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

> 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

> 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