Another good review of our show at Clint Roenisch Gallery in this past Saturday's Globe and Mail paper.
Read it here.
Globe & Mail
FULL SERVICE. Hunter & Cook
Hunter & Cook is pleased to present
FULL SERVICE
*an exhibition of drawings and photos by 30 Canadian artists.
Opens Sunday December 20th 1-6
show runs until Jan 5th
All pieces are priced at $50
Artists are:
Seth Scriver
Niall McClelland
Eva Michon
Robert Dayton
Andre Ethier
Jason McLean
Jennifer Murphy
Mark DeLong
Shay Semple
Olia Mishchenko
Matthew Brown
David Poolman
Joe Becker
Thursday Friday
Kathryn Dingwall
Brad Phillips
Tyler Clark Burke
Romas Astrauskas
Jeremy Jansen
Mark Connery
Sandy Plotnikoff
Jay Isaac
Kineko Ivic
FASTWURMS
Michael Comeau
Josh Reichmann
Tony Romano
Aaron Carpenter
Morley Shayuk
Lorenz Peter
Jimmy Limit
Keith Jones
Alberto Guedea Zamora
Mark Connery
Alexander Irving
Shayne Ehman
Black to Back and Light (installation views)
This exhibit is up until Dec. 19, 2009
works by:
Jeremy R. Jansen
Niall McClelland
Richard Serra
Ellsworth Kelly
Clint Roenisch Gallery
944 Queen St. W
Toronto
For more information and images please contact the gallery.
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23-25.11.09 - "Black to Back and Light", Clint Roenisch Gallery
- despite the excitement, insanity and all-time fun, I managed to document some of the days proceedings...
Section E, Page 2
"Black to Back and Light"
Toronto Star, Monday's edition - 30.11.09
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"The exhibition list is a brain-grabber, to be sure: Richard Serra, Ellsworth Kelly and, oh, right, a couple of other guys. But Serra and Kelly, two proverbial monsters of Modernism, showing in a little private gallery on Queen St. W.? Cool.
That gallery would be Clint Roenisch's, and let it never be said that the proprietor doesn't know how to make a statement. Last year, Roenisch allowed British artists Heather and Ivan Morrison to excavate clay from a hole cut in the gallery floor to build a three-metre high mound of earth, crushed oyster shells and sumac branches by the gallery's front window. The resulting rough monolith stopped passersby in their tracks for weeks.
But such showmanship is really just good business, and while brand names like Serra and Kelly may get you through the door, it's the unknowns that'll keep you there. Their names are Niall McClelland and Jeremy Jansen, two 20something Toronto art world naifs more steeped in 'zines, indie rock and skateboards than this business of art. You may want to remember them, because it's hard to think they'll be unknown much longer.
The show is called "Back to Black and Light," and their work here is more than just promising; at times, it's commandingly good. I'm thinking in particular of a series of pieces by McClelland called "Tapestries," in which he has taken large-scale sheaves of paper photocopied flat-black, and folded and unfolded them in systemic patterns.
The fold lines crack the ink from the page, leaving pale traces of McClelland's literal handiwork; the resultant piece is fantastically engaging and very Modern indeed: simple, handmade and pure, engaged only in its own materiality and the ordering of space.
Add in the Minimalist overtones of the throwaway – copy paper and ink, tonnes of which hit our recycle bins daily – and you've got a tight little package that nods to recent art history with such natural grace that you might think it was unintentional.
But that's the charm of the pairing, really. It probably was. McClelland and Jansen are dead-centre in the Facebook generation, where virtual scenes are as significant as real, physical locations. Their community is found as much in the online, viral aesthetics of the 20-something cross-continental creative scene than right here at home.
Jansen's work has that same atavistic sense, inflected with the immediacy of his scene. Specifically, I'm thinking of an arresting three-metre shard of wood that quite intentionally resembles a telegraph pole, dominating the front gallery.
And the marquee players? You have to step into the back gallery to find a Kelly print, dangling quietly by one corner.
A Serra intaglio print, meanwhile, hangs on the wall opposite, the ink heavily textured and almost impossibly thick. It reminded me of an old Modernist notion, where artistic intent deferred to the material's urge to simply become."
Check out the full article HERE>
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Great way to start a week!
Construction
*Much thanx to everyone who came out for the opening of "Black to Back and Light".
Great fun, you all are beautiful.
Black to Back and Light
"Black to Back and Light"
Opening reception tonight (Nov. 25th)
7-9pm
Clint Roenisch Gallery
944 Queen St. W
Toronto
Reception
"Black to Back and Light"
Jeremy R. Jansen
Richard Serra
Niall McClelland
Ellsworth Kelly
25th Nov - 19th Dec, 2009
Opening reception 25th Nov, 7-9
Clint Roenisch Gallery
944 Queen St. W
Toronto
Showing some work at the Clint Roenisch Gallery later this month.
Can't wait... hope to see you there!
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Clint Roenisch is pleased to present Black To Back And Light, an exhibition pairing the young Toronto artists Jeremy Jansen (b.1979) and Niall McClelland (b.1980) with two works by the senior Americans Richard Serra (b.1939) and Ellsworth Kelly (b.1923). The exhibition, almost entirely black or grey, will contain photographs, folded drawings, large photocopies, bedsheet "skins", sprayed stencils on paper, silkscreens, a newsprint work and a sculpture.
Jeremy Jansen is known in Toronto primarily for his black and white photographs of bands, landscapes and urban situations. Recurring motifs of pattern, opacity, diffusion, gloaming and chiaroscuro pervade much of his imagery. Also to be shown for the first time is a new sculpture of wood, staples and organic matter that has been meticulously built up and aged over the past several months to resemble an old fragment of a "gig pole;" the much-used telephone pole used downtown for announcing shows and cultural events. Niall McClelland's work, meanwhile, radiates aspects of texture, process, geometry, formal elegance and hinted-at rituals (particularly in the "bedsheet skins", which resemble batik but are made with a more restrained, black and grey palette than the usual full-spectrum excesses. Richard Serra is a titan of sculpture whose works have been shown continuously around the world for decades. His analogous works on paper project a similar heft and balance to his trademark steel sculptures. Ellsworth Kelly is widely known for his work with colour and shape. When Kelly's geometric abstractions were first exhibited in 1959, they were already perceived as having "hard, crisp edges (that) commanded the eye to feel them as the hand would feel soft flesh" (E.C Goosen, Sixteen Americans - Moma).
For more information and images please contact the gallery.
(Poster by Colin Bergh, image by Jeremy Jansen)
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- NEWNEWNEW -
Park Life, my latest newsprint project... another bad ass addition to the Seer family.
Super psyched how this one turned out - best yet!
Thanx to Niall Layout & 381 projects.
(all you have to do is ask)
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