The last half of August is truly the dead zone of the local art scene – not in the Stephen King sense, just in the inescapable fact that the galleries who can't afford to take the whole month off, squeeze in their two weeks of holiday before the fall onslaught begins. There are those who can't afford to shutter their windows at all, and I'll be relying on them for the next couple reports. The two shows I'm covering today are mere hours away from closing but worth a boo if you're in the neighbourhood of Dundas and Ossington.
Soft Turns, St. Helena Olive Tree, Extinct 1884-1977, 2013-, 2010, video projection
Sarah Jane Gorlitz and Wojciech Olejnik make up the artist duo Soft Turns. The four short videos they are exhibiting at O'Born Contemporary fall into the moving pictures camp (as opposed to the short movies camp). Each in their own way introduce a dynamic element into a seemingly innocuous scene to elicit a reflection on change and all that entails. The movements are often indirectly presented – such as the shifting shadows in St. Helena Olive Tree, Extinct 1884-1977, 2013- and the reflection of a passing train in A Passage. Both require the viewer to extrapolate a world beyond the frame and, in doing so, construct a narrative. In this summer of floods, Just Add Water's slowly submerged subterranean passages offer a tragic layer to its exploration of space. The collection of work invites a restrained but rewarding opportunity for reflection.
Jen Stark, Glow, 2013, aluminum, powder coat paint, acrylic paint
Jen Stark's use of colour is anything but restrained. Her selection of works at Cooper Cole is all about pleasing the eye, dipping into Op Art territory and coming out in three dimensions. Her wall installations are all trippy, multicoloured swirls and drips; each in its own way also suggests movement. After the initial appeal of her vortex installations wears off, it's a ceiling hung mobile of concentric rings that play with our expectations of volumes of space and an abstract sworl mounted slightly off the wall to allow a subtle glow of colour to emerge beneath that sustain my curiosity.
O'Born Contemporary: http://www.oborncontemporary.com/
Soft Turns: Movement Never Lies continues until August 21.
Cooper Cole: http://coopercolegallery.com/exhibitions
Jen Stark continues until August 24.
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.
↧
Soft Turns at O'Born Contemporary | Jen Stark at Cooper Cole
↧