On Thursday, October 16, the Daniels Faculty will present The Architecture of the Image, a discussion featuring New York-based photographer Richard Barnes, artist and Professor of Visual Studies Charles Stankievech, and the Art Gallery of Ontario’s newly appointed Chief Curator Stephanie Smith. Part of the Daniels Fora series, now in its fifth year, this public event will be held at the Isabel Bader Theatre.
 
Social media has made the use of images to record our lives, curate our identity, and bear witness to events from around the world ubiquitous. At the same time, recent work in photography, art, and design has been combining the communicative power of images with fiction and narrative storytelling in novel ways, raising questions about our relationship to history, geographic distance, the dissemination of information, and the natural world.

The Architecture of the Image will explore the changing role images play in recent work in the arts that combine documentary and more fiction-based forms. Through their verisimilitude, the emotional impact of images can suspend our skepticism and effectively engage the limited attention spans that characterize contemporary consciousness. Yet even images that convey familiar subjects may give pause to long-held notions about the powers of observation and the status of documentary evidence.
 
Richard Barnes and Charles Stankievech are exceptional in their ability to interrogate documentary forms in their contemporary as well as historical guises. Together with Stephanie Smith we will explore the changing role that images play in contemporary works of art, design, and media, particularly in cases where images exploit the grey area between presumed truth and overt artifice.

THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE IMAGE
Thursday, October 16, 2014
6:30 – 8:00pm
Isabel Bader Theatre, 93 Charles Street West

Featuring presentations by:

Richard Barnes, Photographer, New York
Charles Stankievech, Daniels Faculty Visual Studies, Toronto

Respondent:

Stephanie Smith, Chief Curator, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto

Moderated by:

Richard Sommer, Dean, and Professor of Architecture and Urbanism at the Daniels Faculty

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This is a ticketed event. Attendees must RSVP via Eventbrite, and arrive before 6:20pm to claim their seat. A rush line will be available for non-ticket holders.

Stage furnishings provided by:

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ABOUT THE DANIELS FORA

The Daniels Fora series brings together different perspectives in order to raise the level of debate, build relationships, and stimulate discussion on issues related to art, architecture, urbanism, and city building. Each event presents vigorous, engaging, and accessible discussions of interest to students, alumni, and professionals, as well as the general public.

Featured speakers:

Richard Barnes

Work by New York-based Photographer Richard Barnes has been shown in solo exhibitions at such institutions as the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego, the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, the Carpenter Center at Harvard University, Cranbrook Academy of Art Museum, and the University of Michigan Art Museum. His works can be found in numerous public and private collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, The Cleveland Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Hirshhorm Museum and Sculpture Garden. Barnes has lectured extensively, including at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, Parsons School of Art and Design in Manhattan, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He served as adjunct professor/visiting artist at the San Francisco Art Institute and has taught at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco.

Barnes was a recipient of the Rome Prize 2005-2006 and his photographs of the cabin of Ted Kaczynski, aka the "Unabomber," were featured in the 2006 Whitney Biennial and awarded the Alfred Eisenstadt Award for Photography. He was the 2009 recipient of the Sidman Fellow for the Arts from the Institute for the Humanities at the University of Michigan. In 2010 completed a residency from Lightwork/Syracuse University. 

A monograph of his work entitled Animal Logic, published 2009, has received favorable reviews and was included in the American Institute of Graphic Arts juried competition/exhibition 50 books/50 covers in 2010. 

Charles Stankievech

Charles Stankievech is a Canadian artist whose research has explored issues such as the notion of “fieldwork” in the embedded landscape, the military industrial complex, and the history of technology. His diverse body of work has been shown internationally at the Louisiana Museum, Copenhagen; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; MassMoca, Massachussetts; Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal; Canadian Centre for Architecture; and the Venice Architecture and SITE Santa Fe Biennales. His lectures for Documenta 13 and the 8th Berlin Biennale were as much performance as pedagogy while his writing has been published in academic journals by MIT and Princeton Architectural Press.

His idiosyncratic and obsessively researched curatorial projects include Magnetic Norths at the Leonard & Bina Ellen Gallery, Concordia University and CounterIntelligence at the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, University of Toronto. From 2010-2011 (and again currently from 2014-15) he was hired as a private contractor for the Department of National Defence where he conducted independent research in intelligence operations under the rubric of the CFAP.  He was a founding faculty member of the Yukon School of Visual Arts in Dawson City, Canada and is currently an Assistant Professor in the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design at the University of Toronto. Since 2011, he has been the co-director of the art and theory press K. in Berlin.

Stephanie Smith

An accomplished curator, writer and educator with two decades of museum experience, Stephanie Smith joined the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) as its Chief Curator in August 2014. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, and a graduate of Rice University in Houston, Smith has held positions at Houston’s Contemporary Arts Museum and the Rice University Art Gallery in addition to internships at institutions ranging from the alternative space Capp Street Project, San Francisco, to the Menil Collection, Houston, to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

In her previous position as the Deputy Director and Chief Curator of the University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art, Smith led the museum’s intellectual, artistic and educational programs. Lauded for making contemporary art an anchor of the Smart Museum’s programs and profile through major exhibitions, artists’ commissions, and publications, Smith also acquired significant works for the Museum’s collection by artists including Adrian Piper, Kerry James Marshall, Michael Rakowitz and Zhang Huan.

Smith’s role at the AGO includes leading the Gallery’s curatorial team in designing exceptional art experiences that achieve its strategic goals. Her focus is on exhibition planning in addition to developing the AGO’s significant collections, positioning Toronto’s rich artistic community in the widest context possible.