Featuring LISE BEAUDRY, SCOTT BENESIINAABANDAN, MICHELE PEARSON CLARKE, LEILA FATEMI, MARIA HUPFIELD, RAAFIA JESSA, and NADIA MYRE
Curated by NOA BRONSTEIN
Opening Reception: Thursday, September 13, 2018 from 7–9 pm
Presented in partnership with the Koffler Gallery, Through lines is an exhibition that brings together works of seven artists that challenge notions of redaction, tackling its typical devices of shredding, blacking out, editing, and covering up.
August 11-26, 2018
Featuring Azaeb Adane, Clayton Batson, Eli Carmona, Tahoy James, and Ebti Nabag. Curated by Emma German.
In partnership with Gallery 44, EXPOSING LIMINALITIES brings together the work of five artists that expand, challenge, and question notions of the in-between. Employing elements of both analogue and digital photography practices, this exhibition considers the myriad intersections that can define oneself. Presented as a part of Critical Distance’s Summer Sessions, a program through which we support emerging curators and artists by providing free space, mentorship, and installation support for their thesis exhibitions. Continue reading
July 7, 2018
Featuring Contemporary& (Berlin), Half Letter Press (Chicago), Kayfa-ta (Maha Maamoun and Ala Younis, Cairo), Independent Curators International (NY), Domenica (LA), and Maake (US); and Qiana Mestrich (Brooklyn), Khaled Hourani (Palestine), Ed Panar (Pittsburgh), Ciprian Muresan (Romania), Jeanette Ehlers (Denmark), Maggie Groat (Ontario), Sara Knox Hunter (Queens, NY), and Tings Chak (Toronto); plus a selection of catalogues and editions produced by TYPOLOGY Projects and Critical Distance Centre for Curators.
Critical Distance is pleased to participate in Art Book Week in conjunction with the 2018 Toronto Art Book Fair. For our third year of art book-related programming in support of TOABF, we will also be launching our newly stocked e-shop with a celebration and sale on Saturday, July 7th from 4–7 pm at Critical Distance. Continue reading
June 23 – August 5, 2018
Featuring Guillaume Adjutor Provost, Adam Basanta, Adrienne Crossman, and Nadège Grebmeier Forget
Curated by Florence-Agathe Dubé-Moreau and Maude Johnson
Critical Distance is pleased to present … move or be moved by some thing rather than oneself., an exhibition that considers curating and choreography as materials and subjects. Bringing together the work of Guillaume Adjutor Provost, Adam Basanta, Adrienne Crossman, and Nadège Grebmeier Forget, the exhibition is curated by Florence-Agathe Dubé-Moreau and Maude Johnson. The title, taken from a quote by choreographer Yvonne Rainer, echoes the curators’ desire to question the potentialities of artworks as well as presentation contexts from the position of transdisciplinary instability. Continue reading
June 23 – August 5, 2018
Billboard on Shaw curated by Florence-Agathe Dubé-Moreau and Maude Johnson with the exhibition … move or be moved by some ‘thing’ rather than oneself, featuring After Rendering on View (Betty Rowland meets Angela Aames), May 27, 2017 by Nadège Grebmeier Forget.
… move or be moved by some thing rather than oneself. examines the intersections between methods of creation and reflection particular to curatorial and choreographic spheres. As part of the ongoing discussion on dance in the museum, this exhibition responds specifically by disengaging from the danced gesture. It gathers artists who, on the one hand, borrow from curatorial and choreographic methodologies; and who, on the other hand, transform the multiple spaces (physical, virtual, social, political, historical, etc.) and temporalities of the gallery. Continue reading
April 21–June 3, 2018
Featuring Lacie Burning, Jade Nasogaluak Carpenter and Dayna Danger | Curated by Cass Gardiner and presented in partnership with Aboriginal Curatorial Collective
In partnership with Aboriginal Curatorial Collective–Collectif des commissaires autochtones, Critical Distance is pleased to present FORWARD FACING, a Featured Exhibition of the 2018 Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival. Curated by Cass Gardiner (Toronto/Brooklyn), Forward Facing is an exhibition that examines intersectionality within Indigenous identity through the photographic, video, craft, and installation practices of Dayna Danger (Montreal), Lacie Burning (Vancouver), and Jade Nasogaluak Carpenter (Calgary). Continue reading
April 21–June 3, 2018
Billboard on Shaw curated by Cass Gardiner with the exhibition Forward Facing, presented in partnership with Aboriginal Curatorial Collective–Collectif des commissaires autochtones and featuring Kandace by Dayna Danger.
In partnership with Aboriginal Curatorial Collective–Collectif des commissaires autochtones, Critical Distance is pleased to present Forward Facing, a Featured Exhibition of the 2018 Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival. Curated by Cass Gardiner, Forward Facing is an exhibition that examines intersectionality within Indigenous identity. Continue reading
January 25–March 25, 2018
Featuring Quratulain Butt, Khaled Hourani, Maha Maamoun, Smriti Mehra, Huma Mulji, Ed Panar, Alex Sheriff, and Andrea Luka Zimmerman | Curated by Toleen Touq and Nahed Mansour
In partnership with South Asian Visual Arts Centre (SAVAC), Critical Distance is pleased to present We Look At Animals Because, an exhibition that gazes on animality. Through the lens of spectatorship, the show explores the shifting ways in which animals are regarded, represented and accorded meaning in post-industrial landscapes. Exhibiting photographs, video, works on paper, and sculpture, the featured artists reveal the nuanced, complicated and unexpected paradoxes that mark our relationships with cosmopolitan animals. Continue reading
January 25–March 25, 2018
In partnership with South Asian Visual Arts Centre (SAVAC), Critical Distance is pleased to present the Winter 2018 Billboard on Shaw, featuring work by Quratulain Butt curated by Toleen Touq and Nahed Mansour as part of the exhibition We Look At Animals Because.
Growing up with roosters as pets, this motif appears frequently in Butt’s paintings. Originally created using delicate watercolor strokes in the Gadrang (opaque) miniature painting technique, the artist presents figures of brawling roosters as stand-ins for human conflict. Butt also draws, perhaps comically, on the pressures of conformity that come with family and tradition. For this exhibition, an enlarged and digitized version of the original Ego painting was commissioned from the artist for the eight-foot square billboard structure. Continue reading
October 26–30, 2017
Featuring Half Letter Press and works by Marc Fischer/Public Collectors and Temporary Services, Magali Duzant, Graphic History Collective with Paul Buhle, Project 40 Collective, Mark Mulroney, Brandon Dalmer & Erin Ornstein, Maggie Groat, and Tings Chak; plus selected publications from Independent Curators International and selected catalogues and editions produced by Typology Projects and Critical Distance Centre for Curators Continue reading
September 14–November 26, 2017
Critical Distance is thrilled to launch our landmark 5th year of programming with FERMENTING FEMINISM, curated by Lauren Fournier and featuring Sharlene Bamboat, Hazel Meyer, Leila Nadir and Cary Peppermint, Sarah Nasby, Kayla Polan, Walter Scott, and Agustine Zegers.
Kombucha, guts, bacteria, vessels, vitalism, effervescence, degradation, and decay. Fermenting Feminism brings together artists whose work fleshes out the intersections between fermentation and intersectional feminisms. As the process of microbial transformation, fermentation becomes both a metaphor and material practice through which to approach feminist practices in the contemporary. Is feminism a relic of the past, something that has soured? Or is feminism still a vital imperative? This exhibition positions fermentation as a vital and viable space to re-conceive feminisms’s pasts, presents, and futures. Continue reading
September–December 2017
In partnership with Artscape Youngplace, Critical Distance is pleased to present the Fall 2017 Billboard on Shaw, featuring an image by Sarah Nasby, curated by Lauren Fournier.
Fermentation requires vessels to hold and contain its transformative processes. In her Living Things series, Toronto-based artist Sarah Nasby takes vessels designed by women throughout history and re-stages them in light of fermentation as both a practice and a metaphor. Here, a vessel designed by Hungarian-born American designer Eva Zeisel is filled with kombucha, a fermented tea. Nasby graphically interprets the vitality of the kombucha tonic and the undulating design of Zeisel’s pot with her own squiggle pattern, creating a work that is both elegant and excessive in its form. The objects become living things in more than one sense: vessels that we live with, and vessels containing living, bubbling matter.
September 8–23, 2017
Featuring The Site Magazine competition winners: Ali Navidbakhsh, Evan Wakelin, Karan Manchanda, Sarah Gunawan, and Shelley Long; plus runners-up: Anna Longrigg + Jason McMillan, Fionn Byrne, Kyung-Kuhn Lee + Mamata Guragain + Nubras Samayeen, Mitchell Gray, and Rob McIntosh; and honourable mentions: Dominique Cheng, Émélie Desrochers-Turgeon, Emma Mendel, Stephanie Mauer, and Studio Ha-ha
Future Legacy: Design for Canada’s Next 150 Years is an exhibition featuring winners of The Site Magazine’s inaugural design competition. In the context of Canada’s sesquicentennial, entrants were challenged to develop proposals that considered the relationship between the nation’s history, current context, and possible future trajectories. Continue reading
August 18–26, 2017
Featuring work by Zula, Xavier Binette, Wolfie, Starchild Dreaming Loud, Sophia Nahz, Singing Thunder, Rachel Macintosh, Oddane Taylor, Nicholas Ridiculous, M.T. Ness, Michelle Charlie, Jessie Stone, Gen Gagnon, Elijah M, Bethany Papadopolous, Anonymous, and Amelia Merhar. Curated by Amelia Merhar.
Critical Distance is pleased to announce our 2017 Summer Sessions exhibition, Moving Home: The Art and Embodiment of Transience Emerging from Canada’s Child Welfare System. Presented by York University Human Geography master’s candidate Amelia Merhar, this project is the second to be hosted as part of our Summer Sessions, a program through which we support emerging curators and artists by providing free space, mentorship, and installation support for their thesis exhibitions. Continue reading
June 15–18, 2017
Critical Distance and the Toronto Art Book Fair are pleased to present GENERATORS, curated by Anthony Stepter and featuring Erika DeFreitas, Edie Fake, Marc Fischer/Public Collectors, Dina Kelberman, Nellie Kluz, Sanaz Mazinani, Eric Oglander, and Leah Wellbaum.
May–August 2017
Critical Distance is pleased to announce the selection of Mountainburger by Aislinn Thomas for the Spring 2017 Billboard on Shaw. Through this program and partnership with Artscape Youngplace, we are continuing to provide an exciting opportunity for curators and artists to present large format printed artworks for the freestanding mural/billboard on our building’s front lawn. Continue reading
April 27–June 4, 2017
Sebastián Benítez, Petar Boskovic, Shelby Fenlon, Maxwell Hyett, and Mickey Mackenna (gallery); Maggie Groat & Jimmy Limit, Karen Henderson, and Josée Pedneault (stairwells)
Curated by Katelyn Gallucci
SIGNALS & SENTIMENTS, a Featured Exhibition of the 2017 Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival, is a two-part exhibition that examines how gesture functions as a mechanism for the production of identity. Continue reading
March 10–April 9, 2017
Critical Distance is pleased to present Precious Commodity, a group exhibition of recent works by Eunice Luk, Ella Dawn McGeough, Juan Ortiz-Apuy, and Biliana Velkova, curated by Alison Cooley.
Articulating a tension between objects and their ways of being—their forms, their significance, their social and economic circulation—Precious Commodity brings together artworks that examine the complicated sweetness of things. Unanchoring objects from their exchange within capitalism, the artists in the exhibition resignify them as vessels for fantasy, desire, and alternate possibility. Reflecting on the nature of a world populated by things with definitive practical uses and monetary values, each artist playfully contends with form, usurping existing representations in the service of building new meanings. Continue reading
February 24–28, 2017
Featuring Yael Brotman, Melanie Chikofsky, Doug Guildford, Tessar Lo, Tim Manalo, Roula Partheniou, Meghan Price, and Natalie Wood. Curated by Sonya Filman. Critical Distance is pleased to host the second annual In House Benefit Art Show. Continue reading
January 19–February 19, 2017
CDCC is pleased to present The Path, The Divide, a solo exhibition of recent works by Canadian artist Brynn Higgins-Stirrup, curated by Oana Tanase.
Fascinated by the ways in which we confront and reconcile intuitive inquiry with organized thought and form, Higgins-Stirrup has developed a distinctive visual language and practice that revolves around learning systems, geometry, mapping, and writing. Seducing the viewer through technical exactitude and material subtlety, her artworks speak of the space that lies between knowledge and truth, information and meaning.
on view January–April 2017
Critical Distance is pleased to present the second artist’s project in our newest initiative, the 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. Lost in Shape is an 8-foot image by Toronto and Tel Aviv-based artist Ruth Adler, to be unveiled the week of January 18, 2017.
Thursday, December 1, 2016 starting at 3pm
Critical Distance is pleased to support Day With(out) Art in partnership with Visual AIDS. As the Toronto host for a screening of COMPULSIVE PRACTICE, a 65-minute video compilation of compulsive, daily, and habitual practices by nine artists and activists who live with their cameras as a way to manage, reflect upon, and change how they are deeply affected by HIV/AIDS, CDCC joins 60 other international organizations and institutions in commemorating World AIDS Day.
November 5–December 11, 2016
Jeannette Ehlers and Patricia Kaersenhout, Søren Thilo Funder, Jens Haaning, Maj Hasager, Tina Helen,
Stine Marie Jacobsen, Jane Jin Kaisen, and Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen
Critical Distance is pleased to present Crossing the Line, a timely and provocative survey of contemporary Danish art curated by Earl Miller. Recognizing the transnational nature of much recent art from Denmark, the exhibition asks: Can a nation define itself culturally by looking beyond its traditional borders?
October 28–31, 2016
featuring Dominica Publishing and works by Martine Syms, Lauren Anderson, Hannah Black, Marco Braunschweiler, Erin Christovale & Amir George, David Hartt, Sara Knox Hunter, and Diamond Stingily; plus Eve Fowler; Claire Goodwin; and Leslie Hewitt, Matt Keegan, Michael Queenland & Lori Salmon; Kevin Haas; Sophie Calle; Tings Chak; Manar Moursi & David Puig; Jeannette Ehlers; and selected publications and editions produced by Typology Projects and Critical Distance Centre for Curators
Tues, October 18, 2016 from 6–8 pm
In partnership with SAVAC and the Women and Gender Studies Institute, CDCC is pleased to co-present a talk given by Manar Moursi, as part of the release of her recently launched book, Sidewalk Salon: 1001 Street Chairs of Cairo, co-authored with David Puig. Continue reading
on view September 21–October 23, 2016
Critical Distance Centre for Curators is pleased to present The Amoebic Workshop: A Submerged Exhibition, curated by Astarte Rowe and featuring countless living Mediolus corona amoebas in an aquarium habitat, plus artworks by Jessica Drenk (US), Gabriel Lalonde (Canada), and Claudia Wieser (Germany).
on view September 2016–January 2017
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. Continue reading
3 screenings: 9/17, 9/19, and 9/20, 2016
Critical Distance is thrilled to present SLIPSTREAMS, an original 30-min program of moving image works. Responding to the site and festival context, SLIPSTREAMS brings together five artists (Morehshin Allahyari, Maria Flawia Litwin, Manuel Saiz, Marianna Milhorat and Terence Nance), whose works envisage the slippage of time between past and future, and how humans seek to transcend the present moment. Continue reading
Weds, Sept 7, 2016 from 6:30–9 pm
Critical Distance was pleased to host the launch event for AIDS and Memory, Issue 13.2 of Drain: A Journal of Contemporary Art and Culture, edited by CDCC advisory board member, Ricky Varghese. Complementing the magazine’s September 1 online launch, this event included a premiere of Vincent Chevalier’s film À Vancouver and a panel discussion with Chevalier, Varghese, and issue contributors Michele Pearson Clarke, Liz Gibson-DeGroote, Francisco-Fernando Granados, Theodore Kerr, and Cait McKinney. Continue reading
August 20–27, 2016
painter project – version 4 by Simon M Benedict is the first exhibition in our newest initiative in support of emerging artists and curators: Summer Sessions, a program through which we will support emerging curators and artists by providing free space, mentorship, and installation support for their thesis exhibitions. Continue reading
June 16 – 19, 2016
TYPOLOGY is pleased to participate in the inaugural edition of the Toronto Art Book Fair with a pop-up exhibition in the project space, a vendor table in the third floor hallway, and an artist-led book arts workshop on the front lawn, hosted in partnership with Gallery 44 and generously supported by Japanese Paper Place. Our pop-up exhibition, WORKING TITLE, will feature a wide variety of unique and editioned artists’ books, publications, and multiples by local and international artists who have participated in our program over the past three years Continue reading
May 7 – June 11, 2016
TYPOLOGY is pleased to present On The Surface, a Featured Exhibition of the 2016 Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival, featuring Susana Reisman’s findings from her multi-year investigation into the nature of wood. Encompassing aspects of both drawing and painting even as it foregrounds relationships between sculpture and photography, the exhibition includes a selection of large-scale colour photographs and several freestanding wood sculptures. Continue reading
April 1 — May 1, 2016
TYPOLOGY presents Script, Stage, Screen | Ciprian Mureșan, curated by Oana Tanase. Featuring a critical selection of this internationally known artist’s experimental films, Script, Stage, Screen is the first solo exhibition of Mureșan’s work in Toronto, which we are very pleased to present in partnership with the 29th edition of the Images Festival (April 14–23, 2016). Continue reading
2 screenings only! Mar 30 and Apr 3
Just in time for Chinese New Year, TYPOLOGY is proud to announce our support for CHINA NOW: Independent Visions, in the form of two exciting film screenings we’ll host in Small World Music Centre’s theatre space at Artscape Youngplace this spring! Continue reading
Jan 14 — Mar 6, 2016
Each decay is a form of transformation into other living things, part of the great rampage of becoming that is also unbecoming. It is cruel, it is death, and it is also life, degeneration and regeneration, for nearly all living things live by the death of other things.
— Rebecca Solnit
TYPOLOGY is pleased to present Loose Ends, curated by Noa Bronstein and featuring sculpture, video, and photo-based works by Mary Grisey, Faye Mullen, Jérôme Nadeau, and Deborah Wang. Continue reading
October 15 — December 15, 2015
TYPOLOGY is pleased to present Moving right along, the first solo exhibition of work by Nicolas Fleming in Toronto. Appropriating the visual language and syntax of design-build practices, Fleming’s new artworks and site-specific installation transform the exhibition space, exploiting the inherent imperfections and irregular marks characteristic of construction sites to challenge the white cube environment in which they are situated. Constructing a room within a room, the artist’s sculptural gestures within the installation include curved walls and the representation of a fountain which bursts through the ceiling, its shiny finish reflecting the bright neon lighting illuminating the space. Continue reading
2015–16 Event Series
In Fall 2015, the Images Festival and TYPOLOGY launched Moving Images in Contemporary Culture, a new series of peer-led talks and workshops on the changes, challenges, and advances in curating and presenting the moving image. Continue reading
August 21–September 27, 2015
TYPOLOGY launches its Fall 2015 season with THE LOWEST RELIEF, an intimate solo exhibition of art by Maria Flawia Litwin, curated by Katherine Dennis. In this new body of work, Litwin uses wycinanki (pronounced vih-chee-nahn-kee), a Polish paper cutting tradition, to weave stories layered with personal memories, social history, symbolism and mythology. Each work stems from a significant autobiographical detail in the artist’s life. Yet the illustrations are stripped of overt personal narrative. The focus instead is on quintessential life experiences — those as simple and complex as birth and death, and as fleeting or all encompassing as love, alienation, pain, fear or passion — that transcend gender, geography and culture. Continue reading
May 7–June 14, 2015
An cross-continental collaboration between Canadian artist Josée Pedneault (Montreal) and Mexican artist Alejandro Garcia Contreras (Mexico City), THE NEW GODS is a Featured Exhibition of the 2015 Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival and the first exhibition to feature the collaborative work of Alejandro Garcia Contreras and Josée Pedneault in Canada. Continue reading
March 12–April 19, 2015 (stairwells extended thru May 2016)
TYPOLOGY is pleased to present FLIGHTS & LANDINGS, a two-part exhibition of work by three multidisciplinary artists from three different cities: Brooklyn-based Tamara Gayer, Berlin-based Christine Gedeon, and Toronto-based Janine Miedzik. Known for their visually engaging, site-responsive approaches to installation, each artist will debut a large-scale project in one of the stairwell galleries at Artscape Youngplace (the Flights), complemented by a selection of smaller artworks representing object-oriented aspects of their practices in the project space (the Landings). Continue reading
January 22 – February 22, 2015
TYPOLOGY Projects is thrilled to announce the launch of our guest curating program with the two person exhibition, A Riveder le Stelle. Featuring a selection of rarely seen works on paper by the late New York painter Mary Hambleton, and a video installation by Toronto artist Sara MacLean, the exhibition is curated by interdisciplinary artist and independent curator Heather Nicol Continue reading
November 7 – December 14, 2014
TYPOLOGY is pleased to present Elemental, a solo exhibition featuring unique and editioned book works by Saskatchewan artist Cathryn Miller. Ranging from tiny folded paper projects to a new wall-sized composition, the thoughtfully conceived and often laboriously crafted works in the show represent a sustained investigation of manifold worlds, encompassing both the inner/outer, micro/macro, and meta/physical dimensions. In distilling her findings into the personal, poetic, and often playful objects on view, Miller’s observations and life experiences are made exquisitely manifest in the tactile materials, sequential structures, and storied logic of both traditional and invented or altered book forms. Continue reading
September 18 – October 25, 2014
TYPOLOGY is pleased to present OF OTHER FACES, a group exhibition featuring five artists whose works employ strategies of mirroring and doubling to investigate the paradoxical nature of our dualistic world. Through the representation or evocation of reflections, echoes, or iterations, the photographs, sounds, and videos of Andrea Cohen and Wiska Radkiewicz (Paris, New York), Victoria Fu (Los Angeles), Marta Ryczko(Toronto), and Manuel Saiz (Berlin) interrogate, express, or reveal hidden contradictions within contemporary social systems as they relate to dualities of self and Other. Continue reading
April 24 – May 31, 2014 and by appt thru June 14th
TYPOLOGY presents our spring exhibition, THE ORDER OF THINGS or, The Second Conference of the International Network of Personal Relationships (INPR). This exhibition features new and recent work by Leif Low-Beer (Toronto/Brooklyn), an artist who engages in a playful reordering of ideas, images, and expectations through the use of constructed, multi-part, and/or recombined compositions of drawings, collages, assemblages, and sculptural tableaux. The Order of Things is Low-Beer’s first solo exhibition in Canada. Continue reading
November 19 – December 19, 2013 and by appt thru March 13th
One wants a room with no view, so imagination and memory can meet in the dark.
— Annie Dillard
TYPOLOGY is pleased to present our inaugural exhibition, ERRATIC ROOM. Featuring an immersive video installation and new limited edition photo series by Lyla Rye, Erratic Room is an exploration into spatial perception and its often hidden physical and psychological effects. Continue reading