TRIAL & ERROR

I don’t think that I make art.  For the most part, I make things that you can wear although lately I have been making things on paper, but this is still very new for me.  Because I am not trained in any practice, everything I make is a result of trial and error.  This means that I do a lot of experimenting, which also means that I waste a lot of materials.  Some things work out, most do not.  The ratio at which the finished products are “good” or “bad” is not always in my favour, but I continue trying.  Sometimes I make fire, but for now, I am content with making smoke.

The grouping of pieces on exhibition here, deal with shapes.  Three very basic shapes.  Triangle, Circle and Square.  The proportions never change and neither do their size, but placement and colour do.

Combined with found, deadstock papers & translucent paints, these screens prints are reminiscent of the days of graphic design before the age of computers.  Slightly misaligned, warm in texture and colour; a clean approach to standard forms in a complex world.  What more do we need?

BIO

Todd was born the year ‘Star Wars” came out which can only be seen as a good omen. Born and raised in Ajax, On., you wouldn’t know it by the skill and intellect of his work that he did not attend a formal art school. He is a self-taught professional screen printer and graphic designer and one time owner of the clothing line Equinox Forward which we hope to see new prints in the future. He is currently the graphic designer and textile printer for HOI BO and has remained an avid DJ and record collector of disco, rare groove, and weirdo house.

BIO

Glenn Nakagawa was born in Calgary and raised in London Ontario, where he started painting graffiti in 1995 while attending Beal art. After meeting Duro3 in 1998 and mentoring under his teachings, he became part of the Canada wide KWOTA crew and TDV crew and is known today as one of the best 3-D graffiti artists in Canada.

In 2001 he attended the Digital media arts program at Seneca college to study 3D animation and visual effects. He has done mural and illustration work for Burton Snowboards, GM, Labatts, Budweiser, Corbys, plus various other companies. He currently resides as the lead designer/lead compositor at Bullseye for the past 6 years working on motion graphics  and visual effects for CBC, MTV, Discovery channel, National Geographic, History channel and many other networks.

www.water1art.com

THE SHOPKEEPER’S SOCIETY

Exploring  the world of independent stores and shops as well as the people who own and operate them, these pieces focus on the character of the buildings created by worn facades and signage as well as the unique personalities of the shopkeepers.

BIO

Kellen Hatanaka is a Toronto based artist and designer. He graduated from OCAD in 2009 with a BDES in illustration. Since then, he has worked as a freelance artist and has been shown in a variety of galleries throughout Toronto. You can also find his work on walls in Toronto, Paris, Barcelona and Lisbon.

BIO

Liam Crockard was born in Kitchener, Ontario 1986, and now situates his practice in Toronto, where he received his BFA at the Ontario College of Art and Design. Over the last two years Crockard has exhibited internationally in Chicago, Los Angeles and Berlin, as well as organized and participated in a number of successful local shows.

Citing the countless examples of jury-rigged constructions he witnessed growing up in his hometown as a main driving force behind his sculptural practice, Crockard uses materially driven gestures to explore the collision of industry-driven-hometown nostalgia and modern art fetishism. Wandering the old neighborhood and flipping through a art textbook have become increasingly similar experiences. Ultimately this conflation of the personal and the referential sits at the core of his practice, be it articulated through collage, video or sculpture.

I remember the first time I tried LSD at the age of 13. It was a small tab of paper with a blue telephone receiver on it. I remember examining the tab and admiring the colors and textures and had no idea what I was in store for. At that moment light sound and colors took a whole new shape and things would never be the same.

I think life and art all follow in that same formula.Trying to break new ground from where old ideas die and then are born .Otherwise they would be forgotten.

I take inspiration from the sights and sounds of nightlife in the city & 60s psychedelia. I see things through a mirrored eye and collect fragments of moment’s I’m living in.I take elements from the past present and future to create something in the moment.Everything is eventually forgotten (history art etc), that’s why most of my work reminds me of a paisley zombie ready for that one last mind blowing trip…

Art is in a time of laziness and shortcuts.  Everything is so accessible and user friendly that now almost every single human is a self proclaimed artist, which has pros and cons of its own.  I think people need to give more credit to the old ways of creation. Sitting down and doing everything manually and taking your sweet ass time, even if it means loosing your mind in the process. It seems so much more full of substance and authentic when you do it all by hand.No Photoshop or conventional silk-screening equipment, just scissors glue my hands and home made equipment.

In a time where translation and cross-cultural understanding becomes more and more necessary, online translation tools make this process more difficult since the ubiquity and simplicity of access to tools like google translate mean that we never have to work for our translations, think about how we communicate, think about who is trying to communicate, what they mean, what our understanding of what they say means and ultimately think about what doesn’t get said, what doesn’t get heard, who doesn’t hear and who doesn’t get a chance to speak or clarify their meanings in discussions that don’t get to happen.

Since we already believe we know what’s been said, we don’t question or enter into dialogue with each other.

This project takes the artist statements of the artists in this show and translates them from English to French, to Spanish, to Arabic, to German, Swiss, Farsi, Cantonese etc. and then back into English.  The artist statement, presumably a statement of the intent of the artists, their concerns, their backgrounds, and what they are trying to do with the work they are showing, gets distorted in a visible demonstration of the operations that happen automatically on a daily basis.

Rather than show every translation at every step of the process, this project shows only the final translation back into English in order to contrast with the original and to speak to how these processes are unexamined, unquestioned, yet taken for granted as loyal translations of the original.

BIO

Dorian Lebreux is a writer, occasional filmmaker and a master’s candidate in Social & Political Thought at York university. Her research interests are intersubjective communication, responsibility and postcolonial melancholia. Previous work includes the Magical Feminist short films ’3 lives’ and ’69 steps’.

BIO

Darcy Obokata was born in London ON ,where he gravitated towards mark making from his early years.  His creativity was nurtured and guided through elementary and secondary school, where he completed the Beal vocational art program.  Upon the completion of his most thorough and structured art instruction, Darcy took the task of advancing his artist practice himself.  Refining his craft in non-conventional ways while working and collaborating with artists throughout Canada, the US, Southeast Asia, Australia and Brazil.  It is only through this community of colleagues and compatriots that his art is fully realized.

BUY “BLACK”

I see art as an expression of the artist, through their chosen medium, this definition extends to all things created by a person or persons. A dancer dances because she or he has something to express or ‘say’ to their world that can not be put in to words to form a poem or sculpted in clay etc.

Governments, politicians and special interest groups have often commissioned artists to help speak to the people, spread their message and push their agenda.

For this series, I examined the works of each of  two Hip Hop artists and asked “What are the most prevalent themes in their most current body of work? What is their overall message?” Simply put, what are they trying to ‘say’ to the world and what special interest group could benefit from the messages these artists are putting out?

My comparisons and possible conclusions may seem hyperbolic. But the artists and companies responsible for putting the messages out in to the world should not be judged by the intention but by the effect. Countless people of African decent living in North America (myself included) are forced to navigate through the hurtful notions, about what it means to be ‘black’ perpetuated by these artists all the while working to challenge and change them.

The question of conspiracy has been raised and dismissed so often that it seems to be a non issue, but the private sector is hardly known for being haphazard in it’s decision making. There are committees, departments, and in some cases, whole firms dedicated to ensuring that every detail of operation is finely tuned and focused on one goal, profit.

Knowing that music is big business, I find it difficult to believe in the innocence of anyone who would turn profit from the glorification of the worst problems in any community.

The title comes from the “Buy American” (and later “Buy Black”)  posters from WW2. The movement that has sprung up on several periods in history encouraging members of  the community to support American businesses. (Strange since last year alone 60 percent of the value of goods sold in the U.S. was imported.) It became a slogan on many pro war, pro American propaganda posters.

I hope to challenge fans of these artists to re-think their possible position in the cycle.

What are you buying in to? When buying ‘black’.

BIO

Ryan Machan gives us a contemporary look on where today’s man stands in the modern world. He is a self taught artist that continues to question the way we judge success, despite being scrutinized for doing so. His life’s body of work, so far, includes several mediums: film, silkscreen and paint, to name a few.

Ryan’s work has been seen in store front window displays, television, newspaper, several art shows and can currently be seen at Museum London in London, Ontario where he resides. Most recognized by his large canvas pieces with vibrant use of colour, often his signature image of the unevolved ape-man, and words that by some could be taken with offense. He is not timid about forcing viewers to question themselves or to show his own frustrations. Begging to answer, when man is stripped down to raw emotion, have they really evolved so much? No matter, his art commands attention.

His latest experiment is that of portrait style pieces, now the next step in his growth as an artist. Whether it be in the strength of his brush strokes or the rawness of his images, he is always struggling to figure out his (or man’s) relationship with fellow man, the world itself and, of course, the opposite sex. Ryan’s ever changing direction and the guts to follow through always keeps both critics and followers intrigued to see more.

Nep is  interested in exploring the way in which memory and personal experience can give way to myth. Primarily using language, architecture, adornment as a reference point.

This myth language uses the visible universe as a metaphor for the invisible, a communication between the world and the spirit of our individual perspective.

MAN DIP LITE

Although this title sounds like a Chinese brunch special, this series of work has nothing to do with Asian cuisine. For the past 15 years, flyering and and postering for DJ events has been an integral part of self promotion in my life. Today people rely more and more on digital advertising and the art form of the flyer has dwindled. Man Dip Lite not only celebrates the work of such early Hip-Hop flyer designers such as Buddy Esquire and Phase 2 but also the reveals the methods of creating posters such as screen printing, hand painting, photocopying, and cut and paste collage and the various ways posters are presented on the poles and boards on the streets using staples, tape and sticky tack.

Original photographs taken at various venues through I have DJ’ed at over the last 15 years are transformed with photographs taken from the late 70′s and early 80′s hip-hop, disco, and post punk era, and are melded together with the influences of not only the original flyer makers but also the work of  original street and pop art icons such as Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, and Basquiat.

BIO

Andrew Gavin(Hicks)  desperately wanted to work for MI6 when he was a kid, despite various attempts by his father to turn him into an accountant (“you’ll always have a job”).  He tried to train Jedi’s in his backyard, made copious amounts of mix tapes for his friends, and almost became a soccer star, but smoking and drinking that came with a stellar DJ career derailed all of that.

Following an intense passion for film, but in his own words, didn’t know a Monet from a Mondrian, decided that he should go for a less conventional film education and has received his BA in INTEGRATED MEDIA, … more like constantly and consistently starting new projects at OCAD (Ontario College of Art and Design) in Toronto Ontario, Canada as of May, 2010.  He has tried to master photography, screen printing, and design all on his own and of course has taken every conceivable film course the school has to offer.

Deciding that he is not ready for the real world combined with the uncomfortable position of being an artist in an anemic economic market, Andrew will add to his academic achievements by completing a MASTERS OF CINEMATIC STUDIES at the University Of Western Ontario while working on a second short film based on the prolific downtown New York art/music/video scene of the late 1970′s and early 80′s.