PUBLIC ART: Billboard on Shaw by Pejvak
August 21, 2019 - October 31, 2019Billboard on Shaw co-presented in partnership with C Magazine, featuring The Bell at the End of Time (detail), by PEJVAK (Rouzbeh Akhbari and Felix Kalmenson), 2019.
“We came across the following documents during our research residency in Tbilisi at Georgia’s State Silk Museum in March 2019. Reviewing the extensive archives maintained by the museum’s library, in preparation for our upcoming film on the Silk Road, we were captivated by a series of notes and illustrations that felt oddly out of place in the collection. These documents stood out from the rest of the archives not only because of their seemingly disconnected subject matter but also because of their disparate sorting logic and clandestine placement amongst various expedition reports and personal notes written by Nikolay Shavrov, a Russian biologist and the founder and first director of Tbilisi’s Sericultural Station. At first glance, these records appeared to be little more than incidental entries or misplaced files, but soon, with the help of Darejan Demetrashvili, the librarian, and Mariam Shergelashvili, our research coordinator, we uncovered a series of interconnected narratives concerning a monumental intervention in the environs of Mount Ararat in modern-day Turkey.”
So begins the accompanying text written by Pejvak which unravels this mysterious project, originally commissioned for the Summer 2019 issue of C Magazine themed on “Monument.” An uncanny and productively beguiling blend of fiction and non-fiction, The Bell at the End of Time pivots away from questions explored elsewhere in the issue around the legacy of domineering statues in fathomable space and toward a more speculative and imaginative—although still decidedly political—study of monuments and monumentality.
Click here to read the full text.
The Bell at the End of Time is on view at 180 Shaw Street, outside Artscape Youngplace, through August to October, 2021.
Come to Critical Distance at Unit 302 of Artscape Youngplace to receive a complimentary copy of the summer issue of C Magazine complete with a full frame poster of the billboard image inserted inside, while supplies last!
Location and hours:
The Billboard on Shaw is located outside Artscape Youngplace, 180 Shaw Street btw Dundas and Queen Streets, Toronto M6J 2W5. The exact location is on the front lawn facing Shaw Street just south of Argyle Street on the northeast corner of the building lot. The billboard is at street level and measures 8 x 8 feet square. A label with artwork information is located on the back of the billboard structure.
When exhibitions are on, Critical Distance is open for regular gallery hours, Wednesday–Friday, from 12-6 pm and Saturday–Sunday from 11-5 pm. The gallery is located in Suite 302 on the third floor of Artscape Youngplace, a wheelchair accessible building with a ramp at the 180 Shaw Street doors, an elevator servicing every floor, and an accessible washroom on every level. The TTC’s 63 Ossington bus stops nearby and is wheelchair accessible. The gallery is also wheelchair accessible. Please contact us at info@criticaldistance.ca for more information. Admission is always free and all are welcome.
Image: Pejvak, The Bell at the End of Time, 2021. 8 x 8 foot billboard at 180 Shaw Street in Toronto’s West Queen West neighbourhood. Photo by Toni Hafkenscheid.
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About the Artist(s)
Pejvak
Rouzbeh Akhbari
Rouzbeh Akhbari (b. 1992, Tehran) is an artist working in video installation and film. His practice is research-driven and usually exists at the intersections of storytelling, critical architecture and human geography. Through a delicate examination of the violences and intimacies that occur at the boundaries of lived experience and constructed histories, Akhbari uncovers the minutiae of power that regiments the world around us.
Find out moreFelix Kalmenson
Felix Kalmenson (St. Petersburg, Russia, 1987) is an artist whose practice navigates installation, video and performance. Kalmenson’s work variably narrates the liminal space of a researcher’s and artist’s encounter with landscape and archive. By bearing witness to everyday life, and hardening the more fragile vestiges of private and collective histories through their work, Kalmenson gives themself away to the cadence of a poem, always in flux.
Find out morePartners + Co-presenters
C Magazine
C Magazine is a Toronto-based contemporary art and criticism periodical devoted to providing a forum for significant ideas in visual art and culture. Each quarterly issue explores a new theme through original art writing, criticism and artists’ projects.
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