Toronto’s Nuit Blanche is now just a day away. And although I’ve conducted my recommendations alphabetically, it also appears that I’ve saved the best for last. Zone C is looking good, and I can guarantee that the strongest concentration of Nuit Blanche visitors will be wandering in these parts.
Brendan Fernandes, Future (· · · - - - · · ·) Perfect, 2008
My first recommendation comes out of pure curiosity. I can’t really visualize what this “monumental structure” or “towering installation” will look like, but if Brendan Fernandes’s Future (· · · – - – · · ·) Perfect evokes Moshe Safdie’s Habitat housing scheme like the catalogue says, it’s sure to be worth a visit.
FUTURE (· · · – - – · · ·) PERFECT
Brendan Fernandes – Toronto, Canada
Multimedia Installation
Pulsing with a dramatic lighting score indicating S-O-S in morse code, Brendan Fernandes’ towering installation of shipping containers addresses the trauma of migration, displacement and change. Fernandes’ sculptural installation evokes Moshe Safdie’s utopic Habitat housing scheme, produced for the 1967 Montreal Exposition, and designed to include all people regardless of class, race or gender. Fernandes’ monumental structure, however, reflects on the failure of this ideology and the susceptibility of these social projects to capitalist forces. The work has a local relevance, reflecting on the politics of gentrification and the displacements inherent to the project of urban renewal.
Fernandes’s installation will be in the parking lot between Mowat and Fraser Avenues, South of Liberty Street.
Matt Suib, Purified by Fire, 2006, Multi-channel video installation Photo: Matt Suib
Next up is Matthew Suib’s Purified by Fire, partly because I love rear window projections but mainly because I’m interested in the anxiety of watching a building on fire. Suib’s piece incites a critical examination of our relationship to danger. Or, more aptly, our removal from it.
PURIFIED BY FIRE
Matthew Suib – Philadelphia, USA
Installation, Visual Art, Video Installation
Continuing his exploration of the language, iconography and mythology of cinema, Matthew Suib creates the appearance of a building on fire by using seamless video loops as rear window projections. The work explores the physical and moral gap that separates the West from war and destruction and examines the notion of regeneration through violence.
Purified by Fire is at the Liberty Market Building and Toy Factory Lofts on Liberty Street, East of Hanna Avenue.
Laurin Jeffrey, Last Mass, 2006, Digital Photograph Photo: Laurin Jeffrey
Finally, there is DK Photo Group’s Silent Witness. I’ve long been interested in the relationship between citizens and state in so far as our conditioning to order as it relates to private property and dangerous property. The notion of tresspassing is interesting and what’s more is that most of us abide by it.
SILENT WITNESS
Russell Brohier, Sean Galbraith, Steve Jacobs, Laurin Jeffrey, Mathew Merrett
Multimedia Installation
We prowl the areas where most will not go. We do this to bring back the images that we feel we must share with the world. We want others to be able to see what we have seen, what others do not want you to see. The rot, the neglect, the careless abandonment. Some would just bulldoze them into the earth, forever burying their stories.
Societies create societal memories and history through their architecture. But these spaces do not stop telling stories simply because that same society shutters them away and asks itself to stop listening. DKPG unveils the isolation, desolation, and beauty found in unexpected places. Beyond the NO TRESPASSING signs. Beyond the fences and barbed wire into a world of abandonment and society’s architectural refuse.
galleryDK is at 1332 Queen Street West.
So that’s that! I’ll be back with reviews of work I didn’t recommend. Happy drifting…
