In his coming-of-age book, The Anxiety of Influence, Harold Bloom explains the fraught relationship of young poets to their predecessors. The tyros want to be original, but are in danger of simply being derivative. I sensed a similar dialectic at work in my introductory visit to the current – and hopefully continuing – Regent Park digs of the upstart, artist-run Younger Than Beyoncé Gallery. The name is inspired by the New Museum’s 2009 Younger Than Jesus triennial and, like that exhibition, establishes an age limit (thirty-three) for participating artists. I’m far enough over that hill to know youth is not so much a place of originality as possibility, and the challenge new artists face is to come up with fresh variations on age-old ideas. A gallery dedicated to emerging talent is just one instance of that rejuvenation and previous generations of local artists will recall their own versions fondly (Money House, Art System, or West Wing Art Space, anyone?). 
Shannon Scanlan, Soft Manipulations 1–4, 2015, various fabrics, beads, zippers, clips, wire, wool
YTB throws down another reoccurring theme with their current exhibition Flawless and its focus on feminist art practice. The f-word means any number of things in the early 21st Century, but what unites these eight artists is an adherence, whether knowingly or not, to the work that precedes them. The best of what’s on display, such as the bio-morphic fabric forms of Shannon Scanlan, manage to add something extra to their existing lineage. She extends the trajectory of Louise Bourgeois, Kiki Smith, Luanne Martineau, Karen Azoulay, and Allyson Mitchell by introducing new materials such as athletic wear to their tradition of soft sculpture. Danièle Dennis’ ongoing series of photographs of individual strands of hair ties into the work of black women artists like Adrian Piper, Ellen Gallagher, and Karma Clarke Davis, but does it through a disarmingly clinical process. 
Lauren Fournier, Movement for Photoautomat: Berlin Feminist Flash, 1-10 (detail), 2014, photoautomat strip
Lauren Fournier’s photo-based works are too nostalgic for obsolete media and vintage fashion to escape the pull of Cindy Sherman and Suzy Lake’s role-playing from four decades ago, but I get the feeling that’s her intention. Polina Teif and Shannon Garden-Smith head in the opposite direction and are adamantly contemporary with their street-art inspired paste-ups of distressed advertising stripped of context. This type of work always seem out of place in a gallery setting, but they’d be perfect scattered around the city. In contrast, Audrey Assad’s watercolours and Rachel Ludlow’s acrylic painting are right at home inside and they anchor the exhibition with images that don’t immediately remind me of anyone – which, in this context, is the best compliment I know!
Younger Than Beyoncé: http://www.ytbgallery.com/
Flawless continues until August 29.
Terence Dick is a freelance writer living in Toronto. His art criticism has appeared in Canadian Art, BorderCrossings, Prefix Photo, Camera Austria, Fuse, Mix, C Magazine, Azure, and The Globe and Mail. He is the editor of Akimblog. You can follow his quickie reviews and art news announcements on Twitter @TerenceDick.
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Flawless at Younger Than Beyonce, Toronto
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