The White House is a studio space initiative that is a reaction to the dire workspace situation in downtown Toronto. Since commercial spaces are now popular for residential living, studio prices have risen and most recent graduates and practicing artists cannot afford a place in which to develop their work.

By renting a large residential house and converting bedrooms and common spaces into individual/shared studios, the White House provides an affordable working environment as well as a community centre for emerging artists within the city. By doing this we claim back the functionality of residential space left empty by loft-condo dwellers.

Since it’s founding in November 2008, The White House Studio Project hopes to motivate artists, create potential for collaboration and provide affordable working space. Through studio shows, art sales, community events and charitable donations we hope to generate revenue to make this studio project self-sustainable.

This current work continues to delve deeper into themes of psychedelia, death and self-indulgence. The drawings are filled with color and details, each drawing changing one to the next. The artists manage to create great variety in their work without loosing the sense of consistency in the collection.

This show runs until August 30 and, Wowee Zonk can be purchased at The Beguiling, Function 13, This Aint the Rosedale Library and Magic Pony. For more information on the collective visit their sites:

www.patrickkyle.com
www.chriskuzma.com
www.ginettelapalme.com

Currently installed in the Magic Pony window space is locale Toronto artist Melissa Fisher. Her piece explores the notions of mass and how people perceive it. Using minimalist techniques Fisher hopes to create a space that doesn’t dictate meanings but can experienced openly by the viewer. As you circle the piece the apparent mass begins to change, from three distinct vantage points the installation changes from a white void, to grid and then to single parallel lines almost existing in two dimension.

“All in all, “White Mass Perspective Test” is a test, an experiment. What the viewer finds within it to see is not necessarily inherent of the piece but mostly themselves.” –Melissa Fisher

McLeod uses digital rendering software to create his type of “digital painting”; he creates fantasy worlds that are meant to rouse feelings of recycled matter while hinting at the objects interconnectedness at the molecular level. You can see this influence in his piece City Flicker Stars, there is a cyclical quality to the work as water and skulls are ejected from a partial visible geyser. In a way it seems the city is returning to a more natural order. The fluidic shapes of the water contrast the harsh right angles of the buildings that are being engulfed. The cycle is completed when the passively floating cloud mimics both the shape of the water and the color of the buildings closing the cycle and creating the circle.

Michael De Feo takes a radically different approach to painting by using more “traditional” material in untraditional ways. Well known as a street artist, De Feo continues to reference this integral part of his life by continuing to use maps as his canvas. Now, however, he has begun to mount them on board and canvas, a reflection of the gallery world he has become a part of. His self-portraits are emotionally charged as he allows the paint to follow in drips covering his face. The portraits give the feeling of lost of self, the melting away of the old to eventually reveal the new. Although in this series the new has yet to appear, as I feel the artist is still trying to discard the masks of the past.

The show runs until August 29th, for information about Angell Gallery visit their website at:

www.angellgalery.com

In its 9th year Interaccess’ Emerging Artist Exhibition, turns its lenses onto the ever-increasing distractions made by new technologies. The exhibition is a chance for post-secondary or recent graduates to gain experience and exposure at the professional level while continuing to push the boundaries of new media art. This year the artist include, Roja Aslani, Erin Gee, David Han, Beatriz Herrera, Steve Shaddick, and Blake Williams who works create a distracting, but also compelling, environment full of question to which there may be no real answer.

The exhibition explore the daily split multi-tasking of people when it comes to interacting with new virtual technologies, form excessive email checking to social networking site to updating wikipedia. This type of work exemplifies all the ways people are distracted from focusing their attention and energy in a contemporary technological society. People are closely interacting with a growing number of technologies in their every day life, allowing them to collect mass amount of information, more then any previous generation. Now the question becomes how much of this outpouring of information truly is productive, and how much is useless trivia. The lines between reality and fiction begin to blur and the interactive work of the six artists encourages the viewers to reflect on their own technological interactions, and examine how their behaviors and knowledge has been shaped by it.

The works consist of digital projection, interactive new media sculptures, and enclosed video and sound installations. David Hans’ Looking Glass places the viewer in a state of irrationality. By stepping into the space the viewer becomes an active part in the work, triggering the sound and visual effects. As you stare into the looking glass, the piece distorts and changes your images creating a new shadow character, while the sounds of poetry begin to overlap and create a nonsensical collage of words. The viewer becomes overwhelmed by the distortions in sound and video, exemplifying the fragmentation in new media. All the works challenge the observer to question the information they are gathering through new media and to recognize the technological schizophrenia which is plaguing an emerging digital society.

Show Runs until August 15th, 2009 Gallery Hours:

Wednesday 12 — 5pm
Thursday 12 — 5pm
Friday 12 — 5pm
Saturday 12 — 5pm (during exhibitions only)

For more information about Interaccess visit their website:

http://www.interaccess.org/

Here’s a taste:

Cottage Fag Audio <-click for audio track

Bouabane graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design back in 2003, and now has found his way to Montreal to complete his masters at Concordia. For this exhibition Bouabane shows a series of work that focused around text and confronting stereotypes. The idea for the text is inspired by Bouabane family and the fact that he is photographing text made of ice speaks to the temporal quality of the words or stereotypes. This temporal quality of the ice echoes the medium of photography for this young artist.As  Bouabane takes photo in order to capture specific moments in time that only exist for an instant, he immortalizes these moments on film. I look forward to catching up with Bouabane in Montreal after he’s had time to stew in the world of the graduates, and to see what new steps his work will take.

www.kotamabouabane.com
www.jenbekman.com

Last night over a hundred artist types descended on the crew of good blood bad blood, a small retailer in Kensington market, promoting the works of the local emerging art talent. The night, like the store, was packed; the line up featured over 11 artists working in performance, video and installations. From the web cam confessions of Bita Joudaki to the camp fire stories of Joele Walinga and Alicia Nauta each artist brought something new exciting for the masses. Setting the mood of the night was the soft guitar of Matt Dunn and the raging beats of local drumming sensation Romo Roto. This is the first series of planned events to take place at this fledgling collective over the next few months. Collective organizer Reid Jenkins wants the space to create dialogue among Toronto’s young artists, “everyone that pays rent gets an equal say in what happens at the store, if 4 out of 8 say they don’t like something we won’t do it. Its really a democratic system”.

The store itself was created out of a need to create a voice for emerging artist, outside of the already established institutions. The group is fighting to create something that is dictated by their terms, at their level. The store operates by artist for artist; prices are kept fair with the customers mostly existing below the poverty line, which is the realm of the young artist. The collective hopes to continue to operate as long as they can, constantly updating their stock and personnel, creating an open and diverse network of people that connects emerging artists with their peers.

“Last night was a terrific success for me. We didn’t make much money (success number one) and lots of people showed (success number two) and it was disorganized enough to be an honest humble gathering of people who just want to sit down and listen to some things, or watch a tiny video.” – Joele Walinga event organizer