{"id":29020,"date":"2015-06-09T19:05:58","date_gmt":"2015-06-09T23:05:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artoronto.ca\/?p=29020"},"modified":"2018-11-21T13:18:17","modified_gmt":"2018-11-21T18:18:17","slug":"mindset","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/v2.artoronto.ca\/?p=29020","title":{"rendered":"Mindset"},"content":{"rendered":"

Art can be a great way to inform\u00a0people about public health issues. Mindset\u00a0<\/em>at Artscape Youngplace\u00a0<\/em>is a juried photography\u00a0exhibition about mental health. The crowded\u00a0show unexpectantly starts in the hallway of the second floor and spans both\u00a0sides from the door, so I decided to start from the left.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Installation view. Photo: Sunny Kim<\/p>\n

Claudette Abrams’\u00a0photographs\u00a0hang at the end of the left hallway. \u201cAddie & Max\u201d\u00a0shows\u00a0a girl and a boy. The realistic part of the picture has been cut off\u00a0under their eyes and the colors crudely dragged down,\u00a0suggesting some kind of distortion disorder. Jaene Castrillion documents\u00a0a young native woman’s\u00a0journey.\u00a0Her story comes to life\u00a0through three vertically displayed photographs:\u00a0she is hugging a scarred tree\u00a0while looking into the camera,\u00a0her arm with scars of cuts, and\u00a0standing at a beautiful\u00a0lakeside. The images suggest self-reflexion: a painful past followed by liberation.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Claudette Abrams, Addie & Max, 2015. Courtesy of Artscape Youngplace<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Jaene Castrillion, Reftections. Photo: Sunny Kim<\/p>\n

Marta McKenzie’s work, \u201cAnger Due to Lydia; Push to Reset; Bliss\u201d is\u00a0a series of photographs that\u00a0are\u00a0both personal and informative about mental health. Three photographs are repeated three times, to make a long horizontal nine-picture display. The first picture is a construction sign that originally said ‘Danger due to Demolition’. The letter “D” has been erased and the word ‘demolition’ has been replaced with the word ‘Lydia’, reading, ‘Anger due to Lydia’. The second picture shows a button that reads ‘Push to Repeat’. The third picture is a neon store sign that reads ‘Bliss’. McKenzie illustrates how\u00a0our ‘peace of mind’ is not a permanent state of our being, but a short-lived phase that takes hard work \u2013 one can easily slip in and out without precedence.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Marta McKenzie, Anger Due to Lydia; Push to Reset; Bliss, 2015. Photo: Sunny Kim<\/p>\n

The right side of the\u00a0hallway has quite a different atmosphere. Perhaps because it\u00a0is close to the guitarist playing psychedelic, ambient, and grim music, the photographs themselves seem to carry a similar overtone. Marco Buonocore displays a set of photographs that –\u00a0even though they were taken in daylight –\u00a0seem gloomy maybe because they are black and white. The pictures are of suburban houses, and numbered randomly 1, 4, 2, 5, 3. I still felt compelled to look at them in their numerical\u00a0order. Fences are the common theme\u00a0of\u00a0the photographs: classic white picket fences that both isolate and protect. In picture #3, the fence takes up half of the photograph; the sharp white fence paired with dark windows produce a rather eerie atmosphere. I can almost see a person in the window, peeking out\u00a0–\u00a0but it is\u00a0just my imagination, I hope. The dark stylization of these\u00a0images makes me think of a distant past, where hazy memories haunt the present.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Marco Buonocore, Untitled #3 (White Fence), 2010.\u00a0Courtesy of the artist<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Heather Fulton, Boiled, 2014. Courtesy of Artscape Youngplace<\/p>\n

Memories is what Heather Fulton deals with in her works as well. \u201cBoiled\u201d was perhaps the most interesting and complex piece for me\u00a0in this show, both in aesthetics and process. She describes how she intentionally damaged (by boiling) the film role, then went outside and photographed the world. The result is an intricate photo that could be mistaken for a micro-bacteria slide. It is not representational\u00a0but a quite heavily distorted view of reality. It is compelling because the camera itself had photographed something representational, only to result in non-corresponding images. This process speaks most closely\u00a0about mental health. There is always attempts in every patient’s life at wanting to be ‘normal’ \u2013 whatever that is\u00a0\u2013 but the mind is unable to cope or adapt. The cluster of ‘organisms’ in \u201cBoiled\u201d are moving, textured, and faded. However, it’s not faded in a meaningless, forgetful way: it’s faded in a focused, vignette-like way, like a faded memory we’re desperate to get back.<\/p>\n

Sunny Kim<\/p>\n

*Exhibition information: Mindset \/ Claudette Abrams, Marco Buonocore, Jaene Castrillon, Heather Fulton, Hayley Harrington, Marta McKenzie, Annette Seip, Carrie Steenburgh, Monika Szopinska, May 25 \u2013 June 13, 2015, Artscape Youngplace, 180 Shaw Street North, 2nd Floor Public Gallery, Toronto. Gallery hours:\u00a0Mon \u2013 Sun, 8 am \u2013 9 pm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Sunny Kim<\/strong><\/p>\n

Art can be a great way to inform people about public health issues. Mindset<\/em> at Artscape Youngplace is a juried photography exhibition about mental health.<\/p>\n

Read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29038,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,169,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-sunny-kim","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/v2.artoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29020","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=29020"}],"version-history":[{"count":31,"href":"https:\/\/v2.artoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29020\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41924,"href":"https:\/\/v2.artoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29020\/revisions\/41924"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/v2.artoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/v2.artoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/v2.artoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/v2.artoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}