....SHARY BOYLE | VESSELLING
Montréal | 29 February – 20 April 2024
Following a touring exhibition titled Outside the Palace of Me circulated by the Gardiner Museum in Toronto, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, Vesselling is Shary Boyle’s first solo exhibition with Patel Brown. With a diverse array of new works that include wall pieces and sculptures, this exhibition invites the viewer into Boyle’s exploratory cosmos, one populated by figures seemingly pulled from a wonderfully strange dream.
excerpt from the exhibition text by Anaïs Castro
..SHARY BOYLE | VESSELLING
Montréal | 29 février – 20 avril 2024
Faisant suite à une exposition itinérante intitulée Outside the Palace of Me, diffusée au Gardiner Museum de Toronto, au Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal et au Museum of Arts and Design de New York, c’est au tour de Patel Brown de présenter les œuvres de Shary Boyle dans le cadre de Vesselling, sa toute première exposition solo à la galerie. Regroupant une myriade d’œuvres inédites, dont des pièces murales et des sculptures, cette exposition propose une incursion au cœur du cosmos exploratoire de Boyle, peuplé de personnages qui semblent tirés d’un songe fabuleux et étrange.
extrait du texte d’exposition par Anaïs Castro
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....Dominique Sirois | Meridian Liturgy for Travelers
Toronto | 24 February - 23 March 2024
Dominique Sirois’s sculptural practice constantly ebbs and flows between languages, making works that become metaphors. She enmeshes nature, mysticism, creatures, and humans; she creates new vocabulary out of visual languages that are deemed opposite, such as Eastern and Western aesthetics, or industrial and organic forms.
Circulation is a keyword that nourishes Sirois’ practice. […] In her first solo exhibition at Patel Brown, Sirois looks at circulation beyond that of energies; circulation is not merely through the body. This time more abstracted, the body is circulating: across meridians, across cultures, across rituals.
excerpt from the exhibition text by eunice bélidor
..Dominique Sirois | Meridian Liturgy for Travelers
Toronto | 24 février - 23 mars 2024
(Texte anglais uniquement disponible)
Dominique Sirois’s sculptural practice constantly ebbs and flows between languages, making works that become metaphors. She enmeshes nature, mysticism, creatures, and humans; she creates new vocabulary out of visual languages that are deemed opposite, such as Eastern and Western aesthetics, or industrial and organic forms.
Circulation is a keyword that nourishes Sirois’ practice. […] In her first solo exhibition at Patel Brown, Sirois looks at circulation beyond that of energies; circulation is not merely through the body. This time more abstracted, the body is circulating: across meridians, across cultures, across rituals.
excerpt from the exhibition text by eunice bélidor
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....CELIA PERRIN SIDAROUS | OUR DUST
Toronto | 24 February - 23 March 2024
The gesture of taking apart to return together again is customary in your work, but one you had not taken to your family archive. How can re-assemblage make your ephemeral archeological? You could compose genealogy by ennobling the still life: it’s what you call an ethics for living, or an ethics for existing. You could exalt ritual, the objects that form the very basis of life. You could create containers to confine voids—vessels whose surfaces and orifices mirror each other (when one of them overflows, its flow fountain-like, propelled from within, as if with a pulsing core, against gravity, palpitates, then gushes, you remind me that a still life is never still), vessels whose clay still breathes. The vessel becomes visceral, earth skin and skin earth, clay caressed continuous with flesh.
excerpt from the exhibition text by Merray Gerges
..CELIA PERRIN SIDAROUS | OUR DUST
Toronto | 24 février - 23 mars 2024
(Texte anglais uniquement disponible)
The gesture of taking apart to return together again is customary in your work, but one you had not taken to your family archive. How can re-assemblage make your ephemeral archeological? You could compose genealogy by ennobling the still life: it’s what you call an ethics for living, or an ethics for existing. You could exalt ritual, the objects that form the very basis of life. You could create containers to confine voids—vessels whose surfaces and orifices mirror each other (when one of them overflows, its flow fountain-like, propelled from within, as if with a pulsing core, against gravity, palpitates, then gushes, you remind me that a still life is never still), vessels whose clay still breathes. The vessel becomes visceral, earth skin and skin earth, clay caressed continuous with flesh.
excerpt from the exhibition text by Merray Gerges
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....Alexa Kumiko Hatanaka | susceptibility to gravity
Montréal | 18 January - 24 February 2024
Alexa Kumiko Hatanaka intertwines motifs from her cultural heritage with conceptual and thematic elements from nature to create works that map out changes that move people, society, and the land. Her two- and three-dimensional work highlights the expressive quality of washi, a Japanese handcrafted paper that originated in the seventh century and is permeated with the characteristics of the people who make it, the specificities of the water that shapes it, and the history in which it is inscribed. Through ink printing techniques and the use of natural dyes such as kakishibu, a Japanese dye derived from persimmons, Hatanaka creates colourful compositions imbued with a sensitive relationship to nature. Notably, she makes paper clothes that is meant to be worn and is crafted according to the traditional process of kamiko, in which konnyaku starch is added to washi, softening the material enough for it to be sewn. Light and translucent, the paper appears fragile but is surprisingly strong.
excerpt from the exhibition text by Maude Johnson
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Alexa Kumiko Hatanaka | susceptibility to gravity
Montréal | 18 janvier - 24 février 2024
Alexa Kumiko Hatanaka entrelace des motifs issus de son héritage culturel et des éléments conceptuels et thématiques se rapportant à la nature, dans des œuvres où elle cartographie des changements qui meuvent le soi, la société et le territoire. Dans son travail bidimensionnel et sculptural, elle met en lumière l’expressivité du washi, un papier artisanal japonais dont l’apparition remonte au 7e siècle et qui porte en lui le caractère des gens qui le fabriquent, les spécificités de l’eau qui lui donne forme, ainsi que l’histoire dans laquelle il s’inscrit. Grâce à des techniques d’impression à l’encre et à l’utilisation de teintures naturelles comme le kakishibu, une teinture japonaise réalisée à partir de kakis, l’artiste élabore des compositions colorées imprégnées d’une relation sensible à la nature. Elle crée notamment des vêtements de papier, destinés à être portés et conçus selon le procédé traditionnel kamiko, qui consiste à ajouter au washi un amidon de konnyaku permettant d’assouplir le matériau afin de le coudre. Léger et translucide, le papier d’apparence fragile fait preuve d’une étonnante solidité.
extrait du texte de l’exposition par Maude Johnson
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....Mia Sandhu | Mourning Glory
Toronto | 13 January - 17 February 2024
Mia Sandhu's third solo exhibition with Patel Brown takes on the semblance of a funerary installation akin to a vigil. Punctuated by paper-based, funerary-floral arrangements, this solemn scene is sharply contrasted by brazenly nude figures in states of mourning. Those unfamiliar with Sandhu's work might find the presence of these shrouded, nude women surprising in this reverential setting. For those acquainted with the artist's recent projects, Mourning Glory appears as another chapter in their complex realities—realities that now encompass the seemingly insurmountable challenge of processing loss. Crucial to the complexity of these topics, Sandhu also taps into the taboo subject of ambivalence, whether as a coping mechanism or actual apathy, when it comes to grief.
excerpt from the exhibition text by Jenna Faye Powell
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Mia Sandhu | Mourning Glory
Toronto | 13 janvier - 17 février 2024
(Texte anglais uniquement disponible)
Mia Sandhu's third solo exhibition with Patel Brown takes on the semblance of a funerary installation akin to a vigil. Punctuated by paper-based, funerary-floral arrangements, this solemn scene is sharply contrasted by brazenly nude figures in states of mourning. Those unfamiliar with Sandhu's work might find the presence of these shrouded, nude women surprising in this reverential setting. For those acquainted with the artist's recent projects, Mourning Glory appears as another chapter in their complex realities—realities that now encompass the seemingly insurmountable challenge of processing loss. Crucial to the complexity of these topics, Sandhu also taps into the taboo subject of ambivalence, whether as a coping mechanism or actual apathy, when it comes to grief.
excerpt from the exhibition text by Jenna Faye Powell
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....Lindsay Montgomery | bugbear
Toronto | 17 November - 23 December 2023
In Bugbear, Lindsay Montgomery expertly draws on a visual language that she has been refining for the last two decades. Montgomery’s ceramic forms and the figurative and spatial elements of their narrative compositions are informed by close study of Medieval illuminated manuscripts and Renaissance decorative art and paintings, while the themes and issues present in her work mirror the complexities of our tumultuous contemporary moment.
Excerpt from exhibition text by Dr. Julie Hollenbach
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Lindsay Montgomery | bugbear
Toronto | 17 novembre - 23 décembre 2023
(Texte en anglais seulement disponible)
In Bugbear, Lindsay Montgomery expertly draws on a visual language that she has been refining for the last two decades. Montgomery’s ceramic forms and the figurative and spatial elements of their narrative compositions are informed by close study of Medieval illuminated manuscripts and Renaissance decorative art and paintings, while the themes and issues present in her work mirror the complexities of our tumultuous contemporary moment.
Excerpt from exhibition text by Dr. Julie Hollenbach
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....Michael Dumontier & Neil Farber | Vulnerability in transition
Toronto | 17 November - 23 December 2023
In his 2008 memoir Born Standing Up, wild and crazy comedian Steve Martin recalls of his early stand-up: “I was linking the unlinkable, blending economy and extravagance, non-sequiturs with the conventional.” Surveying the range of works in Michael Dumontier and Neil Farber’s exhibition Vulnerability in transition, it’s apparent how the absurdity that underlies Martin’s comedy has influenced these artistic partners since their formative days in the late 1990s as co-founding members of Winnipeg’s ground-breaking Royal Art Lodge.
Excerpt from exhibition text by Sue Carter
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Michael Dumontier & Neil Farber | Vulnerability in transition
Toronto | 17 novembre - 23 décembre 2023
(Texte en anglais seulement disponible)
In his 2008 memoir Born Standing Up, wild and crazy comedian Steve Martin recalls of his early stand-up: “I was linking the unlinkable, blending economy and extravagance, non-sequiturs with the conventional.” Surveying the range of works in Michael Dumontier and Neil Farber’s exhibition Vulnerability in transition, it’s apparent how the absurdity that underlies Martin’s comedy has influenced these artistic partners since their formative days in the late 1990s as co-founding members of Winnipeg’s ground-breaking Royal Art Lodge.
Excerpt from exhibition text by Sue Carter
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....NATIVE ART DEPARTMENT INTERNATIONAL | HIGH MAGICK
Montréal | 16 November - 23 December 2023
In this new body of work, NADI shepards us towards a new set of discoveries. It is like we are witnessing the apparition of a presence telling us the hidden stories of those mountains, this land. They show a tension between an expansion and a contraction, maybe the reflection of two great minds trying not to be contained on a limited surface. Each of the paintings in the “Hidden Shaman” series represents an eye, a vision of the world that is sensitive to divine intervention, and at the same time very aware of the spiritual values they are creating
Excerpt from exhibition text by Manuel Mathieu
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NATIVE ART DEPARTMENT INTERNATIONAL | HIGH MAGICK
Montréal | 16 novembre - 23 décembre 2023
Dans ce tout récent corpus, NADI nous guide vers une nouvelle série de découvertes. Comme si nous assistions à l’apparition d’une entité nous racontant les histoires secrètes de ces montagnes, de ce territoire. Elles évoquent une certaine tension entre l’expansion et la contraction, peut-être le reflet de deux grands esprits qui tentent de ne pas se réduire à une surface limitée. Chacune des peintures de la série Hidden Shaman représente un œil, une vision du monde à la fois sensible à l’intervention divine et très consciente des valeurs spirituelles qu’elle engendre.
extrait du texte de l'exposition par Manuel Mathieu (traduction par Marie-France Thibault) ....
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Kim Dorland | is this it?
Montréal | 5 October - 11 November 2023
Kim Dorland’s art isn’t overtly political, but nowadays, how can we feel safe without taking a hard look at our society? By making everything appear suspect and restless, every sky is charged with doubt, every colour becomes meaningful. "Is This It?" is a deliberately open question with an ambiguous pictorial answer, leaving us unsure if it’s recounting what has happened, speculating on a possible ending, or simply drawing the first images of a worst case scenario. In the past, Kim Dorland demonstrated a kind of fascination with the future, which is something he revives here, although now it is tinged with an uncomfortable yet healthy dose of solastalgia.
Excerpt from exhibition text by Bénédicte Ramade
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Kim Dorland | is this it?
Montréal | 5 octobre - 11 novembre 2023
Kim Dorland ne fait pas d’art politique frontalement, mais comment désormais se sentir à l’abri et s’épargner une réflexion profonde sur notre société. En rendant tout suspect, intranquille, chaque ciel se charge d’un doute, chaque couleur devient signifiante. « Is This It ? » est une question volontairement laissée ouverte, dont la réponse picturale est ambiguë, sans qu’on sache vraiment si elle relate ce qui est arrivé, spécule sur une fin possible, ou dessine simplement les premières images d’un récit du pire. Par le passé, Kim Dorland avait dénoté une certaine fascination pour le futur, avec laquelle il renoue, teinté par une solastalgie inconfortable bien que salutaire.
extrait du texte de l'exposition par Bénédicte Ramade ....
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SHELLIE ZHANG | ELEMENTAL
Toronto | 14 September - 4 November, 2023
“Home” is a recalcitrant dollhouse, a living sense that tails your every last action.
Take stock of the missing element in your home.
For lack of water, enjoy a cold bubble bath.
For lack of fire, let the fumes rise from candle and Ovaltine.
For lack of earth, plant a monkey puzzle tree in the middle of it.
For lack of wood, straighten your spine and bark at the furniture.
For lack of metal, let the handymen plume about your room in fishnet lacquers.
Filial cannibalism, or: how we put each other out of our miseries when blood ties bind us all the way through.
The arrangement of objects in space offers its support to your heroic journey homebound, as if what can always be transformed is the same as peace with one’s own fate.
Excerpt from exhibition text by Fan Wu
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SHELLIE ZHANG | ELEMENTAL
Toronto | 14 septembre - 4 novembre 2023
(Texte en anglais seulement disponible)
“Home” is a recalcitrant dollhouse, a living sense that tails your every last action.
Take stock of the missing element in your home.
For lack of water, enjoy a cold bubble bath.
For lack of fire, let the fumes rise from candle and Ovaltine.
For lack of earth, plant a monkey puzzle tree in the middle of it.
For lack of wood, straighten your spine and bark at the furniture.
For lack of metal, let the handymen plume about your room in fishnet lacquers.
Filial cannibalism, or: how we put each other out of our miseries when blood ties bind us all the way through.
The arrangement of objects in space offers its support to your heroic journey homebound, as if what can always be transformed is the same as peace with one’s own fate.
Excerpt from exhibition text by Fan Wu ....
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Kim Dorland | A small digital print show
Toronto | 14 September - 4 November, 2023
Thematically A small digital print show resumes Dorland’s longstanding interest in the overlap of identity and place. His subject matter feels oddly still yet seems to emit a low-frequency buzz. A type of imperceptible energy. The deep-hum of something quietly percolating. These dualities point directly to the futility many feel living through our current climate crisis. There is so much to do and so little being done.
Excerpt from exhibition text by Jenna Faye Powell
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Kim Dorland | A small digital print show
Toronto | 14 septembre - 4 novembre, 2023
(Texte en anglais seulement disponible)
Thematically A small digital print show resumes Dorland’s longstanding interest in the overlap of identity and place. His subject matter feels oddly still yet seems to emit a low-frequency buzz. A type of imperceptible energy. The deep-hum of something quietly percolating. These dualities point directly to the futility many feel living through our current climate crisis. There is so much to do and so little being done.
Excerpt from exhibition text by Jenna Faye Powell
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Shaheer Zazai | Allow me to Sow and See the Garden I Become
Montréal | 31 August - 1 October, 2023
As an Afghan-Canadian artist, Shaheer Zazai explores how culture and identity are constructed. In Allow me to Sow and See the Garden I Become, Zazai presents a new body of work in which he continues to reflect on how his country of origin is perceived. Afghanistan has long been associated with ongoing war and conflict, to the exclusion of all other possible facets of its culture. By focusing on the power of flowers and gardens, Zazai tries to activate the hope of transformation while allowing his studio to become a site for meditation and reparation.
Floral arrangements created by Atelier Bochatay in response to the artist’s work will be presented as part of the exhibition.
excerpt from the exhibition text by Manel Benchabane
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Shaheer Zazai | Allow me to Sow and See the Garden I Become
Montréal | 31 août - 1 octobre 2023
Artiste afghano-canadien, Shaheer Zazai se questionne sur les notions d’identité culturelle et de construction identitaire. Avec Allow me to Sow and See the Garden I Become, Zazai présente un nouveau corpus d’œuvres par lequel il poursuit une réflexion sur la perception de son pays d’origine. On associe depuis longtemps l’Afghanistan à un vocabulaire lié à la guerre et au conflit, faisant abstraction de tous les autres aspects possibles de la culture. En se penchant sur le pouvoir des fleurs et du jardin, il tente d’activer l’espoir d’une transformation, permettant par le fait même à son espace de création de devenir un lieu de méditation et de réparation.
Les arrangements floraux présentés dans l’exposition ont été réalisés par l’Atelier Bochatay en réponse aux œuvres de l’artiste.
extrait du texte de l'exposition par Manel Benchabane
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Summer Showcase | Break It to Me Gently
Toronto | 4 August - 9 September, 2023
Break it To Me Gently invites you to explore feelings inspired by the hazy days of summer: nostalgia, joy, healing, and wonder. As we gently ease into fall, this exhibition encourages you to savour the remaining rays of sunshine and reflect on the season as it passes.
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Summer Showcase | Break It to Me Gently
Toronto | 4 août - 9 septembre 2023
(Texte en anglais seulement disponible)
Break it To Me Gently invites you to explore feelings inspired by the hazy days of summer: nostalgia, joy, healing, and wonder. As we gently ease into fall, this exhibition encourages you to savour the remaining rays of sunshine and reflect on the season as it passes. ....
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Kendra Yee | Tip of the Tongue
Toronto | 22 June - 9 September, 2023
Let the stage be set: Kendra Yee’s Tip of the Tongue thrives as a makeshift garden of sorts, populated by playful characters balanced between enchantment and wickedness. On the precipice of public / private space, interior / exterior worlds, and angelic / infernal intention, peer over the trellis-like structures that seek to fabricate a dreamscape. Meditations in clay and paint embody the fluidity of theatrical personas and mischievous entities: The Hero, The Joker, The Critter, The Magician, and most broadly, The Entertainer. As a garden that channels the thespian stage, Tip of the Tongue takes an introspective look into versions of our complex identities that exist both inwardly and outwardly. Yee shapes these explorations as a tongue twister, embracing the phenomenon of forgetting to retrieve a word from memory, keeping the curious gate ajar for the audience to enter.
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Kendra Yee | Tip of the Tongue
Toronto | 22 juin - 9 septembre 2023
(Texte en anglais seulement disponible)
Let the stage be set: Kendra Yee’s Tip of the Tongue thrives as a makeshift garden of sorts, populated by playful characters balanced between enchantment and wickedness. On the precipice of public / private space, interior / exterior worlds, and angelic / infernal intention, peer over the trellis-like structures that seek to fabricate a dreamscape. Meditations in clay and paint embody the fluidity of theatrical personas and mischievous entities: The Hero, The Joker, The Critter, The Magician, and most broadly, The Entertainer. As a garden that channels the thespian stage, Tip of the Tongue takes an introspective look into versions of our complex identities that exist both inwardly and outwardly. Yee shapes these explorations as a tongue twister, embracing the phenomenon of forgetting to retrieve a word from memory, keeping the curious gate ajar for the audience to enter. ....
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Marigold Santos | the pace and rhythm of time, floating / ang tulin at kumpas ng oras, lumulutang
Toronto | June 22 - July 29, 2023
Santos recognizes her immigration from the Philippines as the departure point for her work. The artist reconfigures Philippine materiality, traditional sartorial elements, flora, and most stunningly, the formidable figure of the asuang (aswang), the medicine woman of pre-colonial Philippine society, who was demonized by the Spanish missionizing project in order to subdue her power. Along with her expansive repertoire of visual vocabularies, Santos mobilizes this extraordinary being to speak of the multiplicity and complexity of the diasporic condition.
Excerpt from the exhibition text by Excel Garay & Marissa Largo
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Marigold Santos | the pace and rhythm of time, floating / ang tulin at kumpas ng oras, lumulutang
Toronto | 22 juin - 29 juillet 2023
(Texte en anglais seulement disponible)
Santos recognizes her immigration from the Philippines as the departure point for her work. The artist reconfigures Philippine materiality, traditional sartorial elements, flora, and most stunningly, the formidable figure of the asuang (aswang), the medicine woman of pre-colonial Philippine society, who was demonized by the Spanish missionizing project in order to subdue her power. Along with her expansive repertoire of visual vocabularies, Santos mobilizes this extraordinary being to speak of the multiplicity and complexity of the diasporic condition.
Excerpt from the exhibition text by Excel Garay & Marissa Largo....
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Muriel Ahmarani Jaouich | Living Lineages
Montréal | May 25 - July 1, 2023
When you descend from people who were not supposed to survive, what do you make of/from/with your inheritance of their wounds? (. . .) Muriel Ahmarani Jaouich’s paintings are a vehicle for the unspoken, a vessel for connection and reclamation. (. . .) In them, her ancestors are emancipated, bathing in light, despite grief’s presence in these edenic, harmonious, sometimes flamboyant images.
Excerpt from the exhibition text by Merray Gerges
..Muriel Ahmarani Jaouich | Lignées vivantes
Montréal | 25 mai - 1 juillet 2023
En tant que descendante d’une famille qui n’était pas censée survivre, que faire de ces blessures laissées en héritage? (. . .) Les œuvres de Muriel Ahmarani Jaouich se veulent un véhicule pour le non-dit, un vecteur de connexion et de réhabilitation. (. . .) Dans celles-ci, ses prédécesseurs s’émancipent, baignés de lumière, malgré le deuil inévitable émergeant de ces images édéniques, harmonieuses, et parfois flamboyantes.
Extrait du texte de l'exposition par Merray Gerges (Traduit de l’anglais par Marie-France Thibault)
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rajni perera | THE VESSEL WITH TWO MOUTHS
Toronto | 12 May - 17 June 2023
The Vessel with Two Mouths places Perera within a research methodology that investigates her fascination with the unseen. The exhibition displays a non-linear progression of her practice that embodies the origins of her ancestry and linkages to Sri Lankan cultural and spiritual traditions.
Influenced by a month-long residency in her home country of Sri Lanka with her daughter, this new body of work represents the artist’s longing for an ancestral home, and renegotiates her diasporic relationship to her heritage. Perera's desire to build a practice that emerges from the earth and its underbelly produces new material forms, which invite us to revisit our relationships to the traditions that inform our lives and ancestries. The Vessel with Two Mouths collapses a linear progression of time, placing Perera in a position of divine omniscience in relation to her practice that has typically illustrated an imagined future. Here, instead, she looks to the past’s stain upon the present to better understand and establish the canon of the origins of not only her practice, but herself.
Rajni Perera and Sayem Khan
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rajni perera | THE VESSEL WITH TWO MOUTHS
Toronto | 12 mai - 17 juin 2023
(Texte en anglais seulement disponible)
The Vessel with Two Mouths places Perera within a research methodology that investigates her fascination with the unseen. The exhibition displays a non-linear progression of her practice that embodies the origins of her ancestry and linkages to Sri Lankan cultural and spiritual traditions.
Influenced by a month-long residency in her home country of Sri Lanka with her daughter, this new body of work represents the artist’s longing for an ancestral home, and renegotiates her diasporic relationship to her heritage. Perera's desire to build a practice that emerges from the earth and its underbelly produces new material forms, which invite us to revisit our relationships to the traditions that inform our lives and ancestries. The Vessel with Two Mouths collapses a linear progression of time, placing Perera in a position of divine omniscience in relation to her practice that has typically illustrated an imagined future. Here, instead, she looks to the past’s stain upon the present to better understand and establish the canon of the origins of not only her practice, but herself.
Rajni Perera and Sayem Khan
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VANESSA BROWN | TWILIGHT FLOWERS
Montréal | 6 April - 20 May 2023
Akin to the Looney Tunes portal that seems to open ad infinitum, in Twilight Flowers, Vanessa Brown invites us into a generous meditation on surreality, vastness, and vulnerability through the multivalent symbol of the hole. Adapted from the larger exhibition That Other Hunger, presented in 2022 at the Richmond Art Gallery, Twilight Flowers is a material and thematic departure for Brown. Known for her large-scale steel sculptures, this new body of work nevertheless echoes her ethos for theatricality, sensuality and research-based precision. Here, smaller metal objects exist alongside a series of photo collage prints, and a singular poetic film.
Excerpt from the exhibition text by Sarah Nesbitt
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VANESSA BROWN | TWILIGHT FLOWERS
Montréal | 6 avril - 20 mai 2023
Tout comme le portail des Looney Tunes qui semble s’ouvrir ad infinitum, dans Twilight Flowers (Fleurs crépusculaires), Vanessa Brown nous invite à une généreuse méditation sur la surréalité, la vastitude et la vulnérabilité à partir du polyvalent symbole du trou. Adaptée de l’exposition plus grande That Other Hunger présentée à la Richmond Art Gallery en 2022, Twilight Flowers est une rupture matérielle et thématique pour Brown qui est connue pour ses sculptures d’acier grand format. Ce nouveau corpus se fait néanmoins l’écho de sa vision de la théâtralité, la sensualité et la précision basée sur la recherche. Ici, ses objets de métal plus petits cohabitent avec une série de collages numériques et un film poétique.
Extrait du texte de l'exposition par Sarah Nesbitt (Traduit de l’anglais par Catherine Barnabé)
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NICOLAS FLEMING | MORE OF A MUDROOM
Toronto | 9 March - 29 April, 2023
Mudrooms are transitional spaces between the outside world and home where one discards the traces of outdoors before entering domestic privacy. In Nicolas Fleming’s mudroom, however, the mud engulfs and traps the household. Fleming created A Mudroom at the Agnes Etherington Arts Centre [and] successively invited to contribute individual responses in A Mudroom, artists Patrick Cruz, Shellie Zhang, Élise Provencher, Ingrid Syage Tremblay, Celia Perrin Sidarous, GHY Cheung, Nicolas Grenier and The Mud Painters youth workshop.
Displaying the residues of the Agnes installation documented in a series of prints and a selection of original mud sculptures, More of A Mudroom revisits the evidence of artistic exchange through process and collaboration.
Excerpt from the exhibition text by Mona Filip
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NICOLAS FLEMING | MORE OF A MUDROOM
Toronto | 9 March - 29 April, 2023
(Texte en anglais seulement disponible)
Mudrooms are transitional spaces between the outside world and home where one discards the traces of outdoors before entering domestic privacy. In Nicolas Fleming’s mudroom, however, the mud engulfs and traps the household. Fleming created A Mudroom at the Agnes Etherington Arts Centre [and] successively invited to contribute individual responses in A Mudroom, artists Patrick Cruz, Shellie Zhang, Élise Provencher, Ingrid Syage Tremblay, Celia Perrin Sidarous, GHY Cheung, Nicolas Grenier and The Mud Painters youth workshop.
Displaying the residues of the Agnes installation documented in a series of prints and a selection of original mud sculptures, More of A Mudroom revisits the evidence of artistic exchange through process and collaboration.
Excerpt from the exhibition text by Mona Filip
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Group Exhibition | SURFACE TEMPERATURE
Toronto | 9 March - 29 April, 2023
This fortuitous grouping of artists offers a relevant snapshot of how contemporary artists digest and challenge our understanding of being and creating. Collectively, these works take an interest in diverse, even, divergent themes, addressing immigration, decoration, productivism, capitalism, folklore, gender identity, architecture, intergenerational trauma, and mysticism, among others. With no interest in ignoring or side-stepping history or legacy, works in this exhibition appear confident, comfortable, and reverent in where we find ourselves now — unafraid to tackle what’s going to come, equipped with redemptive perspectives.
Excerpt from exhibition text by Jenna Faye Powell.
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Exposition collective | SURFACE TEMPERATURE
Toronto | 9 March - 29 April, 2023
(Texte en anglais seulement disponible)
This fortuitous grouping of artists offers a relevant snapshot of how contemporary artists digest and challenge our understanding of being and creating. Collectively, these works take an interest in diverse, even, divergent themes, addressing immigration, decoration, productivism, capitalism, folklore, gender identity, architecture, intergenerational trauma, and mysticism, among others. With no interest in ignoring or side-stepping history or legacy, works in this exhibition appear confident, comfortable, and reverent in where we find ourselves now — unafraid to tackle what’s going to come, equipped with redemptive perspectives.
Excerpt from exhibition text by Jenna Faye Powell.
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Lido Pimienta | THE FABRIC. THE ANGER. THE RIVER.
Montréal | 24 February - 1 April, 2023
As she grows, breathes and moves through the act of weaving several practices together, the work of Lido Pimiento feels increasingly inseparable in medium. The yearning timbre her singing voice offers and the poise and position of her sewing and painting hand is the same; they tell me that as transplants we look back. They affirm that immigrant practices manifest in a loop, not a line. As the sickness of the Western Colonial Construct shows its face to us all more than ever before, and its veneer of propaganda geared toward poor nations no longer holds up, what is a practice birthed by an immigrant? And what does it do?
Excerpt from the exhibition text by Rajni Perera
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Lido Pimienta | THE FABRIC. THE ANGER. THE RIVER.
Montréal | 24 février - 1 avril 2023
Au fur et à mesure que Lido Pimienta s’épanouit, respire et se déplace en s’évertuant à tisser entre elles diverses pratiques artistiques, celles-ci deviennent de plus en plus inséparables, peu importe le support utilisé. Le timbre ardent qu’offre sa voix chantante ainsi que l’élégance et la contenance de sa main qui coud et qui peint présentent des similitudes; ces détails me rappellent qu’en tant qu’individus transposés, nous regardons vers le passé. Ils révèlent également que les pratiques des personnes immigrantes se manifestent en boucle plutôt que de manière linéaire. Alors que la pathologie inhérente à la construction coloniale occidentale nous montre plus que jamais son vrai visage, et que le voile de la propagande à l’égard des nations pauvres est levé, comment peut-on définir une pratique émergeant d’une personne immigrante? Et quel est le rôle de cette pratique, exactement?
Extrait du texte de l'exposition par Rajni Perera
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Kyle Alden Martens, Dominique Sirois & Shanie Tomassini | Personal Allegories
Toronto | 14 January - 18 February 2023
We use allegories to make sense of universal concepts and personal matters, natural phenomena and everyday life. The artists featured in this exhibition use sculpture, performance and display to create forms of allegory, from the political to the intimate. They employ representation of the human form and references to the body to create narratives in which undercurrents of feminism, queerness, eco-anxiety and identity are palpable. While each of the artists have distinct stories to tell, this exhibition weaves together intersecting elements to bring forward new allegories infused with contemporary ideologies.
Excerpt from the exhibition text by Roxanne Arsenault in collaboration with Jennifer Simaitis
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Kyle Alden Martens, Dominique Sirois & Shanie Tomassini | Personal Allegories
Toronto | 14 janvier - 18 février 2023
(Texte en anglais seulement disponible)
We use allegories to make sense of universal concepts and personal matters, natural phenomena and everyday life. The artists featured in this exhibition use sculpture, performance and display to create forms of allegory, from the political to the intimate. They employ representation of the human form and references to the body to create narratives in which undercurrents of feminism, queerness, eco-anxiety and identity are palpable. While each of the artists have distinct stories to tell, this exhibition weaves together intersecting elements to bring forward new allegories infused with contemporary ideologies.
Excerpt from the exhibition text by Roxanne Arsenault in collaboration with Jennifer Simaitis
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Fatine-Violette Sabiri and Raul Aguilar Canela | Loom
Montréal | 19 January - 18 February 2023
At first glance, this exhibition of works from Fatine-Violette Sabiri and Raul Aguilar Canela could be read as yet another sign of craft’s full reintegration into the contemporary art world – especially textile-based work, which has garnered a lot of attention recently. Both artists have certainly been developing object-oriented practices that exist outside of the specific codes of painting, print or photography, while also hinting at the complex histories of these mediums.
Excerpt from the exhibition text by Daniel Fiset
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Fatine-Violette Sabiri and Raul Aguilar Canela | Loom
Montréal | 19 janvier - 18 février 2023
À première vue, cette exposition regroupant les œuvres de Fatine-Violette Sabiri et de Raul Aguilar Canela pourrait être perçue comme un autre signe annonciateur de la pleine réintégration de l’artisanat dans le monde de l’art actuel. Ce phénomène est d’autant plus discernable sur le plan du travail textile, un domaine ayant suscité beaucoup d’attention ces derniers temps. Les deux artistes ont manifestement développé des pratiques orientées objet, qui existent à l’extérieur des codes spécifiques de la peinture, de l’impression ou de la photographie, tout en faisant allusion aux histoires complexes de ces médias.
Extrait du texte de l'exposition par Daniel Fiset....
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Shaya Ishaq | But there are new suns
Toronto | 14 January - 18 February 2023
Elegy for a matriarch whose spirit pulses through soil and rises with the sun, eternally. This is where words meet cloth. This is where the practice of weaving becomes the practice of mourning. This is where textile and text meet each other – a sculpture of colourful double cloth and arching coils, paired with bent wood and dark soil – as a lament for the dead. The matriarch is Ishaq’s grandmother who died in Uganda during the pandemic. When their funerary practice necessitated a quick burial that she could not attend, weaving was the way she could extend the period of mourning.
Excerpt from the exhibition text by Deborah Wang
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Shaya Ishaq | But there are new suns
Toronto | 14 janvier - 18 février 2023
(Texte en anglais seulement disponible)
Elegy for a matriarch whose spirit pulses through soil and rises with the sun, eternally. This is where words meet cloth. This is where the practice of weaving becomes the practice of mourning. This is where textile and text meet each other – a sculpture of colourful double cloth and arching coils, paired with bent wood and dark soil – as a lament for the dead. The matriarch is Ishaq’s grandmother who died in Uganda during the pandemic. When their funerary practice necessitated a quick burial that she could not attend, weaving was the way she could extend the period of mourning.
Excerpt from the exhibition text by Deborah Wang
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Camille Jodoin-Eng | Convergence at the Frog Pond
Toronto | 24 November - 23 December 2022
For the artist Camille Jodoin-Eng, the terrain of that world, of its feelings and curiosities, is the basis for her growing group of invented symbols. She dips into that world’s depths and out of intuition they emerge: some as simple as an oval or curved line; others, like the papier-mâché pieces on view at Convergence at the Frog Pond, more elaborate. There are experiences that inspire her works—water moving over rocks in a small creek, flocks of birds undulating in the sky, a friend putting on their makeup—but these exist more like spiritual references for the abstract forms they're related to. Her symbols, born from a wordless place, are a mystery even to Jodoin-Eng, and she invites others’ interpretations.
Excerpt from the exhibition text by Rosemary Flutur
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Camille Jodoin-Eng | Convergence at the Frog Pond
Toronto | 24 novembre - 23 décembre 2022
(Texte en anglais seulement disponible)
For the artist Camille Jodoin-Eng, the terrain of that world, of its feelings and curiosities, is the basis for her growing group of invented symbols. She dips into that world’s depths and out of intuition they emerge: some as simple as an oval or curved line; others, like the papier-mâché pieces on view at Convergence at the Frog Pond, more elaborate. There are experiences that inspire her works—water moving over rocks in a small creek, flocks of birds undulating in the sky, a friend putting on their makeup—but these exist more like spiritual references for the abstract forms they're related to. Her symbols, born from a wordless place, are a mystery even to Jodoin-Eng, and she invites others’ interpretations.
Excerpt from the exhibition text by Rosemary Flutur
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Mia Sandhu | Seeing You, Seeing Me, Seeing You
Montréal | November 5 - December 17, 2022
There's something particularly fruitful about the 1970s for Mia Sandhu.It's not just the earthly colour palette that triggers olfactory hallucinations of musty shag-carpets, smokey floral upholstery, and dusty rattan furniture. All elements in Sandhu's drawings come together to produce a synaesthetic reaction — you can smell, hear, taste, and feel her staged environments. And you do so in the position of voyeur. As insinuated in the title, Seeing You, Seeing Me, Seeing You, your presence completes the transaction. […]
Excerpt from exhibition text by Jenna Faye Powell
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Mia Sandhu | Te voir me voir te voir
Montréal | 5 novembre - 17 décembre 2022
Les années 1970 ont quelque chose de particulièrement inspirant pour Mia Sandhu. Et il ne s’agit pas uniquement de la palette de couleurs terre, provoquant des hallucinations olfactives qui nous ramènent aux tapis à poil long, aux rembourrages emboucanés et aux meubles en rotin poussiéreux. Tous les éléments des dessins de Sandhu s’unissent pour produire une réaction synesthésique. Nous pouvons ainsi sentir, entendre, goûter et ressentir les environnements qu’elle met en scène, le tout dans une optique voyeuriste. Comme l’insinue le titre Te voir me voir te voir, la présence de l’auditoire vient consolider l’expérience. […]
Extrait du texte de l'exposition par Jenna Faye Powell
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Kim Dorland | Where are all the protest songs?
Toronto | 20 October - 10 December 2022
What is a landscape artist left to paint when we’ve burned, bulldozed, plowed, flooded or paved over all the landscapes? [Where are all the protest songs?] might be the answer to that question too. One could call this work apocalyptic, it's undeniably macabre in places and some of the imagery terrifying, but that would overlook another energy that runs through the work. The energy of an artist grappling with what the future holds, for him, his family, his world.
Excerpt from exhibition text by Stephen Ranger
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Kim Dorland | Where are all the protest songs?
Toronto | 20 octobre - 10 décembre 2022
(Texte en anglais seulement disponible)
What is a landscape artist left to paint when we’ve burned, bulldozed, plowed, flooded or paved over all the landscapes? [Where are all the protest songs?] might be the answer to that question too. One could call this work apocalyptic, it's undeniably macabre in places and some of the imagery terrifying, but that would overlook another energy that runs through the work. The energy of an artist grappling with what the future holds, for him, his family, his world.
Excerpt from exhibition text by Stephen Ranger
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Nathan Eugene Carson | Blessings, Onward
Toronto | 20 October - 19 November, 2022
Using paper and cardboard with various qualities and types of paints, this unaffected approach enables notable ease and excitement in [the artist’s] mark-making. As paint is layered and removed, characters emerge slowly, and unpretentiously, resulting in a particular type of shimmering alchemy.
As suggested in the title, Blessings, Onward acts as an invitation to be forward-thinking. To take stock of everything we are thankful for and to move onwards with gratitude.
- Excerpt from exhibition text by Jenna Faye Powell
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Nathan Eugene Carson | Blessings, Onward
Toronto | 20 octobre - 19 novembre 2022
(Texte en anglais seulement disponible)
Using paper and cardboard with various qualities and types of paints, this unaffected approach enables notable ease and excitement in [the artist’s] mark-making. As paint is layered and removed, characters emerge slowly, and unpretentiously, resulting in a particular type of shimmering alchemy.
As suggested in the title, Blessings, Onward acts as an invitation to be forward-thinking. To take stock of everything we are thankful for and to move onwards with gratitude.
- Excerpt from exhibition text by Jenna Faye Powell
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Group exhibition | Porous Identities
Montréal | September 17 - October 29, 2022
In anticipation of Patel Brown opening a new location in Tiohtiá:ke / Mooniyang / Montreal, it seems relevant to reflect on how culture communicates, fragments, reinvents, and evolves. On a local scale, it's apparent that there is extraordinary potential for learning and exchange between the respective cultures of the two cities, where the gallery now has a foothold in Toronto, and now in Montreal. Looking closely at the practices of the gallery's artists, including the exhibiting artists of this inaugural show, we see this question of interconnection is at the heart of many of their reflections and artistic considerations.
- Excerpt from exhibition text by Roxanne Arsenault
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Exposition de groupe | Identités poreuses
Montréal | 17 septembre - 29 octobre 2022
En vue de l’ouverture de la galerie Patel Brown à Tiohtiá:ke/Mooniyang/Montréal, il nous semblait pertinent de réfléchir sur la manière dont la culture se communique, se fragmente, se réinvente et évolue. À une échelle locale, nous percevons déjà le potentiel extraordinaire d’apprentissages et d’échanges entre les cultures respectives des deux villes où la galerie possède désormais un pied à terre. En examinant attentivement les pratiques des artistes de la galerie, dont ceux présentés ici, nous constatons que les questions de l’interconnexion et de la porosité des identités sont au cœur de nombreuses réflexions.
- Extrait du texte de l'exposition par Roxanne Arsenault
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Maria Hupfield | protocol break
Toronto | September 2 - October 8, 2022
The artworks in this exhibition were made or revisited in Toronto during our pandemic lockdown, a time of sadness and alienation for many of us. We were afraid, lonely, cut-off. Divided inside. Yearning for our roots and connections, the forest became a chair. Apartments became tents. Survival is passed down and remembered, thrown forward into the future.Magic is afoot! In a felt slipper. Call home, commune with your mom. Claim your voice from the soft body of an instrument. Ask the children to tell you what they’ve learned, write it down, cut it out and sew it on a rainbow.
- Excerpt from exhibition text by Shary Boyle
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Maria Hupfield | protocol break
Toronto | 2 septembre - 8 octobre 2022
(Texte en anglais seulement disponible)
The artworks in this exhibition were made or revisited in Toronto during our pandemic lockdown, a time of sadness and alienation for many of us. We were afraid, lonely, cut-off. Divided inside. Yearning for our roots and connections, the forest became a chair. Apartments became tents. Survival is passed down and remembered, thrown forward into the future.Magic is afoot! In a felt slipper. Call home, commune with your mom. Claim your voice from the soft body of an instrument. Ask the children to tell you what they’ve learned, write it down, cut it out and sew it on a rainbow.
- Excerpt from exhibition text by Shary Boyle
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Native art department international | woodland boogie woogie
Toronto | September 2 - October 8, 2022
The paintings—vortexes of flat colour and black lines that punctuate and intersect with curvilinear organic geometries—slowly reveal the vestiges of their inspiration: the forms of the widely recognizable Woodland School of art, also known as Legend painting, founded by the Anishinaabe artists Norval Morrisseau, Daphne Odjig, and Carl Ray, among others. The colour palette and stylistic motifs of the Woodland School, such as the thick black outlines of human and animal kin figures, cells of x-rayed interiors, interconnecting spirit lines, and split circular megis (cowrie shell) forms, have been submitted to a collaborative painting process in which Hupfield and Lujan reconfigure the inspirational colors and forms through a series of abstracting processes in order to focus on the essential elements of the style. The subsequent designs were painted in tandem, each artist taking turns to execute the paintings in a choreographed arrangement as their individual approaches to and histories with painting brought together their distinct strengths and aesthetic interest.
- Excerpt from exhibition text by Christopher Green
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Native art department international | woodland boogie woogie
Toronto | 2 septembre - 8 octobre 2022
(Texte en anglais seulement disponible)
The paintings—vortexes of flat colour and black lines that punctuate and intersect with curvilinear organic geometries—slowly reveal the vestiges of their inspiration: the forms of the widely recognizable Woodland School of art, also known as Legend painting, founded by the Anishinaabe artists Norval Morrisseau, Daphne Odjig, and Carl Ray, among others. The colour palette and stylistic motifs of the Woodland School, such as the thick black outlines of human and animal kin figures, cells of x-rayed interiors, interconnecting spirit lines, and split circular megis (cowrie shell) forms, have been submitted to a collaborative painting process in which Hupfield and Lujan reconfigure the inspirational colors and forms through a series of abstracting processes in order to focus on the essential elements of the style. The subsequent designs were painted in tandem, each artist taking turns to execute the paintings in a choreographed arrangement as their individual approaches to and histories with painting brought together their distinct strengths and aesthetic interest.
- Excerpt from exhibition text by Christopher Green
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Winnie truong | herbaria
Toronto | July 30 - August 27, 2022
Winnie Truong's labour-intensive drawings have evolved into a distinct signature over the past ten years. What were once delicately weaved coifs became hairy, self-described wimmin creatures emerging from cattails. Within Herbaria, her latest solo exhibition with Patel Brown, new works that include large-scale dioramas and a stop-motion animation focuses on the unfettered femmes of the natural world and their disembodiment entrapped in white tape (“Synaptic Pruning”) or a web of their own making (“Weaving, Watching, Waiting”). She is beyond the viewer’s gaze, free from art historical baggage.
- excerpt from exhibition text by Rea McNamara
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Winnie truong | herbaria
Toronto | 30 juillet - 27 août 2022
(Texte en anglais seulement disponible)
Winnie Truong's labour-intensive drawings have evolved into a distinct signature over the past ten years. What were once delicately weaved coifs became hairy, self-described wimmin creatures emerging from cattails. Within Herbaria, her latest solo exhibition with Patel Brown, new works that include large-scale dioramas and a stop-motion animation focuses on the unfettered femmes of the natural world and their disembodiment entrapped in white tape (“Synaptic Pruning”) or a web of their own making (“Weaving, Watching, Waiting”). She is beyond the viewer’s gaze, free from art historical baggage.
- excerpt from exhibition text by Rea McNamara
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sarah letovsky | miles from home
Toronto | July 30 - August 27, 2022
Sarah Letovsky’s paintings are all of women at a particular stage of life - that time of life where one has to decide. Faced with questions of the future, of biology, of tradition. All of these questions are posed in tandem and in conflict with one’s sense of individuality and personal ambition. This dichotomy isn’t the same as the one presented to our fore-mothers, when options were more limited and to take the road less travelled bore a different kind of stigma. Yet, in our contemporary moment of multiplicities, it is easy to get mired by abundance. Born to an age of introspection, the faces of Letovsky’s women are marked with these questions.
- exhibition text by Stanzie Tooth
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sarah letovsky | miles from home
Toronto | 30 juillet - 27 août 2022
(Texte en anglais seulement disponible)
Sarah Letovsky’s paintings are all of women at a particular stage of life - that time of life where one has to decide. Faced with questions of the future, of biology, of tradition. All of these questions are posed in tandem and in conflict with one’s sense of individuality and personal ambition. This dichotomy isn’t the same as the one presented to our fore-mothers, when options were more limited and to take the road less travelled bore a different kind of stigma. Yet, in our contemporary moment of multiplicities, it is easy to get mired by abundance. Born to an age of introspection, the faces of Letovsky’s women are marked with these questions.
- exhibition text by Stanzie Tooth
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luke painter | bauble bauble
Toronto | June 25 - July 23, 2022
Ignoring the artificial barriers that exist between fields in contemporary fine art, Luke Painter’s elegant works evoke fantastic, yet oddly familiar, spaces and subsequent narratives. Seemingly speculative in their pitch, the works draw us in through novel approaches to space and perspective. In encountering his works, we become voyeurs of strange landscapes and interiors that play with inside/outside, up/down, so that our perception is challenged to the point where we hesitate to depend upon vision and proprioceptive knowledge. Each piece takes us to new and unanticipated worlds.
- Text by Caroline Seck Langill
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luke painter | bauble bauble
Toronto | 25 juin - 23 juillet 2022
(Texte en anglais seulement disponible)
Ignoring the artificial barriers that exist between fields in contemporary fine art, Luke Painter’s elegant works evoke fantastic, yet oddly familiar, spaces and subsequent narratives. Seemingly speculative in their pitch, the works draw us in through novel approaches to space and perspective. In encountering his works, we become voyeurs of strange landscapes and interiors that play with inside/outside, up/down, so that our perception is challenged to the point where we hesitate to depend upon vision and proprioceptive knowledge. Each piece takes us to new and unanticipated worlds.
- Text by Caroline Seck Langill
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Jenna faye powell | is this the right mountain?
Toronto | June 25 - July 23, 2022
In Jenna Faye Powell’s drawings—an eye spy of collected objects nestled within lush greenery—objects float, defying gravity. The surreal compositions lack context and provide insight: vignettes of emotion, permission to daydream, and a sense of foreboding. The drawings in “Is this the right mountain?” at Patel Brown Gallery invite narrative speculation, while the saturated reds and turquoises make it feel as if you’re looking through 3-D glasses at a movie theatre. A dystopian drama. A domestic thriller. A survival story set in the woods. All with the possibility of a happy ending, most likely. “The exhibition title is meant to embody a naive optimism, an outlook that is helpful when embarking on any risky endeavour or campaign,” explains Powell. “Only by climbing the mountain, will you know if you’ve made a grave error,” she continues.
- Text by Tatum Dooley
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Jenna faye powell | is this the right mountain?
Toronto | 25 juin - 23 juillet 2022
(Texte en anglais seulement disponible)
In Jenna Faye Powell’s drawings—an eye spy of collected objects nestled within lush greenery—objects float, defying gravity. The surreal compositions lack context and provide insight: vignettes of emotion, permission to daydream, and a sense of foreboding. The drawings in “Is this the right mountain?” at Patel Brown Gallery invite narrative speculation, while the saturated reds and turquoises make it feel as if you’re looking through 3-D glasses at a movie theatre. A dystopian drama. A domestic thriller. A survival story set in the woods. All with the possibility of a happy ending, most likely. “The exhibition title is meant to embody a naive optimism, an outlook that is helpful when embarking on any risky endeavour or campaign,” explains Powell. “Only by climbing the mountain, will you know if you’ve made a grave error,” she continues.
- Text by Tatum Dooley
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Kara springer | i / must be given words
Toronto | May 14 - June 18, 2022
Kara Springer’s solo exhibition, I / must be given words, seeks to find truth in the confounding of sensory experience and perception—suggesting that an unstable ground is perhaps the most productive one from which to begin making meaning. In the exhibition, high resolution scans of Springer’s skin are transformed into deep, oceanic blues, through a simple digital function that inverses the color spectrum. These image-shades are thrown even further into flux due to the lightboxes’ ever-changing brightness: their light ebbs and flows in tandem with Springer’s breathing patterns, transmitted in real time from a device worn by the artist to a kind of central motherboard that connects them all.
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Kara springer | i / must be given words
Toronto | 14 mai - 18 juin 2022
(Texte en anglais seulement disponible)
Kara Springer’s solo exhibition, I / must be given words, seeks to find truth in the confounding of sensory experience and perception—suggesting that an unstable ground is perhaps the most productive one from which to begin making meaning. In the exhibition, high resolution scans of Springer’s skin are transformed into deep, oceanic blues, through a simple digital function that inverses the color spectrum. These image-shades are thrown even further into flux due to the lightboxes’ ever-changing brightness: their light ebbs and flows in tandem with Springer’s breathing patterns, transmitted in real time from a device worn by the artist to a kind of central motherboard that connects them all.
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Katherine melançon | night blossoms
Toronto | May 14 - June 18, 2022
In Night Blossoms, Montreal-based artist Katherine Melançon invites us to see nature as living and blooming everywhere, close to us, and never separated from culture or technology. The body of work presented here started more than ten years ago, when the artist lived in London, UK, and walked throughout the city scanning flowers and plants growing in private gardens. The central work in the exhibition, Nature morte – Epiphyllum (2018-2022), encapsulates the artist’s interest in biodiversity, image-making processes, the passage of time, and the deployment of digital technologies to extend our engagement with living systems.
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Katherine melançon | night blossoms
Toronto | 14 mai - 18 juin 2022
(Texte en anglais seulement disponible)
In Night Blossoms, Montreal-based artist Katherine Melançon invites us to see nature as living and blooming everywhere, close to us, and never separated from culture or technology. The body of work presented here started more than ten years ago, when the artist lived in London, UK, and walked throughout the city scanning flowers and plants growing in private gardens. The central work in the exhibition, Nature morte – Epiphyllum (2018-2022), encapsulates the artist’s interest in biodiversity, image-making processes, the passage of time, and the deployment of digital technologies to extend our engagement with living systems.
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Luis jacob | borderline cases: two in the bush
Toronto | March 26 - May 7, 2022
Luis Jacob’s newest solo exhibition Borderline Cases: Two in the Bush reveals the autobiography of line work, mark making, and gesture through a body of work that has coalesced over three decades. New spirograph works speak across time to paintings and sketches to trace the energy and aura of the work of art in all its boundless energy.
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Luis jacob | borderline cases: two in the bush
Toronto | 26 mars - 7 mai 2022
(Texte en anglais seulement disponible)
Luis Jacob’s newest solo exhibition Borderline Cases: Two in the Bush reveals the autobiography of line work, mark making, and gesture through a body of work that has coalesced over three decades. New spirograph works speak across time to paintings and sketches to trace the energy and aura of the work of art in all its boundless energy.
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Howie tsui | a prologue to entombment
Toronto | March 26 - May 7, 2022
Howie Tsui’s A Prologue to Entombment examines the funerary ritual of returning bones to one’s hometown as an allegory for migrant experiences and diasporic yearning. This combines with explorations into the mounting suppression of voice as expressed through depictions of figures entombed within scholar rocks, referencing the Chinese practice of using cangues as a form of punishment and furthering Tsui’s ongoing strategies to destabilize canonized objects.
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Howie tsui | a prologue to entombment
Toronto | 26 mars - 7 mai 2022
(Texte en anglais seulement disponible)
Howie Tsui’s A Prologue to Entombment examines the funerary ritual of returning bones to one’s hometown as an allegory for migrant experiences and diasporic yearning. This combines with explorations into the mounting suppression of voice as expressed through depictions of figures entombed within scholar rocks, referencing the Chinese practice of using cangues as a form of punishment and furthering Tsui’s ongoing strategies to destabilize canonized objects.
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Shaheer zazai | a call home
Toronto | February 12 - March 19, 2022
A Call Home is both an examination of and an ode to the conscious and subconscious creation of cultural identity. The works in this exhibition also represent the artist's inversion of exclusive definitions of Afghan cultural identity framed through a strict binary located between the traditional and the contemporary.
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Shaheer zazai | a call home
Toronto | 12 février - 19 mars 2022
(Texte en anglais seulement disponible)
A Call Home is both an examination of and an ode to the conscious and subconscious creation of cultural identity. The works in this exhibition also represent the artist's inversion of exclusive definitions of Afghan cultural identity framed through a strict binary located between the traditional and the contemporary.
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laura dawe | Scrapartment
Toronto | January 15 - April 16, 2022
Laura Dawe’s work explodes from the covers of the traditional scrapbook and brings this methodological approach of meaning-making into the entirety of the gallery. In her Scrapartment we step into the pages of a living scrapbook, one that exudes extreme nostalgia, a simultaneity of bliss and anxiety, a calmness and compulsion. Dawe has spent hours upon hours gathering, compiling, and reinventing snippets salvaged from other art projects, objects found in the street and flea markets into a fully coordinated, provisional, work-from-home-in-progress.
-exhibition text by Rhiannon Vogl
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laura dawe | Scrapartment
Toronto | 15 janvier - 16 avril 2022
(Texte en anglais seulement disponible)
Laura Dawe’s work explodes from the covers of the traditional scrapbook and brings this methodological approach of meaning-making into the entirety of the gallery. In her Scrapartment we step into the pages of a living scrapbook, one that exudes extreme nostalgia, a simultaneity of bliss and anxiety, a calmness and compulsion. Dawe has spent hours upon hours gathering, compiling, and reinventing snippets salvaged from other art projects, objects found in the street and flea markets into a fully coordinated, provisional, work-from-home-in-progress.
-exhibition text by Rhiannon Vogl
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nicHolas bierk | a distant light
Toronto | January 8 - February 5, 2022
Within A Distant Light are wanderings that span across glowing landscapes, resting bodies, and shadows lingering on walls. Nicholas Bierk considers them sketches — each compact canvas like a page in a journal - rendering itinerant, painterly explorations that move from place to place, from time to time, dispersed to dissolve any concise narrative or chronology. Bierk is the wanderer, slipping into his far and near past, gathering images while he goes.
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nicHolas bierk | a distant light
Toronto | 8 janvier - 5 février 2022
(Texte en anglais seulement disponible)
Within A Distant Light are wanderings that span across glowing landscapes, resting bodies, and shadows lingering on walls. Nicholas Bierk considers them sketches — each compact canvas like a page in a journal - rendering itinerant, painterly explorations that move from place to place, from time to time, dispersed to dissolve any concise narrative or chronology. Bierk is the wanderer, slipping into his far and near past, gathering images while he goes.
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group show | re/flex
Toronto | January 8 - February 5, 2022
Re/flex revels in the malleability of lens-based media and its ability to reflect back the complexity of human and environmental experiences. Such explorations complicate the ways in which memories are considered nebulous, fleeting, and organic, while photographs are thought finite, bound, and even stagnant.
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group show | re/flex
Toronto | 8 janvier - 5 février 2022
(Texte en anglais seulement disponible)
Re/flex revels in the malleability of lens-based media and its ability to reflect back the complexity of human and environmental experiences. Such explorations complicate the ways in which memories are considered nebulous, fleeting, and organic, while photographs are thought finite, bound, and even stagnant.
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lido pimienta | hanging by the threads
Toronto | November 20 - December 18, 2021
Hanging by the Threads marks a reflection on a loving personal world filled with familiar faces who guide the way. Lido Pimienta fills the works with the colours and symbolic faces that remind her of her upbringing, and mark reflections of her personal memories inspired by childhood. Hanging by the Threads is Pimienta’s first solo show at Patel Brown Gallery, exhibiting at our Patel Brown East location at 184 Munro St.
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lido pimienta | hanging by the threads
Toronto | 20 novembre - 18 décembre, 2021
(Texte en anglais seulement disponible)
Hanging by the Threads marks a reflection on a loving personal world filled with familiar faces who guide the way. Lido Pimienta fills the works with the colours and symbolic faces that remind her of her upbringing, and mark reflections of her personal memories inspired by childhood. Hanging by the Threads is Pimienta’s first solo show at Patel Brown Gallery, exhibiting at our Patel Brown East location at 184 Munro St.
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group show | Artifacts of the Horizon, Part 2: Setting into Space
Toronto | November 9 - December 18, 2021
Artifacts of the Horizon works to replace possible futures with the frontier of the present, transcending identified categorizations and emphasizing the collective viewpoint and way forward through a variety of unique perspectives and the objects that reflect them.
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group show | Artifacts of the Horizon, Part 2: Setting into Space
Toronto | November 9 - December 18, 2021
(Texte en anglais seulement disponible)
Artifacts of the Horizon works to replace possible futures with the frontier of the present, transcending identified categorizations and emphasizing the collective viewpoint and way forward through a variety of unique perspectives and the objects that reflect them.
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group show | Artifacts of the Horizon, Part 1: rising from place
Toronto | September 25 - October 30, 2021
Artifacts of the Horizon works to replace possible futures with the frontier of the present, transcending identified categorizations and emphasizing the collective viewpoint and way forward through a variety of unique perspectives and the objects that reflect them.
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group show | Artifacts of the Horizon, Part 1: rising from place
Toronto | 25 septembre - 30 octobre 2021
(Texte en anglais seulement disponible)
Artifacts of the Horizon works to replace possible futures with the frontier of the present, transcending identified categorizations and emphasizing the collective viewpoint and way forward through a variety of unique perspectives and the objects that reflect them.
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maria hupfield | storywork
Toronto | September 4 - October 16, 2021
Maria Hupfield’s solo exhibition, Storywork, at Patel Brown East explores how we carry living knowledge through our actions, clothing, words, and actions. The items in the gallery are both sculptures and live performance components, activated by the artist’s touch. Such activation combines the energy of living with the balance of movement, action, sound, strength, and hope as essential components in the creation of meaning making.
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maria hupfield | storywork
Toronto | 4 septembre - 16 octobre 2021
(Texte en anglais seulement disponible)
Maria Hupfield’s solo exhibition, Storywork, at Patel Brown East explores how we carry living knowledge through our actions, clothing, words, and actions. The items in the gallery are both sculptures and live performance components, activated by the artist’s touch. Such activation combines the energy of living with the balance of movement, action, sound, strength, and hope as essential components in the creation of meaning making.
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rajni perera & nep sidhu | in the realm of lightning
Toronto | August 7 - September 18, 2021
Rajni Perera and Nep Sidhu present a collaborative multi-faceted body of work for In the Realm Of Lightning. Comprising of large-scale experimental marbled textile wall work, embroidered protection for ride-or-die spiritualists and kin, as well as varied object, the exhibition culminates two years of labor, life, and intention.
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rajni perera & nep sidhu | in the realm of lightning
Toronto | 7 août - 18 septembre 2021
(Texte en anglais seulement disponible)
Rajni Perera and Nep Sidhu present a collaborative multi-faceted body of work for In the Realm Of Lightning. Comprising of large-scale experimental marbled textile wall work, embroidered protection for ride-or-die spiritualists and kin, as well as varied object, the exhibition culminates two years of labor, life, and intention.
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Michael dumontier & neil farber | thought landscape
Toronto | July 23 - August 28, 2021
Patel Brown East is pleased to present a new series of works by Michael Dumontier & Neil Farber. Whimsical flowers, emotive mixed tapes, and a composite work that continues their Library series comprise the exhibition, further expanding the narrative and visual repertoire of Dumontier & Farber.
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Michael dumontier & neil farber | thought landscape
Toronto | 23 juillet - 28 août, 2021
(Texte en anglais seulement disponible)
Patel Brown East is pleased to present a new series of works by Michael Dumontier & Neil Farber. Whimsical flowers, emotive mixed tapes, and a composite work that continues their Library series comprise the exhibition, further expanding the narrative and visual repertoire of Dumontier & Farber.
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maya fuhr, alexa hatanaka and shaheer zazai | nada house
New York | May 8 - August 1, 2021
The exhibition explores themes surrounding cultural identity and hybridity, the global circulation of textiles and textile heritage, and the intimacy of material culture as it intertwines with lived experience and transforms into new mediums of expression
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maya fuhr, alexa hatanaka and shaheer zazai | nada house
New York | 8 mai - 1 août 2021
(Texte en anglais seulement disponible)
The exhibition explores themes surrounding cultural identity and hybridity, the global circulation of textiles and textile heritage, and the intimacy of material culture as it intertwines with lived experience and transforms into new mediums of expression
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alexa hatanaka | side by each
Toronto | June 26 - July 31, 2021
Consisting of relief-prints and kamiko garments constructed with washi, side by each weaves the long and delicate threads of paper to manifest ancestral connections and intersecting crises.
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alexa hatanaka | side by each
Toronto | 26 juin - 31 juillet 2021
(Texte en anglais seulement disponible)
Consisting of relief-prints and kamiko garments constructed with washi, side by each weaves the long and delicate threads of paper to manifest ancestral connections and intersecting crises.
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group show | flesh on the floor (contact 2021)
Toronto | May 22 – July 3, 2021
Mohamad Abdouni, Evan Atwood, Jorian Charlton, Roya Delsol, Ty Ford, Jah Grey, Isabella Isaziga, Katerina Jebb, Luna Khods, jes sachse, Neva Wireko, Ji Yeo
Curated by Maya Fuhr
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group show | flesh on the floor (contact 2021)
Toronto | 22 mai – 3 juillet 2021
Mohamad Abdouni, Evan Atwood, Jorian Charlton, Roya Delsol, Ty Ford, Jah Grey, Isabella Isaziga, Katerina Jebb, Luna Khods, jes sachse, Neva Wireko, Ji Yeo
Organisé par Maya Fuhr
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maya fuhr | living in a material world (contact 2021)
Toronto | May 01 – June 23, 2021
Recording the fabric of clothing and other related materials, Fuhr examines the relationship with textiles of dress, coalescing the geographic anatomy of the clothing we wear each day.
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maya fuhr | living in a material world (contact 2021)
Toronto | 1 mai – 23 juin 2021
(Texte en anglais seulement disponible)
Recording the fabric of clothing and other related materials, Fuhr examines the relationship with textiles of dress, coalescing the geographic anatomy of the clothing we wear each day.
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anique jordan | nowing (contact 2021)
Toronto | May 15 - June 19, 2021
Nowing is an exhibition of photographs and sculptures that work across time to find, examine, and name “political histories of the present” and imagine how we might contend with these histories today.
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anique jordan | nowing (contact 2021)
Toronto | 15 mai - 19 juin 2021
(Texte en anglais seulement disponible)
Nowing is an exhibition of photographs and sculptures that work across time to find, examine, and name “political histories of the present” and imagine how we might contend with these histories today.
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Michael dumontier & neil farber | precarity
Toronto | April 03 - May 08, 2021
Michael Dumontier and Neil Farber’s practice distills nuanced emotional moments, often to humorous effect. Utilizing various juxtapositions of familiar objects (flowers, animals, houses, books), their works read as a categorical indexing of linguistic and painterly exploration.
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Michael dumontier & neil farber | precarity
Toronto | 3 avril - 8 mai 2021
(Texte en anglais seulement disponible)
Michael Dumontier and Neil Farber’s practice distills nuanced emotional moments, often to humorous effect. Utilizing various juxtapositions of familiar objects (flowers, animals, houses, books), their works read as a categorical indexing of linguistic and painterly exploration.
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ella gonzales, tristam landsdowne, and luke painter | personal space
Toronto | April 02 - May 08, 2021
The works in this exhibition conjure unsettled, and sometimes unsettling spaces that address the contemporary interior. Existing in differing degrees of relation to inhabitable locations, these works navigate the terrain between digital rendering, dream-image, and place.
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ella gonzales, tristam landsdowne, and luke painter | personal space
Toronto | 2 avril - 8 mai 2021
(Texte en anglais seulement disponible)
The works in this exhibition conjure unsettled, and sometimes unsettling spaces that address the contemporary interior. Existing in differing degrees of relation to inhabitable locations, these works navigate the terrain between digital rendering, dream-image, and place.
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vanessa brown | slumber
Toronto | February 27 - March 28, 2021
SLUMBER engages a slowness in the viewer’s eyes. Populated by five ambiguously figurative, larger than life sculptures, the exhibition takes sculptural contour as its point of departure and suggests in its slow forms the heaviness of aging bodies.
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vanessa brown | slumber
Toronto | 27 février - 28 mars 2021
(Texte en anglais seulement disponible)
SLUMBER engages a slowness in the viewer’s eyes. Populated by five ambiguously figurative, larger than life sculptures, the exhibition takes sculptural contour as its point of departure and suggests in its slow forms the heaviness of aging bodies.
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alex sheriff | closing parties
Toronto | February 05 - March 27, 2021
Rooted in themes surrounding the Anthropocene, the works in the exhibition explore ambivalent attitudes towards our species’ extinction within the broad narrative arch of natural history and challenges the audience to adopt viewpoints of other things on Earth.
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alex sheriff | closing parties
Toronto | 5 février - 27 mars 2021
(Texte en anglais seulement disponible)
Rooted in themes surrounding the Anthropocene, the works in the exhibition explore ambivalent attitudes towards our species’ extinction within the broad narrative arch of natural history and challenges the audience to adopt viewpoints of other things on Earth.
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marigold santos | hiwa-hiwalay
Toronto | November 21, 2020 - January 16, 2021
In hiwa-hiwalay, Marigold Santos embraces multifarious self-hoods and fragmented identities as expressions of empowerment and resiliency. Folklore, textures, gestures and objects particular to the Philippines persist in her imagery, which collide and reconfigure in an effort to acknowledge heritage and examine complex histories within diasporic experiences.
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marigold santos | hiwa-hiwalay
Toronto | 21 novembre 2020 - 16 janvier 2021
(Texte en anglais seulement disponible)
In hiwa-hiwalay, Marigold Santos embraces multifarious self-hoods and fragmented identities as expressions of empowerment and resiliency. Folklore, textures, gestures and objects particular to the Philippines persist in her imagery, which collide and reconfigure in an effort to acknowledge heritage and examine complex histories within diasporic experiences.
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mia sandhu | golden girls
Toronto | November 21, 2020 - Janurary 16, 2021
In Golden Girls, Sandhu draws from personal and shared experiences, attempting to portray inner conflicts seemingly intrinsic to womanhood regardless of ethnicity or heritage. Sandhu’s protagonists appear on the cusp of something: they are unshackled by self-doubt, but perhaps are still fighting to be victorious in their new, unrepressed consciousness.
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mia sandhu | golden girls
Toronto | 21 novembre 2020 - 16 janvier 2021
(Texte en anglais seulement disponible)
In Golden Girls, Sandhu draws from personal and shared experiences, attempting to portray inner conflicts seemingly intrinsic to womanhood regardless of ethnicity or heritage. Sandhu’s protagonists appear on the cusp of something: they are unshackled by self-doubt, but perhaps are still fighting to be victorious in their new, unrepressed consciousness.
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kim dorland | way lost
Toronto | October 3 - November 14, 2020
Steeped in psychedelia and anxious energy, Dorland's most recent body of work continues to explore the transformative power of nature while evoking the vulnerability of our environment and, consequently, our own well-being.
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kim dorland | way lost
Toronto | 3 octobre - 14 novembre 2020
(Texte en anglais seulement disponible)
Steeped in psychedelia and anxious energy, Dorland's most recent body of work continues to explore the transformative power of nature while evoking the vulnerability of our environment and, consequently, our own well-being.
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shaheer zazai | a study in human error
Toronto | July 24 - September 26, 2020
Patel Brown East, 184 Munro Street
The works in A Study in Human Error are exactly that. In both bodies of work Zazai is visibly unlearning the controls formerly placed upon his work: embracing unintended brushstrokes and digital knots; rejecting the rules of exact balance and the rules of academic painting; and recognizing the experience of diaspora as one that continually pushes the notion of a fixed identity beyond its limits.
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shaheer zazai | a study in human error
Toronto | 24 juillet - 26 septembre 2020
Patel Brown East, 184 Munro Street
(Texte en anglais seulement disponible)
The works in A Study in Human Error are exactly that. In both bodies of work Zazai is visibly unlearning the controls formerly placed upon his work: embracing unintended brushstrokes and digital knots; rejecting the rules of exact balance and the rules of academic painting; and recognizing the experience of diaspora as one that continually pushes the notion of a fixed identity beyond its limits.
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group show | talisman: magickal objects for revolution
Toronto | August 15 - September 26, 2020
This group exhibition activates and makes available objects that have been brought into the world to act as catalysts for change and revolution. The re-spelling of the word magic removes its affiliation with spectacles for naive audiences, placing it further toward the sphere of the metaphysically charged.
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group show | talisman: magickal objects for revolution
Toronto | 5 août - 26 septembre 2020
(Texte en anglais seulement disponible)
This group exhibition activates and makes available objects that have been brought into the world to act as catalysts for change and revolution. The re-spelling of the word magic removes its affiliation with spectacles for naive audiences, placing it further toward the sphere of the metaphysically charged.
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group show | adapt and pivot
Toronto | June 26 - August 8, 2020
Patel Brown Gallery, 21 Wade Avenue
Shary Boyle, Vanessa Brown, Nicholas Galanin, Alexa Hatanaka, Anique Jordan, Rajni Perera, Nep Sidhu, Howie Tsui, & Naama Tsabar
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group show | adapt and pivot
Toronto | 26 juin - 8 août 2020
Patel Brown Gallery, 21 Wade Avenue
Shary Boyle, Vanessa Brown, Nicholas Galanin, Alexa Hatanaka, Anique Jordan, Rajni Perera, Nep Sidhu, Howie Tsui, & Naama Tsabar
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group show | fair adaptation, gallery pivots
Toronto | June 26 - August 8, 2020
Patel Brown Gallery, 21 Wade Avenue
Nicolas Fleming, Shaheer Zazai, Mia Sandhu, Kim Dorland, Luke Painter, Vanessa Brown, Shellie Zhang and Maya Fuhr
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group show | fair adaptation, gallery pivots
Toronto | 26 juin - 8 août 2020
Patel Brown Gallery, 21 Wade Avenue
Nicolas Fleming, Shaheer Zazai, Mia Sandhu, Kim Dorland, Luke Painter, Vanessa Brown, Shellie Zhang and Maya Fuhr