Double Solo Exhibitions:

May 23 - June 12 . 2013

Celebrate with Alain Bonder and Andrew Bell:
Thursday, May 23rd, 5pm - 8pm



Andrew BELL
skulpturs + fabriks

Andrew Bell makes a point to present works that make us think about ourselves and our world -- in the future.  Bell's Moterwerks series has seen eight strong installments, four here at the gallery.  As a tributary to his ongoing Moterwerks narrative, Bell turns to the very current topic of transhumanism, and more specifically the possibility of synthetic humans, in his new body of work skulpturs + fabriks.  Bell's vision of the future begins in studio with a model in wardrobe and in character, who he photographs in black and white. Bell's photographs are transferred onto board then manipulated with oil paint, and worked into a larger piece. He combines photo-transfer, oil paint and often text in order to portray historic icons, enabling the viewer to draw meaning from the work in a contemporary context.

Just as Bell looks to the future to address and consider what it means to be here, to be human -- Alain Bonder looks to the past and to the memories of what has been, or possibly what has never been...


Alain BONDER
Distortions

Showing successfully in Montreal, Quebec City and New York, Alain Bonder's 2013 solo exhibition Distortions is his first in Toronto.  Alain Bonder (b. 1976) presents a unique visual vocabulary achieving strong compositions through the juxtaposition of contrasting images.

Each painting in this series is based upon a late nineteenth or early twentieth-century studio portrait of a boxer, whose fixed "ready-to-fight" pose, to my eyes, feels forced, overly arranged. The titles are based on biographical information-strange details and trivia-that one might expect to find in a newspaper, or on the back of a collectible sports card.

I see these cards and portraits as records of an effort to capture a moment in the life of these boxers - perhaps an awkward moment, a staged moment, or even the essence of a gesture itself.  These captured moments are the traces by which we, as modern viewers, come to know these boxers, and to think about our past. The photographs and etchings, and their flaws, were the spark for this series. I am not offering answers with these pieces.  Rather, I suggest that as we look, we remember that things never were, are, nor will they ever be, as they seem. 


The purposeful pairing of two great artists with individual solo exhibitions presents a unique opportunity at the gallery this spring.  We look forward to the conversations that will hatch.
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