Critical Distance PROGRAMMING PUBLIC ART: Billboard on Shaw by Steven Beckly

Critical Distance is pleased to present our newest initiative, Billboard on Shaw, through which we are providing opportunities, in partnership with Artscape Youngplace, for curators and artists to propose large format printed artworks for the freestanding mural/billboard outside our building on Shaw Street. Come to My Window is an 8-foot image by Toronto-based multidisciplinary artist Steven Beckly, curated by Matthew Kyba.

As curator Matthew Kyba writes,

“A finger presses against an airplane window waiting for a reciprocal touch. It is looking for contact, longing for intimacy. The title is taken from the 1994 Grammy Award-winning song by Melissa Etheridge. The first single released from her 1993 album Yes I Am, it confesses Etheridge’s intense longing for a beloved while implicating the singer’s queerness and activism.

Captured from the clouds and situated outside Artscape Youngplace, the billboard expresses a similar and unfulfilled wish: a desire for a public and global intimacy that stems from the ground and blooms from the individual. Against the backdrop of windows that adorn the repurposed school, the image becomes a public invitation to engage these openings as sites for social connection.” – Matthew Kyba

Come to My Window is on view at 180 Shaw Street, outside Artscape Youngplace, through September 2016 to January 2017.

Programs and Events
Please join us to celebrate the new billboard on Wednesday, September 21st from 6–9 pm
A reception for the curator and artist will take place in our third floor gallery at Artscape Youngplace and will coincide with the opening of our September show, The Amoebic Workshop: A Submerged Exhibition. Koffler Gallery will also open their building-wide exhibition, Yonder, from 6–9 pm so there will be art on every surface at Artscape Youngplace!

Critical Distance Centre for Curators (CDCC)
Suite 302, Artscape Youngplace, 180 Shaw Street, Toronto, ON M6J 2W5
See Google map of location

Critical Distance thanks Artscape Youngplace for their generous support of this project.

Image: Steven Becky, Come to My Window, 2016. 8 x 8 foot billboard at 180 Shaw Street in Toronto’s West Queen West neighbourhood. Photo by the artist.