Recently, I went to see O'Born Contemporary's first-anniversary show. Located on one of those many motley stretches of Yonge Street, O'Born space seems, from the signage outside, to have formerly housed a biz more grotty than glamorous.
Since cleaning up the space into a respectable-looking gallery, O'Born is most recognized, at least in the media, for showing and representing the work of Rafael Goldchain. Goldchain's Shermanesque self-portrait series "I am My Family" was published by in book form by Princeton Architectural Press last fall.
This summer, O'Born's group show includes a couple of newish artists whose work I enjoyed.
Alex Fischer is a younger artist working in the space between abstract painting, digital work and abstract photography. The concept seemed a bit dated to me at first, but Fischer pulls it off in his images, which provide many layers and dimensions to look at. Working in one range of hue—namely, grey—is part of what seems to help it function. But it's to Fischer's credit that you can't dissect these images easily—they split apart and integrate quite elegantly at times.
Also showing is young artist Alina Skyson. Skyson's imprints of expired Polaroid film on expired inkjet paper start, like Fischer's prints, with a tenuous, art-history-assignment formulation. But the abstract "prints" that remain are actually kind of nice to look at. In this way, Skyson's work seems a slightly updated version of Alison Rossiter's experiments with expired fiberbase papers, which were shown at Stephen Bulger Gallery in May. I can't grab any of Skyson's images of O'Born's website, but you can find some to look at here.
A work byDavida Kidd and a series by Detroit newcomer Kyohei Abe (who has also worked on an interesting, not-displayed project about "Detroit's Sacred Spaces") round out the show—they're not bad, but Fischer and Skyson were, for now, the most interesting to me.
Both images in this post by Alex Fischer from his website
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