All posts by Claire Sykes

Andréanne Michon: Time Sensitive

Andreanne Michon
© Andréanne Michon, Index 2, 2018

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Toronto, ON, January 2, 2020Circuit Gallery is pleased to present Time Sensitive, a solo exhibition by Canadian artist Andréanne Michon. This exhibition, her first in Toronto, incorporates the artist’s recent work across a range of media including photography, printmaking, sculpture, video, and sound.

But Time Sensitive is much more than a collection of new and diverse pieces. It is an eloquently unified whole. Carefully considering all aspects of her installation Michon transgresses expectations of genre, medium, and display to create something poetically new.

Michon’s work has always been environmentally conscious and curious, interested in Nature and the various natural and anthropogenic forces at play in its continual transformation, such as seasonal and climatic changes, fire, and drought. She has previously taken the action of these forces as subject, documenting cycles of growth, destruction and regeneration, in a predominantly lens-based practice.

Her latest work maintains this interest in the subject of transformation, drawing our attention to the planet itself and to the geological and tectonic processes and timescales involved in its formation. But here she also asks us to consider, as analogous, art making at the level of materials and processes interacting across significantly shorter time periods.

While photography remains at the core of Michon’s practice it now also functions as both material and metaphor. For example, in the aptly titled photographic series Index, Michon’s frame filling images of the earth’s strata, seen through various cross-sections of solid bedrock, function, in a sense, as the exhibition’s ground or starting place, a point of reference from which the formal experiments and geological interpretations in Time Sensitive take flight.

Michon has become an alchemist, transforming her materials and sources through carving, burning, tracing, editing, and shaping. She layers and blends techniques and processes to make hybridized new works: photographic materials (paper and film) assume three-dimensional form, pyrographic embossings become photographs.

Experiencing the exhibit, we accumulate layers of insight and understanding which act on each other much like photochemical or geological processes, melding the parts into something that is both completely new and coherently composed of its distinct parts.

At the same time, Michon’s work is consciously enigmatic, playing with perception, perspective, and scale in terms of both subject and medium, relishing the contrasts of macro and micro, light and dark, solid and fragile, appearance and disappearance, line and mass, the ephemeral and the eternal. She deliberately obscures her images’ sources, creating confounding visual mysteries that make the viewer’s interpretation yet another stratum in the transformative process. Are we looking at a contour drawing of a mountain range or a detailed mapping of the veins, seams, and cracks running through rock? Are we watching the freezing or melting of an ice sheet?

As the title implies, Time Sensitive is both an experiment with and a discussion of temporal scale, overlaying the transitory mutations of the darkroom on the vastness of geological transformation. Michon pointedly illustrates the paradox of Humanity’s absurdly small place in the deep time story of the Earth and the devastating urgency of addressing our impact upon it.

Time Sensitive runs January 9 through February 1 at Circuit Gallery @ Prefix ICA, with an opening reception on Friday, January 10, from 6 – 9 p.m.. The artist will be in attendance. Michon will also be at the gallery on Saturday, January 18 from 1-3 p.m. to talk informally about her work.


BIO
Andréanne Michon is a Canadian artist based in Toronto. She received a BFA, with distinction, from Concordia University (Montreal, Canada) in 2010 and she completed an MFA at the San Francisco Art Institute in 2013. She has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions in North America and Europe and her work has been selected for inclusion in international juried shows by important curators from major museums (LACMA, SFMoMA, FAMSF, J. Paul Getty, and the Guggenheim). Michon works with a range of media, including photography, printmaking, sculpture, video and sound, which she often explores in artist residencies; notably at L’imprimerie centre d’artistes in Montreal, at the Vermont Studio Center, and at SÍM Reykjavík in Iceland. In 2019, Michon exhibited her most recent artworks in California at Bass & Reiner Gallery and SF Camerawork.


Andréanne Michon
Time Sensitive

January 9 – February 1, 2020
Circuit Gallery @ Prefix ICA
401 Richmond Street West, Suite 124
Toronto, ON, M5V 3A8
[ Google Map ]

Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 12:00 – 5:00 p.m.


Andréanne Michon
© Andréanne Michon, n o w h e r e – Fractured (25), 2018
Andreanne Michon
© Andréanne Michon, Disappearing Landscape 3, 2018
Andréanne Michon
© Andréanne Michon, Matrix Pyrogravure Embossing Ensemble 1, 2019

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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Akihiko Miyoshi: Through Lens and Screen

Akihiko Miyoshi
Akihiko Miyoshi, ‘Statement’ (detail), 2019

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Toronto, ON, September 3, 2019Circuit Gallery presents new work by gallery artist Akihiko Miyoshi. In this latest project, Miyoshi pushes his interest in the aesthetic space of digital and networked structures to consider questions of affect and representation, working to find a visual language that conveys the mediated experience of seeing through lenses and on screens.

The sixteen decidedly analog and material new works presented in Through Lens and Screen—what Miyoshi simply calls ‘Resin Paintings’—are comprised of thick layers of resin and inkjet pigment, built-up or sandwiched together to create unique and ‘active’ images, images that are constituted by looking through the layers from a given position in space. The resin here becomes a substrate that both resembles and takes us closer to the experience of looking at screens or through viewfinders.

As Miyoshi explains—“I consider the work phenomenological and active. This active quality is important. It is a departure from the traditional static image based on paper or canvas. This allows for a new visual language that I believe is suited to invoke the digital and the network, both of which do not have, in and of themselves, a material basis.”

Miyoshi’s new work, which he categorizes under the subheadings ‘Networks,’ ‘Screens, Monitors and Viewfinders,’ ‘Theory,’ and ‘Computer Drawings / Code Paintings,’ can be seen in relation to the debates in digital aesthetics around the possibility of representing networks. This is how new media theorist James J. Hodge frames it in his essay ‘New Maps, New Poetics: New Works by Akihiko Miyoshi’ that accompanies the exhibition:

All images of the internet look the same! So runs the complaint voiced by media critic Alexander R. Galloway in his 2012 book The Interface Effect. In his artist statement Akihiko Miyoshi cites Galloway’s discussion of the ostensible ‘unrepresentability’ of networks as seminal for his recent work. As Miyoshi notes, Galloway’s provocation has two parts: all images of the network look the same; and even at this late date in the twenty-first century we still lack a poetic or aesthetic vocabulary for imaging and imagining networks. Guided by a dual interest in both the material infrastructure of technology as well as the paradoxically sensual and intangible aesthetic experience of the internet, Miyoshi’s recent works […] provide a timely and sophisticated set of artistic responses to Galloway, and, by extension, to fundamental issues at the heart of contemporary visuality, technology, and experience.

Akihiko Miyoshi: Through Lens and Screen runs September 5 through 28 at Circuit Gallery @ Prefix ICA, in Toronto.


BIOS
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 currently an Associate Professor of photography and digital media at Reed College in Portland, Oregon.

Miyoshi’s work explores the intersection between art and technology most frequently dealing with issues surrounding representation. His exhibition record includes shows in 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. He is represented by Circuit Gallery, Toronto.

Artist Page: Akihiko Miyoshi

James J. Hodge is Associate Professor in the Department of English and the Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities at Northwestern University. His essays on digital aesthetics have appeared in Critical Inquiry, ASAP/Journal, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere. His book Sensations of History: Animation and New Media Art will be published this October by the University of Minnesota Press.


Akihiko Miyoshi
Through Lens and Screen

September 5 – 28, 2019
Circuit Gallery @ Prefix ICA
401 Richmond Street West, Suite 124
Toronto, ON, M6R 2G5
[ Google Map ]

Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 12:00 – 5:00 p.m.


Akihiko Miyoshi
Akihiko Miyoshi, ‘Nodes and Edges’ (with detail), 2019
Akihiko Miyoshi
Akihiko Miyoshi, ‘Split’ (detail), 2019
Akihiko Miyoshi
Akihiko Miyoshi, ‘Inversion’ and ‘Negative Shift’, 2019

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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Philip Cheung talks to Vice about his work and exhibition Arctic Front

Gallery artist Philip Cheung talks to Vice about his work and latest exhibition


Embedding with Canada’s Arctic Guardians

Daily VICE

As a young soldier, Philip Cheung trained in the Arctic with the Canadian rangers. Now, 20 years later, the soldier-turned-photographer is featuring the northern military unit in his latest exhibition.

Philip Cheung: Arctic Front runs January 10 through February 2 at Circuit Gallery @ Prefix ICA, 401 Richmond Street West, Toronto.

LEARN MORE

Alejandro Cartagena: Accumulations

Alejandro Cartagena
Alejandro Cartagena, Accumulations No. 4 (Juarez VI), 2018

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

New solo show by the Mexican photographer Alejandro Cartagena a bold departure

Toronto, ON, March 26, 2018Circuit Gallery is pleased to present Accumulations, a solo exhibition of new work by Mexican artist Alejandro Cartagena.

Accumulations is a contemplation on and response to his acclaimed Suburbia Mexicana, which sought to tell visually the complex story of rapid growth in and around his hometown of Monterrey, Mexico, looking at the causes and effects of unhampered and unplanned development on the people and the landscape, including the environmental consequences.

Accumulations is a bold departure, formally, from Cartagena’s previous work. The culmination of years of research and thinking about how to picture adequately the important issues it explored.

The exhibition features two large abstracted monochromatic circular installations that are comprised of hundreds of small individual photographs Cartagena took of the sky. These photos were taken from his roof when the air quality officially registered as ‘bad’. They are arranged concentrically and held in place with magnets. There are also 10 new photomontage works—the source material for which are photographs from Suburbia Mexicana—cut-up, reassembled and likewise held in place with magnets.

For those who are familiar with the undeniably exquisite and powerful photographs that make up Suburbia Mexicana, Cartagena’s move in the suite of new photomontages, can at first blush, appear to be a destructive if not nihilistic move or breakdown—literally cutting up his own work, rearranging and reconfiguring key images—but upon reflection this move makes sense and fits in terms of both his approach to documentary photography and his more recent trajectory and focus on the possibilities of the photobook.

Cartagena’s approach to documentary has always been multi-faceted—a bit cubist—coming at his subject from all angles while insisting on maintaining the complexity of the narrative in his efforts to raise awareness of the larger interrelated issues confronting Mexico and his home city of Monterrey in relation to irresponsible and unsustainable development, and be a catalyst for a better future for the region’s inhabitants.

This new work however does something else for Cartagena—it is an immediate and visceral commentary or self-reflexive critique of his earlier work. At the same time Accumulations is a painful and passionate expression of outrage, albeit beautifully and articulately rendered.


BIO
Alejandro Cartagena lives and works in Monterrey, Mexico. His projects are primarily documentary based and employ landscape and portraiture to examine social, urban, and environmental issues in Latin America.

Cartagena’s work has been exhibited internationally and is in public and private collections in Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Italy, and the United States, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, the Portland Museum of Art, and the Museo de Arte Moderno in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Cartagena has published several award winning photobooks. His titles include Santa Barbara Shame on US (Skinnerboox, 2017), A Guide to Infrastructure and Corruption (The Velvet Cell, 2017), Rivers of Power (Newwer, 2016), Santa Barbara Return Jobs to US (Skinnerboox, 2016), Before the War (self-published, 2015), Carpoolers (self-published/FONCA 2014), and Suburbia Mexicana (Daylight/Photolucida 2011).

He is the recipient of several major national grants, numerous honorable mentions and acquisition prizes in Mexico and abroad including the Photolucida Critical Mass Book Award, the Lente Latino award in Chile, and the Premio IILA-Fotografia 2012 award in Rome. He has been named a FOAM Magazine “Talent” and one of PDN’s 30 “International Emerging Photographers To Watch”. He has also been a finalist for the Aperture Portfolio Award and has been nominated for the Santa Fe Photography Prize, the Prix Pictet, the Photoespaña Descubrimientos Award, and the FOAM Paul Huff Award.

Cartagena’s work has been published internationally in magazines such as Newsweek, The New York Times Lens blog, Nowness, Domus, The Financial Times, View, The Guardian, le Monde, PDN, The New Yorker, The Independent, Monocle, Maclean’s, and Wallpaper.

Gallery Page: Alejandro Cartagena
Artist Website: Alejandro Cartagena


Alejandro Cartagena

Accumulations

March 29 – April 21, 2018
Circuit Gallery @ Prefix ICA
401 Richmond Street West, Suite 124
Toronto, ON, M6R 2G5
[ Google Map ]

Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 11 AM – 5 PM

Alejandro Cartagena, Accumulations
Alejandro Cartagena, Accumulations No. 11 (Suburban Sky, 9:00 a.m., 101-150 IMECA, MAM), 2018

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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Michel Huneault: Intersection

Michel Huneault, Intersection
Michel Huneault, Untitled 2, Roxham Road, 2017

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Communiqué de presse – PDF en français)

New exhibition reflects upon contemporary migration and the confusing quest for safety

Toronto, ON, August 28, 2017Circuit Gallery is pleased to present a solo show by Montreal-based photographer Michel Huneault, premiering his new project Intersection. Incorporating audio, video, and photography, Huneault reflects upon contemporary migration and the confusing quest for safety.

Huneault has, since early 2017, been documenting the steady flow of asylum seekers into Canada at the Canada-USA irregular border crossing point of Roxham Road, in the Québec community of Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle, 60 kilometres south of Montreal.

Between February and July, he made sixteen visits to Roxham Road, documenting the evolution of this phenomenon as both the public and the authorities were trying to grasp its meaning and scope. Over the course of this period he witnessed 180 crossing attempts by asylum seekers coming from a wide range of countries: Eritrea, Djibouti, Sudan, Syria, Palestine, Democratic Republic of Congo, Colombia, Turkey, Libya, Yemen, Guatemala, El Salvador, Angola, Chad, the Philippines, Nigeria, Burundi, Mauritania, Zimbabwe, and, in the most recent spike in the number of attempts, from Haiti.

Intersection started like most of my projects, initially motivated by my curiosity and interests. In the last two years, I had completed other projects on remittance flows and the migrant crisis in Europe. This long time interest in migration came into sharper focus because similar events were happening at home. When I start my projects, they often have a more current journalistic timing, but I am not a photojournalist per se. I don’t get many assignments and don’t think of my projects as being for the media primarily. What I think I do is photography with a deep anchor in current events, while questioning classic forms of documentation. And then, periodically, I pitch timely excerpts of this work to my media clients. The turning point of this project for me was the photograph I took of the pregnant Nigerian woman who stood, frozen in fear, just steps away from the border. In the end she did not cross, and was taken away by the US Border Patrol. I sent that photo to my entire media client list, but nobody published it. That is when the project became clearer to me, when I grasped the complexity and the tension that I wanted to capture. —Michel Huneault

Public discourse on both sides of the border, indeed around the world, and at every level, from eloquent idealism to naked racism, has swirled and clashed around this phenomenon. American and Canadian government policies, practicalities, rhetoric, and images have defined and defied each other here, where desperate and frightened people cross a line they cannot see.

That moment when, on the side of a dirt road, people make a fundamental choice about what freedom means to them, when they would rather be under arrest in one country than “free” in another, is profoundly political and public. It draws into focus the character and identities of the countries as much as of the individuals. But it is also a moment of great personal risk and change. It is intensely private. By overlaying the outlines of asylum seekers with various fabrics he photographed in 2015 during the European migrant crisis – blankets given to stay warm, clothes donated, and tents erected to provide temporary shelter – Huneault respects that privacy and turns our attention to the moment itself, and to its global and humanitarian context.

I hope that Intersection will help us to reflect on the larger context of humanitarian principles and migratory flows, on why people take to the road and what they hope to find, on the obstacles they face, and on our collective responsibilities towards them. —Michel Huneault

This exhibition will also be adapted as an interactive virtual reality piece produced by the National Film Board of Canada (NFB), to be released in the fall of 2017. To access the NFB’s award-winning content, please visit www.nfb.ca/interactive/


BIO
Michel Huneault is a documentary photographer based in Montreal, Canada. Before devoting himself full time to documentary photography in 2008, Michel Huneault worked in the international development field for a dozen years, a profession that took him to over twenty countries, including one full year in Kandahar, Afghanistan. He holds an MA in Latin American Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, where he was a Rotary World Peace Fellow, researching the role of collective memory in large scale traumatic recovery. At Berkeley, he was a student and teaching assistant of Magnum photographer Gilles Peress, and afterwards held an apprenticeship position with him in New York. His practice—often mixing photography with audio/video elements—focuses on development and humanitarian issues, on personal and collective traumas, and on complex geographies.

Huneault is the recipient of numerous awards including the Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor Prize (2015) for his long-term work on the Lac-Mégantic catastrophe, and the R. James Travers Foreign Corresponding Fellowship (2016) to continue his research on migration. In 2016 his project Post Tohoku, looking at the impact of the tsunami in Japan, was nominated for the Prix Pictet 7 and received a Prix Antoine-Désilets. Huneault’s work has been exhibited in various venues in Canada, France, UK, USA, Japan and the Netherlands.

Artist Website: Michel Huneault


Michel Huneault: Intersection runs September 7 through September 30 at Circuit Gallery @ Prefix ICA, with a reception for the artist on Friday, September 8, from 6–9 PM, and a talk by the artist on Saturday, September 9, from 2-3 PM.


Michel Huneault

Intersection

September 7 – 30, 2017
Circuit Gallery @ Prefix ICA
401 Richmond Street West, Suite 124
Toronto, ON, M6R 2G5
[ Google Map ]

Artist’s Reception: Friday, September 8, 6-9 PM
Artist’s Talk: Saturday, September 9, 2-3 PM
Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 11 AM – 5 PM

Michel Huneault, Intersection
Michel Huneault, Untitled 9, Roxham Road, 2017
Michel Huneault, Intersection
Michel Huneault, Untitled 10, Roxham Road, 2017
Michel Huneault, Intersection
Michel Huneault, Untitled 3, Roxham Road, 2017

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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Alejandro Cartagena lecture video online

LECTURE VIDEO

Learning from Latin American (Sub)Urbanism

Alejandro Cartagena

Friday, May 8, 6:00 – 8:00 PM
OCAD University
Toronto


For the past decade Alejandro Cartagena has been investigating the relationship between Mexico’s urban centres and the suburbs built around them, examining the ways in which explosive growth has altered the landscape and affected the lives of residents.

In this talk, Cartagena discusses the development of his photographic projects including Suburbia Mexicana, Landscape as Bureaucracy, Carpoolers, and his latest work, Outgrowing.

Through these projects, Cartagena creatively sheds light on the complex issues surrounding the ‘ideal’ of homeownership and its recent boom in Mexico. He intimately observes many of the spaces and people involved, including buyers, public bureaucrats, and labourers. He illustrates how Mexico’s social and political context has proved to be both a benefit and a threat to many new buyers, opening up both new opportunities and challenges.

Cartagena’s work looks at the larger implications of the region’s rapid suburban expansion, from urban gentrification and inner-city ‘ghettoization,’ to the seemingly unplanned and unhampered suburban sprawl emanating from many of Mexico’s fast growing cities, and its environmental consequences.

His approach to photography is not overtly polemical; rather, he seeks to tell, from multiple points of view, the complex story of growth and development in Latin America in the context of an increasing globalization and the ongoing influence of its northern neighbour(s) and ‘North American dreams’.


BIO

Alejandro Cartagena lives and works in Monterrey, Mexico. Cartagena’s work has been exhibited internationally and is in public and private collections in Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Italy, and the United States, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Harry Ransom Center, Austin, the Portland Museum of Art and the Museo de Arte Moderno in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

He has received the Photolucida Critical Mass Book Award, the Lente Latino award in Chile, and the Premio IILA-Fotografia 2012 award in Rome. He has been named a FOAM Magazine Talent and one of PDN’s 30 International Emerging Photographers to watch. Cartagena’s work has been published internationally in magazines such as Newsweek, The New York Times Lens blog, Nowness, Domus, The Financial Times, View, The Guardian, le Monde, PDN, The New Yorker, The Independent, Monocle and Wallpaper. His monograph Suburbia Mexicana was published in 2011 (Daylight/Photolucida) and his latest book Carpoolers was released in 2014 (Fonca – Conaculta). He is represented by Circuit Gallery (Toronto).


The Learning from Latin American (Sub)Urbanism lecture is co-presented by CONTACT, LACAP, the Faculty of Art at OCAD University (Through the Photography Department), and Circuit Gallery. Special thanks to Shawn Micallef, Tamara Toldeo, Tara Smith, Rita Leistner, April Hickox and Sharon Switzer.

This event was held in conjunction with Contacting Toronto: Expanding Cities, a CONTACT Public Installation. Curated by Sharon Switzer. Co-produced by PATTISON Onestop and Art for Commuters.

Alejandro Cartagena to give public talk

Alejandro Cartagena
Alejandro Cartagena, Escobedo, from the series Suburbia Mexicana, 2008

Learning from Latin American (Sub)Urbanism

Alejandro Cartagena lecture & conversation with Shawn Micallef

Friday, May 8, 6:00 – 8:00 PM
OCAD University
100 McCaul St., Room 230
[ Google Map ]

Free and open to the public.

Join us for a lecture by noted Mexican artist Alejandro Cartagena, to be followed by a conversation with author and urban columnist Shawn Micallef.


For the past decade Alejandro Cartagena has been investigating the relationship between Mexico’s urban centres and the suburbs built around them, examining the ways in which explosive growth has altered the landscape and affected the lives of residents.

In this talk, Cartagena will discuss the development of his photographic projects including Suburbia Mexicana, Landscape as Bureaucracy, Carpoolers, Roma-Roma and his latest work, Outgrowing.

Through these projects, Cartagena creatively sheds light on the complex issues surrounding the ‘ideal’ of homeownership and its recent boom in Mexico. He intimately observes many of the spaces and people involved, including buyers, public bureaucrats, and labourers. He illustrates how Mexico’s social and political context has proved to be both a benefit and a threat to many new buyers, opening up both new opportunities and challenges.

Cartagena’s work looks at the larger implications of the region’s rapid suburban expansion, from urban gentrification and inner-city ‘ghettoization,’ to the seemingly unplanned and unhampered suburban sprawl emanating from many of Mexico’s fast growing cities, and its environmental consequences.

His approach to photography is not overtly polemical; rather, he seeks to tell, from multiple points of view, the complex story of growth and development in Latin America in the context of an increasing globalization and the ongoing influence of its northern neighbour(s) and ‘North American dreams’.


BIOS

Alejandro Cartagena lives and works in Monterrey, Mexico. Cartagena’s work has been exhibited internationally and is in public and private collections in Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Italy, and the United States, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Harry Ransom Center, Austin, the Portland Museum of Art and the Museo de Arte Moderno in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

He has received the Photolucida Critical Mass Book Award, the Lente Latino award in Chile, and the Premio IILA-Fotografia 2012 award in Rome. He has been named a FOAM Magazine Talent and one of PDN’s 30 International Emerging Photographers to watch. Cartagena’s work has been published internationally in magazines such as Newsweek, The New York Times Lens blog, Nowness, Domus, The Financial Times, View, The Guardian, le Monde, PDN, The New Yorker, The Independent, Monocle and Wallpaper. His monograph Suburbia Mexicana was published in 2011 (Daylight/Photolucida) and his latest book Carpoolers was released in 2014 (Fonca – Conaculta). He is represented by Circuit Gallery (Toronto).

Shawn Micallef is a Toronto Star columnist, co-owner and an editor of Spacing magazine, co-founder of the mobile phone public space documentary project [murmur], and instructor at the University of Toronto. He is the author of Stroll: Psychogeographic Walking Tours of Toronto, The Trouble with Brunch: Work, Class, and the Pursuit of Leisure, and was the Toronto Public Library’s non-fiction writer in residence in 2013.


RELATED EVENTS

Alejandro Cartagena
Alejandro Cartagena, Carpooler #15 (detail) and Carpooler #17 (detail), from his Carpoolers series, 2011

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Contacting Toronto: Expanding Cities
May 1 – 31, 2015
Warden subway station
Warden St and St. Clair Ave W
Toronto M1L 4R7

A CONTACT Public Installation curated by Sharon Switzer. Co-produced by PATTISON Onestop and Art for Commuters.

Through the photographs of Mexican artist Alejandro Cartagena and videos by Kingston, Ontario art duo Julia Krolik & Owen Fernley, Toronto’s subway corridors are transformed with images addressing suburban transportation, development, and sustainability.

Cartagena’s images are shown on 55 posters throughout Warden station, the penultimate stop on the eastern edge of the system. This station serves as a primary destination for many suburban commuters. The artist’s series Carpoolers (2011–2012) portrays a different kind of commute, adopting a bird’s eye view of construction workers and landscapers in the beds of pickup trucks traveling to build and maintain the wealthy suburban communities outside of Monterrey, México.


WORKSHOP

Alejandro Cartagena will be offering a workshop as part of the Contact Photography Festival on ‘The Photobook’

Alejandro Cartagena: The Photobook – workshop
May 6, 12:00 pm
Gallery 44 Centre For Contemporary Photography
401 Richmond St W 120
Toronto M5V 3A8
416-979-3941
www.gallery44.org
info@gallery44.org

Alejandro will teach a two-day workshop focused on photobook history, and edit and sequencing methods. It is geared towards artists with work in progress who are looking for direction and guidance to create a book. His projects are primarily documentary-based and employ landscape and portraiture as a means to examine social, urban, and environmental issues in Latin America. Cartagena’s recent self-published book Carpoolers was listed as one of the best photo-books in 2014 by Time magazine. Students are asked to bring up to three projects to work on with 20 to 30 image printed at approximately 4×6. $160/$140 for Gallery 44 members and CONTACT Portfolio Reviews participants.

Co-presented with Circuit Gallery, CONTACT, Gallery 44 and LACAP.

Visit www.gallery44.org/workshops/photobook to register.
Contact soJin Chun at sojin @ gallery44.org for more information.

This event is in conjunction with Contacting Toronto: Expanding Cities, a CONTACT Public Installation at Warden subway station. Curated by Sharon Switzer. Co-produced by PATTISON Onestop and Art for Commuters.


The Learning from Latin American (Sub)Urbanism lecture is co-presented by CONTACT, LACAP, the Faculty of Art at OCAD University (Through the Photography Department), and Circuit Gallery. Special thanks to Tamara Toldeo, Tara Smith, April Hickox and Sharon Switzer.

This event is in conjunction with Contacting Toronto: Expanding Cities, a CONTACT Public Installation. Curated by Sharon Switzer. Co-produced by PATTISON Onestop and Art for Commuters.

AC_contact_logos680

Alejandro Cartagena public installation for CONTACT

Alejandro Cartagena
Alejandro Cartagena, Carpooler #2 (detail) and Carpooler #1 (detail), from his Carpoolers series, 2011

Circuit Gallery is thrilled that gallery artist Alejandro Cartagena‘s work has been curated into an innovative and ambitious public art installation as part of the 2015 Scotiabank Contact photography festival. The exhibition takes over Warden subway station (google map).

NEWS RELEASE

Alejandro Cartagena’s work to take over Toronto’s Warden subway station as an official public installation for the Scotiabank CONTACT photography festival

Toronto, ON, April, 2015 — PATTISON Onestop and Art for Commuters are pleased to present Contacting Toronto: Expanding Cities, featuring noted Mexican artist, Alejandro Cartagena’s images on 55 advertising posters, converting Toronto’s Warden subway station into a distinctive exhibition space. The exhibition also threads throughout the city’s subway system, via a series of videos by Kingston, Ontario art duo, Julia Krolik and Owen Fernley capturing the attention of more than one million daily commuters from May 1 to 31, 2015.

An official public installation of Scotiabank CONTACT, Toronto’s annual photography festival, the 9th annual Contacting Toronto addresses issues of transportation, suburban development and sustainability. Contacting Toronto: Expanding Cities is curated by Sharon Switzer.

Cartagena’s series Carpoolers (2011–2012) adopts a bird’s eye view of construction workers and landscapers gathered together in the beds of pickup trucks. Travelling to the wealthy suburban communities outside of Monterrey, Mexico that they build and maintain, the men lounge together, nestled among the tools and detritus of their professions. His Suburbia Mexicana (2006–2010) series focuses on the rise of poorer suburbs. Tiny cookie-cutter homes spread across the horizon, while families pose in front of these simple dwellings, proud of their new neighbourhoods.

Intersection (2015) is a series of videos by Krolik and Fernley, shown non-stop on 5 TTC LCD screens throughout Warden Station and every 5 minutes at 62 other stations across the city. Aerial views of suburban homes, roads, and parking lots are revealed with map-like precision, through the use of government orthophotos. The artists created a custom image processor to randomly sample images from a suburban region north of the GTA. Appearing as a triptych of changing images, this expanse transforms continuously as unnamed communities replace one another, details blurring into a seemingly never-ending suburban landscape.

“The artwork in Expanding Cities asks viewers to think critically about suburban expansion and sustainability,” said Sharon Switzer, National Arts Programmer and Curator, PATTISON Onestop. “Warden station, at the eastern edge of Toronto’s subway system, may seem like an unlikely place to mount an ambitious art installation, but I believe the relatively remote location will enhance viewers’ appreciation of work.”

For artist’s bios and statements, and to view a selection of Contacting Toronto: Expanding Cities images and an exhibition essay by Nives Hajdin, please visit www.contactingtoronto.ca


Contacting Toronto: Expanding Cities is co-produced by PATTISON Onestop and Art for Commuters, in partnership with Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival, with financial support from the Ontario Arts Council and PATTISON Outdoor’s Art in Transit program.

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Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival – www.scotiabankcontactphoto.com
PATTISON Onestop – www.pattisononestop.com – @onestopmedia
Art in Transit – www.artintransit.ca – @ArtTransit
Art for Commuters – www.art4commuters.com – @art4commuters


About Onestop
Onestop is a world leader in the development and operation of Digital Out-of-Home Media (DOOH). Onestop creates and delivers uniquely engaging experiences that connect the physical and digital worlds, and provides audiences timely and relevant information in engaging spaces. Onestop leverages proprietary technology to deploy digital campaigns for mass transit, office, airport, residential, and retail environments, as well as being the exclusive media provider in the PATH – Toronto’s underground walkway connecting office towers and subway stations to over 1,200 shops and services. Onestop is a division of PATTISON Outdoor Advertising.
www.pattisononestop.com

For more information contact:
Marie Nazar, Arts Publicist, PATTISON Onestop
416-762-7702 | marie.nazar@bell.net

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CONNECTED EVENTS

Circuit Gallery is pleased to support the following connected events.

Friday, May 8th at 6:00pm
Alejandro Cartagena: Learning from Latin American (Sub)Urbanism
OCADU, 100 McCaul Street, Room 230

Artist talk, followed by a conversation with author, Shawn Micallef.

This event is co-presented by CONTACT, Latin American-Canadian Art Projects Speaker Series (LACAP), the Faculty of Art at OCAD University (Photography Department), and Circuit Gallery, in conjunction with Contacting Toronto: Expanding Cities.


Wednesday, May 6th – Thursday, May 7th
Alejandro Cartagena: The Photobook
Gallery 44 Centre For Contemporary Photography
401 Richmond St W, Suite 120

Cartagena will teach a two day workshop focused on photo book history, edit and sequencing methods. Cartagena’s recent self-published book carpooler was listed as one of the best photo books in 2014 by Time magazine.

This event is co-presented by Gallery 44, Centre for Contemporary Photography, CONTACT, LACAP and Circuit Gallery, in conjunction with Contacting Toronto: Expanding Cities.

Donald Weber – 2014 Scotiabank Photography Award Finalist

Donald Weber 2014 Scotiabank Photography Award Finalist
Donald Weber 2014 Scotiabank Photography Award Finalist

Donald Weber was a finalist for the 2014 Scotiabank Photography Award. A huge honour and well deserved recognition. Congratulations Don!

Watch the video of Donald talking about his work.

Canadian Art Critic and Writer Sarah Milroy nominated Donald for the Award.

Donald Weber
Nominator’s Statement

Documentary photography is a calling that entails all the aesthetic discrimination, technical expertise, and sophisticated reading of the world demanded of artists working in the fine art tradition. Added to this, however, is the added pressure of making pictures out in the world, often under conditions of threat. It’s a dance with fate: the operations of chance, of light judged on the fly, the threat of equipment failure, the chance nature of human encounter and connection, the sometimes steep requirements for personal courage, and the need for instinct that can never be quantified or explained — all must be summoned in the moment.

Donald Weber, now 40, is one of Canada’s most compelling practitioners in the field of documentary photography, a tradition too seldom honored in Canadian art. His insightful and piercing images of life in Russia and Eastern Europe have lifted the veil on a part of the world little known and understood in the west, his images powerfully bearing forth the vitality, violence and grim subsistence of a people burdened by the weight of a traumatic history, and stranded in a purgatorial present. Whether photographing the snow swept aftermath of Stalin’s purges, or the now-stilled landscapes of the western Ukraine and Siberia that were once the site of political atrocities, Weber captures the eeriness of a present haunted by the past. As we see in the faces of his urban denizens, gang members, and marauding police, the use of force has become a way of life, grimly accepted by its victims and exalted by its perpetrators.

In a similar vein, Weber has explored the vestigial curse of environmental disaster. In the long shadow of Chernobyl, he pursued connection with the human beings left in the wake of the 1986 explosion, either as survivors of the medical afflictions caused by radiation, or as scavengers reduced to rubbish picking in closed contamination areas. (More recently, he has documented the aftermath of the Fukushima explosion.) The sense prevails of people as subject to historical forces beyond their control, whether he is photographing a child living in the Chernobyl exclusion zone or an Inuk negotiating his abrupt cultural transition into the digital 21st century. Through Weber’s lens, poverty, the forces of oppression and the machinations of power are seen to grind the human subject in their gears.

In this regard, his most recent series of photographs, titled War Sand, serves as a solemn coda. The sands of the Normandy beaches are said to be eight percent shrapnel, metal exploded in combat and then corroded by time and the constant ministrations of the ocean tides. Added to this is its grim corollary: a portion of human remains, bone that has been crushed and crumbled to near powder-like consistency. Through the use of microscopic photography and with a kind of forensic inquisitiveness and existential wondering, Weber brings us close to these fragments, offering us, too, the longer view: the eerie hush of the beachhead and the expressionless features of the sea and sky, edged in grasses. The series invites a contemplation of the endless quiet that lies beyond the flare of bold historical events, offering a cautionary tale of the hubris of humankind.

– Sarah Milroy