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Working across the disciplines of art, craft and design, “Material Overtures,” set within a larger Harbourfront Centre programme entitled “Desire,” exhibits a playful skepticism directed towards an inheritance of exhibition practice that suggests that the very function of aesthetic objects is contemplation and consumption. Referencing Harbourfront Centre’s craft studios where, from a distance, the public can watch artists-in-residence at work, two artists play with the image and the gesture of the artist and atelier. With Studio, Sandy Plotnikoff moves his energetic hybrid art/design studio into the gallery… |
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Desire and Material Overtures – Kim Simon
Working across the disciplines of art, craft and design, “Material Overtures,” set within a larger Harbourfront Centre programme entitled “Desire,” exhibits a playful skepticism directed towards an inheritance of exhibition practice that suggests that the very function of aesthetic objects is contemplation and consumption.
Referencing Harbourfront Centre’s craft studios where, from a distance, the public can watch artists-in-residence at work, two artists play with the image and the gesture of the artist and atelier. With Studio, Sandy Plotnikoff moves his energetic hybrid art/design studio into the gallery. Plotnikoff highlights process and sociality as essential to production as visitors are invited to get involved in a range of collaborative projects in progress.
In a related gesture, Anne Fauteux’s “BOLM: Projet rafistolage/The Tinker Project” presents an ironic bureaucratic structure within which a service/goods exchange will occur. With a unique portable studio and a theatrical interactive performance, visitors are invited to become clients of Fauteux as she underlines her simultaneous roles as skilled craftsperson, jerry-rigger and labour for hire.
With Corwyn Lund’s Prototype for a Stolen Bike, a customized courier bicycle-as-sculpture is brought to life through the emotional expectation of its function and appearance outside the gallery with the interactive work Delivery Service. Visitors to the gallery are invited to write letters of affection on postcards made available by the artist. For the duration of the exhibition, a courier service will use Prototype for a Stolen Bike every Monday to deliver the letters throughout Toronto.
Amongst these works, “Companion,” a series of bench prototypes by furniture maker James Wright, uses the ubiquitous modern museum bench as a base form. Yet, rather than work towards a visual neutrality to support the quiet contemplation of art, Wright modifies his benches with the aim of gallery seating itself as the potential site of social interaction and play.
Reshaping our expectations of the relationship between exhibitions, objects produced and their consumption, the artists of “Material Overtures” propose ways in which material processes and objects are a prelude to social exchange.
