Derived from an old parable, the term PARDES, meaning ‘orchard’ in Hebrew, has come to symbolize the realm of Jewish mysticism. In the legend entitled Four Entered the Orchard, four great sages who enter the esoteric practice meet different fates: one dies, one loses his mind, and one forsakes the Jewish tenets. Only one enters in peace and leaves in peace.

Developed by Toronto-based curator Liora Belford, PARDES brings together four Israeli sound and multi-media artists to investigate notions of mysticism, heresy and the occult from secular perspectives, as they relate to contemporary society. With new and recent works, they examine the mythological aspirations of military technologies, gender ideologies within ritual practices, the collapse of conventional social models, and the impact of marginalized voices on mainstream cultural traditions.

Drawing a parallel to the machine-like Ophanim angels, Nadav Assor examines the obscure undercurrents of drone development: ambitions of unbridled motion, omnipresent vision and remote-controlling power. Amnon Wolman explores gender in Judaism with a sound-embedded prayer shawl, while his sculptural audio book transcends language, lifting it to a different form of expression. Ira Eduardovna’s audio/visual piece juxtaposes chorus-sung reflections on the Apocalypse to a TV sitcom-inspired family scene – a comment on society’s decline and crumbling ideologies. Nevet Yitzhak’s audio/video installation processes archival recordings from the Israel Broadcasting Authority Arabic Orchestra (1948-1993), creating a new composition based on marginalized traditions.

Through a variety of media and artistic approaches, PARDES explores the myth of concealment and mystery that shrouds the path to spirituality, questions our search for heroic figures, and examines the individual’s need to relate to a collective intellectual realm.

Liora Belford is an MVS-Curatorial student at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design. As an emerging art curator who has had the opportunity to organize numerous exhibitions in both public and private institutions, Belford's curatorial practice spans the experimental sonic realm, where she investigates the relationship between sound and space.

Nadav Assor and Amnon Wolman will speak about their work on Sunday, September 21 at the Koffler Gallery at 2 PM. Nadav Assor creates videos, installations, performances, and objects. His work deals with the performed mediation of cities, bodies and personal narratives via appropriated military-industrial technologies. Amnon Wolman is an artist/composer who works in sound art, performance sound-art, composition and collaborative projects. They will discuss their works in the exhibition PARDES in the context of their broader practices.

Regular exhibition hours:
Tuesday to Friday, 12 PM – 6 PM
Saturday & Sunday 11 AM – 5 PM
Admission is free, closed Mondays and statutory holidays

Pardes is generously supported by Mifal Hapais. The Koffler Gallery gratefully acknowledges the support of the Toronto Arts Council, the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts.

Featuring "Undocumented: The Architecture of Migrant Detention" by Daniels Faculty alumna Tings Chak (MArch 2014) and "Pure Space: Public Space Transformations in Latin American Slums" by Elisa Silva.

This exhibition features the work of two architects working at nearly opposite ends of the Americas. Their respective projects look closely at the political and material economies of space that permeate public and institutional settings occupied by some of North and South America’s most marginalized individuals: the informal settlements within large urban centres of Latin America, such as Rio de Janeiro’s favelas or Medelin’s comunas; and the landscapes and interiors of Canadian detention facilities – the re-purposed motels, jails, and ‘processing’ centers where migrants and immigrants become ‘detainees’.

These are places largely occupied by individuals whose socio-economic and/or political status lies at the margins of sanctioned, mainstream society. Within these settings, the presence of design in its formal sense is largely unaccounted for – even disclaimed.  Bereft of spatial generosity, the minimum of what is deemed to be acceptable, purposeful, or merely adequate is too often realized.

In situations where minimal space is the norm – whether by design or by default – the expression of individual and collective identities is potentially thwarted, or is disallowed entirely. Everyday life likewise retracts in these contexts, as individuals encounter significant challenges to where they might appear and legitimately be recognized. 

While resilience is a characteristic of active engagement, it also can be an aspect of resigned acceptance of conditions that are not equitable or just. Importantly, Silva and Chak show us how tactics of resilience can, in the face of privation, absence or loss, allow the assertion of individual and collective identities to persist – and it is hoped, prevail.

Tactical resilience may be found in acts of design small and large. It is present in the ingenuity a detainee summons to create a birthday cake from meager ingredients, celebrating another year and refuting, if only temporarily, the negation of individuality and personal history the spaces of incarceration impute. It resides in the insight that co-opts the purely infrastructural imperatives of flood control, realizing the same margins engineered to serve as spatial impediments in the event of a flood can further community identity, if only seen differently as places for collective gathering.

Finally, even as Silva’s and Chak’s work directly challenges the established practices of the design professions – asking whether architects should be complicit in designing places of detention (Chak), or examining sites where the involvement of an architect, landscape architect or urban designer are often unaffordable luxuries (Silva), their projects also demonstrate that the architect’s analytical tools and methods of documentation are in fact quite resilient. They have deployed  these tools and methods to productively engage sites too often overlooked, or simply unaccounted for,  in contemporary design discourse. In so doing, they open up new kinds of agency for the designer and urbanist.

The Justina M. Barnicke Gallery is pleased to present An Introduction to the Language of Partial Seduction: Works by David Buchan. A beloved cult figure of Toronto’s contemporary art world, David Buchan rose to prominence in the 1970s and 80s as vocal and vibrant member of the city’s art and queer communities. With a multidisciplinary art practice that defied categorization, he merged the mediums of performance, photography, artists’ publications and video into his own unique campaign. Working closely alongside General Idea, Lisa Steele and Colin Campbell, Buchan was a central member of a generation of groundbreaking artists responsible for helping shape the contemporary art landscape in Canada.

Focusing on the theme of performativity as the uniting force in Buchan’s art, this survey is the first solo showing of his work in nearly two decades and marks the 20th anniversary of his untimely passing from AIDS-related causes. Buchan often operated under the alias of his alter-ego, Lamonte Del Monte, who was a vehicle for the artist’s investigations into the socio-political factors that influence the construction of identity. He was a pioneer in broaching critical media studies and maintained a complex practice that exalted the authorial power of the artist, using the methods of appropriation and drag to intervene and re-interpret prevailing conceptions of gender, sexuality and difference. With an electrifying presence, punk ethos and flair for fashion, Buchan’s works are emblems of a defining era in Canadian art, and remain highly relevant in the context of social media’s fetishism of self-fashioning and voyeurism.

David Buchan (born February 11, 1950, Grimsby, Ontario; died January 5, 1994, Toronto, Ontario) was an artist and graphic designer. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts Honours degree from York University in 1972. He lived in Montreal, Quebec between 1972 and 1975 before settling permanently in Toronto in 1975. Beginning in 1975, he worked for Art Metropole in the capacity of Bookstore Manager and helped develop the institution’s archive and collection. In 1982 he was awarded a Canada Council Artist Studio in Paris, France. Buchan’s work and performances have been included in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Canada, the United States and Europe, including: Alte Oper (Frankfurt), Artists Space (NYC), Glenbow Museum (Calgary), Hall Walls Gallery (Buffalo), Mercer Union (Toronto), Museum of the 20th Century (Vienna), The Power Plant (Toronto), Vancouver Art Gallery (Vancouver), Western Front (Vancouver) and YYZ (Toronto). Works by David Buchan are in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada, Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, University of Lethbridge Art Gallery, Canada Council Art Bank, and Winnipeg Art Gallery, as well as private collections.

An Introduction to the Language of Partial Seduction: Works by David Buchan is made possible through the generous support of friends and former colleagues, and especially Steve and Patti Abrams, and AA Bronson.

This exhibition is produced as part of the requirements for the MVS degree in Curatorial Studies at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto.

Please visit the accompanying MVS Curatorial Studies thesis exhibitions, Communicating Vessels, curated by Corrie Jackson at the Blackwood Gallery, University of Toronto Mississauga, from April 16 – May 11 and Why Can’t Minimal, curated by John G. Hampton, to open Fall 2014 at the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery.

The Justina M. Barnicke Gallery’s programs are made possible by the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.

COMMUNICATING VESSELS
April 16 - May 11, 2014
Curated by Corrie Jackson

With works by IAIN BAXTER&, Luis Jacob, Roula Partheniou and Judy Radul

Opening Reception
Wednesday April 16, 5 – 8pm
Artist talk with IAIN BAXTER& and Roula Partheniou at 6:30pm.
***A FREE shuttle bus will depart from Mercer Union (1286 Bloor Street W) at 5:30pm and return for 9pm.

Communicating Vessels brings together three generations of Canadian artists from a range of backgrounds and disciplines, with works from 1965 to the present day. These works offer an examination of visual associations that are held by familiar objects and how these assumptions, when disrupted, force a self-conscious renegotiation of the body in its environment. The everyday experience of being in the world is not one of aware perception as consciousness forgets its own phenomena, allowing itself to be constituted by familiar glances. This moment of aware interaction, found in the re-presenting of familiar objects as means of bringing attention to the assumptions of looking, is taken up in the work of IAIN BAXTER&, Luis Jacob, Roula Partheniou and Judy Radul.

Click here for the exhibition brochure.

This exhibition was produced as part of the requirements for the MVS degree in Curatorial Studies at the University of Toronto's John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design. For more information, please visit /admissions/programs/master-visual-studies.

Presented by the Blackwood Gallery and the Masters of Visual Studies (MVS) Program at the University of Toronto.

The Daniels Faculty invites students, faculty, staff and the public to Eyeball, the annual Visual Studies undergraduate art show. This year’s show will be on Friday, December 6 from 6-9pm at 563 Spadina Cresent.

Eyeball is a one-night show featuring projects from Visual Studies undergraduate students.

Click here to view a gallery of previous Eyeball exhibitions.

T412 explores twelve housing projects by Winnipeg-based 5468796 Architecture, spanning a full spectrum of user groups, demographics, ownership models, and unit typologies.

Looking through the lens of various data, the exhibition examines the parameters, limitations and inspiration for 5468796’s work in the context of Winnipeg — a conservative civic environment where private developers and public agencies are largely concerned with the bottom line, and unconventional ideas are always measured against safer or cheaper options. In many cases, these limitations are what drive and inspire 5468796's design approach.

This exhibit highlights the importance of an architect's ability to work with municipal regulations, finances and costs of all building systems, and to use resourcefulness and innovation in order to achieve more with less. Through T412, the compilation of raw data for completed and in-progress projects will pave the way for further study, analysis and the development of future work.

ABOUT 5468796

Over the past five years 5468796 Architecture has become recognized on architecture's international stage. From its base in Winnipeg, Manitoba, the firm has received numerous honours and awards for realizing buildings that are breathing new and exciting life into the local landscape and encouraging people to take notice of their surroundings.

This exhibition is open from 9:30 AM - 5:00 PM, Monday to Friday, until April 4, 2014.

The John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design is pleased to present:

ALMOST EVERYTHING
With works by: Lorna Bauer, Nicole Collins, David Court, Deborah Kirk, Josh Thorpe, and Blake Williams
Curated by: Julia Abraham

Almost Everything presents six alumni of the Master of Visual Studies program at the University of Toronto. Basing its title on the notion of measure, the exhibition problematises quantifiable arrangements through repetition, layering, and circulation of materials, moments, and potentials. The exhibition presents the concept of accumulation by means of spatial absorption, repeated re-contextualization, limitless gesture, compiled material, and masses of imagined volume.

The running dog perpetually covers ground in Lorna Bauer’s Always Running Forever; the almost monochromatic paintings of Nicole Collins leak light in-between masses of wax, while her audio work represents black as a compacted, layered, and embracing sound; David Court’s green screen – that is not quite – opens a window onto an arena of potential, while his text outlines context for the perpetual arrivals and departures of artworks in an exhibition; multiple casted objects are shown in their absence in Deborah Kirk’s (A) Work in Progress; Josh Thorpe’s thread presents a linear composition of space while a luminous boat floats in the wake of layered light; Blake Williams’ shapeshifting platform curves into perpetually mutating dimension.

The exhibition does not necessarily function as a representation of the graduates of the program, but rather it demonstrates just one line of affinity running through these divergent practices.

Julia Abraham is a curator, writer, and artist from Toronto. She is currently the Curatorial Assistant and Collections Manager at the Blackwood Gallery. Recent work includes curatorial projects at the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery (Toronto), the Freie Kunstakademie (Stuttgart), the Barber Institute of Fine Arts (Birmingham, UK), and Gallery 44 (Sydney, Australia). Forthcoming writing will be featured in the Munich based Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon on the work of Gordon Lebredt and Suzy Lake, respectively. Julia has attended the College of Fine Arts at the University of New South Wales (Australia), and she holds a Master of Philosophy from the University of Birmingham (UK), and a Master of Visual Studies in Curatorial Practice from the University of Toronto.

Exhibition Dates: January 16 – February 14, 2014
Opening Reception: January 16, 7 – 9pm

Gallery Hours: Monday to Friday 9am – 5pm

Here be dragons is a curious phrase derived from medieval cartographic notation. The placement of dragons, sea serpents and other mythical creatures on maps indicated un-charted and likely perilous territory.

The 2013 student exhibition focuses on work produced within the option and thesis studios for Architecture, Landscape, and Urban Design. These studios are an opportunity for upper-level students to pursue and explore personal research sites. The work collected here constitutes a vast array of conceptual and practical approaches to design practice and representation.

The exhibition opening will also feature the launch of The Annual 13: Accumulation.

Held in the Eric Arthur Gallery, ONE FUTURE: The Daniels Faculty @ One Spadina, the show will exhibit detailed architectural renderings and models depicting the Daniels Faculty’s ambitious plans to renew and transform Toronto’s historic One Spadina Crescent.

 

ONE FUTURE: The Daniels Faculty @ One Spadina

The revitalized site at One Spadina will be the new home of the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design. When complete, the 19th century Gothic Revival building and a major new contemporary expansion and landscape will be a working laboratory and showcase for the city. One Spadina will be a world-leading venue for education, research and public outreach on architecture, landscape architecture, urban design and the visual arts. The project is being designed by Nader Tehrani and Katie Faulker of the internationally acclaimed firm NADAAA. Adamson Associates and Public Work are the architect-of-record and landscape consultants, respectively. ERA Architects are serving as the preservation architects.

 

Nader Tehrani is a leading figure in architecture and design today. Among other accolades, he has received a remarkable fourteen Progressive Architecture Awards, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Architecture (2002) and the Cooper Hewitt Award for Architecture (2007). Tehrani is also an influential pedagogue, and is currently Professor of Architecture and Head of the Department of Architecture at MIT. Katie Faulker, an architect who recently completed an MBA, joined NADAAA after 20 years of design and management experience in large scale planning, academic, institutional, and health-care projects.

For more information on the whole design team, including NADAAA, Pubic Work, Adamson and ERA, see: /press-release-one-spadina

ONE FUTURE: The Daniels Faculty @ One Spadina

September 12 – October 18

Eric Arthur Gallery, 230 College Street

For more information on the One Spadina project and the exhibition, visit: danielsdev.site

The exhibition “Kevin Roche: Architecture as Environment” will run until July 6, 2013.

“Kevin Roche: Architecture as Environment” celebrates the work of the Pritzker Prize-winning principal of Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates (KRJDA), whose many famed projects include the Ford Foundation Building (1963–66), the Oakland Museum in California (1961–69), and the Union Carbide World Corporate Headquarters (1978-82) in Danbury.

The subtitle of the exhibition, “Architecture as Environment,” reflects Roche’s understanding of architecture as a part of a larger context, both human-made and natural, including symbolic systems and technological networks. For example, Roche’s Ford Foundation Building in Manhattan contains a 12-story plant-filled atrium, which was heralded as a great innovation when the building opened in 1966.

Roche's career spans more than half a century and two continents. He was trained at University College Dublin in his native Ireland during the early 1940s, and at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), where he studied with Mies van der Rohe in the late 1940s. Roche is also a former design associate of Eero Saarinen.

In addition to the Pritzker Prize, which he received in 1982, Roche was the recipient of the Gold Medal Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1990, and the AIA Gold Medal in 1993.

Curated by Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen

ASSA ABLOY is the lead sponsor of "Kevin Roche: Architecture as Environment." Additional support for the exhibition is provided by The Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Carolyn Brody, Elise Jaffe + Jeffrey Brown, and an anonymous donor.

Organized by the Yale School of Architecture.

A detailed essay on Roche's work and a review of the exhibit originally displayed at the Yale School of Architecture in 2011 was published in Places Journal. Read the full article here.