amnon Wolman is an artist/composer who works in sound art, performance sound-art, composition and collaborative projects. They will discuss their works in the exhibition PARDES in the context of their broader practices.

Regular exhibition hours:
Tuesday to Friday, 12 PM – 6 PM
Saturday & Sunday 11 AM – 5 PM
Admission is free, closed Mondays and statutory holidays

Pardes is generously supported by Mifal Hapais. The Koffler Gallery gratefully acknowledges the support of the Toronto Arts Council, the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts.

Featuring "Undocumented: The Architecture of Migrant Detention" by Daniels Faculty alumna Tings Chak (MArch 2014) and "Pure Space: Public Space Transformations in Latin American Slums" by Elisa Silva.

This exhibition features the work of two architects working at nearly opposite ends of the Americas. Their respective projects look closely at the political and material economies of space that permeate public and institutional settings occupied by some of North and South America’s most marginalized individuals: the informal settlements within large urban centres of Latin America, such as Rio de Janeiro’s favelas or Medelin’s comunas; and the landscapes and interiors of Canadian detention facilities – the re-purposed motels, jails, and ‘processing’ centers where migrants and immigrants become ‘detainees’.

These are places largely occupied by individuals whose socio-economic and/or political status lies at the margins of sanctioned, mainstream society. Within these settings, the presence of design in its formal sense is largely unaccounted for – even disclaimed.  Bereft of spatial generosity, the minimum of what is deemed to be acceptable, purposeful, or merely adequate is too often realized.

In situations where minimal space is the norm – whether by design or by default – the expression of individual and collective identities is potentially thwarted, or is disallowed entirely. Everyday life likewise retracts in these contexts, as individuals encounter significant challenges to where they might appear and legitimately be recognized. 

While resilience is a characteristic of active engagement, it also can be an aspect of resigned acceptance of conditions that are not equitable or just. Importantly, Silva and Chak show us how tactics of resilience can, in the face of privation, absence or loss, allow the assertion of individual and collective identities to persist – and it is hoped, prevail.

Tactical resilience may be found in acts of design small and large. It is present in the ingenuity a detainee summons to create a birthday cake from meager ingredients, celebrating another year and refuting, if only temporarily, the negation of individuality and personal history the spaces of incarceration impute. It resides in the insight that co-opts the purely infrastructural imperatives of flood control, realizing the same margins engineered to serve as spatial impediments in the event of a flood can further community identity, if only seen differently as places for collective gathering.

Finally, even as Silva’s and Chak’s work directly challenges the established practices of the design professions – asking whether architects should be complicit in designing places of detention (Chak), or examining sites where the involvement of an architect, landscape architect or urban designer are often unaffordable luxuries (Silva), their projects also demonstrate that the architect’s analytical tools and methods of documentation are in fact quite resilient. They have deployed  these tools and methods to productively engage sites too often overlooked, or simply unaccounted for,  in contemporary design discourse. In so doing, they open up new kinds of agency for the designer and urbanist.

The Justina M. Barnicke Gallery is pleased to present An Introduction to the Language of Partial Seduction: Works by David Buchan. A beloved cult figure of Toronto’s contemporary art world, David Buchan rose to prominence in the 1970s and 80s as vocal and vibrant member of the city’s art and queer communities. With a multidisciplinary art practice that defied categorization, he merged the mediums of performance, photography, artists’ publications and video into his own unique campaign. Working closely alongside General Idea, Lisa Steele and Colin Campbell, Buchan was a central member of a generation of groundbreaking artists responsible for helping shape the contemporary art landscape in Canada.

Focusing on the theme of performativity as the uniting force in Buchan’s art, this survey is the first solo showing of his work in nearly two decades and marks the 20th anniversary of his untimely passing from AIDS-related causes. Buchan often operated under the alias of his alter-ego, Lamonte Del Monte, who was a vehicle for the artist’s investigations into the socio-political factors that influence the construction of identity. He was a pioneer in broaching critical media studies and maintained a complex practice that exalted the authorial power of the artist, using the methods of appropriation and drag to intervene and re-interpret prevailing conceptions of gender, sexuality and difference. With an electrifying presence, punk ethos and flair for fashion, Buchan’s works are emblems of a defining era in Canadian art, and remain highly relevant in the context of social media’s fetishism of self-fashioning and voyeurism.

David Buchan (born February 11, 1950, Grimsby, Ontario; died January 5, 1994, Toronto, Ontario) was an artist and graphic designer. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts Honours degree from York University in 1972. He lived in Montreal, Quebec between 1972 and 1975 before settling permanently in Toronto in 1975. Beginning in 1975, he worked for Art Metropole in the capacity of Bookstore Manager and helped develop the institution’s archive and collection. In 1982 he was awarded a Canada Council Artist Studio in Paris, France. Buchan’s work and performances have been included in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Canada, the United States and Europe, including: Alte Oper (Frankfurt), Artists Space (NYC), Glenbow Museum (Calgary), Hall Walls Gallery (Buffalo), Mercer Union (Toronto), Museum of the 20th Century (Vienna), The Power Plant (Toronto), Vancouver Art Gallery (Vancouver), Western Front (Vancouver) and YYZ (Toronto). Works by David Buchan are in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada, Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, University of Lethbridge Art Gallery, Canada Council Art Bank, and Winnipeg Art Gallery, as well as private collections.

An Introduction to the Language of Partial Seduction: Works by David Buchan is made possible through the generous support of friends and former colleagues, and especially Steve and Patti Abrams, and AA Bronson.

This exhibition is produced as part of the requirements for the MVS degree in Curatorial Studies at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto.

Please visit the accompanying MVS Curatorial Studies thesis exhibitions, Communicating Vessels, curated by Corrie Jackson at the Blackwood Gallery, University of Toronto Mississauga, from April 16 – May 11 and Why Can’t Minimal, curated by John G. Hampton, to open Fall 2014 at the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery.

The Justina M. Barnicke Gallery’s programs are made possible by the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.