New Dana Holst lithograph available

Katharine Mulherin Contemporary Art Projects is pleased to offer

Dana Holst

The Wishing Well, 2011

Litho on paper, 24 x 19"

(Edition is of 25)

$475

Roberta McNaughton: Twelve Months of Winter opens February 2, 6-9 PM

Katharine Mulherin Contemporary Art Projects is pleased to present an exhibition by Roberta McNaughton, Twelve Months of Winter. This exhibition of new paintings begins with an opening reception from 6 to 9 pm on Thursday, February 2, and continues through February 26, 2012 at 1082 Queen Street West, Toronto.

This is the slow weight of winter, where light appears unnaturally bright or unnaturally tinted, and snow disguises the familiar under a blanket of white.

The beauty of winter comes in it’s test of our resolve. We transform and adapt with weather’s unpredictable shifts and the lucky ones embrace the snow and the cold and learn to skate.

This is the collection of two winters, roughly twelve months of painting winter.

-- Roberta McNaughton, 2012

Katharine Mulherin Contemporary Art Projects

1082 Queen Street West

Toronto, ON

416 993 6510

gallery hours Thursday to Saturday 12-6, Sunday 1-5

or by appointment

Roberta McNaughton: Twelve Months of Winter opens February 2, 6-9 PM

Katharine Mulherin Contemporary Art Projects is pleased to present an exhibition by Roberta McNaughton, Twelve Months of Winter. This exhibition of new paintings begins with an opening reception from 6 to 9 pm on Thursday, February 2, and continues through February 26, 2012.

This is the slow weight of winter, where light appears unnaturally bright or unnaturally tinted, and snow disguises the familiar under a blanket of white.

The beauty of winter comes in it’s test of our resolve. We transform and adapt with weather’s unpredictable shifts and the lucky ones embrace the snow and the cold and learn to skate.

This is the collection of two winters, roughly twelve months of painting winter.

-- Roberta McNaughton, 2012

Robert McNaughton: Twelve Months of Winter opens February 2, 6-9 PM

Katharine Mulherin Contemporary Art Projects is pleased to present an exhibition by Roberta McNaughton, Twelve Months of Winter. This exhibition of new paintings begins with an opening reception from 6 to 9 pm on Thursday, February 2, and continues through February 26, 2012.

This is the slow weight of winter, where light appears unnaturally bright or unnaturally tinted, and snow disguises the familiar under a blanket of white.

The beauty of winter comes in it’s test of our resolve. We transform and adapt with weather’s unpredictable shifts and the lucky ones embrace the snow and the cold and learn to skate.

This is the collection of two winters, roughly twelve months of painting winter.

-- Roberta McNaughton, 2012

Nancy Friedland: Vigil opening February 2, 6-9 PM

Katharine Mulherin Contemporary Art Projects is pleased at this opportunity to present new and recent works by photo-based artist Nancy Friedland.

February 2 -- 26, 2012

Opening Thursday, February 2, 6-9 PM 

Plants can be difficult: they are strangely shy in front of my camera and I am often awkward in front of them. I want to portray their melancholy, their ambivalence toward us, their alienation from the natural world, their longing to be wild. Sometimes they frustrate me, and then I leave them to wither. But they keep drawing me in with their sad stories. Plants try so hard to communicate for us, I think. They arrive in our lives as a gift, an apology, a leftover centerpiece, an offering, a burden. How can they seem so benign and forgettable when they often stand for words we can’t say?

-- Nancy Friedland

A Few Facts about Sad Plants

We think we are consistent in our affections but we are not. We are fickle.

Our love is susceptible to the forces of daily life. Everything wavers: our faith, desire, greed, and attention.

We say: “I will love you forever.” And: “Nothing in the world is more important to me.” But the truth is that very few people and even fewer things are guaranteed a fixed place in our hearts.

We insist that there is always enough love to go around. But the reality is that our love is lopsided and choosy. There is a ruthless hierarchy to our caring. What was once on top is quickly demoted. A baby is born and the cat or dog we used to adore is now relegated to second-tier status. A plant that flowered lushly grows crispy with neglect.

Nancy Friedland’s sad plants are a measure of our shifting preoccupations and priorities. Look around and you will see that there are many kinds of sad plants: plants from the 50% markdown table, Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree type plants, anemic institutional plants, plastic-wrapped plants that were never truly adopted, shabby plants that came with the apartment, burdensome gift plants that droop with accusation, homely plants that were placed on the radiator and gladly extinguished for their ugliness.

Every sad plant has a pedigree and story. Each one has something to say about our erstwhile aspirations and current failings as mothers, lovers, friends, and keepers of the domestic realm. Who knows precisely why these plants are sad? Who knows what fate awaits them?

We think that plants (and love) cannot be resuscitated but that is untrue. With a little vigilance, even the saddest, limpest, driest plant can be revived. We have all seen it happen: the sickly-looking stalk that suddenly sprouts a perky green leaf, the dessicated succulent resurrected with a bit of water and sunlight. There is hope for even those of us with blundering hands and clumsy hearts. Sad plants ask: what do you want to do about that love of yours?

We think we talk to plants but really they talk to us.

-- Kyo Maclear

Katharine Mulherin Contemporary Art Projects

1086 Queen Street West

Toronto, ON

416 993 6510

gallery hours Thursday to Saturday 12-6, Sunday 1-5

or by appointment

STO, My Slow Called Life at MULHERIN + POLLARD, opening Thurday December 8, 6-9pm

My Slow Called Life Opening Thursday December 8, 6-9 pm

MULHERIN + POLLARD, 187 Chrystie Street, NY

In My Slow Called Life, STO presents a tranquil, one room NY studio apartment scene as the backdrop for a variety of papier mache sculptures. Devoid of any people, we are left to ponder the objects on their own as we walk through the space.... Leftover pizza on the table, old food in the fridge, a stack of books, some dirty socks, and a slop sink with paintbrushes as well as toothbrushes are just a few of the mundane objects recreated in chunky, lovable papier mache. There is a natural sense of whimsy in the limitations of the mache as a medium and it boldly reveals itself with rough textures and gobs of paint applied liberally. There is also a sense of comedy beneath the surface, as if the objects were laughing at their own meaninglessness and at us for needing them. These deadpan takes on quotidian objects question our common understanding of what is real and reveal the many ways that we are entangled with our possessions. By shining a spotlight on the everyday, these works evoke our own daily lives and slow us down long enough to take stock in what they really consist of.

Exhibition runs December 1 - 31

John Dickson: From Light to Dark, opening Thursday, December 1, 6-9pm.

From Light to Dark

Central to this exhibition are two live-feed video sculptures, each taking a film as a starting point: Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now and Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu. In both films there is a journey that leads the protagonist into a dark and dangerous place. Apocalypse Now depicts an expedition up a river to assassinate Colonel Kurtz, a brilliant madman who has immersed himself in savagery during the Vietnam War. In Nosferatu the protagonist must travel into the Carpathian Mountains to deliver real estate documents to Count Dracula. The linear nature of these narratives made them suitable for his re-rendering using models, motors and live-feed cameras.

Redux (2009) is a distillation of key elements of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (which was based upon Conrad’s novel), compressing the narrative into 4 1/2 minutes. A miniature video camera tracks back and forth past a series of mundane items, live-feeding to an adjacent television, where the plastic plants, mirror and upholstery stuffing are transformed into jungle, river and fog. The disjuncture between the mundane objects and the images viewed on the screen, necessitates a back and forth investigation on the part of the viewer. While Apocalypse Now examines the insanity and savagery of war, Redux re-renders the story as a journey into a ravaged wilderness.

Shadow of the Vampyre (2010) is structured after a portion of Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu (which is a remake of Mernau’s 1922 version) - specifically the scenes in which the protagonist makes his way through the Carpathian Mountains and enters Count Dracula’s castle. In this work the camera is stationary while pieces of a mountain model (originally part of a diorama from the Ontario Science Centre) move past on a rotating circular table, creating an endless, looping narrative. Although the work is based on a vampire movie, only the vampire’s shadow is seen, and only briefly. It is less about vampires and more of a metaphor for our journey through life towards death and the unknown.

The drawings are primarily derived from stills from the two films, highlighting the source imagery for the sculptural works. Black spray paint was used to approximate the subtleties of light and atmosphere, while adding graininess similar to that of film. Once I began, the subject matter expanded naturally to encompass related images based on war, death and disintegration, dark themes that recur frequently in the artist’s work.