Installations at Art Toronto 2024

Arrived (formerly known as Pig Mountain) is an artwork my renown artist Kim Adams. Adams has been working on the sculpture for 10 years. Built exclusively in HO scale, the work depicts various scenes and landscapes all situated around a massive topographical feature.

In Nadia Belerique's "I Love You This Much," a series of tables are placed one inside the next, like nesting dolls. Some of them are missing their centres, as if split open. A self-portrait of sorts, the expanding, spreading and splitting allude to a personal expansion and refraction in Belerique’s own identity as a woman, artist, and mother. The construction and constraint of her own sense of personhood occurs in relation to the family members that came before her, and those that will follow. In creating this work, Belerique’s process was experimental, using objects found around the studio as place-holders to prop up the tables to a certain height: tuna cans, clay pipes, mason jars. In some cases, these place-holders remain in the finished sculpture, and in others they are sand casted and made into aluminum copies. One such item is a pastiche figurine standing on a tiny platform, next to a small tray for loose change, with the text “I Love You This Much” underneath.

Photo: LF Documentation. Image courtesy of the artist and Daniel Faria Gallery.

Over (us) alls, 1
Oil and acrylic on sewn canvas overalls, ric rac, sinew, beadwork, porcupine quills and reclaimed fabric, dimensions variable roughly 100 x 8 x 8 inches, 2023

Over (us) alls, 2
Oil and acrylic on sewn canvas overalls. beadwork and tarp 40 x 18 × 18 in, 2023

Over (Us) alls, 3

Oil and acrylic on sewn canvas overalls, beadwork, and branches, 105 x 22 x 41 inches, 2023

Follow your chest

Acrylic on sewn canvas, tarp, and porcupine quills, 22 x 22 x 6 inches, 2023

Douglas Coupland is a graduate of Vancouver’s Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in Vancouver, as well as the Hokkaido College of Art and Design in Sapporo, Japan. He also attended the Istituto Europeo di Design in Milan, Italy. His work has been the subject of two major museum retrospectives: everywhere is anywhere is anything is everything at the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Royal Ontario Museum, and Toronto’s Museum of Contemporary Art, and Bit Rot at Rotterdam's Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art and Munich's Villa Stuck. Coupland’s work can be found in the collections of the Vancouver Art Gallery (Vancouver), University of British Columbia (Vancouver), Museum of Canadian History (Gatineau), Glenbow Museum (Calgary), Agnes Etherington Art Centre (Kingston), the Albright Knox (Buffalo), and the Confederation Centre (Charlottetown).

Image courtesy of the artist and Daniel Faria Gallery.

Nicholas Crombach's Chariot Burial (2023) is a reimagined archaeological dig, assembled from an unexpected collision of materials. In this piece, a pair of horse skeletons and the half buried remains of a chariot emerge from a deep-red flocked section of ground, seemingly cut out of the earth. In a louche rejection of the natural coloration typical of paleontological remains, the horses' bones are ornate and varied, formed from hand-worked wood, engraved aluminum, carved stone, porcelain, 3D-printed plastics, and other materials.

In assembling this impressive mountain of brass and bauble, Crombach draws inspiration from excavated chariot burials of antiquity, where the chariots were often adorned with small brass or bronze objects. The range of materials and techniques used to craft each horse's bones recalls the decorative arts of bygone eras, while the red flocking gestures toward traditional modes of displaying and storing precious objects.

Landscapes often echo with layers of histories, evolutions, and aspirations, revealing the intricate interplay between the remnants of the past and the possibilities of tomorrow. "Electric Silence" emerges from this dialogue, aiming to interpret the transformative journey of technology within the context of the natural world.

As we reshape the urban landscape, we inadvertently expose the inherent contradictions of our ecological relationships. "Electric Silence" serves as a reflection of this intricate relationship, aiming to capture the tension between our aspirational advancements and the environmental cost they often demand. Through this lens, the project becomes a meditation on the interconnectedness and vulnerabilities of our shared ecological existence.

Sami Tsang uses clay and drawing to materialize internal questions and traumas. Weaving together domestic and psychological narratives related to the conservatism of her youth, Tsang references Chinese proverbs and uses humour, distortion, and whimsy. These stories are not presented didactically, but through a fantastical visual language that combines memories, internal dialogues, folklore and imagined futures.

Bloodless Wounds From Poisonous Roots (2024) is a site-specific installation that reflects Tsang's life experiences, and examines her struggles with the past and the present. Through her masterful understanding of ceramic media, and the intimate approach to the illustrative line work found across her body of artwork, Tsang captures a nuanced understanding of how to merge seemingly disparate emotions and thoughts.