Opening on March 12th, Social Exchange at Gallery Neubacher celebrates women artists and their special networks. This exhibit highlights the accomplishment of women artists both established and emerging. Venerable senior artists such as Joanne Tod and Gerda Neubacher will show work next to frisky up-and-comers such as Zoe Stonyk and Karen Azoulay.
Social exchange dominates social life. The artists represented in this group exhibit work within a discourse of social exchange, a culture of participation. Though such exchange-based art and practices ostensibly speak a language of intellectual generosity, there remains a sharp commentary on social posturing within contemporary life. Many of the women in the show base their cultural activity on affection, upon a system of social links. Theirs is a social enterprise not determined by formal procedure; rather it is a regime of aesthetic pleasure in the face of a mainstream culture in crisis. The participants themselves resolve questions of what it means to make work in the context of a fickle, “bonfire of the vanities” art circuit.
These “girls” are the Princess Charmings of the art scene. Stonyk, Firth-Eagland, Azoulay and Tod are as recognizable on the party circuit and in fashion magazines, as they are on the gallery scene. Metropolitan bon vivants, they are often cited as much for their sense of style and panache as they are for their conceptual output. Social synchronicity and serendipity is often at play in the work of these women. What happens when an artist documenting herself in private constitutes the public work? Stonyk likes to render moments when our inner lives leak out in public. Vey Duke electrifies the space between our love and fear of social life. Tod has simply become what she once beheld: a belle of the new haut monde.
Social Exchange’s curatorial premise examines the threshold of this culture of conceptual reciprocity, of public and private life. What are the implications of such event-based artistic practices? Of art work based on a cultural exchange rate?
About Gallery Neubacher:
Gallery Neubacher promises to introduce and contribute to the development of emerging artists as well as showcase the talents of more established contemporary artists working in all media. Gallery Neubacher is located within a stone's throw of Toronto's celebrated Yorkville gallery district.
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