Summer Exhibits

Burtynsky’s Photographic Lens Captures Oil Extraction at ROM

(ROM) The Royal Ontario Museum’s Institute for Contemporary Culture hosts an examination of one of the most important subjects of our time, by one of the most respected and recognized contemporary photographers in the World. Edward Burtynsky: Oil features fifty-three beautiful and provocative large-format photographs by internationally renowned Canadian artist Edward Burtynsky. His images explore the hotly-debated effects of oil extraction, our international dependency on the substance, and with an unflinching eye, Burtynsky presents us with the reality of oil production as its role in our civilization undergoes massive transformation. Burtynsky’s photographs render his subjects with transfixing clarity and detail. His extensive exploration is organized thematically into three distinct groupings: Extraction and Refinement, Transportation and Motor Culture, and The End of Oil.

Descriptive audio for Edward Burtynsky: Oil is available, made possible by Accessible Media Inc.

Edward Burtynsky: Oil is presented by the Ryerson Gallery and Research Centre, the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival and Scotiabank Group. Edward Burtynsky: Oil is organized by the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and made possible with the generous support of the Scotiabank Group.

Read an exhibit review by Murray Whyte, Visual Art Critic, in the Toronto Star, 6 April 2011 http://www.toronto.com/article/680082

Edward Burtynsky: Oil runs until August 21 in the Roloff Beny Gallery, Level 4, at the Royal Ontario Museum, 100 Queen’s Park. For hours and more information, call 416-586-8000 or visit www.rom.on.ca.

PHOTO

Edward Burtynsky at the Royal Ontario Museum with his “Oil Sands #6” from 2007, of an oil sands extraction site near Fort McMurray, Alta

Barbara Edwards Contemporary [gallery] presents a solo exhibition of selected works by Ukrainian Canadian conceptual artist Taras Polataiko, which are indicative of the artist’s concern with iconic moments in art history. In returning to the origin of the idea, Polataiko enters a dialogue with his predecessors, one that is at once reverent and subversive.

Concurrently on exhibition as part of Rearview Mirror at The Power Plant, the Glare Series (1995) revisits Kazimir Malevich’s geometric abstractions, albeit in the form of deftly painted glossy textbook pages. In his writings, Malevich defined the “additional element” as the quality of any new visual environment bringing about a change in perception. For Polataiko growing up in Communist Soviet Ukraine, access to these images was limited to textbooks, and so the artist paints the glare - the added element of his own perception.

Polataiko’s celebrated Cuts Series (2001) reconsider Lucio Fontana’s spatialist principles. Where Fontana slashed the painted canvas in an attempt to capture movement through space and time, Polataiko re-paints Fontana’s cut as trompe l’oeil, reinforcing surface and superficiality, an inversion of Fontana’s original intent.

In Human Locomotion, models re-enact poses from Eadweard Muybridge’s iconic stop-motion project (1887). While Muybridge used a rapid shutter speed to freeze his subject’s natural motions, Polataiko uses slow and long exposures to capture his models holding unbalanced positions. Through this inversion, Polataiko addresses the conditioning of humanity by technological advances.

In his multiples derived from the installation Light Works, the artist revisits the birth of conceptual art with Marcel Duchamp’s ready-mades. The installation created for the Muse d’Art Contemporain (2005) comprised a collection of light sources; their functioning controlled by ten individuals on bicycles peddling as compensation for minor offences. The conceptual working drawing and the ready-made included in this exhibition present a contemporary take on Duchamp’s concept that the “creative act is not performed by the artist alone”, but rather involves the spectator’s participation and interpretation as integral to the work.

Polataiko was born in 1966 in Chernivtsi, Ukraine. He studied painting, art history, and philosophy at the Moscow State Stroganov University of Fine and Industrial Arts, moving to Canada in 1989 to pursue a Master of Fine Arts at the University of Saskatchewan. Polataiko’s public exhibitions include Ukrainian Institute of America (New York); Künstlerhaus Schloβ Balmoral (Frankfurt, Germany); Center for Contemporary Art (Warsaw, Poland); Soros International Center for Contemporary Art (Kyiv, Ukraine); Art Gallery of Hamilton; Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art; Muse d’Art Contemporain; Winnipeg Art Gallery, among others and participation in international biennale. He is currently based in Lethbridge, Alberta.

Taras Polataiko gallery exhibition runs until July 30 at Barbara Edwards Contemporary, 1069 Bathurst St. Gallery Hours: Wed.-Sat. 11am-6pm (or by appointment). For more information, contact barbara@becontemporary.com or call 647-348-5110.

PHOTO

Light Works Multiple, 2005