All posts by Circuit Gallery Admin

Philip Cheung: Arctic Front

January 7, 2019 Circuit Gallery Admin Leave a comment

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Toronto, ON, January 7, 2019 — Circuit Gallery is pleased to present Arctic Front, a solo exhibition of new photographic work by Philip Cheung.

In 2016 Cheung was selected for the Canadian Forces Artist Program to continue his work about military cultures and environments. Arctic Front is the first chapter in a long-term project examining Canada’s various post-Afghanistan military foci and engagements—the new and future front lines of operations. Here he turns his lens North, to observe the Canadian Rangers, a part-time military unit comprised mostly of Indigenous volunteers. Cheung writes:

The Rangers have been a visible military presence in remote northern communities for over 65 years and they continue to serve as the military’s ‘eyes, ears and voice’ of the North. As the Canadian military refines its ability to operate in the region, the Rangers will continue to play an essential role in asserting Canada’s sovereignty over its Arctic land and sea.

The Arctic has always figured prominently in Canada’s national imagination and in its claims to sovereignty, but with shifting global environmental, social, economic, and political pressures, the Arctic has also become a potential military front-line, as vulnerable as it is valuable. As Cheung explains:

Canada’s Arctic is its last frontier. The Far North makes up more than 40 percent of its landmass, but contains less than 1 percent of Canada’s population. Rising sea and air temperatures due to climate change are contributing to sea-ice loss, which has opened up international interest in control over new ‘ice-free’ shipping routes in the Northwest Passage, as well as access to the significant natural resources such as oil, gas and precious metals found there.

In addition to these environmental and international concerns, the Arctic is also an important front with regard to the relationships between non-Indigenous and Indigenous people in Canada. As Sara Matthews rightly notes in “Watching the Watchers,” her essay that accompanies the exhibition:

[As] part of the sovereign colonial project in the country we now know as Canada […] the Arctic has a complicated history made from the unsettled relations between newcomers and Indigenous peoples who live and work in relationship to the land.

With over 10 years of experience in the Canadian Armed Forces prior to working as a photographer in some of the world’s most conflicted regions (Iraq, Afghanistan, the West Bank, and Northern Africa), Cheung has an informed perspective on military issues and culture that distinguishes his work from conventional media narratives and reporting. As Matthews notes:

Utilizing a medium format digital camera and tripod, his photographic process is slowed-down and mirrors the attitude of watchfulness with which his subjects are tasked. Encouraging the viewer to likewise adopt this stance of vigilant interest, each photograph offers an enigma that hints towards a greater whole.

The photographs in Arctic Front are subtle, indirect portraits of the dissonant tensions in the North between military and civilian (both settler and Indigenous) interests, resources, and labour and subsequently a contemplation of the human capacity for adaptation, survival, and endurance.

Philip Cheung: Arctic Front runs January 10 through February 2 at Circuit Gallery @ Prefix ICA, with an opening reception on Friday, January 11, from 6-9 p.m.. The Artist will be in attendance.

BIOS
Philip Cheung is a Canadian artist, based in Los Angeles and Toronto, with a significant background and experience in various forms of photography. In recent years, he has decidedly moved towards a contemporary practice focused on research and exploration of issues of citizenship, capital, labour and industrialization through a layered approach of natural and urban landscapes and portraiture. His projects include Desert Dreams, A Winter in Kandahar, The Thing about Remembering, The Edge, and Arctic Front.

His work has been exhibited in galleries, museums and festivals across North America and Europe, including The National Portrait Gallery (London, UK), the Lumix Festival (Hanover, DE) and the Flash Forward Festival (Toronto, CA).

Cheung was named one of PDN’s 30 New and Emerging Photographers to Watch and has been awarded research and production grants by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and Toronto Arts Council. In 2018 he was shortlisted for the Aperture Portfolio Prize. In 2016 he was selected for the Canadian Forces Artist Program (CFAP) by the Directorate History and Heritage to continue a series that examines military culture in Canada’s post-Afghanistan military. Cheung has also been recognized by the Magenta Foundation, Communication Arts, Photo District News and American Photo. His work is held in the collection of Akkasah, Center for Photography at NYU Abu Dhabi, and has appeared in features and reviews in The British Journal of Photography, Canadian Art, The Walrus, Harper’s, The Washington Post, and TIME among others.

Artist Page: Philip Cheung

Sara Matthews is Associate Professor in the Department of Global Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. Her research and teaching are interdisciplinary and consider the dynamics of war, violence and social change. Working primarily in the field of research-creation, her projects explore the relations between visual culture, nation building, colonialism and martial politics. In addition to her academic-based work, Sara curates aesthetic projects that archive visual encounters with legacies of war and social trauma. Her critical art writing has appeared in PUBLIC, FUSE Magazine and in exhibition essays for the Robert Langen Gallery, Circuit Gallery, the Ottawa Art Gallery, the Doris McCarthy Gallery and as a blog for Gallery TPW.

Philip Cheung

Arctic Front

January 10 – February 2, 2019
Circuit Gallery @ Prefix ICA
401 Richmond Street West, Suite 124
Toronto, ON, M6R 2G5
[ Google Map ]

Opening Reception: Friday, January 11, 6-9 p.m.
Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 12:00 – 5:00 p.m.

Visit Circuit Gallery for more information and to see more images:
www.circuitgallery.com/exhibitions

ABOUT CIRCUIT GALLERY
Circuit Gallery specializes in contemporary photography. Established in 2008 by Susana Reisman and Claire Sykes, the Toronto based commercial gallery represents both emerging and established Canadian and international artists.

Web: www.circuitgallery.com 
Email: info@circuitgallery.com
Phone: 647-477-2487

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Exhibitions + Fairs, News

Philip Cheung: The Edge

January 4, 2017 Circuit Gallery Admin Leave a comment

Philip Cheung, "Lifeboats, Al Jaddaf, Dubai," 2015, from 'The Edge' — Philip Cheung, “Lifeboats, Al Jaddaf, Dubai,” 2015

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

New exhibition offers a contemporary look at the rapidly changing coastal landscape of the United Arab Emirates

Toronto, ON, January 4, 2017 — Circuit Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of ten large-scale photographs by Philip Cheung from The Edge, a new project that follows the 1300 km coastline of the United Arab Emirates looking at the region’s rapid development and transformation.

As Cheung Explains:

The United Arab Emirates is a country in a state of constant geopolitical change. Once an obscure Gulf nation, the UAE has, in just 40 years, emerged from the desert sands. Substantial economic growth resulting from the discovery of major oil and gas reserves off the coast of Abu Dhabi have transformed the formerly semi-nomadic Bedouin society into a thriving localized culture, anchored in international business, tourism, and luxury

Significant urban and industrial development has attracted migrant workers, business people, consumers, and tourists from all around the world. Expatriates now make up 85 percent of the population in the major urban centers of Abu Dhabi and Dubai. As a result, the cultural identity of the Emirates as a whole is evolving through a constant influx of foreign influences.

The Edge is a continuation of Cheung’s successful project Desert Dreams which offered a modern portrait of the Emirates and its negotiation of a relationship between traditional culture and lifestyle and the new cosmopolitan aspirations afforded by massive wealth, intense urbanization, and economic development. With this new work Cheung turns his attention to the landscape and to the varied activities taking place along the coast. In these photographs he’s looking at the expression of these changes and ambitions through the built environment, architecture, infrastructure, and indeed the use of space—the spaces various people occupy, from local Emirati’s to Western expats and migrant labourers, and the distance between co-existing and contrasting worlds.

As Leo Hsu astutely writes, in his essay accompanying the exhibition:

Cheung’s photographs are powerful because, beyond surveying, or describing, they suggest the seeming necessity of the present moment, which in his graceful compositions feels both inevitable and eternal. At the same time, they underscore the moment’s contingency—the feeling that the cultural features on display, functions of power, economics and globalization, look so specific, when seen in the context of the landscape that has made this wealth and power possible. Where nature cannot but look as it does, the built environment betrays human ambition in the way that it assumes its specific forms. The success of Cheung’s photographs is its evocation of the tension between these two imperatives.

BIOS
Philip Cheung is a Canadian photographer with experience in various forms of photography who, since 2007, has worked extensively in the Middle East, particularly the United Arab Emirates. In recent years, his personal work has focused on research and exploration of issues of citizenship, capital, labour and industrialization through a layered approach of natural and urban landscapes and portraiture.

Cheung’s work has been exhibited in galleries, museums and festivals across North America and Europe, including The National Portrait Gallery (London, UK), the Lumix Festival (Hanover, DE) and the Flash Forward Festival (Toronto, CA), and has appeared in features and reviews in The British Journal of Photography, CNN, Boston Review and TIME, among others. Clients include The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian Weekend Magazine, Stern, The Independent Magazine, The New York Times, Der Spiegel, Le Monde and Wallpaper*.

In 2011 Cheung was named one of PDN’s 30 top emerging photographers, and in 2016 he was selected for the Canadian Forces Artist Program by the Directorate History and Heritage to continue a series that examines military culture in Canada’s post-Afghanistan military. He is currently based in Los Angeles and Toronto.

Leo Hsu is a writer, researcher and photographer based in Toronto. He is a regular contributor to Fraction Magazine and holds a PhD in Anthropology and Certificate in Culture and Media from New York University.

Philip Cheung: The Edge runs January 12 through February 4, at Circuit Gallery @ Prefix ICA, with an opening reception on Friday, January 13, from 6-9 p.m.. The artist is in attendance.

Philip Cheung

The Edge

January 12 – February 4, 2017
Circuit Gallery @ Prefix ICA
401 Richmond Street West, Suite 124
Toronto, ON, M6R 2G5
[ Google Map ]

Opening Reception: Friday, January 13, 6-9 p.m.
Gallery Hours:
Tuesday – Saturday, 11:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Philip Cheung, "Friday, Fujairah," 2014, from 'The Edge' — Philip Cheung, “Friday, Fujairah,” 2014

Philip Cheung, "Roundabout, Khor Fakkan, Sharjah," 2014, from 'The Edge' — Philip Cheung, “Roundabout, Khor Fakkan, Sharjah,” 2014

Philip Cheung The Edge Circuit Gallery — Installation view of Philip Cheung’s solo exhibition “The Edge” at Circuit Gallery @ Prefix ICA, Toronto, Canada (January 12 – February 4, 2017)

Visit Circuit Gallery for more information and to see more images:
www.circuitgallery.com/exhibitions

Web: www.circuitgallery.com 
Email: info@circuitgallery.com
Phone: 647-477-2487

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Press + Reviews

Alejandro Cartagena photo-essay in Maclean’s

April 19, 2015 Circuit Gallery Admin Leave a comment

Circuit Gallery artist Alejandro Cartagena has a nice photo-essay in Maclean’s Magazine, as lead-up to a pubic installation as part of the Contact Photography Festival

Keep truckin’: Portraits of Mexico’s morning commuters

Alejandro Cartagena spent a year photographing workers on their morning commute

by Aaron Hutchins, Maclean’s
April 19, 2015

When Alejandro Cartagena moved to Monterrey, Mexico, as a teenager in 1990, he was put to work as an assistant on his grandfather’s construction crew for a few months. His grandfather would pick up employees, who filled the back of his truck, and off they went to the work site. What Cartagena learned, he says, is “how hard it is to work for a living.”

Cartagena has since turned to photography for a living, while life in Monterrey is hard in itself. Sometimes still alive, victims of the drug war were hanged from bridges or beheaded, then dumped in the city. But in the midst of the chaos and the deaths, there are locals trying to make an honest living.

During a housing boom 10 years ago, blue-collar residents were encouraged to become first-time homeowners in a suburb north of town. Construction jobs, meanwhile, were at least an hour’s drive from where the workers now lived. For an entire year, Cartagena waited on the same bridge between 7 and 9 a.m. as the pick-ups went by. The bird’s-eye view gave him an intimate look into their private lives. During their commute, some read the newspaper. Others listened to music. Many simply slept. “The culture here is very much of the macho cowboy,” Cartagena says. “So when you see the guys spooning each other, [it shows] we’ll do whatever it takes [to survive].”

The trucks weren’t always filled with people—an illegal practice, after all. And if someone died after flying out the back during a collision, police would patrol for a few weeks, but the commuters inevitably came back. “They’re having to risk their lives to keep their houses,” Cartagena says. “They inspire me.”

View original article and see more images: Keep truckin’: Portraits of Mexico’s morning commuters

Alejandro Cartagena’s work is part of Contacting Toronto: Expanding Cities an official public installation for the 2015 Scotiabank Contact photography festival. Curated by Sharon Switzer. Co-produced by PATTISON Onestop and Art for Commuters.

Learn more about this and related events.

Exhibitions + Fairs, News

Akihiko Miyoshi: CMYKRGB

March 26, 2015 Circuit Gallery Admin Leave a comment

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Akihiko Miyoshi: pushing the intersection of art and technology into new territory

Toronto, ON, March 26, 2015 — Circuit Gallery is pleased to present CMYKRGB, an exhibition of new abstract photographic and installation work by Portland Oregon based artist Akihiko Miyoshi.

In this latest work, Miyoshi pushes his interest in the intersection of art and technology into new territory. While Miyoshi has consistently engaged questions specific to photographic representation – exploiting the conventions of perception, questioning the status of both the photographer/author and the referent/real in the digital age – here he extends his investigation into the very processes and conditions of contemporary image production.

I believe we live in a moment where the torrent of the digital and the inertia of the analog collide with each other creating an aesthetic and lived experience unique to our time…. This collision is the subject of the works presented.

The works exhibited exist, conceptually, somewhere between painting and photography. Visually, they are between formal abstraction and photographic representation.

Using photography, a medium whose indexicality clings to the real, Miyoshi performs a variety of gestures that bring to the fore the tensions between the analog and the digital. These gestures range from very material and mechanical performative actions undertaken in the studio in front of the camera (using paper, paint, light, mirrors, and the artists own body), to manipulations within the software (digital gestures such as offsetting the color channel), through to collaborations with the digital algorithms of the software – “letting it think” and act.

Miyoshi seeks to represent something of our contemporary experience of what is pervasive yet elusive, known only through the effects of optics, algorithms, data, and mediation – and experienced though screens and web browsers, 8-bit aesthetics, and virtual worlds.

The works evoke what is intangible or unrepresentable, and yet oddly familiar, by revealing something of the processes underneath the act of representation. Questioning and revealing the spaces between pigment and light, the tensions between the material and immaterial, the real and the virtual, between human and machine, between certainty and uncertainty, Miyoshi’s new work allegorically offers a way to look at the complexity of our present state.

The exhibition is accompanied by the essay, “Photography and the ‘Artifacts of Software’: Akihiko Miyoshi’s CMYKRGB,” by Toronto-based writer and researcher Emily Doucet.

BIO
Born in Japan, Akihiko Miyoshi received his MFA in photography in 2005 from the Rochester Institute of Technology after leaving a PhD program in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University to pursue art. Miyoshi is an Associate Professor of Photography and Digital Media at Reed College (Portland, OR). His work explores the intersection between art and technology most frequently dealing with issues surrounding photographic representation.

His work has been exhibited widely including Portland, New York, Los Angeles, Rochester, Pittsburgh, and Toronto. He was named the International Award Winner of Fellowship 12 at The Silver Eye Center for Photography in Pittsburgh PA, and the finalist for the Betty Bowen Award from the Seattle Art Museum in 2012 and Aperture Portfolio Prize in 2013. Miyoshi received a Hallie Ford Fellowship in 2012.

Akihiko Miyoshi: CMYKRGB runs April 9 through May 2 at Circuit Gallery @ Prefix ICA, with an opening reception on Wednesday, April 8, from 6 – 9 PM.

Akihiko Miyoshi

CMYKRGB

April 9 – May 2, 2015

Reception: Wednesday, April 8, 6-9 p.m.

Circuit Gallery @ Prefix ICA
401 Richmond Street West, Suite 124
Toronto, ON, M6R 2G5
[ Google Map ]

Gallery Hours:
Tuesday – Saturday, 11:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Visit Circuit Gallery for more information and to see more images:
www.circuitgallery.com/exhibitions

Web: www.circuitgallery.com 
Email: info@circuitgallery.com
Phone: 647-477-2487

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Exhibitions + Fairs, News

Shelagh Keeley: Barcelona Pavilion

December 30, 2014 Circuit Gallery Admin Leave a comment

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Canadian artist Shelagh Keeley to premiere Barcelona Pavilion photographs in new solo exhibition at Circuit Gallery

Toronto, ON, December 29, 2014 — Circuit Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of photographs by senior Canadian artist Shelagh Keeley. These images were taken in 1986 in the newly reconstructed Mies van der Rohe Pavilion in Barcelona, Spain, just before it was reopened to the public.

Keeley is well known for her highly visceral and embodied drawing practice. She has always used photography, incorporating it into her site-specific installation work and drawings through collage, however Keeley’s own photographs are rarely the focus of attention in an exhibition.

Barcelona Pavilion, presented here for the first time, reveals an approach to photography that is consistent with this artist’s broader practice. Here is a subjective and embodied kind of ‘drawing with light’ and poetic engagement with space that is refreshingly irreverent, inconsistent with both our expectation of photography and for pictures of such an iconic work of modernist architecture.

Albeit attracted to the iconic aspects of the celebrated building—the materials (marble, glass, and metal), the key spaces, and light—they seem like asides, as her focus is more ambient and on the mundane. She uses photography in a subjective way, where her “less is more” minimal and abstracting compositions are less about describing these sober and rational spaces, than they are about a poetics of space, and about being in them.

Shelagh Keeley: Barcelona Pavilion is the fourth exhibition for Circuit Gallery @ Prefix ICA, a new presentation partnership where the commercial gallery is sharing exhibition space with Prefix ICA in the destination landmark arts building at 401 Richmond Street West in Toronto.

The exhibition is curated by Claire Sykes, with catalogue essays by Joel Robinson and Mark Kingwell.

BIO
Shelagh Keeley (born Oakville, Ontario) lives now in Toronto after spending 23 years in New York City and Paris. She received her Honours BFA in Art History / Anthropology from York University, Toronto.

Keeley has an extensive international exhibition history over the last 30 years and has travelled across the globe. Keeley’s recent production includes a commission by the Power Plant, Toronto, to create two new installations for the venue’s large clerestory walls (2014/2015), and by MoMA, Library and Archives, NYC, for a new research project / performance with choreographer Lin Snelling (2014/2015).

In 2013 she created a major on-site commissioned wall drawing installation at Stadtisches Museum Abteiberg, Monchengladbach, Germany, for the exhibition In Order to Join (2013). This exhibition will travel to the Goethe-Institut / Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (former Prince of Wales Museum), Mumbai, India (2015), and will include the Barcelona Pavilion photographs.

Keeley’s larger record includes exhibitions at: Devi Art Foundation, Gurgaon, India (2013); Ryerson Image Centre, Toronto (2013); Nuit Blanche, Paris (2012); McMaster Museum of Art / Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa (2010); Vancouver Art Gallery (2010); Caoyang Village Public Art Project, Shanghai (2009); National Gallery of Canada (2008, travelling exhibition), RAM Foundation, Rotterdam (2008); Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto (2007); Nature Morte Gallery, New Delhi (2004); Printed Matter, NYC (1998), Indianapolis Museum of Art (1995); John Gibson Gallery, NYC (1994); Exit Art, NYC (1993); MOMA P.S.1 Museum, NY (1992); and DIA Art Foundation, NYC (1989).

Her work is in the collection of major international public institutions including: the Museum of Modern Art, NYC; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; the Fonds National d’Art Contemporain Paris; the Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver; the Musées de la Ville de Paris, Paris; the Getty Museum, Santa Monica; the Harvard Art Museum, Boston; the Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh; the Yale University Art Gallery, CT; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA.

Shelagh Keeley: Barcelona Pavilion runs January 8 through the 31st at Circuit Gallery @ Prefix ICA, with an opening reception on Thursday, January 8, from 6 – 9 PM. The artist is in attendance.

Shelagh Keeley

Barcelona Pavilion

January 8 – 31, 2015

Reception: Thursday, January 8, 6-9 p.m.

Circuit Gallery @ Prefix ICA
401 Richmond Street West, Suite 124
Toronto, ON, M6R 2G5
[ Google Map ]

Gallery Hours:
Tuesday – Saturday, 11:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Shelagh Keeley Barcelona Pavilion — Shelagh Keeley, *Barcelona Pavilion III*, 1986/2012

Visit Circuit Gallery for more information and to see more images:
www.circuitgallery.com/exhibitions

Web: www.circuitgallery.com 
Email: info@circuitgallery.com
Phone: 647-477-2487

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Exhibitions + Fairs, News

Donald Weber: Interrogations

November 18, 2014 Circuit Gallery Admin Leave a comment

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Interrogating the Interrogator: Donald Weber’s award-winning photography project Interrogations set for Canadian premiere in new exhibition

Toronto, ON, November 18, 2014 — Circuit Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of work by Donald Weber from his award-winning project Interrogations, seen here for the first time in Canada.

The exhibition features twelve large-format photographs of suspected criminals being subjected to intense interrogation in an unnamed police station somewhere in Ukraine. This powerful series is accompanied by a selection of smaller photographs, which serve as a prologue.

Weber spent seven years traveling throughout Ukraine and Russia in an effort to understand and show something of life in the post-Soviet era. He observed how, since the collapse of Communism and its replacement with free-market Capitalism and an ostensible democracy, people are negotiating their places between ideologies, past and promised, and within “the system”.

Over the course of his research Weber became increasingly preoccupied with the subject of Power as exercised by the modern state, and how it deploys an all-encompassing theatre for its subjects. Amassed, his gritty photographs offer a complex portrait of people and a place, haunted by the past, and disillusioned with the present and its failure to provide a promised future.

Interrogations is the culmination of this seven-year project and a sharp distillation of subject and theme—one that seeks to go beyond the specificity of time, place, and individual, to reveal something more universal about the human situation.

Power is invisible, an abstract concept to which we are all subject. It can only be represented through its effects and consequences, its symbols and subjects (victims and perpetrators). Weber’s photographs from inside the interrogation room are simple stark images offering complex scenes.

Having gained the trust and permission of both the policeman and detainees to take photographs, Weber, as third party witness to the unfolding dramas (including the violent threats, aggression, and intimidation tactics of the policeman) focused his lens on the suspects, the men and women (and youth) who for whatever reason are brought in for questioning and find themselves in the room, subjected to interrogation.

Weber withholds context and specificity. We are not given information as to who they are, or the what, where, or why of their circumstance. Reduced to the confines of the room and to a succinct grammar of gesture and expression, Weber adeptly offers a series of types revealing a range of emotion and reaction: angry, defiant, pleading, ashamed, terrified, scheming, pliant, resigned.

We are unable to adjudicate guilt or innocence here. The implied indictment, it would seem, is not of the people portrayed nor is it limited to former Soviet states, but rather of the very idea of “the system” and the larger abuse of power and authority. The interrogator, rarely seen in the photographs, becomes the embodiment of Power itself in these emblematic dramas played out on the small stage, within the confines of the room.

This is a work which intelligently asks and invites all sorts of interesting and important questions about photography and the photographic situation as much as it does about the interrogations themselves.

Interrogations is the third exhibition for Circuit Gallery @ Prefix ICA, a new presentation partnership where the commercial gallery is sharing exhibition space with the highly respected Prefix ICA in the destination landmark arts building at 401 Richmond Street West in Toronto.

The exhibition is curated by Claire Sykes with a catalogue essay by Randy Innes.

BIOS
Donald Weber is a photographer fascinated by the subject of power (be it economic, political, or psychological) and how it deploys an all-encompassing theatre for its subjects. His Interrogations project and accompanying book (Schilt, 2011) has received notable recognition and accolades from World Press Photo, PDN, Aperture, and many others. It was preceded by Bastard Eden, Our Chernobyl (2008) which won the Photolucida Book Award. Weber’s numerous awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Duke and Duchess of York Photography Prize, and two World Press Photo prizes. Most recently he was shortlisted for the 2014 Scotiabank Photography Award. He is a member of the acclaimed VII Photo agency and is represented by Circuit Gallery (Toronto).

Randy Innes holds a PhD in Visual and Cultural Studies from the University of Rochester. He has taught at several universities and he contributed to significant developments at the School of the Photographic Arts: Ottawa. His research interests include the history and theory of photography, museum theory and exhibition practice, and aesthetic theory. Randy held the History of Photography research fellowship at the National Gallery of Canada, and he has published research and exhibition essays on historical and contemporary photography, along with other topics. An article on Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin appears in the special issue of the Canadian Art Review (RACAR) dedicated to War and Photography (Fall 2014).

Interrogations runs November 27 through December 20 at Circuit Gallery @ Prefix ICA, with an opening reception on Thursday, November 27, from 6 – 9 PM.

Interrogations

Donald Weber

November 27 – December 20, 2014

Reception: Thursday, November 27, 6-9 p.m.

Circuit Gallery @ Prefix ICA
401 Richmond Street West, Suite 124
Toronto, ON, M6R 2G5
[ Google Map ]

Gallery Hours:
Tuesday – Saturday, 11:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Donald Weber, Interrogation II, 2010 — Donald Weber, *Interrogation II*, 2010

Donald Weber, Interrogations, 2010 — Donald Weber, *Interrogation VIII*, 2010

Visit Circuit Gallery for more information and to see more images:
www.circuitgallery.com/exhibitions

Web: www.circuitgallery.com 
Email: info@circuitgallery.com
Phone: 647-477-2487

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News

Circuit Gallery now on ARTSY

November 16, 2014 Circuit Gallery Admin Leave a comment

Circuit Gallery on Artsy

GALLERY NEWS

The Art World Online – Artsy features the world’s leading galleries, museum collections, foundations, artist estates, art fairs, and benefit auctions, all in one place

Circuit Gallery is pleased to announce that we are now listing our work through Artsy. It is a great platform and tool with a tremendous global audience and reach. So if you use the platform (mobile or web), please FOLLOW US there to stay up to date on openings, available works, and more!

About Artsy

Artsy is an online platform for discovering, discussing, and collecting art, featuring 180,000+ works from over 2,000 renowned galleries and 300 institutional partners, including museums and foundations, from around the globe.

News

Robert Bean Exhibition Striking Type at ZKM

November 8, 2014 Circuit Gallery Admin Leave a comment

Robert Bean, Noiseless, 2006 — Robert Bean, *Noiseless*, from the series ‘Writing Machines Archive’, 2006

ARTIST NEWS

Historic Typewriters in Changing Times. Writing Machines and Obsolescence

Gallery artist Robert Bean’s exhibition STRIKING TYPE opens at ZKM | Zentrum für Kunst Medialounge in Karlsruhe, Germany. The exhibition, curated by Hartmut Jörg, runs November 14, 2015 through January 6, 2015.

Historic Typewriters in Changing Times. Writing Machines and Obsolescence.
Photography by Robert Bean

The @-sign was first integrated into the keyboard in 1882, when North American typewriter manufacture, Caligraph, presented Model 2 in the USA. The occasion was a request by North American Association of Stenographers to integrate the @-sign into the keyboard as a commercial abbreviation. With the numerous historical items of Ludwigsburg expert, Lothar K. Friedrich, the exhibition Striking Types documents the evolution of mechanical writing machines from North America and Europe through to the emergence of the PC era. A parallel exhibition by Canadian photographic artist Robert Bean, takes an analytic look at the mechanics and type face of the typewriter that have now vanished from everyday life.

Exhibitions + Fairs, News

Judy Natal: Future Perfect

August 22, 2014 Circuit Gallery Admin Leave a comment

Judy Natal Energy Plant Baby — Judy Natal, *Energy Plant*, from the series *Future Perfect*, 2011. ©Judy Natal

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

New exhibition invites us to imagine the landscapes of the future and consider our present moment and the environmental choices we have yet to make.

Toronto, ON, August 22, 2014 — Circuit Gallery presents Future Perfect, a solo exhibition by Chicago-based artist Judy Natal. The exhibition is curated by Claire Sykes with a catalogue text by Timothy Morton.

In Future Perfect Judy Natal presents three peculiarly evocative and troubling sites where human intervention and land use are exploring the quality and state of futurity. A Las Vegas desert preserve that envisions a sustainable future; Biosphere 2’s experimental tracts in Oracle, Arizona, that research controlled eco-systems and space colonization; and Iceland’s geothermal landscapes are worlds apart from each other, but become, in Natal’s photographs, perfect foils to imagine what the landscapes of the future might look like, illuminating the present moment and the environmental choices we have yet to make.

The photographs establish unexpected but compelling resonances between these sites to distill and display our hopes, perceptions and misunderstandings of nature, and suggest both the potential and pitfalls of our future on earth. Natal describes how central nature can be to our lives, and how hopeful and confused we may be in using, recreating, and changing nature. While she envisions these areas as indications of our future, they are also touchingly poignant examinations of our current intentions, our limitations, our own fragility and ultimately human nature.

BIOS
Judy Natal is a Chicago-based artist, Professor of Photography, and Co-coordinator of the Graduate Program at Columbia College. She is the author of EarthWords (Light Work, 2004), and Neon Boneyard Las Vegas A-Z (Center for American Places, 2006). Her photographs are in the permanent public collections of the the Museum of Contemporary Art, California Museum of Photography, Center for Creative Photography, the International Museum of Photography and Film at George Eastman House, and the Museum of Contemporary Photography, among others. Her work has been exhibited at Projects International and Photograph Gallery in New York City, the Nelson Atkins Museum, Kathleen Ewing Gallery, Washington, D.C., and the São Paulo Biennal.

She has received numerous grants and fellowships including a Fulbright Travel Grant, Illinois Arts Council Photography Fellowships, Polaroid Grants and New York Foundation for the Arts Photography Fellowships. Natal has also been awarded numerous artist residencies nationally and internationally, most recently in Iceland and the Biosphere 2 for her current work Future Perfect 2040 • 2030 • 2020 • 2010.

Timothy Morton is Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English at Rice University. He gave the prestigious Wellek Lectures in Theory in 2014. He is the author of Dark Ecology: For a Logic of Future Coexistence (Columbia, forthcoming), Nothing: Three Inquiries in Buddhism and Critical Theory (Chicago, forthcoming), Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World (Minnesota, 2013), Realist Magic: Objects, Ontology, Causality (Open Humanities, 2013), The Ecological Thought (Harvard, 2010), Ecology without Nature (Harvard, 2007), seven other books and 120 essays on philosophy, ecology, literature, music, art, design and food.

Future Perfect runs August 28 through September 20 at Circuit Gallery @ Prefix ICA, with an Reception on Thursday, September 11, from 6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. (artist in attendance) and an Artist’s Talk on Saturday, September 13, 1 to 3:00 p.m. Both events will be in the gallery and are free and open to the public.

FUTURE PERFECT

JUDY NATAL

August 28 – September 20, 2014

Reception: Thursday September 11, 6-9 p.m.
Artist’s Talk: Saturday September 13, 1-3 p.m.

Circuit Gallery @ Prefix ICA
401 Richmond Street West, Suite 124
Toronto, ON, M6R 2G5
[ Google Map ]

Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 11:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Judy Natal, Future Perfect — Judy Natal, *Steam Portrait, Emergency Worker*, from the series *Future Perfect*, 2011. ©Judy Natal

Judy Natal, Saguaro Armature — Judy Natal, *Wrapped Saguaro*, from the series *Future Perfect*, 2011. ©Judy Natal

Judy Natal, Plastic Curtain — Judy Natal, *Plastic Curtain*, from the series *Future Perfect*, 2011. ©Judy Natal

Visit Circuit Gallery for more information and to see more images:
www.circuitgallery.com/exhibitions

Web: www.circuitgallery.com 
Email: info@circuitgallery.com
Phone: 647-477-2487

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News

New Exhibition Venue: Circuit Gallery @ Prefix ICA

April 1, 2014 Circuit Gallery Admin Leave a comment

Circuit Gallery @ Prefix ICA

GALLERY NEWS

Bricks and Mortar – Circuit Gallery has a new exhibition home!

Circuit Gallery is very pleased to announce that we have entered a presentation partnership with Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art.

Starting in 2014, Circuit Gallery @ Prefix ICA will present four exhibitions a year at this respected venue located in the 401 Richmond building, a destination arts-hub in downtown Toronto.

Our first exhibition, Embedded, features new work by Canadian photographer Donald Weber, from his new project War Sand, and Ukrainian born, U.S. based photographer Dima Gavrysh, from his award winning project Inshallah. The show opens April 10 and runs through May 3.

Prefix ICA is located at 401 Richmond Street West, Suite 124, Toronto, M5V 3A8

Philip Cheung

New exhibition offers a contemporary look at the rapidly changing coastal landscape of the United Arab Emirates

Philip Cheung

Keep truckin’: Portraits of Mexico’s morning commuters

Alejandro Cartagena spent a year photographing workers on their morning commute

Akihiko Miyoshi: pushing the intersection of art and technology into new territory

Canadian artist Shelagh Keeley to premiere Barcelona Pavilion photographs in new solo exhibition at Circuit Gallery

Interrogating the Interrogator: Donald Weber’s award-winning photography project Interrogations set for Canadian premiere in new exhibition

The Art World Online – Artsy features the world’s leading galleries, museum collections, foundations, artist estates, art fairs, and benefit auctions, all in one place

Historic Typewriters in Changing Times. Writing Machines and Obsolescence

New exhibition invites us to imagine the landscapes of the future and consider our present moment and the environmental choices we have yet to make.

Bricks and Mortar – Circuit Gallery has a new exhibition home!

Established in 2008, Toronto based Circuit Gallery specializes in contemporary photography. Representing both emerging and established Canadian and International artists.