2012 Visiting Artists¹ Residency Exhibitions
Tom Ngo: Refractions
Derek Sullivan: Surplus Portfolio
June 28 ­ July 28, 2012

Artist Talks: Thursday, June 28, 6-7 pm
Opening Reception: Thursday, June 28, 7-9 pm

 ‹ Toronto, ON ‹ Open Studio is pleased to present the
second of two 2012 Visiting Artists¹ Exhibitions featuring Toronto-based
artists Tom Ngo and Derek Sullivan, June 28 ­ July 28, 2012. Each year, Open
Studio selects four professional artists with or without printmaking
experience to create works in the print medium of their choice, working
closely with a professional print artist to realize their projects. These
exhibitions by Ngo and Sullivan are the result of this intensive work
period.

After receiving his Master¹s of Architecture, Tom Ngo began to explore
architectural representation in the field of art, and has since been working
as a mixed media artist. He is represented by LE Gallery and also produces
designs and concepts for the firm of Moriyama & Teshima. Keeping current
with architectural practice informs his artwork ‹ melding it with his work
to shape a critical outlook on contemporary art and architecture. Ngo's work
employs absurdity and nonsense as a means of questioning the logic of
building design. His print series Refractions, created during his Visiting
Artist Residency at Open Studio, adds another variable to his exploration of
structures by examining the effect of screenprinting on the design of his
absurd constructions. Each piece was generated by printing fragments of
floor plans and then extrapolating the plans into buildings. These buildings
then went through another stage of splicing, collage and multiple-timed
exposures to create new arrangements. The arrangements were edited and
redrawn to create the final constructions. The resulting works stand as
absurd buildings seen through the lens of the screenprinting process. A text
by Chloe Town accompanies the exhibition.

Derek Sullivan¹s recent solo exhibitions include Albatross Omnibus at The
Power Plant, Toronto and Young Americans at KIOSK in Ghent, Belgium (both
2011), and his work is included in the collection of the National Gallery of
Canada. His collaboration with Gareth Long, The Illustrated Dictionary of
Received Ideas, has been performed at numerous venues including PS.1,
Queens, NY; Art Metropole, Toronto; Artexte, Montréal; and Wiels, Brussels.
Sullivan was recently short-listed for the 2012 Sobey Art Award. During his
Visiting Artist Residency at Open Studio, Derek Sullivan produced Surplus
Portfolio 2012, a suite of seven relief prints printed on Japanese Kozuke
paper using two woodblocks carved into variously shaped parallelograms. Each
edition within the suite mimics the open spread in a book, with paired
parallelograms as abstract book pages. Each print shares one block from the
previous edition, so looking through the suite evokes the act of turning
pages in a book. The prints can be read as pages or fragments from an
artist¹s book; as Sullivan writes in his artist¹s statement, the most
obvious way to read a book is front-to-back, and blank books are endlessly
written. A text by Jen Hutton accompanies the exhibition.


To download a copy of the accompanying essays, including full artist and
author biographies, please visit
http://www.openstudio.on.ca/images_site/ngo-sullivan-brochure.pdf. For
high-resolution images or interviews, contact sara@openstudio.on.ca.

Showing Concurrently
George Gilmour Members¹ Gallery ­ Jenn Law: Unwritten
Print Sales Gallery ­ Amber Albrecht: The Summer House
Varied Editions ­ Open Studio Members¹ Online Gallery Featured Artist:
Carlina Chen

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Open Studio gratefully acknowledges the support of The City of Toronto
through the Toronto Arts Council, The Canada Council for the Arts, the
Ontario Arts Council and the generous support of its members and numerous
foundations, corporations and individuals.

Details for attached images:
Tom Ngo, Alpha (Plan), screenprint on paper, 19" x 24", 2012. Printed by
Joseph Sui under the auspices of the Open Studio Visiting Artist Residency,
2011-12. 
Derek Sullivan, Eager, Guilty, Free, Reserved, woodcut on Kozuke, 25" x 37",
2012. Printed by Laine Groeneweg under the auspices of the Open Studio
Visiting Artist Residency, 2011-12. Photograph by Chris Thomaidis.



--
Sara Kelly
Associate Director 

Open Studio
401 Richmond Street West, Suite 104
Toronto ON  M5V 3A8
T/F: 416-504-8238
E: sara@openstudio.on.ca
W: http://www.openstudio.on.ca