Fleishman Gallery

MARTINA EDMONDSON tells stories through nature

2010-11-06T11:37:00.000-07:00

>MARTINA EDMONDSON: Transfigurations

Opens November 5th 2010 7-9pm
At Fleishman Gallery November 5th to December 10th 2010

“A person suffers most by imagining their greatest fears that never eventuate. You lose yourself and then after great struggles, you find yourself again. This does not happen overnight, it takes a long time of looking at things in nature, objects, relationships, what is said and what is left unsaid – it all adds up and hopefully, in the end, it all comes together. Sometimes you have to keep turning that stone or twirling that twig or marvel at that just perfect feather and then you want to take all that to repair what is wrong in your world”.

Martina Edmondson is an emerging, multi-disciplinary artist based in Toronto and is a member of *new* gallery. She has exhibited at Latcham Gallery, The Textile Museum, Neilson Park Creative Centre, Propeller Gallery, OCAD Gallery, and is participating in a group exhibition with the W Collective, opening on November 26th at the Gladstone Hotel.

MONICA BODIRSKY explores histories and stories

2010-10-01T11:20:00.000-07:00

>MONICA BODIRSKY: The stories we tell ourselves ...

Opens October 1 2010 7 – 9pm
At Fleishman Gallery from October 1st to 31st 2010

The stories we tell ourselves… is an exhibition of mixed media works inspired by Victorian curiosities and Gothic storytelling. Bodirsky's work explores the process of how narrative enables the collection, destruction and resurrection of memories, experience and identity. By combining encaustic, fibre, pigment, objects, illustrations and photos, in unusual and sometimes spontaneous ways, the stories that unfold are cryptic yet familiar. The layered surfaces provide an archaeology of meaning through purely textural passages intermingled with written text; a marker of language and storytelling. Just as the Gothic novel explores the shadow side of human experience and emotion, so do these visceral combinations offer up the murky complexity of memory, meaning and personal histories.

Monica Bodirsksy is an emerging, multi-disciplinary artist and arts educator based in Toronto. A member of the *new* gallery collective, her works have also been exhibited at The Textile Museum, The Oakville Museum, OCAD Gallery, and the Spadina Public Library.

LEZLI RUBIN-KUNDA performs books

2010-09-14T12:01:00.000-07:00

>LEZLI RUBIN-KUNDA: Performing Books

Exhibited at the Fleishman Gallery September 14 to 29 2010

Lezli Rubin-Kunda, a multi-disciplinary artist currently based in Israel presents a group of videos that document book-based performances. In each work, she sets up a dialogue between the written text, and the realities of place and lived experience, intervening through drawing, materials and direct action. Along with the video works, ‘performed’ and ‘altered’ books are displayed in the gallery.

The exhibition takes place in connection with a book-based performance titled Realms of Knowing, taking place at the Hart House Reading Rooms at the University of Toronto on September 25th, and the accompanying exhibition for WIAprojects, at the Centre for Women’s Studies in Education (CWSE) at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) U of T (Sept 27th).

Video Programme:

Topographical Readings, 2007, Drawing over the pages of historical books on Jerusalem, the artist accesses the more primary landscape underlying the conflicted history and myth that cover the land.

The Consolation of Philosophy, 2008, The artist explores the relation between the disembodied truths of philosophical texts to the material world. Spices and foodstuff are rubbed or licked onto the pages, merging the two paradigms of knowledge.

Petal Preservation, 2010, In the artist’s backyard, petals are plucked and pressed between pages of an encyclopedia.

Erase and Dissolve,2010, Truths in texts are accessed only in fragments, over time. Obscured texts are exposed through erasure, or dissolved through rubbing.

Lezli Rubin-Kunda is a multidisciplinary Canadian/Israeli artist, whose site-specific performance work in Israel, Canada and Europe explores intimate connections to spaces and materials. Her performance videos have been widely shown at festivals and symposiums, including Toronto’s 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art www.lezlirubinkunda.com

ANNIE ONYI CHEUNG explores language, culture and gender in 'Mi'

2009-10-01T16:49:00.000-07:00

>ANNIE ONYI CHEUNG: Mi

Installation and video work presented at Fleishman Gallery

October 16th to November 20th, Opening Reception October 16th 7-9pm

Annie Onyi Cheung’s work in time-based and three-dimensional media explores themes of memory, identity, shame and vulnerability, as well as generational and cultural difference. She is drawn to concepts that can be investigated through experiential environments, unravelling imagery and narratives, and bridging gaps between disparate perspectives. Her art manifests as combinations of performance, video and installation.

This emerging artist is a recent graduate of Art History and Studio Art from the University of Toronto. The Fleishman Gallery is very pleased to present her first solo exhibition.
Please visit: www.onyi-ajar.com

The exhibition, Mi, includes a wall-mounted paper grid which documents calligraphy practice of elementary-level traditional Chinese vocabulary and family vernacular, examining each character’s construction and pronunciation. The video component, Untitled (She Me), features a dream-like narrative that is projected as a continuous loop. The video, presented as a triptych, attempts to reveal the various manifestations of femininity that compete within certain social structures such as family, gender and nationality. The video contains no dialogue, instead opting to communicate through a vernacular of gesture to find relationships between tradition, gender and identity. The subtitle, ‘She-Me’ refers both to the phonetic Chinese pronunciation of ‘wash rice’ as well as the self-reflective quality of the video’s world of interiors.

The installation will also be accompanied by a third element, a performance piece to take place during the opening reception. The live performance featuring both the artist and her mother, will further explore the complicated and conflicting notions of femininity and womanhood that influence and inform the artist’s relationships with her mother and with her cultures.

KAREN AUGUSTINE INTERVIEW w/Leslie Peters: To Serve and Protect

2009-06-07T09:51:00.000-07:00

> LESLIE PETERS: TO SERVE AND PROTECT
talismans for the home - an interview with Leslie Peters
This is a very wonderful series. And I have wanted, yearned, for an interview with an artist – both brave enough, and in touch enough – who would speak more to the metaphysical expressed in one's art practice, for an artist to speak to the experience of being an artist healer. And finally....

Read more at http://www.PossessionSessions.com
POSSESSION: All that is sacred in contemporary art

CHRISTINA BATTLE investigates the changing natural environment

2009-06-07T06:00:00.000-07:00

>CHRISTINA BATTLE: as storms take shape in the distance...
Opening: Friday, July 6th, 7-9pm
Exhibition runs to August 4th, 2007

Combining works on paper, film and video, as storms take shape in the distance… investigates the changing natural environment by imagining moments
when major storms strike.

Pulling from footage gathered by storm researchers and chasers, imagery is re-worked to consider the impacts of major weather patterns. The artworks re-create, collect and preserve existing ecological systems while imagining the impacts such events could have on the overall natural balance. Setting aside the effects of specific severe weather events which were an inspiration to the work, such as Hurricane Katrina (USA, 2005) and the South Asian Tsunami (Bandeh Aceh, Indonesia, Sri Lanka & others, 2004), as storms take shape in the distance…instead concentrates on the systems themselves and the precise moments when such storms hit. Reflecting on the global effects of natural disasters, the presented works seek to remind us how forceful the natural environment can be and how easily it can render us powerless.

Biography: With a B.Sc. in Environmental Biology from the University of Alberta and an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute, Christina currently lives and works in Toronto. Her artworks have been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto (LIFT), the National Film Board of Canada and the Toronto Arts Council. She has screened her films internationally in festivals and galleries including: The Images Festival (Toronto), The London Film Festival (London, England); The International Film Festival Rotterdam (Netherlands); White Box (New York City); The Foreman Art Gallery at Bishops University (Sherbrooke, QB); The City of Toronto’s Nuit Blanche 2006 and in the 2006 Whitney Biennial: “Day for Night” (New York City).

For more info visit: www.cbattle.com

LESLIE PETERS shares beautifully intricate and ornate talismans

2009-05-28T06:00:00.000-07:00

> LESLIE PETERS: talismans for the home

Opens March 28th 6-9pm

At Fleishman Gallery from March 28th - May 1st

Talismans For The Home is a series of small sculptural objects, created from items found and collect

ed within nature and the domestic environment. Each talisman is formed from sacred objects: domestic items imbued with meaning. For example, the artist’s great aunt’s spoon collection, her paternal grandmother’s silverware, relics collected from her maternal grandmother’s abandoned home, objects discarded or lost, found on beaches, in the streets, at the local goodwill and garage sales, gifted items, bits of glass and stones. These contemporary artifacts are combined with other cherished items found within nature; sticks, feathers, bones, seeds, shells and are ultimately bound together using twine, wire, leather and thread. Essentially these small sculptures are woven curios that contain the combined recollections and emotions of the individual artifact and the “charge” and intention generated by the artist through the creation process.

Toronto based artist Leslie Peters has been actively working in video, multi-channel installation, as well as curating exhibitions and coordinating cultural events for the past 12 years. Alongside her video practice she has been producing sculptural works that have rarely been exhibited.

Leslie was the featured Spotlight Canadian Artist at the 2004 Images Festival in Toronto where a retrospective of her work was shown and her installation becoming was premiered at the WARC gallery (Womens’ Art Resource Centre). The retrospective then toured to Peru where she presented her work in Lima and Cusco at the VAE8 Festival and in the fall of 2006 the retrospective was presented at Anthology Film Archives, New York.

ADRIENNE REYNOLDS takes us through sci-fi landscapes in her drawing series

2008-11-28T06:00:00.000-08:00

> ADRIENNE REYNOLDS: Cyborg Journeys

A drawing series presented at Fleishman Gallery

November 28th to January 10th, Opening Reception November 28th 7-9pm

In the drawing series, Cyborg Journeys, industrial and organic imagery morph into urban and sci-fi landscapes. Ink and gouache lines move in energetic patterns representing physical and mental travel, fragmentation and regeneration. Bolder marks give way to tenuous structures that are both conversely makeshift and impenetrable, jumbling references to the natural and manufactured. In the words of Donna Haraway “A cyborg . . . is a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction. . . Cyborgs are not reverent; they do not re-member the cosmos. They are wary of holism, but needy for connection. . .” These drawings explore a kind of searching for connection in a disjointed, fragmented space.

Adrienne Reynolds is a cross-disciplinary artist, who splits her time between New York City and Toronto. Drawing is a main part of her practice, along with work in sculpture, video, painting, and site specific installation. Thematically, her work deals with ideas around connection and disconnection through exploring psychological, emotional, and physical spaces. Questions around a nature/technology dialectic also inform much of the work, including how we navigate dualisms in an increasingly cyborgian world.

Born in Minnesota in 1966, Adrienne has shown in Chile, Mexico, Serbia, Brazil, Toronto and most recently at the Kitchen in New York City. She served on the Board of Directors for A Space gallery in Toronto for two terms. She has a Masters from Parsons (2008) and is an Associate of the Ontario College of Art (1991). Grants/scholarships include Ontario Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts, the Parsons Deans Graduate Scholarship and the LCU Foundation grant.

LEZLI RUBIN-KUNDA, performance documents presented at Fleishman Gallery

2008-10-17T06:00:00.000-07:00

> LESLI RUBIN-KUNDA: Outside In

Opening Reception: Friday October 17th 7-9pm

Lezli Rubin-Kunda is a multidisciplinary artist who uses live action, as well as installation, drawing, photography and video to explore her relationship with her surroundings.

The three video pieces presented here, all deal with a place. Through simple spontaneous actions and activities, using the materials of the immediate surroundings in interaction with the artist’s body, they connect to different sites, each with its physical, as well as symbolic, cultural, or metaphysical dimensions. Two of the works are created from documentation from performance festivals. In Down to Earth, the artist digs up earth, carries it through the streets and then descends into an old wine cellar where she acts and plays with the earth and other local produce and debris.

The third and longest work, Housekeeping, is an extended meditation on the reality and concept of home. It is comprised of 11 short video ‘poems’, each one related to different aspects, both material and philosophical, of the artist ‘s relation to her home in all its complexity. Home is the place of living, working , daydreaming, a rich and fertile ground for creating.

It is the hearth, and I am like the goddesss Hestia, guarding the domestic realm; it is the meeting place between sacred and profane space; it is an arena of daily life, from the trivial and banal to the most transcendent: sometimes a trap, sometimes a shelter. Seeing the house as a performance arena blurs the boundaries of art and life, of domestic and artistic pursuits; when I set up my camera every action becomes fraught with layers of significance.

In these works, any assumptions of home as refuge, as order against the chaos, as domestic vs wordly - are reexamined. Rootedness and permanence are brought to question: human constructs cannot keep out the inevitability of flux and dissolution. The built world and the natural world continually fuse, shifting positions.

The artist holds a BA from the University of Toronto in Interdisciplinary Studies, and an MFA from the Boston School of the Museum of Fine Arts. She currently lives in Israel, teaching in the Architecture and City Planning area at the Technion, Haifa, Israel. www.lezlirubinkunda.com

PAM PATTERSON explores mortality in her work "Travelling", presented at Fleishman Gallery

2008-06-20T06:00:00.000-07:00

> PAM PATTERSON: TRAVELLING

Presented at WonderWorks Fleishman Gallery from June 20^th to June 30^th

^{Performance and Opening Reception Friday June 20^th 7 – 9pm}

The shift from being one person to being another person is what I call travel... Those of us who are “world” travellers have the distinct experience of being different in different “worlds”... The attitude that carries us through is [a] playful [one]... We are not worried about competence. We are not wedded to a particular way of doing things. We are there creatively... (Lugones 1990: 396)

Travelling as exhibit/performance continues my work in and around mortality. As a person who has chronic health issues and is mobility challenged, travel is a difficult and problematic task. Travel, though, also implies for me, an informed action, a journey of re-discovery, re-historicizing, a ritual re-making. The site is the body - my body. Projected mages of my feet moving in and through various locations mark like various biopsies my "travel" through and past these issues. At the opening, I will perform an action/exchange, I will take up this investigation as a "dance" and in dialogue. To accomplish this, I have traveled to London, UK, St. John's, Newfoundland, and into the body - my body - in play as I continue to reconfigure the self.

Pam Patterson has, for 25 years, been active in the health, art and women’s communities. Her research, performance and teaching have focussed on embodiment in art practice, the “body” in art, women and health, disability studies, women’s studies and feminist art education. As a performance and visual artist she has exhibited and performed with Leena Raudvee in Artifacts and solo internationally. Her recent work A Cellu(H)er Resistance : A Body without Organs? was presented by FADO in Toronto 2008.

LEENA RAUDVEE on her work, presented at Fleishman Gallery

2008-05-15T06:00:00.000-07:00

>LEENA RAUDVEE: STORM (2)

Showing from May 15^th to June 7^th

^{Opening Reception – Thursday May 15^th 7 – 9pm}

Water and waves constantly move stones and rocks on the beach, hiding, revealing, and sorting them. Over the course of a day, I moved stones from one area of the beach to another, mimicking the effect of a storm passing through.

For this exhibit, I am working in the space between two active interests - the use of the hand to physically mimic natural forces and the use of the hand to manipulate images. This tension creates a visual movement-as-metaphor. Pondering a recent onslaught of unwanted but valued things and their emotional weight, I began to investigate both the accumulation and release of things - objects both natural and human-made - metaphorically activated with/through handmade forces and images. This exploration takes form in large photo images and small framed collages both referencing rocks and the hand.

Leena Raudvee is a Toronto-based visual and performance artist. Her drawings, mixed media work and performances have appeared over the last 20 years in Ontario galleries. As co-director of Artifacts, a performance art company, she performed for the 7a*11d International Performance Art Festival in 2000 and at the V.MacDonnell Gallery. In 2006, she presented a performance, "the fear of pleasure", at the Collision symposium in Victoria, B.C.

SUE LLOYD renders perception in new works presented at Fleishman Gallery

2008-03-07T07:00:00.000-08:00

>SUE LLOYD: Void
Opening Reception: Friday, March 7th at 7pm
Exhibition runs through Saturday, April 5th
Gallery Hours: Tuesday-Saturday 11am-6pm

VOID, a solo exhibition of new works by Sue Lloyd, continues her interest in making “textually-based” work in a digital environment. Composed of existing images remixed from a wide variety of source material, the new works are large digital prints. Having begun with images of the sky, VOID arrives at a much less concrete place. By using existing imagery, the task of rendering appearances is de-emphasized and focus can shift to the rendering of issues less visible but more primary: speaking, knowing, seeing. Lloyd finds the rendering of perception more compelling than the documentation of visual appearance: landscapes and figures describe interior as much as exterior states of being.
"Viewing the thirteen images of Sue Lloyd’s VOID provokes a visual consciousness reminiscent of a haunting. Whether pleasurable or disturbing, the heightened memory states that haunt each of us retain a vivacity outside of linear time. Sue Lloyd’s digital remixed images quietly ambush us in a similar manner." Betsy Warland.

SUE LLOYD is visual artist who lives and works in Toronto. Her work has been exhibited locally and nationally; past solo exhibitions include Presentation House in Vancouver and Kamloops Art Gallery. Her work has also appeared in publications including BRICK and Public. She has received Council grants and her work is represented in private and public collections. She is a past member of the Red Head Gallery, and the Out of the Frame and Giant-S Collectives. She received her M.F.A. from York University and teaches in the Visual Studies Program at University of Toronto.

Flock of Hands John Constable: Hampstead Heath, Looking towards Harrow at Sunset, 9 August 1823. Paintings of the Annunciation, PHAIDON, London 2000: Bedoli, El Greco, Gentileschi, Gerard David, Barocci, Murillo, de Zurbaran, Beccafumi, Vouet, Rubens, Poussin, Poelenburgh, Pittoni, Masucci, Procaccini; Giordano, Remi, van Poelenburgh, de Champaigne, Bougereau, Bordone, Veronese, Tiepolo, Strozzi.
Digital archival print, 23”x 28”, 2007

b.h. YAEL and JOHANNA HOUSEHOLDER present Approximations and Verbatim

2007-11-23T06:00:00.000-08:00

>b.h. YAEL and JOHANNA HOUSEHOLDER: Verbatim
Opening Reception: Friday, November 23rd, 7-9pm

Screening schedule:
Saturday, November 24th, 12-8pm
Sunday, November 25th, 11-6pm
Tuesday, November 26th to Friday, November 30th 11-6pm

Closing Reception & Talk: Friday, November 30th, 7-9pm

APPROXIMATIONS: parts 1 – 3
Three videos by Johanna Householder & b. h. Yael

The Mission, Colour, Video, 4 min 21 sec., 2000
With the exception of one brief sequence, this tape is a shot-for-shot recreation – edited in camera – of the opening scene of Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 landmark film, Apocalypse Now, with Johanna Householder in the role of Captain Benjamin Willard. By replacing Sheen’s body with her own, Householder probes subjectivity and the processes of identification as b.h. Yael duplicates Vittorio Storaro’s Academy Award™ winning cinematography Dogme style.

December 31, 2000, Colour, Video, 7 min. 22 sec., 2001
December 31, 2000 is a shot-for-shot recreation of the pivotal scene in Stanley Kubrick's classic 2001: A Space Odyssey in which Dave dismantles HAL, the renegade computer. But on December 31, 2000, Kubrick's apocalyptic dream has not yet been realized. The domestic scene supplants the space station, and household appliances become the conduit through which we enter the mainframe. In ironic reversal, the failure of the future is exposed.

Next to Last Tango, Colour, Video, 7 min., 2001
Johanna Householder gets in a bag with Francis Bacon, Bernardo Bertolucci, Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider, re-reading the infamous “butter scene” from the highly controversial 1972 film which, according to Pauline Kael, "changed the face of an art form." b.h. Yael equally faithfully records the action. Commissioned by Trinity Square Video for the Trans>Sex>Tech Residency.

VERBATIM, Colour, Video, 7 min. 45 sec., 2005
The work recreates the opening scene of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, with shot-for-shot faithfulness. When Gibson released the film in time for the Easter screenings of 2004, it had already received an enormous amount of pre-publicity around Gibson’s vaunted goal of going for verisimilitude, which included the cast speaking in Aramaic and Latin, but didn’t exclude the studio set for the garden of Gesthemene, flooded with smoke and blue light, or the previously unreported presence of the Devil (herself) on the Via Dolorosa.
‘Our strategy is to open up the question about accuracy versus interpretation, a tactic that Gibson used to ensure that the conservative Christian audiences, for whom it was made, would approach The Passion with proper, uncritical reverence. But then Pope John Paul II agreed: “It is as it was,” he was reported as saying in the Wall Street Journal. This version just is.’

Biographies:
Both b.h.Yael, and Johanna Householder are professors of Integrated Media Program in the Faculty of Art at the Ontario College of Art and Design.

Johanna Householder has been making performances and other artwork in Canada since the late 1970s. She was a member of the notorious, satirical feminist performance ensemble, The Clichettes, who performed under variable circumstances, throughout the 1980s. Householder has maintained a unique performance practice, often collaborating with other artists. She is one of the founders of the 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art, and with Tanya Mars, she co-edited Caught in the Act: an anthology of performance by Canadian women, YYZ Books, 2004.

b.h.Yael is a Toronto based filmmaker, video and installation artist. Yael’s work has exhibited nationally and internationally and has shown in various settings, from festivals to galleries to various educational venues. Her works have been purchased by several universities. These include Fresh Blood, A Consideration of Belonging, In the Middle of the Street, and Trisk-aidekaphobia. In 2006, Yael premiered Palestine Trilogy, three videos that focus on activist initiatives, addressing the politics of Palestine and Israel in sites of solidarity. Yael has just completed Trading the Future, a video essay questioning the ways in which secular culture has embraced apocalypse as inevitable.

DEANNA BOWEN reframes African American Christian spirituality in 'Hymnals'

2007-05-11T00:01:00.000-07:00

>DEANNA BOWEN: Hymnals
Opening: May 11th, 7-9
Exhibition runs to July 1st, 2007

Hymnals is a conceptual photo series that revolves around the artist’s efforts to reframe African American Christian spirituals as nomadic “road songs” within the greater contextual framework of the Black diaspora. Over the passing centuries, the spiritual has determinedly prevailed as both vehicle for subversion and transcendental tool. Accordingly, Hymnals relies upon an understanding that despite Christianity’s problematic history, African-American slaves and freed blacks have found refuge, solace, strength, and at times, education within the black church for generations.

Bowen collected the pictured hymnbooks in the summer of 2006 while shooting her upcoming experimental documentary about her great grandparents’ migration from a cotton plantation in Alabama in 1911. The photos are part of a larger conceptual project Gospel; an interdisciplinary work that illuminates the interconnected spaces of slavery, Christianity, race, gender and sexuality. This project takes criticisms of black Christianity into account while looking to the long-standing intersection between Canadian and American slave histories as an artistic starting point. Once completed, Gospel will premiere at the University of Toronto’s Graduate Student Thesis Exhibition in April 2008. Bio: Deanna Bowen is a Toronto-based media installation artist. She is a graduate candidate in the University of Toronto’s Masters of Visual Studies Program and received her Diploma of Fine Arts from Emily Carr College of Art and Design in 1992. Her work has been exhibited nationally (Toronto, Chatham, Montreal, Regina, Vancouver) and internationally (Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy) in numerous film festivals and galleries. She has received several grants in support of her artistic practice, most notably from OAC, TAC, Toronto Lesbian and Gay Community Appeal, Telefilm Canada and BC Cultural Services. In addition to artistic production, Deanna has also worked in the cultural sector for over 10 years at organizations such as the Images Festival of Film, Video and New Media, InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Centre, the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto (LIFT), Point of View Magazine, Women in Focus Arts & Media Centre, and the Inside Out Lesbian & Gay Film and Video Festival.

For more info visit: www.deannabowen.ca

Violet Spectrum by ELIDA SCHOGT

2007-02-02T06:00:00.000-08:00

>ELIDA SCHOGT: VIOLET SPECTRUM

Opening Reception Friday February 2nd 7-10pm
Exhibition runs daily to February 6th

Violet Spectrum is a mixed media installation that reflects on the act of photographing to remember the fragile nature of life and the power of the earth’s elements. We don’t learn the specifics of Violet’s story, only the fact that her photograph is from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. Violet Spectrum is a memorial to one individual -- an homage to a young girl who once had her whole life in front of her.

Presented in one room, Violet Spectrum is comprised of a single channel projection on one wall – a simple pairing of fire footage and the photograph – flanked by a 300 lb. block of ice on one side and a small African violet plant on the other. The ice and houseplant are each illuminated by ultra-violet bulbs. The sound of a young girl’s breath appears to fuel both the fire and the slow fade in and out of the photograph.

One girl, whose existence has been eclipsed by the Holocaust, is briefly acknowledged by name and face. The ice block serves as a tomb for the unknown girl – for Violet – and countless others like her. Set against the austere qualities of the fire and ice, the fragile houseplant is an echo of the girl’s short life.

Biography: Elida Schogt uses conceptual premises, formally experimental techniques and poetic visual language. Whether installation or film, the work explores the theme of memory; uses scientific or historical inquiry as a tool for seeking truth; and, ultimately relies on metaphor to distill complex human processes into clear and coherent forms. Elida has an MA in Media Studies from the New School for Social Research in New York. She is best know for her debut work – a critically acclaimed trilogy of short films dealing with Holocaust Memory – Zyklon Portrait (1999), The Walnut Tree (2000), and Silent Song (2001)

DEANNA BOWEN at WonderWorks Fleishman Gallery, November 3rd, 2006

2006-11-03T06:00:00.000-08:00

>DEANNA BOWEN: (truth)seer

The WonderWorks Fleishman Gallery is pleased to present the installation of Deanna Bowen’s single channel projection (truth)seer from November 3rd to December 9th 2006

(truth)seer is a dreamlike experiment in story telling that plays with time and narrative with the use of audio design and symbolism. The work conceptually examines the ways in which time distorts as individual consciousness mutates. Bowen developed the 18-minute looping video (truth)seer during a three year period of personal and creative exploration. Using the allegory of David and Goliath, (truth)seer constructs a symbolic depiction of spiritual transformation through a triumph over an array of personal issues and the expansion of consciousness. The work reinterprets the story through live action 16 mm footage, hand drawn characters, and digital animation; recasting the central characters as identical twins to metaphorically propose that both characters are facets of the same person, thus transforming the narrative into a struggle within the self.

Deanna Bowen is a Toronto-based media installation artist. She received her Diploma of Fine Arts from Emily Carr College of Art and Design in 1992 and is recently completed her Master’s Degree in Visual Studies at the University of Toronto.

Her work has been exhibited nationally (Toronto, Montreal, Regina, Vancouver) and internationally (Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy, Spain) in numerous film festivals and galleries. She has received several grants in support of her artistic practice, most notably from OAC, TAC, Toronto Lesbian and Gay Community Appeal, Telefilm Canada and BC Cultural Services. In addition to artistic production, Deanna has also worked in the cultural sector for over 10 years at organizations such as the Images Festival of Film, Video and New Media, InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Centre, the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto (LIFT), Point of View Magazine, Women in Focus Arts & Media Centre, and the Inside Out Lesbian & Gay Film and Video Festival.

For more information on Deanna's work, please visit http://www.deannabowen.ca/

Opening Reception: Friday November 3, 2006 from 7-9pm