Urtopia
Curated by Kelly McCray
August 16 Ð September 4, 2007
Opening Reception: Thursday August 16, 6 - 8 pm


left. Samantha Salzinger: Neuschwancastle, 2006. transparencies in 3d viewer right. Brian Dettmer: Itch with Service Angle, 2006. dissected book

Samantha Salzinger (Carol Jazzar Gallery, Miami)
Brian Dettmer (Aron Packer Gallery, Chicago)
Mark Bovey
Scott Chandler
Christopher Mandseth
Penelope Stewart (Edward Day Gallery, Toronto)
Matt Mincoff
Sara Graham (MKG 127 Gallery, Toronto)


The Edward Day Gallery is pleased to present the Urtopia group show, an exhibition of constructed interpretations of utopic worlds, wonder-worlds, breathing states of fantasy. Visions coined after Sir Thomas MoreÕs sixteenth century book Utopia that envisioned ideal states, settings, and environments. The exhibition title beckons to both historical and contemporary realities. 2030 Ð 1980 BC is considered to be the dates of one of the earliest known civilized cities in the world. Thought to inhabit more than 65,000 people, the city of Ur materialized out of ancient grounds, south of Baghdad, to provide one of the first physical centres of urban dwelling. Catapult leap years ahead to current forms of technological mass communication, mass control and the prefix Ur denotes a text messaging shorthand for "Your", or "You are".

Through technology, The mass populace now has the ability to construct inner worlds, technological fantasies, ideal identities Ð second lives that inhabit a constructed digital reality. In contemporary society the digital age encourages the Ur populace to embrace and inhabit the hand of God; to play the visionary, the artist, the creator. To construct conceptual personalized worlds that have little need for physical interaction. Little need for urban socialization. Part of the intention of the Urtopia exhibition is to ask how some artists are manifesting visions that allude to contemporary states of self-determination; contemporary states of Urbanization.

Florida-based Samantha Salzinger's larger than life-size wall viewer transparencies can be observed by one person at a time. Inspired by the original invention of the nineteenth century stereopticon and the 1960s ViewMaster, SalzingerÕs surreal presentation of landscapes or habitats of dismembered female body parts create a heightened sense of intimacy and curiosity. The physical construction of the viewing apparatus confronts the viewerÕs voyeuristic nature with much the same allure that a porn site provides on the personal computer, with the exception that her most inner worlds are located in a public arena.

Recent OCAD graduate, Matt Mincoff, confronts the technological age through the vision/construction of the postmodern city that swells with symptoms of disorder Ð symptoms of anxiety and McLuhanist angst. Mincoff states that "the postmodern city is made of the wired network that allows for its citizens the ability to be electronic super-humans". Data breathes, the dislocated central nervous system breathes, and when data respiration is impeded, anxiety is downloaded onto the more vulnerable human control mechanisms. MincoffÕs remarkable Electronic Breathing City speaks of the highly susceptible harmony needed for contemporary urban hard-wired environments.

Through her on-going body of work, BromleyÕs Bluff, Sara Graham has been creating a fictional city as "a representation of a hypothetical physical environment constructed through two and three dimensional scenarios". Through her architectural-like drawings of modules, urban living environments or constructions, Graham teases the viewer with apparent realities that are not utopic and can never be constructed. They are her vision of hypothetical environments that are in search of a function, in search of definitions and in search of human adaptability that will ultimately fail.

Christopher Mandseth, a queer-based installation artist at the University of Calgary, regards the human breathing mechanism with a wry sense of humour. In MandsethÕs pulsating video Raw, the viewer is confronted with amoebae-like shapes that penetrate one another. Anonymous, shapeless forms morph, pulse, merge, and pull away like a biographical breathing mass of Petri dish particles. Mandseth moves the world of sex, porn, and desire into an arena that regards a most basic human need as a microcosm of the cellular components of life.

In his Hotel Lobby Series of photobased work, Scott Chandler exposes the margins of public and private worlds through the documentation of hotel lobby suites in downtown Toronto. Chandler states that the actual wealth and luxury of the hotel lobby has been removed from most venues, replaced by a pretension to luxury. The hotel world creates a utopic entrance to your sleeping or visiting enjoyment by presenting a simulation of luxury and comforts of the home. This ideal environment co-exists with revolving doors, pay phones and security cameras that fuse public realities with simulated visions of private comfort, private desires.

At the opposite end of the spectrum Edward Day Gallery artist Penelope Stewart creates a miniature room of wax that is non-penetrable. We can see that breathing life, details of human existence and physical presence are encased within the environment. But we are unable to enter. Like SalzingerÕs work, the viewer is drawn into the intimate life and scale of the room, but unlike SalzingerÕs larger than life slide viewers or ChandlerÕs hotel lobby photographs, StewartÕs environment is encased, enclosed and constructed to resist public or private scrutiny.

Atlanta-based Brian Dettmer virtually excavates the life, memory, and fabric of an object the modern world has been reliant on, but whose life expectancy is rapidly diminishing due to technological advances: the all-too-familiar page of the book. With scrutinous surgical precision, Dettmer unearths and dissects the bound vehicle of information with knives, tweezers, and medical implements to carve, expose and re-contextualize the recorded memory. He is recreating an intricate sculptural world of penetrable texture and hidden meaning.

Another artist whose work features the pages of a book is Mark Bovey, whose photo-based Ledge_Suite is based on the discovery of an obscure relic of a ledger that survived over five generations of the artistÕs family, containing collected information by relatives living between 1895 and 1950. Each photograph is the amalgamation of a page containing fiber-based newspaper, magazine clippings, hand notes, scribbles from past eras, layered with BoveyÕs virtual images from the electronic highway, creating a personal world, a personal ledger of both an historical and contemporary palimpsest.

The Urtopic world seems to be a quest for the "You", the "Your", and the "You Are" in a contemporary age where individual realities are apparent everywhere but, like many artists are addressing, exist in a state of flux or in realities that no one person owns or really belongs to.

Mr. Kelly McCray
Co-director
_________________________
Edward Day Gallery
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Toronto ON M6J 1G8
416 921 6540
416 921 6624
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