Fall 2015 exhibitions
26 September 2015–3 January 2016
Opening: 25 September, 8–11pm
The Power Plant
231 Queens Quay West
Toronto, Ontario
Canada M5J 2G8
The Power Plant is pleased to present three major solo exhibitions by renowned artists Dora García, Carlos Amorales and Mark Lewis for the gallery’s fall 2015 season. The broad spectrum of installations combines the international with the local and, although diverse, all speak to issues central to the city. While engaging with a range of international authors and theorists, Dora García’s installation I SEE WORDS, I HEAR VOICES also takes up the topic of exile, a discussion all too familiar for many of Toronto’s inhabitants. From the city’s industrial past to its current position in the global economy, García’s work provides a timely reflection on this subject and others. Carlos Amorales’ Black Cloud (2007/2015) recreates an ecological phenomenon of the Industrial Revolution by attaching thousands of black moths to the gallery walls—an eerie yet bewitching requiem for both the city’s industrial past and The Power Plant’s past life as a coal burning facility. Shot in various architectural landmarks within Toronto, Canadian-born Mark Lewis’ new films from his project Invention use Toronto’s urban landscape as a template for an imaginary world.
Dora García
I SEE WORDS, I HEAR VOICES
Guest curated by Chantal Pontbriand
Since 2009, Spanish multidisciplinary artist Dora García has been carrying out the Mad Marginal project, major stages of which were shown at dOCUMENTA (13) and the 54th Venice Biennale (2011). Her work examines the wellsprings of artistic experience, altering the traditional relationships between artist, work and viewer, as well as those of the individual, whose daily behaviour she questions through performance, film and discussion. The conclusion of the current stage of this project will be presented this season at The Power Plant.
Support Donor: Institut Ramon Llull
Carlos Amorales
Black Cloud
Guest curated by Christine Shaw
In partnership with Scotiabank Nuit Blanche
Carlos Amorales’ Black Cloud (2007/2015)—the first of The Power Plant’s Fleck Clerestory Commission Program projects—immerses spectators in a swarm of 30,000 delicate black moths, whose frailty and stilled flight contrasts with the sordidness of their forceful infestation. At once beautiful and unnerving, the black moths appear to have entered and enveloped the gallery through its iconic smoke stack. The work’s reference to the Industrial Revolution fittingly recalls The Power Plant’s history as a storage space for coal, as well as the gradual shift of Toronto’s waterfront from a space of industry to one of culture and tourism. Black Cloud stands as a poetic allegory should the concatenation of industrial metabolism, urbanization, climate change, and the extinction of species continue unabated.
Lead Donor: La Fondation Emmanuelle Gattuso / Jack Weinbaum Family Foundation
Support Donor: Consulate General of Mexico / AeroMexico
Mark Lewis
Invention
Guest curated by Barbara Fischer
In partnership with Justina M. Barnicke Gallery / University of Toronto Art Centre
Invention, which first premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in early September 2015, forms part of Mark Lewis’ most ambitious project to date. The exhibition centers on three new films shot on location in Toronto, each addressing the changing nature of the city’s urban core, as well as the origins and experience of the moving image itself. At a time when images proliferate across hand-held devices within a multitude of digital interfaces—and, not least of all, in the liquidity of visual messaging across architectural surfaces and advertising screens across the city’s urban core —Invention seeks to engage with the ways in which cinema revolutionized consciousness, both in the world of cinema as well as in our physical, quotidian world.
Lead Donor: Hal Jackman Foundation
Support Donors: Margaret C. McNee / Samara Walbohm & Joe Shlesinger
About The Power Plant
The Power Plant is Canada’s leading public gallery devoted exclusively to contemporary visual art. It is a vital forum for the advanced artistic culture of our time that offers an exceptional facility and professional support to diverse living artists, while engaging equally diverse audiences in their work.
