Last Folio

Posted: February 17, 2015 in galleries, history
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Last Folio, A Living Monument to the Holocaust
An exhibit of photographs by Yuri Dojc,
at the Art Gallery of Ontario

Yuri Dojc was born in Slovakia but is now based in Toronto.
Starting in the 1990’s he has returned to Slovakia a number of times in search of traces of Jewish life from prior to WW2.

a close up of a photograph of an old book, open, with the pages on one side all curled up. The photo is taken from the top of the book.

Details of one of the photographs in the exhibit.

There are only eight photographs in this exhibit but each one tells a story.   Narratives of loss and of life interrupted.
But also stories of memory and remembrance.

 More information about the Last Folio project.

 

anti graffiti

Posted: February 12, 2015 in graffiti and street art
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There will probably always be some controversy surrounding graffiti and and street art.  Some people like it and some don’t.  There is street art with a lot of artistic merit.  There are a number of drab grey places in the city that are improved by adding street art.

Graffiti is temporary by nature.    Time and weather affect it.  Sometimes it evolves over time as others add stickers or comments.   This is a strength and a weakness.  All it takes is a marker or a can of spray paint to make your mark on a wall, a doorway, or any surface you want for that matter.  Unfortunately, there are people who destroy rather than create.

There are many examples of the juvenile nature of some taggers so these are just a few.

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Stupid and clueless. The mural on Croft street commemorating the Fire of 1904 has also been tagged over.


 
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a black tag over a grey and white painting on the side of a set of stairs

The word 'lame' is written on blue letters on a large black and white tag.

Great comment. Written on a black and white tag that was painted on top of a street art picture

 

The City of Toronto has a Graffiti Management Plan.
They try to encourage Graffiti Art while getting rid of Graffiti Vandalism.

Where the West Toronto Railpath meets Dundas West.

Where the West Toronto Railpath meets Dundas West.  The graffiti and street art that were here were painted over with grey paint, probably by the city.

 

Bathhouse raids mural

Posted: February 12, 2015 in graffiti and street art, history, locations
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The Bathhouse Raids by Christiano De Araujo is a mural on Church Street just south of Carlton.
Completed in the fall of 2013, it was the largest of the Church St. Mural Project pieces commissioned for WorldPride 2014.

The following photos were taken with a very wide angle lens
because of the size of the mural and because there are always cars parked in front of it.

large mural on the side of a building. A number of cars are parked in front of it. The mural depicts the bathhouse raids, an event in Toronto's history where police raided gay bath house and arrested those they found inside. A yellow Toronto police car, a fire truck with its lights on are both in the picture. An oversized person is in the center, hands held over her/his head.

On the 5th of February, 1981, Toronto police raided four bathhouses in what was known as ‘Operation Soap’.
Around 300 men were arrested.  Most charges connected to the incident were eventually dropped or discharged, although some bathhouse owners were fined.

part of a large mural showing a yellow Toronto police car from the 1980's, a couple of policemen and a crowd of men standing just back of the police car

part of a large mural showing a yellow Toronto police car from the 1980's, a couple of policemen and a crowd of men standing just back of the police car

The event marked a major turning point in the history of the LGBT community in Canada.
The raids led to protests – the night after the raids, 3,000 people marched on 52 Division police headquarters and on Queen’s Park, smashing car windows and setting fires.  That spring the city held its first Pride Parade.

right hand side of the bathhouse raid mural on Church St. showing a firetruck with its red flashing lights on

eyes on fingernails

Posted: February 11, 2015 in graffiti and street art, locations
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Graffiti on a wall on Queen St. West
at the west side of Trinity Bellwoods park.

A graffiti face high on a grey wall, with a pine tree branch partially obscuring it

Close up of graffiti painted fingers in many bright colours. They are very large. Each fingernail has an eye.

Close up a piece of street art featuring brightly coloured fingers, with eyes on the fingernails. Partially hidden behind pine trees. Snow on the ground.

Close up a piece of street art featuring brightly coloured fingers, with eyes on the fingernails. Partially hidden behind pine trees. Snow on the ground.

Unfortunately, there is now an ugly black tag on the lower left corner.

Graffiti painting of a man high up on a grey wall, partially hidden behind two trees. Unfortunately someone has painted a black tag over the lower left corner of the painting

In the corner of a piece of graffiti with a blue background is a signature of the artists, in blovk letters, LEXR & EVOKE

a few guys hanging out

Posted: February 11, 2015 in general Toronto
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A few guys that I encountered the other day.

black and white paper graffiti of a man in grey pants, white shirt, and tie. He has two black and white faces instead of hands. Someone has scrawled words on the hands.
A deflated inflatable Santa Claus is hanging from a hydro pole in an alley beside a garage door with a graffiti man on it.

A large pinkish man's face, with big blue eys, and large hands

close up of man's face painted on a garage door. You can see one ear, the nose and the mouth.

Street art painting of two men's heads. Both have beards. One is wearing a black crown and the other has a red hat and a red & black plaid shirt on

 

around the corner

Posted: February 9, 2015 in graffiti and street art, locations
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I walked around the corner and down a small dead end lane and this is what I saw.

near St. Clair West

garages and gates in fences in a snow covered lane. Two of the doors have been painted in geometric designs.

On a brownish grey wall, some white paint has been applied to provide a backgound for some black line drawings of faces. There are four faces.

A mural on a wall of two polar bears - an adult and a young cub. It looks like they are walking on the snow.

Close up of the mural of two polar bears. in this picture, the whole cub is visible but only the nose of the adult bear is seen. The picture is signed J. Mora 2010

 

beep beep

Posted: February 9, 2015 in graffiti and street art
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Wile E. Coyote is still chasing the roadrunner…..
right out of Looney Tunes and onto a wall in a Toronto lane.

street art painting of Wile E. Coyote from the looney tunes cartoon. He has a smug look on his face and he is holding a lit stick of dynamite.

street art painting of the Looney Tunes cartoon character the roadrunner. He is running past a window on a brick building.

 

the walk

Posted: February 6, 2015 in galleries
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Seen in the ‘Genizot: Repositories of Memory’ exhibit

 by Bonnie Eisenstein,

at the Royal Ontario Museum until 8 February 2015

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“Concentrate all your strength, and compel yourself to do the loftiest deed, to endure the most difficult trial, and to survive the most arduous struggle.”

from The Walk by Robert Walser, translated from the German, Der Spaziergang written in 1917.

Douglas Coupland at the ROM

Posted: February 5, 2015 in galleries
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Douglas Coupland: everywhere is anywhere is anything is everything

Royal Ontario Museum
until April 26, 2015

entrance to an exhibit at the Royal Ontario Museum featuring a large yellow wall with the name Douglas Coupland in large black letters. In the distance are two women standing in front of a painting that is hung on point.

In the background is a large painting of geometric abstract shapes in yellows, reds and greys. In the foreground is a close up of two stacks of blocks. The blocks are old children's wooden building blocks but they are alll different. Three have letters of the alphabet on them, one has a picture of a birds nest.

The 21st Century Condition
“I want to explore how it feels to be inside the 21st century brain as opposed to the 20th century brain”

Six paintings arranged three across by two down, on a wall. One in grays, one in pink, one in purple, one in ornage and one in pale pink.

a large wall is covered with coloured rectangles and in each rectangle is an expression that has become common. For example, get a life, oh my god, delete entire history?, etc. A woman is standing to the left of the wall, taking a picture of it with her cellphone.

view of an art exhibit, some people are walking through it and a couple of people are looking at the art on the walls

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Painted with dots.  When they are hanging on the wall, they look abstract.
When they are shrunk down and viewed on a smartphone, the picture comes into focus.

three paintings hanging on a wall in an art exhibit. One is of Osama bin Laden and the other two are 9/11 related, New York .

update:  Here is an interesting article that appeared in the Torontoist on 24th Feb about this exhibit.

Douglas Coupland at MOCCA

Posted: February 4, 2015 in galleries
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Douglas Coupland’s
everywhere is anywhere is anything is everything
at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Queen St. West
until 19 April 2015

Secret Handshake
What makes Canadians Canadian?
What do we identify with that others don’t recognize?

close up of part of a quilt. One of the squares is made from fabric with a Toronto Maple Leafs hockey player on it. Old chrome hubcaps have been added to the quilt.

A quilt made of plain beige fabric into which dreamcatchers of various sizes have been incorporated.
A low hutch with three drawers. The handle of each drawer is on old pepsi advertisement on an old bar from a door - the kind of bar that you would push on to open the door.

 One of the rooms of the exhibit features Coupland’s re-imagining of famous Canadian paintings,  paintings by Tom Thomson and Lawren Harris of the Group of Seven to name a couple.
In the center of the room is a black metal structure that is supposed to represent a damaged hydro transmission tower reminiscent of the ones damaged by the eastern Canada ice storm of 1998.

A large metal structure that is supposed to represent a damaged hydro (electricity) transmission tower is in the center of a room. There are paintings on the walls.

A large metal structure that is supposed to represent a damaged hydro (electricity) transmission tower is in the center of a room. There are paintings on the walls.

***

Growing up Utopian

A portion of three Douglas Coupland creations are visible. In the foreground are numerous lego houses complete with yards and garages all laid out in a grid. In the background are wood shelves with household articles from the past. In the middle are lego towers in bright stripes and interesting shapes.
below: Towers, 2014
An urban jungle of imaginative lego towers created from selected parts of towers that were “crowd-sourced” at building events at the Vancouver Art Gallery.

Close up of some of the brightly coloured lego towers in the art exhibit

below: 345 Modern House, 2014
One hundred identical houses built from a kit that was first issued in 1969.

A grid of white lego bungalows with black roofs with detached garages, green lego lawns and red fences.

 

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