Paulo Catrica, Lfc445 25/7/2006 16:10hrs f22/15 sec., 2006

NEWS RELEASE

New Exhibition: Circuit Gallery Presents Portuguese Photographer Paulo Catrica’s OPERA Project

Toronto, ON – May 4, 2010 — Circuit Gallery is pleased to present eleven large format photographic works from Paulo Catrica’s OPERA project. This is the Portuguese artist’s first solo exhibition in North America, and Circuit Gallery’s second exhibition at Böhmer.

In a series of exquisite pictures taken inside the Teatro Nacional de São Carlos, the home of the Portuguese National Opera in Lisbon, Paulo Catrica allows us to look behind the scenes at the working spaces of this historical theatre.

Devoid of people or action, and deceptively straightforward, Catrica’s photographs seem, at first glance, to concern themselves with presenting the non-public (non-performance) spaces of this heritage building—offering us, as viewers, a privileged look at old theatre rigging, the workings of the clock featured on the main façade, the empty auditorium from the stage, the storage and rehearsal rooms, and so forth.

While presenting, indeed documenting, the interior of São Carlos in this way, Catrica’s photographs are less interested in these “backstage” spaces or the architecture as such, as they are in what has and is happening in them. Despite their objective “emptiness” the spaces Catrica presents are inhabited by both people and history.

The presence and industry of people and the past are powerfully evoked—conjured at the piano or the workshop table. The tension between past and present are pronounced in plastic wrapped chandeliers, and the juxtaposition of a calendar girl and an 18th century portrait, but they are undeniably palpable elsewhere. They are the subject of these images (and, in a profound sense, that of photography itself).

Catrica embarked upon this project between 2005 and 2009, at a time of economic stress which resulted in the trend toward the wholesale acquisition of larger European co-productions. As he says these photographs were taken “at a time when the building was undergoing significant changes,” and when, in effect, the “working spaces of S. Carlos [were becoming] obsolete or un-used.”

Paulo Catrica: OPERA

June 29 – August 14, 2010
Reception: Saturday July 17, 2:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Paulo Catrica, Lfc796 5/1/2009 16:45hrs f64/2:00 min., 2009

Paulo Catrica, Lfc794 29/12/2008 16:45hrs F32/3:00 min., 2008

Paulo Catrica, Lfc 451 1/8/2006 16:05hrs f45/2 sec, 2006

Paulo Catrica is a Portuguese photographer currently living in London. Since 1998 his work has regularly been exhibited in Europe: Portugal, Spain, Finland, UK, France, Greece, Belgium, Italy, Czech Republic, Germany and Slovakia. His work is in numerous public and private collections in Europe, including the Siemens UK Art Collection, the Museum of London, the Colecção Nacional de Fotografia (Porto), and the Museu da Imagem (Braga).

Catrica’s recent solo shows include H08, at Silo Cultural, Porto (2009), No Ruses So To Speak, at Galeria Quadrado Azul, Lisbon (2008) and Images & Pictures, Arquivo Fotográfico da C.M.Municipal de Lisboa (2008). The near future is an equally busy one for Catrica as he has exhibitions opening in Barcelona, Rio de Janeiro, and Lisbon later this year, as well as an artist residency in the Galapagos Islands and a related exhibition at the Natural History Museum, London, planned for 2011.

Paulo Catrica studied Photography at Ar.Co. (Lisbon, 1985) and History at Universidade Lusíada (Lisbon, 1992). He received his MA from Goldsmith’s College, London (1997) and currently is a PhD candidate at the University of Westminster in London. His current project is entitled “Subtopia: the New Towns Program in Britain.”

Paulo Catrica: OPERA runs June 29 through August 14 at Böhmer, with a reception on Saturday July 17, from 2:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. The space is open for viewing Monday through Saturday, 2:00 p.m. until close.

Please visit Circuit Gallery online to see and learn more about this work.
www.circuitgallery.com

About Böhmer

Böhmer is located at 93 Ossington Ave. (between Queen and Dundas). The restaurant is open for dinner everyday except Sunday, starting at 5:00 p.m..
Website: www.boehmer.ca
Tel: 416-531-3800

About Circuit Gallery

Circuit Gallery is the shared vision and collaborative product of Susana Reisman and Claire Sykes. The gallery specializes in high-end editions of works by emerging and established contemporary artists with an emphasis on photographic, digital and print-based works on paper.

For more information, visit www.circuitgallery.com or follow the daily conversation at www.twitter.com/circuitgallery.

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For more information, contact:
Claire Sykes, Partner, Circuit Gallery
Tel: 647-477-2487
E-mail: claire@circuitgallery.com

Circuit Gallery is based in Toronto, Canada
www.circuitgallery.com | tel. 647-477-2487 | email: info@circuitgallery.com

CRITICS CHOICE: Nicola Mann writes about Circuit Gallery artist James Rajotte’s compelling photographs of East High School as part of our ongoing series.

James Rajotte, Locker Room, 2005

Night School
by Nicola Mann

I have a recurring dream. An unfortunate discrepancy in my academic record means that I must return to the U.K. to resit my ‘A’ Level exams, the British equivalent of the North American high school SAT tests. Embalmed in the prickly wire wool of my regulation Black Watch tartan kilt and without a pencil or protractor to my name, I shuffle through endless labyrinthine corridors looking for an exam I’m already late for. Hearing activity behind a door, I decide to forgo my exam in favor of the chokingly dusty realms of Mr. Puddephatt’s wood shop. You’re just in time, Nicola. It’s your turn on the band saw. Remember to be careful. With these fateful last words I – of course – break the band saw blade, nearly decapitating a crowd of terrified teens in the process. Banned from the wood shop (again), I find myself dismissed to the corridor and out into my waking hours.

James Rajotte, History, 2005

It is into this maze of dreamy dread to which I am transported when looking at James Rajotte’s History and Locker Room, two works that make up his East High School (2005) series. The strict frontal spatial symmetry of both works invites the viewer to ‘step in’ through the threshold of the dream window and into a 3D time machine of sorts. Once absorbed in this tardis we are projected along the portals of our memories and back under the glare of the hot stage lights of our school days. Describing the cinematic spatial mysteries in Blue Velvet, David Lynch says, “(they) provide a corridor where you can float out.” In an analogous sense, Rajotte’s familiar stage sets provide an opportunity for the viewer to “float out” and fill with the ghostly actors of times past. One of the strengths of Rajotte’s Circuit Gallery work is its ability to ‘float’ evocatively between photographic precision and narrative obscurity; his theatrical set pieces generously set the scene and we direct, projecting our own personal melodrama into the space. The stark corporeal absence belies a paradoxical feeling of ‘fullness’. After looking at Locker Room, just close your eyes and imagine the proverbial array of winners and losers in front of you: tubby kids crying salty tears over bloodied knees, as chuckling snub–nosed pretty girls look on and you, well, if you’re anything like me you were still wrapped up in your Black Watch tartan trying to get out of P.E., doing anything to evade the spotlight, to be anything but a lead actor. But as these illuminated images reveal, much like my kilt, memory has you in a vise. Cue dramatic music: there is no place to hide. For as much as many of us proclaim to have hated our school days, we still can’t really let go, can we? Drawn by morbid fascination we attempt to recapture this time in the bite-sized chunks provided by social networking sites like Facebook. Locker Room tempts the viewer along the yellow brick road between now and then, playfully teasing this bizarre desire to compartmentalize the teenage experience by forming faux friendships with people we can hardly remember.

With its shallow patchwork grid of wooden boxes and its title placed along its top like a status update, History makes a similar claim to the (im)portability of history, alluding to events that are passed, but which we nevertheless carry with us. Rajotte’s Pandora’s boxes reside in the collision between our irrational desire to archive the fading shadows of the past in the hopes of gaining access to a comprehensive truth, and the impossibility of doing so. As Rajotte’s fantastic psychogeography makes tantalizingly clear, it is only as we close the curtains on the theater of our dreams – when we decapitate past ghosts instead of ‘friending’ them – that temporal proximities collapse and we are finally cast in the lead role. Preserved in our midnight hours (and only in our midnight hours), our teenage triumphs and traumas, and the phantoms that provoked them, are as alive as they ever were.

Nicola Mann is a doctoral candidate in the Visual and Cultural Studies program at the University of Rochester. She holds a B.F.A. from the Surrey Institute of Art and Design and a M.A. in Painting from the Royal College of Art in London. Nicola’s current area of research involves a critical investigation of late 20th century popular visual representations of Chicago’s public housing.

See more photographic work by James Rajotte:

James Rajotte, Nightclub, 2006

James Rajotte, Kitchen Chair, 2008

James Rajotte, Yellow Light, 2007

Alejandro Cartagena, Untitled Lost River #12, from the Suburbia Mexicana Project, 2008

NEWS RELEASE

Circuit Gallery Goes On-site At Böhmer With New Exhibition Line-Up Of Contemporary Photography

Toronto, ON – May 4, 2010 — Circuit Gallery and Böhmer are pleased to announce their partnership, one that gives the on-line gallery a vital and spacious physical exhibition space to showcase larger format work from their roster of both Canadian and international artists.

Böhmer, located at 93 Ossington Avenue in the heart of the thriving Queen West art district, is the new eponymous restaurant of renowned chef Paul Boehmer and partner Tracy Ulicny. Together, with designer Roy Banse, they have transformed a 5,000 square foot former auto garage into an impressive contemporary dining environment.

Circuit Gallery is an innovative web-based gallery whose primary mission is to make high-quality contemporary art more accessible by making it affordable. “As soon as we saw the Böhmer space we realized this was a perfect fit for us,” explains Claire Sykes, Circuit Gallery co-director, “not only in terms of its prime ‘art location’ and fantastic walls, but also in terms of our desire to showcase our artists’ work in physical spaces, in addition to our on-line presence.”

Alejandro Cartagena: Lost Rivers

The inaugural “Circuit Gallery @ Böhmer” exhibition introduces the work of the award winning Mexican-based photographer Alejandro Cartagena to a Canadian audience.

Coinciding with the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival, Cartagena’s first solo exhibition in Canada features eleven large format works from the highly acclaimed Lost Rivers series.

Coming from a deeply felt love and concern for the landscape, Cartagena’s Lost Rivers series presents exquisite images of dried-up streams and river beds, visually rich in detail, colour, and light. While aesthetically alluring, these photographs simultaneously offer a poignant social commentary on the ecological and environmental effects of untempered urban expansion.

Must see work, the images in this series subtly document the direct effects of “wrongly implemented economical strategies” on the local ecosystem, all the while exposing a beauty that, despite this, inheres in the landscape. As the river beds become scars, and trash and graffiti punctuate quasi-picturesque scenes, Cartagena gives us a poignant yet ambivalent testament to the absolute interdependence of humans and our environment.

Based in Monterrey, Mexico, Alejandro Cartagena is receiving international praise and recognition for his photographic work. In 2009 Cartagena won the Critical Mass Book Award and was named one of PDN´s Top 30 emerging photographers. In 2009 Cartagena was also a finalist for the Aperture Portfolio Prize, selected as an “International Discovery” at the Houston FOTOFEST, a Hey Hot Shot Finalist, and a featured artist at the Lishui International Photography Festival in Lishui China (with a solo exhibition of Suburbia Mexicana). With his career taking off, Cartagena has a very busy 2010 with shows in New York, Monterrey, Portland, Barcelona, and Amsterdam.

Alejandro Cartagena: Lost Rivers runs May 11 through June 26 at Böhmer, with a reception on Saturday May 15, from 3:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m. The space is open for viewing Monday through Saturday, 2:00 p.m. until close.

Please visit Circuit Gallery online to see and learn more about this work.
www.circuitgallery.com

About Böhmer

“At Böhmer we celebrate seasonality as Mother Nature intended; allowing good foods to present themselves. We offer our fare in an earthy yet elegant environment using mainly materials sustainably harvested, reclaimed or upcycled to furnish the dining room. At Böhmer we take the concept of community seriously, cultivating and maintaining relationships with local farmers and artists alike, offering a modestly elegant environment in which to showcase each individual talent.”

Böhmer is located at 93 Ossington Ave. (between Queen and Dundas). The restaurant is open for dinner everyday except Sunday, starting at 5:00 p.m..
Website: www.boehmer.ca
Tel: 416-531-3800

About Circuit Gallery

Circuit Gallery is the shared vision and collaborative product of Susana Reisman and Claire Sykes. The gallery specializes in high-end editions of works by emerging and established contemporary artists with an emphasis on photographic, digital and print-based works on paper.

For more information, visit www.circuitgallery.com or follow the daily conversation at www.twitter.com/circuitgallery.

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For more information, contact:
Claire Sykes, Partner, Circuit Gallery
Tel: 647-477-2487
E-mail: claire@circuitgallery.com

Circuit Gallery is based in Toronto, Canada
www.circuitgallery.com | tel. 647-477-2487 | email: info@circuitgallery.com

April 2010

Circuit Gallery is pleased to feature new limited edition works by Toronto-based media artist Sharon Switzer.

Sharon Switzer, Still #1 from Experience Hope, 2009

Continuing to experiment and push at the boundaries between media, Sharon Switzer’s series of new “digital video drawings” is an exploration, in the artist’s words, of “the possibilities of ‘creation’ within a digital compositing program. They are not traditional drawing, video, or animation—but something unique born from within this medium.”

Sharon Switzer, Still #1 from Dreaming of Butterflies, 2010

In these works Switzer isolates moments from her animated digital video series—I Should Be Dreaming of Butterflies—and recreates them at a much higher-resolution. The resulting images posses a remarkable quality. Crisp, delicate, almost luminous lines create small events in an otherwise devoid space. Visually their precision is strangely comforting—perfect, clean, demarcated. Yet in the text based pieces, as is the case in so much of Switzer’s work, this aspect is held in an effective tension with the work’s disconcerting and often darkly humorous message(s).

As the artist explains: “I am thinking about what it means to search for happiness—balancing an undercurrent of worry with a sense of hope.”

The original video series, I Should Be Dreaming of Butterflies, is represented by Corkin Gallery in Toronto.

Sharon Switzer, Still #1 from Happy Strangers, 2010

As an artist Sharon Switzer has exhibited her media art in Canada and the U.S. since the early 1990’s. Her work toured throughout Canada in 2007 as part of the exhibition 18 Illuminations: Contemporary Art and Light, that originated by the Tom Thomson Memorial Art Gallery. Her solo exhibitions include shows at the McMaster Museum of Art, The Koffler Gallery, Artcite, The University of Rochester, AKA Gallery and Corkin Gallery, Toronto, where she is represented.

As a curator, Sharon Switzer founded Art for Commuters in 2007 in response to an opportunity to showcase the work of artists and filmmakers to over 1.3 million people on the network of TTC subway platform screens. Switzer is the Director of the Toronto Urban Film Festival, curator of a month-long photo exhibition as part of Contact, and a program for Nuit Blanche—all annual projects on the TTC screens.

Switzer holds an MFA from the University of Western Ontario and in 2005-2006 participated in the Canadian Film Centre’s Habitat Interactive Art and Entertainment Program. As an instructor she has lectured extensively at the University of Western Ontario, Brock University and the Ontario College of Art and Design.

Sharon Switzer, Still #2 from the series Desert, 2008

See more photographic work from this series by Sharon Switzer available through Circuit Gallery.

Watch the six animated digital video drawings (below) by Circuit Gallery artist Sharon Switzer from her exhibition I Should Be Be Dreaming of Butterflies at Corkin Gallery, Toronto, November 19 – December 22, 2009.

I Should Be Dreaming Of Butterflies, 2009 from Sharon Switzer on Vimeo.

Lost, 2009 from Sharon Switzer on Vimeo.

Experience Hope, 2009 from Sharon Switzer on Vimeo.

Happy Strangers, 2009 from Sharon Switzer on Vimeo.

It’s Best Not To Think About It, 2009 from Sharon Switzer on Vimeo.

Ghosts Not God, 2009 from Sharon Switzer on Vimeo.

The original video series I Should Be Dreaming of Butterflies is represented by Corkin Gallery in Toronto.

Call for Proposals from Toronto-Based Artists and Photographers for Flip-Toronto

Deadline: July 2, 2010

Circuit Gallery, in collaboration with Art for Commuters (Toronto) and Dar Onboz (Beirut, Lebanon), is initiating Flip-City, an exciting new project that combines flip-books, media screens, and story-telling to bring to life the urban secrets, hidden histories, and present preoccupations of the cities we inhabit.

Inspired by Flip-Beirut, the successful flip-book project conceived and realized by the Lebanese publishing house Dar Onboz, Flip-Toronto is slated as the second in what we hope will become a multi-city initiative (under the umbrella title of Flip-City).

Flip-Toronto
For Flip-Toronto we are seeking proposals from Toronto-based artists to create flip books about specific Toronto neighbourhoods. Artists are asked to choose a specific neighbourhood or location in the city to portray or explore in their project. Projects can be created in any medium (drawing, painting, photography, video, film, various digital media or combination thereof) so long as the final product can be reproduced to meet the specifications of the flip-book.

The Flip-City projects are conceived to have both a physical and digital manifestation. The 12-15 commissioned projects for each city will be included in a beautiful printed flip-book set and be screened in a variety of locations (on public screens, on the web, etc.). The goal is for an eventual artistic exchange between participating cities.

Art for Commuters
We are very excited to be collaborating in this first phase of the Flip-Toronto project with Toronto’s Art for Commuters. Working with the Onestop Media Group, Art for Commuters initiates, curates and programs exhibitions, screenings and festivals throughout the year on the Onestop network of TTC subway screens. Art for Commuters will be involved in both the local selection process and will provide an exciting venue for screening the digitized / adapted versions of the flip-books. Selected projects will be screened on the Onestop TTC screens to an audience of 1.3 million daily commuters.

Flip-Book Specifications
The books are tentatively envisioned to consist of 60 pages, with each page measuring 10.5 cm x 7.5 cm (4¼” x 3″). The 12-15 flip-books will be packaged and available as a set.

Your proposal should include the following:

• a one-page project proposal explaining your choice of neighbourhood or location in Toronto. We are intentionally keeping the call thematically open—with the only stipulation being that you base your project upon an actual physical location as each flip-book project site must be able to be located on a map of the city. In addition to your chosen location or subject, please describe the final project— i.e. what media you plan to employ and its time-based trajectory (e.g. why it makes sense as a “flip-book”).

• 3-5 visuals – please submit digital images that convey something of the look and style of your proposed project (what your flip-book pages will look like). Visuals must be submitted as JPEG files and must not exceed 1200px x 1200px.
• an image list with any relevant information.
• a bio or CV including contact information.
• a link to your website. If you do not have a website you MUST also submit 5-10 images of previous work and an information sheet about this submission.

All materials must be submitted digitally. All text documents must be saved as PDF. All image files must be saved as JPG. Please adhere to the following file naming conventions:

• LASTNAME_proposal.pdf
• LASTNAME_img001.jpg
• LASTNAME_bio.pdf [etc.]

Email your proposal to: flip-city@circuitgallery.com
All proposals must be received by July 2, 2010

Flip-Toronto is curated by Claire Sykes and Susana Reisman (Circuit Gallery), Sharon Switzer (Art For Commuters), and Nadine Touma (Dar Onboz).

The Curatorial Committee will consider all proposals and respond by July 31, 2010. 

If your proposal is accepted the curator(s) will contact you to discuss the details of your project, including technical considerations for its realization (screening on the Onestop network and for print publication). Deadlines for final projects will be announced when known and are contingent upon funding.

Fees paid for selected artist projects are contingent upon funding. Funding is being sought from a range of sources.

For more Information, please contact:
Claire Sykes (Circuit Gallery)

tel. 644-477-2487

email: claire@circuitgallery.com


Critics Choice: Salvador Alanis escribe sobre el trabajo fotográfico de Alejandro Cartagena.

Alejandro Cartagena, from the Suburbia Mexicana Project: Urban Holes

Lo que no se ve en la fotografía de Alejandro Cartagena
por Salvador Alanis

Una preocupación común en la expresión contemporánea es reflejar con un lenguaje directo lo que no se puede ver de forma inmediata. Ante la evidencia y obscenidad de los medios, al artista se le presenta la alternativa de jugar con los mismos valores de una articulación formal que pretende mostrarlo todo para referirse a lo que subyace en la imagen. Dentro de lo aparentemente cotidiano, el artista presenta un subtexto que trasciende la formalidad. Alejandro Cartagena (República Dominicana, 1977), juega con los valores formales de la fotografía documental para subvertir el discurso y señalar la discontinuidad en lo que vemos retratado. Para Cartagena, el llamado fotodocumento es una herramienta valiosa para la expresión personal, o como lo dijera el crítico de fotografía mexicano José Antonio Rodríguez, significa el trabajo de “la circunstancia externa como pulsión individual” (28).

En principio, Cartagena, quien reside en México, participa de la tradición fotográfica mexicana que toma el paisaje como objetivo principal para estructurar su discurso. Dicha tradición se ha actualizado a lo largo de las diferentes generaciones, integrando las preocupaciones correspondientes a la época. En el caso del trabajo de Cartagena, el punto de partida evidente es el reflejo de las diversas transformaciones del paisaje, las marcas que dejan los diferentes estadios de las ciudades, las cicatrices del crecimiento y actividad humanas. Por eso, en primera instancia la lectura del trabajo de Cartagena es sin lugar a dudas relacionado con la responsabilidad ambiental, el desgaste del entorno, la multiplicación casi absurda de la mancha urbana sobre terrenos naturales mancillados.

Cartagena muestra en sus series fotográficas sobre la Suburbia Mexicana diferentes manifestaciones del desarrollo de las grandes metrópolis, basándose en el crecimiento de Monterrey, la tercera ciudad más grande de México. Cartagena toma la inserción de la ciudad a partir de viviendas en serie en la periferia inhabitada; dibuja el paso de las vías rápidas sobre espacios parafuncionales; da fe de la desaparición de los ríos al abastecer de agua las ciudades. La serie que Cartagena expone en Circuit Gallery, Lost Rivers, sigue la premisa documental que denuncia el daño ecológico que la ciudad infringe a las redes fluviales; muestra de arroyos y ríos secos de una forma visualmente muy afortunada. Sin embargo, más allá de esta preocupación evidente acerca del fenómeno, el documento pone de manifiesto instancias adicionales que pueden escaparse si solamente nos atenemos a lo eminentemente anecdótico del trabajo. Las fotografías de Alejandro Cartagena se centran en el registro de la discontinuidad, a partir de poner en evidencia espacios perdidos o mecanismos de sobreposición. Lo que importa en el trabajo a la vez paisajístico y documental de Cartagena es lo que no está, el elemento faltante. La falta se da como un encuentro formal, pero también como expresiones de la violencia. La discontinuidad genera un subtexto hacia lo antifuncional, aquello de lo que solamente queda el rasgo y que al mismo tiempo nos hace ver lo que realmente está en el paisaje. El crecimiento de la ciudad pone en evidencia lo faltante, el espacio inhabitable, lo perdido.

En otra serie del artista, llamada Urban Holes, Cartagena registra lotes sin construcción, los cuales de una forma o de otra escapan al continuo de las calles. En Symbolic Layering, el artista muestra capas y huecos en pasos a desnivel. Es lo que que no está lo que importa; lo que vemos es simulación, artificialidad, forma delirante que olvida espacios significativamente más importantes. La eficacia visual del trabajo de Cartagena logra poner en el mismo plano lo que no está en la fotografía de una manera que si bien, desde una perspectiva documental podría apuntar a una cierta nostalgia, en un nivel más profundo no es la nostalgia lo que opera, sino la presencia manifiesta de lo que no se ve, con todo su poder y misterio.

Rodríguez, José Antonio. “Los procesos de la fotografía contemporánea mexicana”, Huesca Imagen. Huesca: Huesca Imagen, 2004. 12-29.

Salvador Alanis (Mexico, 1964), is a writer. He has developed his work in the literary arena, as well as in the electronic media. He has been awarded by the National Fund for the Arts in Mexico and has been an artist in residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts. Salvador Alanis won the Multimedia Prize at the Video and Electronic Arts Biennial of Mexico, Vidarte, in 1999. He collaborates with major newspapers and magazines in Mexico, Spain and Canada. His published works include: “Del Paralaje” (Ediciones del Equilibrista, 1997), “Reojo” (Libros del Dragón, 1998), “Tránsito” (Libros del Dragón, 1999), “Fronteras, Borders” (La mano izquierda press, 2005), “De cuerpo presente”(Artes de Mexico, 2007), and “Fragilidad de las Fronteras” (K Editores, 2009). His visual work has been shown in several art spaces in solo and group exhibitions. He lives in Toronto.

Untitled Lost River #2, from the Suburbia Mexicana Project, 2008

Untitled Lost River #6, from the Suburbia Mexicana Project, 2008

CRITICS CHOICE: Allen Topolski writes about Circuit Gallery artist Heather Layton’s body of work entitled “Preparing to Lose” as part of our ongoing blog series.

Heather Layton, Training Exercise #1 (from Preparing to Lose), 2008

Preparing to Continue
by Allen Topolski

Second place is so tragic. Third and all the rest hardly matter.

The Winter Olympic medal count just ran across the bottom of the TV screen – as if that is all we needed to sum it up. Who decided that the list’s order should be based on the over-all number of metals (US), as opposed to the most gold (Canada)? Aren’t we just altering the data so as to win?

Can’t we just say that ‘trying’ is all that matters and that losing only makes us stronger? Perhaps we’re not trying hard enough though; and who is to say if we are? And wouldn’t that be just a different strategy for winning?

Okay – ‘process.’ We can rest in the comfort of the ongoing. I like process. But process still does imply work toward an end. I’m afraid I have adopted process only because it continually poses the potential to become about trying or winning.

If only we could truly embrace continual transformation as a resolve… (It’s a paradox – I know – but we live plenty of them anyway.) Transition pushed to constancy bears out continuation. If we could desire that as a means of existence, we’d be happy to prepare to lose. Just as happy to practice to win or arrange our own downfall. Because the ‘endings’ would only exist in this scenario as points along a continuum, I guess what I’m talking about is just ‘being’ – but importantly, active ‘being’ and being a part for its own sake.

What Heather Layton is usually ‘talking about’ in her art – and what is so expertly presented in her ‘Preparing to Lose’ series, is ‘active being’ – the constancy or persistence employed by the collective and the splendor of contribution. Forget losing individuality to the collective, it doesn’t happen in the spaces of Heather’s art. If one truly commits to the role of the active participant, one’s desire for individuality – and the pride that comes with it – dissolves with the urge to conquer. Individuality is still there though – determined by fair distribution of different roles and separate objects – the weight of the buckets (Hospice) or the pattern of the bundles (Beautiful Burden).

Layton’s Circuit Gallery drawings look tragic to me – familiar and funny illustrations of futility – but that is only because I remain mired in finality. The parachute softens the landing and upon the landing it immediately becomes the – um, – burden? Nope. It immediately becomes the tool to manage a burden. Objects here are the same as people – they are what they can do or choose to do. By our common standards it may not be the best tool (that would be too similar to winning) and it may not be the best process (that would emphasize trying) but it is what it is and it is pointed not to a result divided and ranked but a shared experience, a story very worthy of telling.

Allen C. Topolski is a practicing artist, Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Rochester (Rochester, New York). He teaches a variety of interdisciplinary courses. Topolski was raised in the coal region of central Pennsylvania. He was formally trained in painting and later realized the importance of artifacts from his post-industrial childhood town – they prompted the investigations of nostalgia and domesticity that dominate his work today. Topolski received his BA from Bucknell University and his MFA in 1990 from Penn State University. Topolski has a national exhibition record and is currently involved in a number of public art initiatives in the city of Rochester.

See more work by Heather Layton:

Heather Layton, Pull (from Preparing to Lose), 2008

Heather Layton, Parachute Down (from Preparing to Lose), 2008

Heather Layton, Arsenal (from Preparing to Lose), 2008

March 2010

Circuit Gallery is very pleased to present work by Mexican photographer Alejandro Cartagena from his award winning Lost Rivers series.

Untitled Lost River #10, from the Suburbia Mexicana Project, 2008

Coming from a deeply felt love and concern for the landscape, Cartagena’s Lost Rivers series presents exquisite images of dried-up streams and river beds, visually rich in detail, colour, and light. While aesthetically alluring, these photographs simultaneously offer a poignant social commentary on the ecological and environmental effects of untempered urban expansion.

Lost Rivers is one part of a larger project entitled Suburbia Mexicana: Cause and Effect, which seeks to tell a complex story of contemporary Mexican urban development and expansion: from urban gentrification and inner-city ‘ghettoization,’ to the seemingly unplanned and unhampered suburban sprawl emanating from many of its fast growing cities.

from Suburbia Mexicana: Fragmented Cities

In Lost Rivers, Cartagena turns his attention specifically to the unintended environmental consequences of such rapid and unplanned growth, in this case in the region surrounding the northern city of Monterrey. (Monterrey, the third largest city in Mexico, has witnessed explosive growth over the past two decades with a current estimated population of 5.1 million in the metropolitan region). In order to meet increased demand for water from the fast expanding suburbs of Monterrey, many of the region’s rivers were re-routed and dammed, and as a consequence many of the rivers and streams have dried out, or are in the process of drying up.

Untitled Lost River #9, from the Suburbia Mexicana Project, 2008

The images in this series subtly document the direct effects of “wrongly implemented economical strategies” on the local ecosystem, all the while exposing a beauty that, despite this, inheres in the landscape. As the river beds become scars, and trash and graffiti punctuate quasi-picturesque scenes, Cartagena gives us a poignant yet ambivalent testament to the absolute interdependence of humans and our environment.

Untitled Lost River #2, from the Suburbia Mexicana Project, 2008

Untitled Lost River #4, from the Suburbia Mexicana Project, 2008

Untitled Lost River #3, from the Suburbia Mexicana series

Untitled Lost River #7, from the Suburbia Mexicana Project, 2008

Emergence: Contemporary Photography in Canada. Edited by Sarah Parsons. Co-published by Gallery 44 and Ryerson University.

Circuit Gallery artist Susana Reisman is featured in EMERGENCE, a new publication by Gallery 44 that celebrates contemporary Canadian photography. It is an attractive volume with solid essays by Matthew Brower, Liz Park, Gabrielle Moser, Marie Fraser and Katy McCormick.

Reisman was selected by Suzy Lake.

Pictured: Suzy Lake's Extended Breathing 2. Lake is represented by Paul Petro Contemporary Art.

I chose Susana Reisman because of her interest in how we see, counter to assumptions of photographic information. There is a sense of extended duration in her works Camera Lucida and On the Scale of History that allows us to accrue detail towards a subjective experience of her photographs. These works are sequenced to a “panorama” for space or movement, rather than a topical narrative.

The subject matter in both of these series us a staging or sculptural construction of seminal texts on photography. To photographers, our past moves linearly present. Thought becomes material. And this emphasis on materiality brings poetry to “about photography.” Form and content marry.
— SUZY LAKE

Susana Reisman's - Art History of Photography, from On the Scale of History, 2007. Resiman is represented in Canada by Peak Gallery.

Congratulations Susana!

Susana Reisman, Endless Column (after Constantin Brancusi), 2007

Susana Reisman, The Real Thing (after Donald Judd), 2007