Olia Mishchenko “untitled (Don Blanche)” 2011 pen and ink on paper (detail) one of four parts 22 x 30 inches
June 15 – July 14, 2012,
Opening: Friday June 15, 7 – 10 p.m.
PAUL PETRO CONTEMPORARY ART
980 Queen St. W. Toronto, ON, M6J 1H1
T: 416 979 7874
E: info@paulpetro.com
www.paulpetro.com
Hours: Wed – Sat 11 – 5 p.m
Paul Petro Contemporary Art is pleased to present new drawings by Olia Mishchenko and a new interactive sculpture by Nell Tenhaaf.
Olia MIshchenko was born in Kiev, Ukraine,1980, and moved to Canada in 1997. She studied architecture and art history at the University of Toronto before becoming a practicing artist. Mishchenko works primarily in drawing, ranging from miniature bookworks to large-scale wall works and actively works with several artist collectives on installations, sculpture, preformance and food based projects. She lives and works in Toronto, teaching at OCAD University (formerly Ontario College of Art and Design) in the Environmental Design Programme, as well as recent innovative and collaborative design and run architecture and new media projects for children at several contemporary art and design institutions including The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Oakville Galleries and OCAD U. Permanent collections include the Art Gallery of Ontario, The Doris McCarthy Gallery (University of Toronto), the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen’s University (Kingston, ON) and Osler Hoskin & Harcourt, Toronto as well as commissions for the MaRS Centre (University of Toronto), and St. Michael’s Hospital, Toronto.
Nell Tenhaaf is an electronic media artist and writer. She has exhibited across Canada, in the U.S. and in Europe. A touring 15-year survey of her work entitled Fit/Unfit was mounted in 2003 at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa (with catalogue). Tenhaaf has published numerous reviews and articles that address the cultural implications of biotechnologies and of Artificial Life. She has been a jury member for the Vida/Life art and artificial life competition based in Madrid since its inception. Tenhaaf is an Associate Professor in the Visual Arts department of York University in Toronto. Tenhaaf’s works created between 1989 and the mid-1990s were aimed at deconstructing the dominance in mainstream biological and biotechnology discourse of DNA as the “master molecule.” The discourses themselves have evolved since then. Later works attempt to represent some of the complex dynamics of life and involve the viewer as one element in a continuous flux. Tenhaaf’s latest work, WinWin, returns to the biotechnology interests of her work from the late 1980s.