Jorian Charlton: Jorian Charlton: Out of Many

December 18, 2021 - August 7, 2022

In 2017, Toronto-based photographer Jorian Charlton received a collection of 35mm slides from her father for safe-keeping: his photographs from Jamaica, New York and Toronto from the late 1970s to the late ‘80s. The images reveal Charlton’s family lineage, and they inspired this exhibition. Charlton’s own portraits are paired with her father’s slides, creating a visual dialogue across generations.

Charlton explores the fluidity of the immigration story in her work, considers new ways of thinking about Jamaican-Canadian culture, and reimagines the family album through a contemporary lens. In concert with her father’s photographic narrative, these works constitute a tangible archive of what was, what is, and what will become––one, out of many.

Jorian Charlton: Out of Many is curated by Emilie Croning and presented in collaboration with Wedge Curatorial Projects and Gallery TPW.

Originally scheduled to open at Gallery TPW in February 2021 and delayed due to prolonged COVID-19 closures, this exhibition has become an online project (www.out-of-many.ca). While the virtual experience is still active, presentation at the AGO marks the first time these works are on view in person for visitors to enjoy.

Photo credit: Jorian Charlton, Untitled (Nyabel & Nevine), 2021. Inkjet print. Overall: 76.2 x 101.6 cm. Courtesy of the artist. © Jorian Charlton.

Nathaniel Tetsuro Paolinelli: Downtown

June 11 - September 3

Timothy Duffy

May 5 - August 31

See More

Eugène Atget, E.J. BELLOCQ, Bill Brandt, Harry Callahan, Imogen Cunningham, Mario Giacomelli, André Kertész, Robert Mapplethorpe, Irving Penn, Edward Weston: Vision Past

July 1 - August 31

Reception: Fri July 1, 6-8:30pm

A summer exhibition featuring 20th century works by Eugène Atget, E.J. Bellocq, Bill Brandt, Harry Callahan, Imogen Cunningham, Mario Giacomelli, André Kertész, Roert Mapplethorpe, Irving Penn, and Edward Weston.

Opening reception: Friday, July 1, 6 – 8:30PM

On view on Sundays from noon to 4PM and by appointment throughout July and August, 2022.

Click HERE to see works from this show.

Press Release

Paul Mpagi Sepuya: 144 Powers

June 14 - September 30

See More

Tokuko Ushioda, Yasuhiro Ishimoto, Kiyoji Ōtsuji: From Student to Master: Tokuko Ushioda and Her Teachers

May 17 - July 29

Alison Bradley Projects is pleased to debut From Student to Master: Tokuko Ushioda and Her Teachers, early vintage photographs by Tokuko Ushioda (b. Tokyo, 1940) and rare photographs by her teachers, Yasuhiro Ishimoto (b. San Francisco, 1921–2012) and Kiyoji Ōtsuji (b. Tokyo, 1923–2001).

Press Release

Between Background and Foreground

January 20 - August 7

Last fall, LaToya Ruby Frazier’s photograph Grandma Ruby’s Refrigerator was the centerpiece for incoming students’ conversations about identity, place, and social change in the exhibition Shared Art. This spring, the conversations continue with a selection of images from the AMAM collection of American photography. From Lewis Hine’s portrait of Pittsburgh steelworkers in the early 20th century to a still life by Nan Goldin taken in the first days of quarantine in 2020, the exhibition probes how and why artists have captured personal experiences and larger social narratives in their photography.

MULTITUDES

January 24, 2021 - September 5, 2022

Many minds, one project: the American Folk Art Museum is a collection of multitudes. Marking the occasion of the Museum’s 60th anniversary, the displays on view mine this figurative expression as a metaphor for the vast breadth of the Museum’s holdings and its many creators. From its inception in the 1960s and gathering momentum over the decades, AFAM developed as a “collection of collections,” a result at once unified and expressive of numerous perspectives.

Omnipresent throughout the exhibition is the concept of multitudes as reflected in the artistic process itself—from gestures of repetition and seriality, as well as organizing acts of systematization, memorialization, inventory-taking, and the creation of casts of characters. Meanwhile, across the galleries, groupings prompt consideration of art-making and collecting as aligned creative practices, each contributing to identity-formation and world-building. Presented non-chronologically, the works are visually clustered to reveal not only their individuality but also their commonalities and underlying patterns.

Moving across four centuries, AFAM’s collection brings together a rich array of voices, experiences, and mindsets, yielding a correspondingly diverse set of objects: community-based creations rooted in long-standing traditions; functional but highly aesthetic objects reflecting widespread popular practices; distinctive works by neurodivergent individuals made outside the purview of artistic peers; works as fragments entangled in lifelong private mythologies. Rejecting artificial and discriminatory boundaries prevalent in dominant art historical narratives, by which formally trained artists are often constrained, the identity of the Museum’s collection has been formed and reformed over the years by newly-added makers and fresh ideas. The idea of multitudes invites a meditation on the complexities of the Museum’s evolving and multifaceted collection as a larger whole, constituting more than the sum of its parts.

Black Every Day: Photographs from the Carter Collection

June 11 - September 11

This exhibition explores over a century of photographic representations of Black Americans as represented in the Carter collection. Instead of focusing on major historical events or contemporary images of strife and violence, Black Every Day explores the fullness and richness of Black culture, addressing themes of community, excellence, family, and labor.

See More

Mario Kiesenhofer: Mario Kiesenhofer: Surroundings

June 2 - July 2

Peter Hay Halpert Fine Art is pleased to present Surroundings, an exhibition by emerging queer artist Mario Kiesenhofer. For his first solo show in the United States, Kiesenhofer blurs body representations and maps queer surroundings.

Wendy Red Star: Wendy Red Star: American Progress

April 6 - August 28

Wendy Red Star: American Progress presents work by the artist, Wendy Red Star, who was raised on the Apsáalooke (Crow) reservation in Montana. Red Star’s work is informed by her cultural heritage and engagement with many forms of creative expression, including photography, sculpture, video, fiber arts, and performance.This exhibition, installed throughout the first floor of the museum, explores the ideas of Westward Expansion and Manifest Destiny through the lens of John Gast’s 1872 painting, American Progress. Gast’s painting exemplifies the justification of American settlers driving Indigenous communities off their land during the 19th century.

See More

Esery Mondesir: Esery Mondesir: We Have Found Each Other

December 18, 2021 - August 7, 2022

Toronto-based artist-filmmaker Esery Mondesir describes the impulse that fuels his art practice as “a search for kinship.” At the heart of his work is Mondesir’s connection to the Haitian diaspora, based on his own experience of migration: the artist left Haiti, his country of birth, at the age of 28.

Mondesir mines personal archives, institutional collections, music, and oral histories to chart and connect people and places with links to Haiti. The film footage, score, passport photographs, and text presented here are expressions of his search. They reflect an extended family he has found, across decades, and connecting Toronto, Havana, Montreal, Port-au-Prince, and the Oti region of Ghana.