At the Galleries: Morrow Avenue

Some fun shows up at Morrow Avenue right now, like Lyla Rye @ Olga Korper, Dennis Burton @ Chris Cutts and a summer group show @ Peak Gallery. My reviews of these are up at Posted Toronto, and will be out in this Saturday's National Post. An excerpt:

1. Lyla Rye at Koffler Gallery Off-Site at Olga Korper Gallery
17 Morrow Ave., to Aug. 20
Lyla Rye’s Swing Stage is a must see — make that a must swing? — of the summer. Its webs of steel chains suspend a large, glossy black platform a few inches off the floor of Olga Korper Gallery. Slip off your shoes, step onto the platform and you’ll experience something akin to a bouncy-castle version of conceptual art as the chains sway your strides in unexpected ways. Wall texts outline Rye’s aim: namely, to call attention to the gallery space itself, which was once an industrial foundry. To underline this point, Rye has arranged the chains to mirror the building’s roof struts, and she’s provided a catalogue of the old factory’s wares, as well as a video projection of the locale past and present. (The projector wasn’t working when I visited, but I didn’t feel the lack of it — the material force of the structure is the main draw here.) Overall, Rye’s mix of context and content reminded me of how we’re forever treading on the past — if not on the shoulders of giants, then on the tiptoes of regular ol’ working stiffs like the hundreds of folks who produced electroplating supplies, generator sets and walrus hides (!) on this very site just 100 years ago. We might use the same space they did, Rye’s magnum opus suggests, but we’re forever at least a few unstable inches removed from their reality.

Read on for the rest at Posted Toronto.

(Image of Lyla Rye with her Swing Stage courtesy the Koffler and via the National Post)