Second Annual Emergent Artists Exhibition

I recently visited the O’Born Contemporary‘s Second Annual Emergent Artists Exhibition at O’Born gallery on Ossington Avenue.  I was welcomed with a friendly and warm reception and guided to a catalogue that listed all of the artists involved, including work and aritist statements. 

Installation view with Yshia Wallace, Superorganism, 2011, porcelain and wire 32” x 48” x 72”. O’Born Contemporary, 2012

Installation view.  O’Born Contemporary, 2012

While the the entire collection was well curated and all pieces were weighted with significant interpretations and stories, there were two artists’ works I was particularly drawn to. The work of Charlotte Stewardson is described in the Exhibition Statement as the portrayal of “…similar concerns of psychological influence on physical space [that] is articulated through photographic heaps of body and cloth, a mountain range of both life and the inanimate objects of our everyday.” At first glance, I was unable to truly make out what the subject matter portrayed, which in turn, immediately encouraged me to draw in closer to solve this visionary puzzle.  Soon after, I was able to piece together objects and characteristics that would then complete the human form. Juxtaposed against the soft layering of the cloth added to the dialectic of “the peculiar in the banal” which could also suggest life and death; i.e. life against the lifeless. The composition could be described as an ‘organized chaos’. A homogeneous entity, that when viewed at a closer proximity becomes heterogreneous subjects. The body lacks an identity, concealing another reality that lures the viewer into a further curious state of thought.

 Charlotte Stewardson, Interrupted Landscape, 2011, Digital Print 12” x 48”. O’Born Contemporary, 2012

Lindsay Lauckner‘s work was the other luring piece, as the Exhition Statement says, “…photographs of estate sale homes focuses on the intermediate state of a home in transition, where remnants of previous inhabitants visibly fade to accommodate others. Lauckner’s images have a sense of stilling a time so briefly that it is otherwise likely to be forgotten.” The sentimental state of emotion through a  transition from old to new and from populating to evacuating, is vivid in her images. We see a history, but we can’t quite determine its narrative. She certainly has displayed “presence of life in the stillest of moments.” This photograph portrays a tryptic of portraits of (assumed) significant people, perhaps children of the home owners, yet we are still left to question ‘who and why?’.

Lindsay Lauckner, Painted Portraits, 2012, Digital Chromogenic Print Edition of 5, 15” x 22.5”. O’Born Contemporary, 2012

The opening on January 4, 2013. O’Born Contemporary, 2012

The opening on January 4, 2013. O’Born Contemporary, 2012

The opening on January 4, 2013.O’Born Contemporary, 2012

I urge the public to visit this exhibition before it closes on January 19, 2013.

Deborah Kanfer