Kristan Horton | Tabarium

(This arrived as an email yesterday. I'm not sure to what degree the event is "private", so I would RSVP before attending.)

Kelly Mark: Everything Is Interesting

[Kelly Mark]
Kelly Mark: Everything Is Interesting
Toronto, Canada: The Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, 2014
256 pp., 26 x 21 x 2 cm., hardcover
Edition size unknown

Edited and with an introduction by curator Barbara Fischer, this survey of mid-career work by Kelly Mark features new essays by Jonathan Watkins, Christina Ritchie and Dan Adler. It also features republished texts, reviews and interviews by: Robin Metcalfe, James Prior, Jenifer Papararo, David Liss, Brian Joseph Davis, Alan Dunn, Craig Buckley, Germaine Koh, Sara Krajewski, Ingrid Jenkner, Terri Whitehead, Jonathan Safran Foer, Kristan Horton, Micah Lexier, Gabrielle Moser, Christopher Régimbal, Robert Enright, Jen Graves and Eileen Sommerman.

A text I wrote for Mark's 2005 glow-in-the-dark poster for Glow House is also re-printed.

The title, co-published with Cambridge Galleries, Mount St. Vincent University Art Gallery, Kenderdine Art Gallery, and Art Gallery of Windsor, is divided into six categories of the artist's work: Installation/Intervention, Video, Sculpture, Photography, Drawing, Multiples/Audio/Misc. The latter includes posters, buttons, rubber stamps, CDs and records, cigarette lighters and wallpaper.

The title launches tomorrow night (Wednesday February 11th) at the the University of Toronto Art Centre. The reception begins at 8pm, with remarks at 8:15. Mark and several contributors will be in attendance.

Just prior to this, at 7pm, curator Sarah Robayo Sheridan will present a tour of her exhibition Sign, sign, everywhere a sign, featuring recent acquisitions that "captures the ways in which commercial graphics shape urban landscapes -- whether in the proliferation of billboards and screens, the identity of nations and institutions, or the visual logic of window display." Mark's video for Demonstration is included in the exhibition.

Everything Is Interesting will be on sale for $25.00 CDN.

For more information, join the Facebook group, here.

Les Rassembleurs

Les Rassembleurs, curated by Dean Baldwin, closes a week from today at MKG127. It is the gallery’s fourth “artist-curated” summer exhibition, following Toolkit by Germaine Koh in 2012, Chopped and Screwed by Hugh Scott-Douglas in 2011 and A - B, by Micah Lexier in 2010.  

The exhibition includes the work of 14 artists on the loose topic of intoxication and indulgence (Dean’s professional area of expertise). Several of the artists (Ken Nicol, Roula Partheniou, Michael Dumontier, Kristan Horton) have appeared on this site (see tags below) many times before. Other artists include Valérie Blass, Karen Kraven, and Roy Meuwissen from Montreal), Dean Drever from Kingston, John Marriott and Margaux Williamson  from Toronto, Radames "Juni" Figeroa (San Juan, Puerto Rico), Poonam Jain (Mumbai) and Sarah Peters (New York). 

I have two works in the show. One is a silkscreen text piece called Red Nose Semiotics, about a 1905 ballad which became a popular trope in early British comedies. Before one could show a character vomiting or urinating in public, the song Nellie Dean was the fastest cue to the character’s inebriation.

The other work is titled The Piano Has Been Drinking, after the Tom Waits song of the same name. Here an altered 45 rpm record plays the song off-axis, continuing the fiction of the lyrics, in which the singer claims to be sober. The audio for the piece can be heard here. 

For more information, visit the gallery site here, or a review by Terrence Dick, here. 

Kristan Horton | Dr Strangelove Dr Strangelove

Kristan Horton
Dr Strangelove Dr Strangelove
Toronto, Canada: Art Gallery of York University, 2007
208 pp., 6.75 x 12"., hardcover
Edition size unknown

After watching Stanley Kubrick's classic 1964 film Dr Strangelove [or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb] seven hundred times in his studio (it was the only video Horton had on hand), the artist began to attempt to produce an animated version of the film, using only found materials. Realizing that the stills had more resonance than a stop motion film might, Horton set about recreating every unique image in the movie, limiting himself to materials already in the studio.  A knife and fork become a B52 bomber in much the same way a pie plate would become a UFO in a low budget sci-fi film. The closing nuclear explosion is rendered with a cloud of popcorn. A snow covered mountain top is made with a plastic shopping bag and coffee grounds. A television remote on its side becomes a bank of computers and post-it notes become floor tiles.

The work was made between the years of 2003 and 2006, and the following year the AGYU presented an exhibition of the photographs (including a 'colourized' version) and this accompanying bookwork. 

For images of the works and installation views, visit the artists' website here. The book is available for $40 from the publishers, here.