Critical Distance FEATURING

FILM NOTES is a scent-infused screening series in Toronto presented by writer + curator Dhvani Ramanujam. Each program pairs a scent or a perfume with a different film, its specific notes psychically responding to, and embodying fragments of the selected film’s narrative, tone, landscape, mise-en-scène, or a relationship between characters. On June 23rd, the program returns for its second screening. Lina Wertmüller’s 1986 sensuous comedy, Summer Night with Greek Profile, Almond Eyes and Scent of Basil. A later Wertmüller entry, the film features a familiar star (Mariangela Melato as a bronzed blond tycoon) and a familiar theme in Wertmüller’s work: the crises of class warfare and gender politics distilled into horny sex games. The scent pairing will be revealed to those who attend…Find out more

This year, Critical Distance is turning 13, and while some might call it an “awkward phase,” we’re choosing this moment to celebrate how lucky we’ve been over the past 13 years.

It’s been our good fortune to collaborate with over 350 guest curators, artists, and co-presenting partners on 70+ exhibitions and curatorial projects, 30+ public art billboards, and well over 100+ art and educational events including screenings, performances, workshops, field trips, talks, and tours since opening our doors in 2013!

As we look ahead to our next 13 years, we’re asking for your support to keep the momentum going. If Critical Distance has ever supported, engaged, challenged, enriched, or inspired you, now is a great moment to give back. As a small arts organization facing real sustainability barriers, every dollar makes a huge difference in helping us continue to both provide, and thrive.

Click HERE to DONATE NOW!

Find out more

Free and open to the public, TURNING TABLES 2 is a hybrid art book market + exhibition that shines a spotlight on over 30 local, regional, national, and international arts publishers and producers of art books, critical arts publications, zines, periodicals, and more.

Find out more

Critical Distance Centre for Curators (CDCC) is pleased to present The Contingent Image, an artistic and curatorial collaboration and exhibition-as-research developed by Peterborough-based artist John Climenhage in conversation with CDCC Director Shani Khoo Parsons. Featuring an expansive new body of work that Climenhage has been developing since 2015, The Contingent Image is the artist’s first solo exhibition in Toronto in over 20 years. 

As an exhibition-as-research, The Contingent Image is an invitation to visitors to participate through the making of their own unique assemblages on a large table in the gallery space using a selection of Climenhage’s original works set aside for this purpose. In conversations that arise through this hands-on opportunity, visitors can gain insight not only into Climenhage’s artistic processes in relation to contemporary painting and abstraction—they can experience for themselves, firsthand, a sense of how “painters go through a catastrophe, or through a conflagration, and leave the trace of this passage on the canvas, as of the leap that leads them from chaos to composition.” ² With each ‘refresh,’ other images and ideas will rise to the surface as visual and conceptual associations between shapes, colours, lines, volumes, and voids are dissolved and reconstituted anew. 

Find out more

Critical Distance is pleased to welcome you to STUDY HALL, our newest initiative in support of critical curatorial inquiry, community, and practice. This Winter we’re opening up our space and our program to explore more nimble, flexible, responsive and mutually supportive frameworks for curatorial commoning and collaboration. 

All are welcome to drop in and visit, ask questions, peruse our featured publications, and join in the conversation on curating today. Outside public hours, visit our Instagram page @critical.distance for links to our survey, e-Shop, and newsletter subscription form, so you can be in the know on upcoming programs, events, and other ways to get involved.

Find out more