SCOTT LYALL
‘The Color Ball’
20 September – 23 November 2008
HARRELL FLETCHER
‘Title in Progress’
20 September – 2 November 2008
MANON DE BOER
20 September – 23 November 2008
The Power Plant
231 Queens Quay West
Toronto ON Canada M5J 2G8
SCOTT LYALL, ‘The Color Ball’
Curated by Gregory Burke, Director of The Power Plant
On the heels of his participation in SITE Santa Fe’s Seventh International Biennial, The Power Plant presents Toronto artist Scott Lyall’s largest solo exhibition to date. Somewhere between a survey of past work and a new assemblage, ‘The Color Ball’ is also The Power Plant’s 2008 Commission, realized under the gallery’s annual Commissioning Program and commissioned in partnership with the Toronto-based visual arts support group Partners in Art.
As with recent artist surveys at The Power Plant, ‘The Color Ball’ is a new installation that draws from past work, in this case seven of Lyall’s previous projects involving performance. The commission a structure of rotating party lights functions within this conceptual framework and, in conditioning how viewers see the work, incorporates the entire exhibition. Named after a fictitious gala reminiscent of The Power Plant’s annual fundraising Power Ball, ‘The Color Ball’ evokes a haunted ballroom. It also alludes to art works which have taken parties and socializing as their theme from Marc Camille Chaimowicz’s ‘Celebration? Real life’ (1972) to Judy Chicago’s ‘The Dinner Party’ (1974-79) and Rikrit Tiravanija’s projects serving food. Literally, the exhibition references the color-sphere selector used in computer imaging-software. This spherical diagram incorporates every hue at every intensity and shade, resulting in a black centre. ‘The Color Ball,’ suggests Lyall, is therefore the figure of “every image, whatever”
Performative and conceptual aspects exceed the installation. These include images used to market the show drawn from fashion photography, celebrity magazines, and the fairytale Cinderella; a performance by artist Ei Arawaka staged within the exhibition on the closing weekend; and a ‘multiple’ comprising a hand-blown glass ball containing coloured bath salts that would stain the user’s body.
Scott Lyall (born in Toronto, Ontario, 1964) has recently collaborated on exhibitions with artist Rachel Harrison at the Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver (2006) and with Blake Rayne at Art Basel (2008).
A catalogue accompanying The Color Ball will be published in 2009.
Commissioning Partner: Partners in Art
Presenting Sponsor: RBC
Support Sponsor: Westbury National Show Systems Ltd.
Support Donor: Miguel Abreu Gallery, New York
HARRELL FLETCHER, ‘Title in Progress’
With Augusto Bastos, Thomas Brandt, Sean Frey, Hannah Jickling, Alison SM Kobayashi, Helen Reed, Kerri Reid, Kristin Shaw, Swintak, Maiko Tanaka, Amy Wah, and Karen Wielonda.
Project Consultant: Darren O’Donnell
Curated by Senior Curator of Programs, Helena Reckitt
For this as-yet-untitled project, Fletcher invited six artists from Toronto (who in turn invited six non-artists) to together devise an exhibition over ten days. Projects might encompass anything and everything from drawings to videos, podcasts to banners, found materials to publications, as well as guest speakers and temporary public interventions.
Harrell Fletcher (born in Santa Maria, California, 1967) has initiated socially engaged artworks for over fifteen years. He established the participatory website Learning to Love You More with Miranda July and, recently, Some People.
MANON DE BOER
Curated by Senior Curator of Programs, Helena Reckitt
Manon de Boer’s solo exhibition combines two films and one audio work that, in different ways, capture people in the act of remembering. Sylvia Kristel – Paris, 2003, shows the star of the soft-core Emmanuelle films reminiscing about her past in Paris. Resonating Surfaces, 2005, meanwhile, creates a picture of Paris and São Paulo through the memories of Suely Rolnik: a psychoanalyst, translator and former lover of Gilles Deleuze. The sound piece, Switch (1998), records vocalist Alison Goldfrapp attempting to replicate monologues given in languages that she doesn’t understand.
Manon de Boer (born in Kodaicanal, India, 1966) lives in Brussels. Recently she has participated in the 2007 Venice Biennale, the 2008 Berlin Biennial and in a 2007–08 solo exhibition organized by the Frankfurter Kunstverein and Witte de With, Rotterdam.
Cultural Agency Partners:
Consulate-General of the Kingdom of The Netherlands
Mondriaan Foundation