Eamon Mac Mahon, Inuvik Airport, (2008)

NEWS RELEASE

Timely new exhibition asks us to consider our complex relationship with nature

Toronto, ON, April 25, 2012 — Circuit Gallery is proud to present SCENES FROM HERE as a Featured Exhibition in the 2012 Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival.

This exhibition, curated by Claire Sykes, seeks to bring forward something of our complex and ambiguous relationship with nature, its role in our imaginary (specifically as represented in landscape) and our different experience and understanding of its reality (its strength and fragility).

SCENES FROM HERE presents the work of two photographers, Eamon Mac Mahon and Jim Verburg, whose considerably different interests in the natural landscape both seem predicated on a sense of disconnect and loss.

Mac Mahon is fascinated by our ideas and impressions of the ‘wilderness’, and the constant push-pull of man versus nature. He invites us to consider the range of attitudes that we have towards nature and to being in the natural world.

In a series of non-prescriptive images that focus on visual anecdotes: particular places, moments, and incidents, he effectively reveals our ambiguous relationship with nature, recognizing both its power as something unforgiving, destructive and “bigger than us” and its fragility as something in need of protection.

Jim Verburg’s photographs are not about specific places or nature itself, rather they are projections of psychic space—anthropomorphized conduits of moods and experience. The landscape and nature, often formally reduced to basic forms and elements (circles, light, water, fire, wood), function here as motif for the larger themes he explores in his work: interpersonal relationships, ideas of self and other, and our connectedness and difference.

For Verburg, being in nature, or ‘getting away’, becomes the ground or condition for connection, affording him that contemplative space to look inward, to strip things down and get in touch with what feels basic, honest and essential.

About the Artists
Eamon Mac Mahon is an award winning photographer/videographer currently based in Montreal. His photographs have appeared in various publications including the Walrus, National Geographic, and the New Yorker, as well as exhibition spaces such as the Griffin Museum of Photography, Higher Pictures NYC and San Jose’s Institute of Contemporary Art. A large-scale, year-long exhibition of his ‘Landlocked’ series, described as ‘magnificent and mysterious’ by the Globe and Mail, was presented at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport during CONTACT 2008. His video work has been exhibited at The Power Plant, The Detroit Institute of Arts, and the Music Gallery in Toronto. He is represented by Bau-Xi Photo.

Jim Verburg is a Toronto-based artist whose practice is mainly concerned with the complexities of relationships. His second film For a Relationship won the 2008 Jury Prize for the Best Canadian Short Film at the Inside Out Film Festival in Toronto. The work was also nominated for the Iris Prize in the UK. Recent exhibitions include a solo show at Widmer and Theodoridis Contemporary in Zurich, Portrait Study at the New Stage of National Theatre in Prague, Domestic Queens at the FOFA Gallery in Montreal, So Many Letdowns Before We Get Up at Platform Gallery in Winnipeg, and One and Two, a solo show at Le Mois de la Photo in Montreal. The show was awarded the 2011 Dazibao prize.

SCENES FROM HERE runs May 3 through 26 at Gallery 345, with an opening reception on Thursday May 3, from 6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.. Both artists will be in attendance.

SCENES FROM HERE

Eamon Mac Mahon
Jim Verburg

May 3 – 26, 2012

Opening Reception: Thursday May 3, 6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.

Circuit Gallery at Gallery 345
345 Sorauren Avenue, Toronto, Canada
[ Google Map ]

Gallery Hours:
Saturdays, 12:00 noon – 5:00 p.m., or by appointment (please don’t hesitate to make one)
For more information contact Claire Sykes: claire@circuitgallery.com | 1-647-477-2487

Jim Verburg, Untitled (Diptych), 2011

Eamon Mac Mahon, Woodland Caribou, 2011

Jim Verburg, Untitled, 2012

Please visit Circuit Gallery online to learn more about this exhibition and to see more work: www.circuitgallery.com/exhibitions_contact2012

About Circuit Gallery

Circuit Gallery is the shared vision and collaborative product of Susana Reisman and Claire Sykes. The gallery specializes in 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

Akihiko Miyoshi, Ode to the Pictorialists (2003)

Circuit Gallery @ upArt

Find Circuit Gallery at the 2011 upArt Contemporary Art Fair. We are very happy to be participating again in Toronto’s alternative art fair, scheduled to coincide with Art Toronto.

Our showcase exhibition features affordable and highly collectable works by:

Robert Canali
Alejandro Cartagena
Paulo Catrica
Leanne Eisen
Andrew Emond
Akihiko Miyoshi

+ TPW Silver Editions 2011 (a limited edition portfolio)
Kotama Bouabane
Michelle O’Byrne
Michael Snow

upArt 2011 Contemporary Art Fair

Thursday, October 27 through Sunday, October 30

Gala Opening Reception: Thursday, October 29, 7:00 – 10:00 PM
Exhibition Hours: Friday, Saturday + Sunday: 12:00 noon – 5:00 PM

The Gladstone Hotel
1214 Queen Street West
Toronto, ON, M6J 1J6

[map]

We hope to see you there!
Claire + Susana

Andrew Emond, Board, Buffalo Color (2005)

Kotama Bouabane, Bridge (2010)

Leanne Eisen, Laneway Lansdowne (2010)

Robert Canali, Untitled 7 (In Dust), 2010

NEWS RELEASE

INTANGIBLES: New group photography exhibition featuring Robert Canali, Wayne Dunkley and S. Billie Mandle

Toronto, ON— Circuit Gallery is pleased to present INTANGIBLES, a group exhibition of work by three photographers who all, in their own way, attempt to give representation to something experienced, perceived or felt, but not otherwise tangible—be it the phenomena of light, color, energy or the more transcendent, indeed spiritual state of being.

From his project In Dust, Robert Canali gives us a series of highly abstract and beautiful images about light and its corollary colour. Exploring the oppositions between the tangible and the intangible, abstraction and representation, Canali uses the very materials of photography—glass, paper, film, fluorescent tubes—to give objective representation to the essential yet utterly immaterial aspects of the medium.

In her own way, S. Billie Mandle’s work also relies heavily on the representation of light and color, in this case as metaphor, for spirituality and transcendence. In her series, Reconciliation, Mandle gives us photographs of the interiors of catholic confessionals. Here she shines a light, literally drawing the curtain, on these small, dark, non-descript and indeed well worn rooms for private introspection—spaces not meant to be seen or experienced in themselves as such. Mandle is interested in how the materiality, indeed how the tangibility of such space gets transformed into a space for the intangible ritual of confession. In these exquisite images, Mandle powerfully evokes, the presence of others, their secrets, and ultimately something of the desire for and experience of transcendence.

And finally, like other artists attempting to give representation to the “sublime”, Wayne Dunkley uses photography to capture something of the intangible, specifically something of his embodied and emotional connection to the landscape. Literally each image in his series TransForm is the product of a single hand-held exposure that effectively records the movement of his body, his breathing, as he experiences and connects with the land and its most basic elements: water, rock, trees and light.

In Dunkley’s photographs of the landscape he is bringing into the foreground what he describes as a “resonating energetic space” that exists below the surface of objects and within landscape, and that can be experienced when we are open to such experience. Dunkley’s photographs are less about the material world and any clear objective representation of it (photography’s traditional role) and more about our affective experience of being-in it.

INTANGIBLES runs September 15 through October 22 at Gallery 345, with an opening reception on Thursday September 15, from 6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.. Both Mr. Canali and Mr. Dunkley will be in attendance.

Please visit Circuit Gallery online to see and learn more:
http://www.circuitgallery.com

Circuit Gallery at Gallery 345
345 Sorauren Avenue, Toronto, Canada
[ Google Map ]

Gallery Hours:
Saturdays, 12:00 noon – 5:00 p.m., or by appointment
For more information contact Claire Sykes: claire[at]circuitgallery.com | 1-647-477-2487

Wayne Dunkley TransForm5, 2011

S. Billie Mandle Saint Peter, 2008

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

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[at]circuitgallery.com

Alejandro Cartagena, Girl Coming Home To Suburb In Juarez From A Night Out In The City from Suburbia Mexicana, 2009

NEWS RELEASE

ALEJANDRO CARTAGENA: SUBURBIA MEXICANA

Circuit Gallery brings acclaimed project to Toronto for CONTACT Photography Festival Featured Exhibition

Toronto, ON – April 28, 2011 — Circuit Gallery is pleased to present, as a Featured Exhibition in the 2011 Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival, a major solo exhibition of 30 large-format works by contemporary Mexican photographer Alejandro Cartagena from his acclaimed project Suburbia Mexicana: Cause and Effect (2006-2009). The exhibition features works drawn from the project’s constituent parts—Urban Holes, Fragmented Cities, Lost Rivers, and People of Suburbia.

The recent monograph Suburbia Mexicana, co-published by Daylight and Photolucida (2011), accompanies the exhibition. The book features 36 colour plates, an Introduction by Karen Irvine, an Essay by Gerardo Montiel Klint, and an Interview by Lisa Uddin.


Suburbia Mexicana is a documentary project deeply rooted in the local and the particular, in the artist’s own experience living and working in the northern Mexican city of Monterrey. It is an ambitious and committed project that seeks to tell, in multiple chapters, the complex story 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 its fast growing cities, including the environmental consequences.

Alejandro Cartagena’s project pays homage to and distinguishes itself from the New Topographics—a 1970s American exhibition of landscape photography that evolved into a movement. His subjects include: tract housing, inner-city vacant lots, desiccated or polluted rivers, and the residents of these new developments. Yet beyond simple documentation, Cartagena is interested in foregrounding the larger picture: “the Mexican suburbs are symbolic; they represent corruption, a lack of standards in planning, and personal obsessions.” Through a sustained and holistic visual study, Cartagena effectively conveys something about the deeper mechanisms at work–the ideological, political, economic, and social ground–in his “man-altered landscapes.”

Cartagena’s work equally diverges from earlier New Topographic approaches in that it does not simply reject beauty, or seek to coolly “aestheticize the banal.” His images are aesthetically alluring and offer multiple points of resonance, reaching beyond the specific place represented and attesting to something more pervasive and palpable on a global level—greed, corruption, ecological fragility and loss—as shared issues under advanced capitalism.

Alejandro Cartagena lives and works in Monterrey, Mexico. His work has been exhibited and published internationally, and is in several public and private collections in Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Italy, and the United States, including the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, the Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR, and the Joaquim Paiva Collection, Sao Paolo, Brazil. He is the recipient of several major national grants, numerous honorable mentions and acquisition prizes in Mexico and abroad. He is represented by Circuit Gallery (Toronto).

Suburbia Mexicana: Cause and Effect runs April 28 through May 29 at Gallery 345, with an OPENING RECEPTION on Thursday May 5, from 7:00 p.m. – 10:00 p.m.. The artist will be in attendance.

On Saturday, May 7, from 1:00 – 3:00 p.m., Mr. Cartagena will talk about his project and be signing books.

Please visit Circuit Gallery online to see and learn more:
http://www.circuitgallery.com

Circuit Gallery at Gallery 345
345 Sorauren Avenue, Toronto, Canada
[ Google Map ]

Gallery Hours:
Saturdays, 12:00 noon – 5:00 p.m., or by appointment
For more information contact Claire Sykes: claire@circuitgallery.com | 1-647-477-2487

Alejandro Cartagena, Fragmented Cities, Escobedo, 2008

Alejandro Cartagena, Business In Newly Built Suburb In Juarez, 2009

Alejandro Cartagena, Fragmented Cities, Santa Catarina #2, 2008

Alejandro Cartagena, Untitled Lost River #16, from the Suburbia Mexicana Project, 2008

Alejandro Cartagena, Father With Children After Gathering Wood In Juarez Suburb, 2009

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

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

Alphabet City Festival 2010: AIR – Toronto Book Launch and Exhibitions

Toronto’s Alphabet City is celebrating the publication of its 15th anthology AIR – and the completion of its five-part biblioblitz on the environment – with events in NYC + Toronto.

The thin layer of atmosphere that clings to the surface of our planet is a fragile and corrupted brew. Air is in constant, restless migration around the globe, connecting us in the most intimate fashion. From the dust storms that sweep into Beijing from faraway deserts to the smog from Chinese factories that shrouds Los Angeles, our air, the ultimate commons, is tragically defenseless. Breathing air is an involuntary physical function, but keeping the air breathable requires acts of political imagination and will. AIR considers the condition of this basic component of life on earth from a range of perspectives. It reveals the thick materiality of air, air as stinky, clotted, corrupted matter – in a word, dirty. AIR leads us to perceive air, and the imperative to protect it, anew.

AIR art + talks + party – Toronto

Saturday, December 11, 3:00 p.m. – midnight

Toronto Free Gallery
1277 Bloor Street West (Lansdowne subway station), Toronto
www.torontofreegallery.org

Presented in partnership with Toronto Free Gallery and Circuit Gallery

ALL DAY – Exhibitions and Print Sale

3:00-6:00 p.m. – MUSEO AERO SOLAR: Help build a giant balloon artwork!

6:00-8:00 p.m. – CITIES OF AIR: Readings and interviews with four AIR authors: Diana Fitzgerald Bryden, Megan Griffith-Greene, Amanda Jernigan, and Lisa Rochon

8:00-midnight – PARTY-AIR!: Celebrate with the authors, artists, designers, partners and editors of the AIR project.

LEARN MORE – visit the AbC Festival site

TRASHFOODFUELWATERAIR

December 11 through February 23, 2011
Toronto Free Gallery

Christine D'Onofrio, Smarties (Group of 4), 2004 - from the anthology FOOD

TRASHFOODFUELWATERAIR features fine art prints for sale from ABC’s five-volume series on the environment. The exhibition and print sale are part of our ongoing fundraising collaboration – Art from the Anthologies – with Alphabet City.

Find work, exclusively available through this project, by: Michael Cook, Eamon Mac Mahon, Stefan Petranek, Christine D’Onofrio, Ian Spence, Susana Reisman, Meredith Carruthers + Susannah Wesley (Leisure Projects), and Cynthia Lin.

Susana Reisman, Untitled 9 from the Plastikos series, 2002 - from the anthology TRASH

Eamon Mac Mahon, Lake Ice, 2005 - from the anthology WATER

Michael Cook, Beaconsfield Overflow, Garrison Creek Relief Sewer, Toronto, 2008 - from the anthology WATER

Please visit our Projects section to see and learn more about this collaboration.

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

Bill Finger, After Psycho from the series Gravity Wins, 2006

NEWS RELEASE

Circuit Gallery Presents Bill Finger: Distant Smoke

Toronto, ON – November 15, 2010 — Circuit Gallery is pleased to present Distant Smoke, a solo exhibition of eleven large scale photographs by Seattle artist Bill Finger. This will be his first solo exhibition in Toronto.

Creating images that explore both television crime drama and the photographer as “unreliable narrator,” Bill Finger’s photographs elaborately play with both fiction and reality. Within each image Finger evokes and entwines memories of specific places from his childhood with those of the Hollywood movie sets he has worked on during a 20 year career as a motion picture Assistant Cameraman.

Each photograph in the exhibition began with a handcrafted miniature diorama that Finger painstakingly constructed for the point of view of the camera. Pulling back slightly with the camera, on certain images, he further exposes the illusion while allowing the viewer a glimpse off the set. With the edges exposed, Finger adds an emphasis to the constructed nature of photography. Where most photographs make a claim to represent the truth, Finger’s images do just the opposite, each one an elaborate fiction.

Without the physical presence of people or actors within his miniature sets of tenement bay windows, hospital rooms and derelict fields, he is still able to create a feeling of tension and foreboding that something has either just happened or is about to occur. It could be an approaching storm, the loss of something valuable or perhaps something much more sinister.

Bill Finger received his MFA in Photography from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 2005. His work has been exhibited across the United States and Canada and is included in the permanent collection of the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography. Bill’s images have been published in the books Light & Lens and Exploring Color as well as the European magazine Fotograf.

Bill Finger: Distant Smoke

November 23 – December 5, 2010

Opening Reception: Wednesday, November 24, 7:00 p.m. – 10:00 p.m.

Department Gallery
1389 Dundas St. West, Toronto M6J 1Y4
[ Google Map ]

Gallery Hours:
Tuesday through Friday, 2:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.
Saturday and Sunday 1:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.

Bill Finger, Watch from the series Gravity Wins, 2009

Bill Finger, 1969 - Age 8 from the series Paramnesia, 2004

Bill Finger, Forest Set from the series Gravity Wins, 2006

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

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.

-END-

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

Join Circuit Gallery for the upArt Contemporary Art Fair at the Gladstone Hotel as we engage head-on with this year’s theme—For What It’s Worth—and challenge you to consider the question of “value” in art!

Our exhibition features work by:

Robert Bean
Alejandro Cartagena
Dan Larkin
Akihiko Miyoshi
Sharon Switzer
Andrew Wright

What do we value in art? Why do we collect? How do we attribute worth to an artwork? In the case of digital or photographic work—where there is no “original,” simply an infinitely reproducible image—what determines the edition?

The consideration of these questions and the multifarious meanings of value, lie at the core of Circuit Gallery’s intervention. Our business model is based on questioning the very idea of “value” in art—what this means and where we find it. Instead of polemically answering these questions, we seek to make explicit their terms and entanglements, to create a new model of circulation for art, and to offer new options for both artists and collectors.

The 2010 exhibition theme, For What It’s Worth: Curios, Collections and Counterfeits, could not be more appropriate and we are very happy to have been invited to participate in this year’s event, scheduled to coincide with the Art Toronto.

UpArt 2010: For What It’s Worth

Friday, October 29 – Sunday, October 3

Gala Opening Reception: Thursday, October 28, 7-10 pm
Friday, Saturday & Sunday Hours: 12 noon – 6 pm

The Gladstone Hotel
1214 Queen Street West
Toronto, ON, M6J 1J6

[map]

We hope to see you there!
Claire + Susana

Circuit Gallery will be at the Queen West Art Fair @ the Gladstone Hotel next weekend in ROOM 207.

Saturday, September 18 – Sunday, September 19, 2010, 11:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.

** Opening Night Gala: Friday Sept 17, 7-10:00 p.m. **

The Gladstone Hotel
1214 Queen Street West
Toronto, ON, M6J 1J6

[map]

Find works by:
Meredith Carruthers and Susannah Wesley, Bill Finger, Dan Larkin, Robert Bean, Roger Sayre, Susana Reisman, Eamon Mac Mahon, James Rajotte, and many more…

Stop by for prizes, promotions and great, AFFORDABLE ART!

We hope to see you there!
Claire + Susana

The Gladstone’s Queen West Art Fair is a key art fair during the Queen West Art Crawl weekend. The Art Fair is curated by the Gladstone Hotel’s Director of Exhibitions, Britt Welter-Nolan.

The Queen West Art Crawl began as a one-day event in 2003. Since then it has blossomed into a weekend-long festival … » Learn More

Schedule of Events
Visit the Event Page on Facebook
Visit the Event Page on the QWAC website

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.

-END-

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

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 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.

-END-

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