Showing posts with label daniel borins. Show all posts
Showing posts with label daniel borins. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Condo Craze fills TO Galleries this Week


Sometimes it seems like various galleries get bit by a conceptual bug at the same time. Such is the case with two Toronto shows right now: Sylvie Bélanger's Des Fleurs Pour Decorer at Birch Libralato and duo Daniel Borins and Jennifer Marman's Marmco International at YYZ Artists Outlet. There's even a real-life art-condo project this week to add to the art-life momentum.

In her show, Bélanger actually compiles the work of various artists into a model-suite-like arrangement. Her own videos hang on flatscreens in a pseudo living room. The best part of this show, I think, are the metal-plate signatures that Bélanger creates for each artist, as if each was branding a particular kind of condo layout. The show will be wrapped up with an auction this Thursday, July 23 -- though it's unclear what will be auctioned off. The ersatz business cards? The blank books covered with coffee-table-tome covers?

Borins and Marman, for their part, aim for that partly constructed, heavily signaged feel that condo construction and display-suite sites have. [CLARIFICATION: They intended a mall like effect, but since I live across from a condo construction site, I associated it immediately to condos. Apologies for any misunderstandings.] There's half built walls, open toolkits, hanging celebratory opening banners, the full commerce-in-process effect. They also hang an ersatz realty co. sign in the gallery window, a nice touch.

In an interesting twist, perhaps, local arts nonprofit Artscape has just started to blitz local papers with ads for their new real-life foray into real estate development. Set in the "Boheman Embassy"-ed area of Queen West, the Artscape Triangle Lofts offer "substantially lower monthly carrying costs compared to other new-build loft condominiums in Toronto" to artists. They even offer an "Artscape Mortgage".

Artscape's collision of artist culture and condo craze in Toronto is far from ironic. It's true that artists, like other folks around, need affordable housing. But given artist skepticism to commercialized "culture districts", as exemplified by Bélanger, Borins and Marman, I wonder who will turn up to Artscape's first qualifying info session on Thursday, July 23. No judgment here, just saying the timing is very ripe for real-life meets art-life comparisons.

All images from Sylvie Bélanger's Des Fleurs Pour Décorer from her website

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