“Today, we are living in dark times: borders are closing; there is a growing refugee crisis; identity, internationalism and citizenship are in turmoil,” remarks Sally Tallant. “Environmental challenges and the oppression of minorities in a society of pervasive gender inequality define this moment. We cannot let these uncertainties paralyze us, we must find a way to gain perspective and develop ways of seeing that allow us to build new hope. It is through art that we express our hopes and fears, and articulate alternatives and new possible worlds. Artists often speak out for the rights of people on the margins of society and now that we are facing a shift in how those people and margins are defined, we need artists to continue to be brave.”
Xaviera Simmons deploys photographic and sculptural works to explore the systems that have rendered invisible major aspects of the American narrative. Both Tania Candiani and Super Taus use objects and performance to offer critiques of cultural stereotypes and to explore personal and national identity. Ryan Gander employs comic reinvention to re-visualize a modernist sculpture; Andreas Angelidakis challenges the market through the redistribution of school supplies in a ‘donation drive’, and Siah Armajani responds thoughtfully to the current migrant crises with radical hospitality in the form of seven rooms. Environmental issues of ecology and waste are brought into sharp focus by Pascale Martine Tayou through a spectacular work comprised of multi-colored plastic bags. Iris Häussler re-presents a body of work that blurs the line between fact and fiction, challenging historical reinvention, while Jessica Stockholder combines symbiotic objects that require support from, and are dependent on other objects, to demonstrate the need for collaboration and collective action.
Presentation details:
Daniel Faria Gallery (Toronto) will present Iris Häussler’s Apartment 5 (2019) a studio reconstruction representing the late body of work of French immigrant Florence Hasard. In 1942, Hasard moved from Wisconsin to New York. Her legacy reveals the life of a reclusive artist living in exile and isolation, the mind of a woman traumatized and obsessed with her experiences during World War I. Location: Town Square, Pier 92.
In 1918, Belgian abstract sculptor, painter and founding member of the De Stijl group, George Vantongerloo, created Komposition Aus Dem Ovoid (Composition from the ovoid). Over a hundred years later, Ryan Gander comically revisits this artwork as an enlarged and swollen form made of up of ovoids covered in multi-color artificial fur balls, exhibited on a white plinth. Gander’s work, Het Spel (My neotonic ovoid contribution to Modernism) (2019) is presented by Lisson Gallery (London, New York). Location: Champagne Lounge, Pier 94.
