Newsstand: February 9, 2010
Duly Quoted: Adam Giambrone
Bob Kinnear isn't Greg Kinnear
Newsstand: February 8, 2010
Scale Model City, Actual-Size Grime
Elegant Corruptions, the best-named art show in town, opened last night with resounding success. It's the second in a now annual series of exhibitions called Radiant Dark and the brainchild of MADE partners Julie Nicholson and Shaun Moore. As Nicholson told us, while the "radiant" part of that equation is probably clear, the "dark" might need more explaining. It refers to the "perceived obscurity of Canadian design"—the exhibits are something of a call to arms, a vivid demonstration of just how active a design community we have. (Toronto, as she points out, is the second-ranked city in North America for design work.) While the notion sometimes gets short shrift, Nicholson believes that there is undoubtedly a Canadian aesthetic, which she characterizes as clean, rooted in modernism, and "definitely concerned with a question of identity."
This year's installment in the series is devoted to the theme of transgression. "Elegant Corruptions" explores the idea that a little degeneration can be good thing, artistically speaking. It's "about trying to find the beauty in what can be ugly," said Nicholson, and based on the pieces we saw, there's no doubt many of the designers have managed to do precisely that. With more than seven hundred people in attendance last night, and several shiny "sold" stickers as proof that the love is backed up by money, Canadian independent designers have good reason to be hopeful.
We could gush about our favourites, but instead we've put up some photos so you can see for yourself.
All photos by Hamutal Dotan/Torontoist.
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I feel like I've seen chandeliers made of different sorts of drinking glasses (champagne flutes, beer bottles, and teacups, thus far) in lots of places. It's neat seeing one without the whimsy.
And that candleholder looks like a D/s toy for hot wax play.
What's in the teacups? Looks like hollowed-out sno-cones...
The sno-cone-y bits are, astonishingly, made from porcelain too. (I believe they are supposed to be reminiscent of salt.)
The artist, in case you want to track here down, is Toronto-based Taliaferro Jones.
*her
Thanks Hamutal, amazing that they're porcelain! They're so delicate and porous-looking - I wish I could touch them just to see what they feel like.
It seems like in the last five years or so more and more artists are doing unconventional things with porcelain. I've seen porcelain clothes, porcelain milk cartons, and all kinds of funky takes on traditional porcelain teacups, dishware, and figurines. My favourites are these porcelain necklaces that look like frozen splashes of milk (admittedly they also contain second-hand fur, which I guess is how the shapes came about).
Anyway, it's nice to see some Toronto design stuff, I sometimes forget to look local.