RE place RE quest
Angélica Teuta

April 6-May 26, 2012
Gendai Workstation,1265 Bloor St. West
Hours: Tue.-Sat., 11am-6pm

Opening Reception
Saturday April 14, 2012, 8-11pm

Unlike the neutral spaces of museums, art galleries and artist-run centres, the Gendai Workstation functions as a constantly evolving site of collaborative construction, installation, architecture and renovation. Artists, architects, builders, curators and others; magicians, chefs, and gardeners to name a few, are invited to contribute to the physical and theoretical development of the space. Changing the focus from a finished product to an ongoing process of construction and collaboration allows for a move away from reified forms of knowledge to a multifarious dialogue, which, at every instance, provides possibilities for improvisation and interrogating the underpinnings on which artistic and architectural forms of knowledge are built.

Colombian artist Angélica Teuta will be a collaborator-in-residence at the Workstation, working together with the two architectureDjs-in-residence, Anne Ehrlich and Jonathan Wong, to create a new site-specific installation RE place RE quest. Teuta’s own practice is well suited to this kind of collaboration; her work involves the creation of a dialogue between sculptural and photographic elements, and uses basic technology, projected and reflected light, small motors, machines, recycled objects and information to transform spaces into unique environments. Teuta’s installations challenge the notions of reality we have been taught or to which we have simply become accustomed, creating a context to encourage inquiry, wonder and reflection rather than passive acceptance.

RE place RE quest is presented in collaboration with the 25th Images Festival, April 12-April 21. This project with Teuta was facilitated and is supported by the Art Gallery of York University, who will be working with her later this year on a residency in preparation for their Fall 2012 exhibition Imaginary Homelands.

Collaborator-in-Residence

Angélica Teuta is an artist living and working in Bogotá, Columbia. She studied fine art at the National University of Columbia. Teuta creates installations using light, mechanisms, and spaces. Her most recent solo show, Scenes to prevent nightmares was shown at the Cases Reigner Gallery in Bogotá and the Des Pacio Gallery in San Jose, Costa Rica. Her other solo exhibitions have been at Centro Colombo Americano, Alianza Francesa sede Centro, and Cámara de Comercio in Bogota, Galería La Vitrina in Cali, the Central Library at the National University of Columbia in Medellín, and a site-specific installation in her own home. Her work has been included in group exhibitions in Chile, Columbia, Puerto Rico, Argentina and Brazil, and has been written about in Artforum and Artnexus.

ArchitectureDjs-in-Residence

Anne Ehrlich has worked as a designer on various architectural, furniture, and exhibition projects in Toronto, Vancouver, and San Francisco. Her sculpture and drawings have been exhibited at Helen Pitt Gallery, Access Artist-Run Centre, and Antisocial Gallery in Vancouver, and Larry Wayne Richards Gallery in Toronto.

Born in Mauritius, Jonathan Wong lives and works in Toronto, Canada. He makes spatial interventions through the notion of drawing that reinvent the notion of public space. In doing so he also explores issues of affect and collaboration. He has initiated a number of independent projects that temporarily appropriate various urban spaces (back alley, lobby of public institutions, etc…) to invite the users to reconsider their usual perception of those spaces. He has exhibited at the Gendai Gallery (Toronto), Larry Wayne Richards Gallery (Toronto) and the Eye Gallery (Toronto).

Graphic hype wo/man: Chris Lee, (WILDECORED)
Artistic Coordinator: Haley Uyeda

For more information, please contact Yan Wu at ywu@gendaigallery.org or 416.534.1693.