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Four Generations in Four Square Feet
Sandwiched between Dufflet Pastries and Quasi Modo Modern Furniture on Queen Street West sits an art gallery in a sliver of a window. At nineteen inches wide, two feet deep, and more than eight feet high, it is the site of what may be Toronto’s smallest public art space. Called *QueenSpecific, this window gallery is programmed by Joy Walker and hosts a new installation every month or so.
The city has at least one other window gallery, and their genius is simple. Operating at street level, they are inarguably accessible—both physically and emotionally—having removed the inhibitive structural and cultural barriers between local members of the public and contemporary art. Their contents are viewed casually, perhaps accidentally. This is art you can take in alongside the summer sales in neighbouring windows.
Currently on display in *QueenSpecific is Molly to Molly by Toronto artist (and director of gallery MKG127) Michael Klein. A series of four photographs, it features four generations of women from the artist’s family. According to the artist’s statement, “the top three photographs each contain a pair of images of a mother and her daughter: Molly & Sharon; Sharon & Lainie; Lainie & Molly. The bottom photograph pairs an image of the youngest member of the family with the great grandmother for whom she is named.” These pairings of images are made possible through the unusual choice of medium, lenticular photography. Two images are printed on the back of a plastic, prismatic covering that visually separates the two. When viewed from different angles, the different images can be seen.
Torontoist spoke to Klein about his motivations for the work. “My cousin had a baby girl a little over a year ago. She was named after my grandmother who passed away about two years ago. Her grandmother (my aunt) passed away a year ago and only got to spend a very short time with her new granddaughter.” As for the medium, “It was something I’ve wanted to try but never had an appropriate project for it.”
The success of the medium for this application is clear. The artistry, and the artist’s intent, lies in the transitions—the in-betweens—as it shifts from one image to another. That’s where the shared and separate aspects of these women’s lives play out. It’s perhaps not the perfect transformation one would expect from the smooth digital executions we have become more familiar with. As you move your gaze back and forth, sometimes it’s an eye, or the mouth, or the glasses from one, that intervene on the other.
There’s also a required movement on the part of the viewer that you don’t realize you’re fulfilling; a rocking back and forth, or up and down, to make the visual shift happen. This same lenticular medium, and therefore the same audience activity, was employed in Teresa Ascencao’s 2003 exhibition “Maria,” at A Space Gallery. Her collection of small, sweetly composed diorama settings featured female dolls in staged scenes dealing with taboos in the Catholic faith. With important details changing in the images when you looked at them from the right angles, the gallery was filled with viewers bobbing up and down. This intuitive, performative act to activate the art lends itself naturally to the site of Molly to Molly. With its potential audience already passing by from one side to the other, the action is built in.
Molly to Molly can be casually viewed and happened-upon until July 27.
Photos by Michael Chrisman/Torontoist.