Past Program Years

PAST PROGRAM 2013–2016
A handy list of all of our exhibitions and special projects/events for our first three program years as TYPOLOGY

2013–2014

ERRATIC ROOM  Nov 19–Dec 19, 2013 (extended through March 2013 due to Director’s maternity leave)
Lyla Rye (Toronto)
Immersive video installation and new limited edition photo series through which the artist explores spatial perception and its physical and psychological effects. Curated by Shani K Parsons. Support for this exhibition provided by the Ontario Arts Council. Related events: Artist & Curator in conversation, all ages Buster Keaton film screening, and artist-led collage and button-making workshop.

THE ORDER OF THINGS  Apr 24–May 31, 2014
Leif Low-Beer 
(Brooklyn, Toronto)
Multi-part compositions of drawings, collages, assemblages, and sculptural tableaux through which the artist evinces a keen interest in the mark of the hand, relationships between objects in space, and the active engagement of the viewer. Low-Beer’s first solo exhibition in Canada. Curated by Shani K Parsons. Related events: Afternoon with the Artist, all ages artist-led sculpture workshop, participation in Doors Open Toronto.

2014–2015

OF OTHER FACES  September 18 – October 25, 2014
Andrea Cohen (Paris) + Wiska Radkiewicz (New York), Victoria Fu (Los Angeles), Marta Ryczko (Toronto), Manuel Saiz (Berlin)
Group exhibition of five artists who employ strategies of mirroring and doubling in their photographs, sound works, and video installations to investigate the paradoxical nature of our dualistic world. First exhibition in Toronto of work by international artists Victoria Fu and Manuel Saiz. Related events: Artist talk and screening by Berlin-based artist Manuel Saiz, sound art intensive workshop led by Paris and New York-based artists Andrea Cohen and Wiska Radkiewicz, and all ages mask-making workshop with Toronto-based artist/designer Marta Ryczko. Curated by Shani K Parsons. Technical and community support for this exhibition provided by Dunn House B&B, NAISA, and Vtape.

ELEMENTAL  Nov 7 – Dec 14, 2014
Cathryn Miller (Saskatoon)
Solo exhibition of unique and editioned book works and a new wall-based installation representing a sustained
investigation into manifold worlds encompassing inner/outer, micro/macro, and meta/physical dimensions. Curated by Shani K Parsons. Related events: artist-led paper folding workshop, all ages holiday star-making workshop.

A RIVEDER LE STELLE  Jan 22–Feb 22, 2015
Mary Hambleton (New York), Sara MacLean (Toronto)
Two person show of rarely seen works on paper by the late New York painter Mary Hambleton and a video installation by emerging artist Sara MacLean. Curated by Heather Nicol. Taking its name from the final line of Dante’s Inferno (1314), A Riveder le Stelle (once more, to see the stars) is conceived as a virtual conversation between two artists separated by time, place, and practice, who nevertheless share a mutual interest in the body, the scientific gaze, and the sense of wonder such scrutiny engenders. Related event: all ages body tracing workshop led by artist-curator Heather Nicol.

FLIGHTS & LANDINGS  Mar 12–Apr 19, 2015 (stairwell installations extended through May 2016)
Tamara Gayer (Brooklyn), Christine Gedeon (Berlin), Janine Miedzik (Toronto)
Two-part exhibition of work by three multidisciplinary artists from three different cities. Known individually for their visually striking, site-responsive approaches to installation, the artists share a lifelong fascination with cities and the built environment, symbolic representations of both in maps and signs, and commercial methods and materials of related trades. Featuring a large-scale installation by each artist in the stairwells at Artscape Youngplace (the Flights), complemented by smaller sculptures, collages, and stitched drawings in the project space (the Landings). Curated by Shani K Parsons. Related event: Community wall art project faciliated by artists Murat Saman and Melissa Fisher. Exhibition and event support provided by Artscape Youngplace and Artscape Gibraltar Point.

THE NEW GODS  May 7–Jun 14, 2015
Alejandro Garcia Contreras (Chiapas, Mexico City), Josée Pedneault (Montreal)
Cross-continental collaboration examining fantastical rites of spring that have emerged spontaneously within Carrillo Puerto, an isolated village in the mountains of Chiapas in southern Mexico. Large-scale photographs and highly detailed small sculptures and paintings capture and extend the villagers’ Good Friday transformations into an alternate pantheon of deities and demons existing in opposition to the highly codified characters of the traditional Passion play. Curated by Shani K Parsons. Related event: all ages mask and helmet-making workshop with artist Paddy Leung. Exhibition made possible by the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and the National Council for Culture and the Arts of Mexico. A Featured Exhibition of the 2015 Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival.

2015–2016

THE LOWEST RELIEF  Aug 21–Sep 27, 2015 
Maria Flawia Litwin 
(Toronto)
Intimate solo exhibition featuring wycinanki, a Polish papercutting tradition, to weave stories layered with personal memories, social history, symbolism and mythology. Related events: Afternoon with the Artist, Fall kickoff celebration with music by Ewelina Ferenc (courtesy of Kosa Kolektiv), a Polish papercutting workshop led by Maria Flawia Litwin at Paperhouse Studio, artist’s talks and exhibition tours in conjunction with Koffler Gallery Art Bus tour, Culture Days and Gallery Hop. Curated by Katherine Dennis (Vancouver).

MOVING IMAGES IN CONTEMPORARY CULTURE  2015–2016 Event Series
Co-presented with the Images Festival
Series of peer-led roundtable discussions and workshops launched in October 2015. Event #1: Behind the Projection roundtable discussion on the changes, challenges, and advances in curating and presenting the moving image.; Event #2: The Space of Production featuring Victoria Brooks, EMPAC curator of time-based visual art (January 2016, presented in partnership with InterAccess at Small World Music); and Event #3: Contemporary Collaborative Strategies, a seminar with Sven Lütticken (April 2016, presented in partnership with Mercer Union and The Power Plant).

MOVING RIGHT ALONG  Oct 15–Dec 1, 2015 (extended through Dec 15, 2015)
Nicolas Fleming 
(Montreal, Toronto)
Site-specific installation that appropriates the visual language of design-build practices to challenge the white cube environment in which it is situated. Installation accompanied by two related wall-based artworks. Co-curated by Shani K Parsons and Oana Tanase, this is the first solo exhibition of work by Nicolas Fleming in Toronto. Related events: Afternoon with the Artist, all ages sound-based intervention for building-wide community event, Art of Darkness.

LOOSE ENDS Jan 14–Mar 6, 2016 
Mary Grisey 
(Toronto), Faye Mullen (Toronto; France), Jerome Nadeau (Montreal), Deborah Wang (Toronto)
Group show featuring sculpture, video, and photo-based works on the spaces between states of being, tracing the cyclical and vernacular places between appearance and disappearance, presence and absence, construction and deconstruction. Curated by Noa Bronstein. Related events: Afternoon with the Artist (Faye Mullen, Deborah Wang), Intuitive Sculpture: a fibre arts workshop with Mary Grisey at Paperhouse Studio (three sessions). Featured exhibition of the 2016 Toronto Design Offsite Festival.

CHINA NOW | Selections from Cinema on the Edge  Mar 30 and Apr 3, 2016 screenings
Bai Bin 
(Tibet), Chen Li-hua (Taiwan), Zhong Su (Hangzhou), Huang Xiang (Guangdong), JP Sniadecki (Chicago), and Xu Ruotao (Shenyang)
Organized by curator and critic Shelly Kraicer (Toronto), producer and distributor Karin Chien (Los Angeles), and filmmaker JP Sniadecki (Chicago), Cinema on the Edge is a program of 29 experimental moving image works representing the best of Chinese independent film festivals from 2012-14. Our selection of three animations and one feature documentary comprises work by filmmakers from across the mainland and Taiwan, providing a glimpse of the vastness of space, time scales, and cultural difference they experience in a country where censorship remains the order of the day. Both the evening and daytime screenings included an introduction by Shelly Kraicer, with Q+A featuring Kraicer and Karin Chien after the evening screening and kids’ Q+A after the Sunday animations.

SCRIPT, STAGE, SCREEN  Apr 1–May 1, 2016
Ciprian Muresan 
(Cluj, Romania)
Three experimental films by this internationally acclaimed artist, curated by Romanian-born, Toronto-based Oana Tanase. Through the use of puppetry, Muresan engages performative modes of writing, enacting, and visualizing both the absurd and the whimsical, bringing viewers into surprising discourse with both the ideals and failures of collectivity. The films are supplemented with selected artists’ books and publications that offer multiple perspectives on Muresan’s practice. This solo exhibition, the first to feature Muresan in Toronto, was presented as part of the 2016 Images Festival’s Offscreen program and produced with the support of Galeria Plan B Cluj/Berlin and Dekla. Related event: Images Festival Art Crawl.

ON THE SURFACE  May 7 – Jun 11, 2016
Susana Reisman (Toronto)
Large-scale colour photographs and several freestanding wood sculptures comprise Reisman’s latest findings from her multi-year investigation into the nature of wood. Painterly photographs of industrial wood finishing rooms contrast with playfully tactile sculptures evincing the vivid and varied marks of her experimental method of “drawing” into their surfaces with a table saw and chisels. Curated by Shani K Parsons. Support for this exhibition provided by the Ontario Arts Council. Related event: Afternoon with the Artist. Featured Exhibition of the 2016 Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival.

WORKING TITLE  Jun 16 – 19, 2016
Lyla Rye, Leif Low-Beer, Manuel Saiz, Cathryn Miller, Janine Miedzik, Josée Pedneault, Nicolas Fleming, Faye Mullen, Susana Reisman, Maria Flawia Litwin, Emily Cook, Christopher Manson, and Tamara Gayer 

Pop-up exhibition for the Toronto Art Book Fair (TOABF) featuring works by artists who have participated in past programs at TYPOLOGY. Images of their current projects along with extended labels discussing how and why each artist engages the book format will accompany the works in the exhibition. Related events: vendor table presenting additional artists’ book works, editions, and multiples for sale, and free all ages artist-led workshop in photobook making and binding on the front lawn at Artscape Youngplace. Workshop presented in partnership with Gallery 44, with generous support from the Japanese Paper Place.

Also:

IN HOUSE: A Benefit Exhibition  Mar 11–20, 2016
Nicole Collins, Pamela Dodds, Michelle Forsyth, Annyen Lam, Heather Nicol, Emma Nishimura, Shani Parsons, Ed Pien, Jonathan Scott, Penelope Stewart

Works by ten established and emerging artists made through experimentation and collaboration with Paperhouse Studio founders Emily Cook and Flora Shum. Each artist donated editions and TYPOLOGY hosted the exhibition and benefit evening in support of Paperhouse Studio and its educational programs.

PAINTER PROJECT – VERSION 4 | University of Guelph MFA Thesis Exhibition  Aug 20–27, 2016
Simon M Benedict 
(Toronto)
First of our newly launched Summer Sessions, a program initiated to support graduating students of art, art history, criticism and curatorial practice by providing space in downtown Toronto for their final exhibitions. University of Guelph MFA candidate Simon M Benedict presents painter project–version 4, a performative video installation that playfully and critically explores the portrayal of artists in biographical films.