{"id":16527,"date":"2012-11-23T14:13:33","date_gmt":"2012-11-23T19:13:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artoronto.ca\/?p=16527"},"modified":"2013-01-11T14:41:40","modified_gmt":"2013-01-11T19:41:40","slug":"summer-colours","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/v2.artoronto.ca\/?p=16527","title":{"rendered":"Summer Colours"},"content":{"rendered":"

Arsenal Toronto,<\/strong> a new art gallery in the city,\u00a0follows the traditions of modern, cutting edge New York City galleries and is a smaller version of its Montreal namesake.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Arsenal Toronto<\/em> is a converted lumber warehouse, situated\u00a0 within a residential Dundas West neighbourhood at 45 Ernest Avenue. The exterior is uninviting, box-shaped and sheathed in corrugated metal. As the viewers enter the gallery, they discover that the metal sheaths of the outside contrast with the smooth, sterile-white walls of its interior. The gallery is large, with polished concrete stretching out under high ceilings of exposed metal. It’s industrial-sized, minimalist aesthetic is ideal for large-scale abstract works.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Arsenal Toronto, installation view<\/p>\n

The grey palette of Arsenal Toronto\u2019s exterior emphasized the bright\u00a0hues of its Summer Colours<\/strong> exhibition.<\/p>\n

Visitors entered the gallery through a concrete, side-door into a small hallway and were\u00a0optically stricken by the yellow glare of Daniel Buren<\/strong>\u2019s Travaux Situes “C” <\/em>(1990).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Installation view with Daniel Buren’s Travaux Situes “C”<\/em><\/p>\n

This large art work abandons the traditional methods of art presentation. Traditionally, art is moved from gallery to gallery. Instead, Travaux Situes “C”<\/em> relies on the space which it is presented in.\u00a0The\u00a0work consists of a yellow painted entry wall, with hanging square wood forms and white strips.\u00a0It was re-staged and\u00a0assembled by personnel at Arsenal Toronto according to the the artist’s concept. Buren sent detailed instructions for the recontruction of Travaux Situes “C”,<\/em> requiring the application of a particular kind of paint and the hanging of the forms based on specific proportions. Buren challenges the idea of authorship by allowing others to re-construct his artworks, and by doing so, he\u00a0provokes the seemingly easy, but complex question we all sometimes ponder: What makes art, art?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Daniel Buren, Travaux Situes “C” <\/em>(1990). Photo: Marie van Zeyl<\/p>\n

Barry Allikas<\/strong> in his work All Along the Watch Tower <\/em>(2011) revamps a traditionally high-modern, non-objective kind of abstraction to embrace freedom in composition with lyrical forms. His hard-edged patterns in white, blue and red create a seemingly perfect composition where the eye moves smoothly around the canvas.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Installation view with Barry Allikas works<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Barry Allikas, All Along the Watch Tower <\/em>(2011). Photo: Marie van Zeyl<\/p>\n

The largest\u00a0room\u00a0was dedicated to the late Yves Gaucher<\/strong> as a tribute.\u00a0He passed away in 2000.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Installation view with Yves Gaucher’s works<\/p>\n

The viewer had to step back\u00a0in order to investigate the flat planes of antagonistic colours in Gaucher\u2019s large-scale canvases. The white frame of wall that surrounds the painting titled\u00a0\u00a0Reds and Ps<\/em> (1992) enables the viewer to experience the artwork with no distraction. However their eyes will not move smoothly across the canvas. This abstract work depicts colour blocks of bright and muted reds and yellows, that are unequal in weight and energy buiding an unusual spatial experience. Gaucher uses a diagonal and vertical line to disrupt the entire rhythm of the canvas. The diagonal line pushes the viewer\u2019s eye forward until the vertical line requires the eye to stop on a block of bright red colour.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Yves Gaucher,\u00a0Reds and Ps (1992). Photo: Marie van Zeyl<\/p>\n

The artworks of\u00a0 Summer Colours<\/strong>\u00a0were illuminated by both streams of daylight shining in from high-mounted windows and evenly spaced tubes of fluorescent light, suspended above the\u00a0canvases by wires. The gallery space is bare, void of benches. The minimalist aesthetic of the space compliments the geometric perfection that\u00a0all three artists\u00a0embrace in\u00a0their works.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Summer Colours installation view<\/p>\n

The exhibition at Arsenal Toronto by\u00a0Daniel Buren, Barry Allikas and Yves Gaucher\u00a0was jointly organized by Galerie Division<\/em> and Galerie Rene Blouin<\/em>. The show opened this summer\u00a0and was on dispaly between\u00a0June 27 and\u00a0October 27.<\/p>\n

Marie van Zeyl<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Marie van Zeyl<\/strong><\/p>\n

The gallery is large, with polished concrete stretching out under high ceilings of exposed metal. It’s industrial-sized, minimalist aesthetic is ideal for large-scale abstract works.<\/p>\n

Read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16553,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,75,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-marie-van-zeyl","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/v2.artoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/v2.artoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/v2.artoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/v2.artoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/v2.artoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16527"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/v2.artoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16562,"href":"https:\/\/v2.artoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16527\/revisions\/16562"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/v2.artoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/v2.artoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/v2.artoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/v2.artoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}