Arnaud Maggs
dal 20/10/2010 al 3/12/2010
Segnalato da
20/10/2010
Arnaud Maggs
Susan Hobbs Gallery, Toronto
The Dada Portraits. Continuing with his ongoing investigation of visual taxonomies, the artist's exhibition features a new series of archival ink jet prints that mark a watershed moment for the artist. The Dada Portraits are based on a recent discovery of a collection of 19th century French diagrammatic drawings used as educational tools for carpenters.
Continuing with his ongoing investigation of visual taxonomies, Arnaud Maggs’ exhibition features a new series of archival ink jet prints that mark a watershed moment for the artist. The Dada Portraits are based on a recent discovery of a collection of 19th century French diagrammatic drawings used as educational tools for carpenters. Each “little exploded drawing” is a partial cross-section of a wooden dwelling. The edges of their vaulted roofs extend into oblique planes and subsequently rotate in space to reveal impossible perspectives and complex geometries. Of these lattices of superimposed forms, Maggs recognized their anthropomorphic qualities, from Cubist heads, to Constructivist faces, to Dada experiments, or even portraits of their major players.
Though these drawings share affinities with the graphic sensibilities of the Dadaists—such as the fractured figures in Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase—Maggs’ cool yet intimate image-based studies of his “ready-made” subjects follow a similar Dadaist impulse. His renaming of each drawing after the celebrated figures of the Zurich, Berlin and Paris undergrounds is a playful gesture that, like photography, is a way to modify these found documents into something of his own.
Image: The Dada Portraits: plate 35, Max Ernst
Opening Thursday, 21 October, 6:00 to 8:00pm
Susan Hobbs Gallery
137 Tecumseth Street - Toronto
Wednesday through Saturday from 11am to 5pm or by appointmen
Admission free