August 15 – September 1, 2012
Opening Reception: Thursday, August 16, 6 – 9 p.m.
THE RED HEAD GALLERY
401 Richmond St. W., Suite 115
Toronto, ON, M5V 3A8
T: 416.504.5654
E: art@redheadgallery.org
www.redheadgallery.org
Hours: Wed–Sat 12–5 p.m
The Red Head Gallery presents guest artist Stephanie Cormier’s exhibition The GenMod: Hexes and Antidotes. This body of work continues the legacy of Cormier’s previous project, The Reconceptualized Universe of the Anti- Logo League Girls.
This new body of work addresses experiments in genetic engineering and the declaration of a new geological term, The Anthropocene, marking the evidence and extent of human activities on the earth’s ecosystems. The GenMod will comment on the future of humanity, specifically the species as a genetically modified being having modified life sources and altered enlightenment and aestheticism. The GenMod is part human, animal, plant and product, shaped by contemporary changes affecting our evolution such as new food processes and scientific breakthroughs.
These creations highlight the surreal divide between artifice and nature and find inspiration from both spirituality and contemporary ecological concerns. While questioning the means of production of necessities such as food, the project challenges proliferation and depletion and offers a glimpse of optimism in a largely bleak future. The factious concept rejects all systems such as capitalism and Christianity while borrowing heavily from ancient systems, witchcraft and science fiction and implementing them into an imagined future. Using largely the detritus of such rejected systems, the new world will promote the salvation and fetishization of objects. Simultaneously, these objects will act as talismans to remind us of a bleak past and will be transformed into antidotes for the future.