The works are disconcerting due to the disconnection between title and aesthetic. The artist widens the meaning by adding his fingerprints, and there are also feathers stuck to the surface recalling the messy environmental business of oil spills. The reason for this cognitive dissonance was an intentional connection made by Scaglia during his research on El Fronton. The massacre – for which the island is known – left behind bullet holes in the walls of the cells in random patterns from which Scaglia forms symbols of this history like the patterns we call constellations. Scaglia\u2019s fourth work, titled “Golden II,” is an installation including an unstretched painting of the island painted entirely in shades of gold with a selection of rocks from the island placed on the floor with feathers. The rocks relate to the Land Art practice of the non-site in which elements are taken directly from the works location to act as off-site documentation. The rocks and feathers in Scaglia\u2019s works are appropriate punctuation for the research he did on El Fronton.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n On the upper floor of Corkin Gallery, Miles Gertler\u2019s installation Superlith<\/em> is displayed in the project space. His works of black and white paper architecture explore the power of architectural revisionist history. Gertler uses architectural renderings and archival photography to produce empty landscapes punctuated by structures to establish a political iconography of oppressive buildings. Architectural revisionist history has a history of its own driven by political leaders. For example, prior to WWII, Hitler employed architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel to redesign Germany\u2019s history through classical Grecian architectural iconography to produce an image of the nation as powerful and lasting. The buildings in Gertler\u2019s “Speculative Fiction” series are marble monoliths appearing in his scenes like the one in “2001 a Space Odyssey.” Some of the buildings resemble the concrete, cube structures of Le Corbusier, set atop thin columns to allow for movement beneath, some echo the forms of Russian Constructivist maquettes, as well as Classical sculptures and architectural forms.<\/p>\n In most of the prints, the buildings express no particular function and do not relate to the surrounding landscape; they are like foreign spaceships or sculptures of omnipotence. A scale model of one such structure titled “Superlith, Supralith” (resembling his other work “Seven, Hanging Gardens”) is installed in the project space populated with fiberglass molds in front of three panels including fields and distant monoliths. His largest work is a geological composite printed on wheat paste and gypsum panel.\u00a0 The study\u2019s title “No. 1, Zoom” is textured like marble, but the abstraction also presents like a pixelated photograph zoomed in too close.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.artoronto.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/rsz_1stellar_aereo_27_and_28.jpg\" "\\"rsz_1stellar_aereo_27_and_28\\"")
<\/a>Giancarlo Scaglia, Stellar Aereo 27 and 28, 2015, ink on Japanese paper mounted on canvas, 118 1\/16″ x 125 15\/16″<\/p>\n<\/a>Giancarlo Scaglia, Golden II, 2015, acrylic on canvas (78 11\/16″ x 110 3\/16″) with rocks from the island of El Fronton<\/p>\n<\/a>\u00a0Miles Gertler, Seven Temple (top left); Seven, Pyramid (top right); Superlith, Superlith (bottom left); Superlith, Mothership (bottom right), 2015, each: digital collage on cotton paper, 22.9″ x 22.9″<\/p>\n<\/a>Miles Gertler, Seven, Hanging Garden, 2015, digital collage on canvas, 40.8″ x 40.8″<\/p>\n