Vocat and Crangle: Opening Thurs. Feb 23 @ KWT

KWT contemporary presents two solo exhibitions of new work

Daryl Vocat: "One Continuous Mistake"
and
Fiona Crangle: "Be Prepared"

opening reception with artists present:
Thursday, February 23, 2012 from 6 - 8 p.m.

624 Richmond St. West, Toronto, Canada

Open noon-six, Wednesday through Saturday.

Lower Gallery:

Daryl Vocat: "One Continuous Mistake"

"Part of how I make art is by borrowing clichés, ideas and images from popular culture. I try them on and look for a version of truth within the stereotypes. Through this process I seek a more nuanced understanding of ideas, while still presenting them in an approachable and humorous style. By using cultural tropes in my work, I play with the viewers' familiarity to the subject matter. I look at how information and ideas are conveyed; how they describe our experiences, or alternately, how they define our experiences.

In broad terms, my work is about identity and difference - looking at the familiar and disrupting expectations. By collaging and manipulating images, I create new relationships and understandings of what already exists. By revising and recombining cultural references, I create work that plays with mass culture and the recognition of its production. My work looks at intersections between natural, cultural and social influences, and at how understanding these concepts influences who we are, what we identify with, and how we act.

I use Boy Scout imagery to discuss behavioural norms, sexuality, and the construction of masculinity. These boys exist in the space between how they are expected to behave, and how they want to behave. They fumble through moral experiments while haphazardly staking out their own territory. These characters imitate the world, images and scenarios surrounding them.

The suite of etchings titled Playing the Game uses Goya's Disasters of War as a starting point. In referencing historical work dealing with the brutality of war, the images meet today's world, discussing violence and representations of masculinity in modern society. Through their serial and repetitive nature, narratives of subculture, ritual and violence play out. The work acts as a dialogue with its source material.

The photographs in this exhibition also address ideas of ritual and subculture. These self-portraits look at ideas of magic and intention. In creating magic symbols we lay out our intentions and desires, we choose to have hope, we attempt to give structure, and create meaning. Through magic, much like through art, we transform and create the world as we want to see it."

- Daryl Vocat (2012)

Biography:
Daryl Vocat graduated with a BFA from the University of Regina in 1999, and an MFA from York University in Toronto in 2001, both majoring in printmaking. He has received project grants from The Toronto Arts Council, The Ontario Arts Council, and The Canada Council. In 2008 he won first prize for Open Studio's National Printmaking Award. In 2009 he won the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop International Purchase Award. In 2011 a catalogue of his work was published by Maison Kasini gallery in Montreal. Also in 2011 The New York Public Library purchased a suite of Vocat's screen prints for their print collection. Most recently he had his first solo exhibition at the Blackburn 20/20 Gallery in New York City.

Daryl Vocat thanks Ontario Arts Council and Toronto Arts Council for their support.

Daryl Vocat is represented by KWT contemporary.

Upper Gallery:

Fiona Crangle: "Be Prepared"

Lucy (2011) oil on canvas, 40" x 60"

"In art, the idea of human goodness is packaged and delivered to us as beauty. Saints, the definitive do-gooders, are rendered as exquisite creatures: glowingly beautiful, artfully posed, often adorned with arichness usually reserved for more worldly personas. During the Baroque period and especially in the hands of Zurbaran and Caravaggio, the paintings of these perfect young things mix desire with the desire to be good, creating a push/pull response in the viewer. Allowing light and dark to fight for space on the canvas reflects the conflicting nature of the viewer's response.

It was the overlapping iconography of "sainting" and "scouting" that initiated this body of work: hagiographic symbols litter the insignia, motifs and especially the badges of the world of scouts and guides. The trials and stages of each saint's quest towards ultimate goodness can be mapped out via an accumulation of scouting badges. The symbols that throughout art history have visually identified each saint - originally for an illiterate audience- are also found in the Catalogue of Scouting Honours. But the similarity does not stop at the symbolic; both these young female saints and Girl Guides are in pursuit of a goal of self betterment, moving toward an ideal vision/version of themselves through a series of challenges. And importantly, both groups are adolescents.

Adolescence is a short lived period of idealism. Physically, we are at our most ideal, like a young Greek kouros or kore, with lithe and supple bodies poised at the cusp of adulthood. Emotionally, this is a time of black and white belief systems, of unshakeable idealism. The saints depicted in Be Prepared have been chosen because at the root of their stories they are defiantly stubborn in a way that only a teenager can be. They have made choices that no amount of forceful persuasion can sway. Most often their stories involve rebuffing the advances of a man that responds to their physical desirability- the ideal beauty of adolescence enhanced by their innate goodness that polishes it to perfection. This holds true to images of adolescents today- their ripening beauty compels us to stare and in fact demands it. And yet the gaze that returns ours is aggressive and challenging, masking an uncertain reaction to the invitation to become a sexual being. The contemporary faces of the girls used for the blended Girl Guide- saints in Be Prepared are armoured with a modern belligerence.... Look, but don't touch."

-Fiona Crangle (January, 2012)

Biography:
KWT contemporary is pleased to introduce newcomer Fiona Crangle with this, her first solo exhibition in Toronto. Crangle is an artist and educator who lives and works in Port Hope, Ontario. She holds a B.F.A. from York University. She has previously exhibited at the Clarington Visual Arts Centre, the Art Gallery of Northumberland, and A.K. Collings Gallery.

Fiona Crangle is represented by KWT contemporary

KWT contemporary is located at 624 Richmond St. West, at the corner of Bathurst, in Toronto.

Open noon-six, Wednesday through Saturday.

News

kwtcontemporary.com

e-mail

416-646-2706

Aurelie K. Collings, Director/Curator
Jessica Vallentin, Administrator
Kristyn Wong-Tam, Owner