Micah Lexier: One, and Two, and More Than Two
21 September 2013–5 January 2014
Opening: 20 September, 8–11pm
The Power Plant
231 Queens Quay West
Toronto, Ontario
M5J 2G8 Canada
Presented by BMO Financial Group
Curated by Gaëtane Verna
The Power Plant’s fall season features the work of Micah Lexier and the idea of artistic collaboration and its role in contemporary art practice.
One, and Two, and More Than Two presents a survey of significant work by Toronto-based artist Micah Lexier. United by his interests in temporal and graphic systems of organization and measurement, this exhibition brings together an important selection of recent work that reflects the artist’s diverse and dynamic practice. Featuring four solo large scale pieces, three collaborations, and one new, ambitious curatorial project, One, and Two, and More Than Two witnesses Lexier at all levels of his practice. Whether working individually (One), in a collaborative process (Two), or encompassing hundreds of different artists (More than Two), Lexier’s work evinces witty and playful reflections on the creative processes of making and presenting art.
At the level of One, this exhibition features personal projects such as Self-Portrait as a Wall Text (1998/2013). This self-descriptive artwork consists of a large graphic text that reads: “Self-portrait as a wall divided proportionally between this black type representing life lived and the remaining white space representing life to come, based on statistical life expectancy.” This seminal conceptual installation was originally produced by Lexier at the age of thirty-seven, it is now paired with an updated version made specifically for this show and both works are presented for the very first time in Toronto in the gallery’s clerestory. Likewise, Working as Drawing displays a selection of 470 working documents culled from the last thirty-two years of his own artmaking. Additionally, Lexier presents a new video installation titled This One, That One that explores concepts of collecting and ordering seen throughout the exhibition.
The gallery’s second floor is meanwhile devoted to Two: Lexier’s collaborations with writers, including Two Equal Texts, a complex anagram work made with Canadian poet Christian Bök; I am the Coin, originally commissioned in 2010 for Toronto’s Bank of Montréal Project Room, in which Lexier custom-minted twenty-thousand coins with a text by Canadian novelist Derek McCormack; and 1334 Words for 1334 Students (2008), a project Lexier made with a commissioned text by the Irish writer and Man Book Prize nominee Colm Tóibín—a short story that was as many words long as there were students in the Cawthra Park Secondary School in Mississauga.
At his most ambitious, however, is Lexier’s More Than Two (Let It Make Itself), a curatorial project that displays more than 200 new and recently created artworks and other art related objects by 101 artists/duos/collectives in and around Toronto, with a deep interest in process and form. Encompassing artists of all ages and at varying stages of their careers, Lexier presents his take on the wide-ranging, multi-generational portrait of a robust Toronto art community. In seeking to celebrate this expansive community, Lexier brings to The Power Plant an incisive look at the networks of creative production that surround it.
Accompanying this exhibition are two new publications—an artist book and an exhibition catalogue—published by The Power Plant and designed by Micah Lexier and Jeff Khonsary. More, Micah Lexier, working with fashion designer Jeremy Laing, created Coloured Dot Scarf Puzzle, a limited-edition artwork in four parts produced by and available at Drake General Store and The Power Plant.
Presenting sponsor: BMO Financial Group
Lead sponsor: Rogers Communications
Lead donor: La Fondation Emmanuelle Gattuso
Sponsors: Partners in Art and Drake Hotel
Support donors: Sarah Milroy and the Toronto Friends of the Visual Arts through the 2011 TFVA Achievement Award and the 2013 Founders Award, Terry Burgoyne, Victoria Jackman
Donors: Robin & Malcolm Anthony, Debra & Barry Campbell, Dr. & Mrs. Paul Chapnick, Rosamond Ivey, and Mr. and Mrs. Harry & Ann Malcolmson
