explorations in toronto art.

Last week I went to LE Gallery, which has been consistently good since I started visiting regularly, to check out both their new shows. However, I left feeling so impressed by the work I saw in the back part of the gallery, that I’d rather devote this review to what I thought was the most engaging.

Whimsical, absurd architectural drawings by Tom Ngo were hanging in a show titled Outliers & Obsolescence. The drafting-style drawings, with their perfectly straight lines, clear colours, and pervasive sense of the grid, belied the clever imaginativeness of the content. Ngo’s play with ridiculous proportions, impossible perspective, and bizarre constructions, is endearing and funny. Yet a faint sense of urban malaise is palpable: bridges and ramps lead from the top of one high-rise to another, titles like Giant and Work and Home imply a certain frustration at the way transportation and architecture function in big cities.

Tom Ngo, Work and Home (courtesy of LE Gallery)

But instead of sinking into the suburban-wasteland trope that has been so ubiquitous over the past several years (which I find is rather tired from overuse, and also somewhat intellectually lazy),  Ngo’s works float along in the zone of skeptical neutrality, fuelled by the nimble, incongruous, character of the compositions.

Some of the pieces are drawn on the backs of maps, which is difficult to perceive at first, but becomes clearer on further inspection. It’s another indicator of the subtlety that Ngo employs in the artwork— not too obvious, but  gives the paper a nice texture and personality, and the roughened edges are a contrast to the perfectly clean lines.

As I made my way around the gallery, owner & curator Wil Kucey told me about Ngo’s background as an architect, who did his master’s thesis on Absurdist architecture. This is visible in the pieces, and I was glad to know this detail that really enriched my experience of the work. These paintings are so detailed and precise that they must be seen in person.

More about Tom Ngo can be found on his website. Outliers & Obsolescence, as well as Bloodletting, continue at LE Gallery, 1183 Dundas St. W, until October 3rd. Gallery hours are Wed – Sun 12-6pm.

Have you seen the new exhibition at the AGO? Playing with Pictures: The Art of Victorian Photocollage is incredible! I visited a few weeks ago and found myself entranced and entertained by the pieces on view. I visited again today and was awed by the skill of the collagists, the recurring social themes; I really found it interesting and touching how timely and easy to relate to the album pages were.

The works on display are pages from the albums of aristocratic ladies in Victorian times, in which they painted scenes in watercolour, pasting in the portraits of loved ones, friends, family, and celebrities. The resulting pages are hilarious, poignant, and very curious. In addition the the framed pages on  the walls and open albums in display cases, there were two monitor stations that allowed the viewer to “flip” through the albums, mimicking the sequential experience. I spent a bit more time at the monitors during today’s visit and was drawn in by the collagists’ use of multiples (heads especially— there must have mainly been portraits at their disposal), along with web or tree structures that explained (or parodied!) social structures and relationships.

One of my particular favourites is from Lady Georgina Berkeley’s album, of a street scene in contemporary London. The wall text reads that it depicts Berkeley’s parody of the “rise of consumer culture,” as well as her “tongue-in-cheek fascination with [...] modern life”— the faces of her friends and associates are placed into mock advertisements for products and services. I can only imagine the types of subtle inside jokes that aren’t visible in the images; for example, the face of a friend who is shy and private, advertising his series of public lectures.. or a family member who dislikes animals, endorsing a brand of pet food.

It also feels timely because the current culture shift/zeitgeist can be mirrored in the urban industrialization of the Victorian era; as such, consumerist and news media parody is the closest to the kind of satire being generated today: see The Onion, The Daily Show, et al. There’s a certain surrealist/Monty Python aesthetic, too— this classic cut-up look is fun to see in one of its earliest forms.

Playing with Pictures is a great show full of wit and whimsy, and is on view at the Art Gallery of Ontario until September 5.