2 May to 8 June 2013 Please join us for the opening on Thursday, 2 May from 7 to 9 p.m. Gebimsel is a German word that roughly means “dangling decorations”, and can apply to such domestic decor as garlands and beaded curtains. Likewise, in his second exhibition with the gallery, Husain’s assembly of “anti-architectural structures”, drawings, and silk paintings riff off of condominium showroom decor—a design strategy that turns objects into props to give an empty architecture the impression of lived-in-ness, and more importantly, a lifestyle to buy into. Husain’s video montage of found footage of condominium “fly throughs” (virtual 3D videos of proposed developments) is in dialogue with Marguerite Duras’s concept of the image passe-partout, a blank image to which the filmmaker may apply an indefinite number of texts. Husain’s video inserts SMS-styled chat bubbles into these various constructed spaces. The video is an extension of Husain’s earlier videos Q (2002), Swivel, and Shrivel (both 2005) which depict digitized versions of everyday life in the city, but this newest work presents a more pointed meditation on gentrification. The condo showroom, as a real-life venue or modeled in CGI, is the postmodern image passe-partout, and allows us to composite our own fantasy of day-to-day living into it. Accompanying the show is a custom poster depicting a box of Indonesian pandan leaf-flavoured cake mix (depicting a red-lipped and beehived model on the box) paired with the sporadic playing of German popstar Alexandra’s 1968 schlager “Illusionen”. For Husain, these two components evoke the optimism of the 1960s as a comparison to the present, and Alexandra’s song inflects the installation with an air of melancholy. The promises of high rise construction of the 1960s seem to have shifted now, especially in Toronto. As Husain writes, “It’s not that the leading critics of urbanism, like Richard Sennet and Jane Jacobs, are irrelevant now, but thinking about urban development in those terms doesn't apply any more now that we're surrounded by glass walls as given facts.” For more information please contact the gallery or visit our website.
follow us on Susan Hobbs Gallery 137 Tecumseth Street Toronto, Canada M6J 2H2 telephone: 416 504 3699 facsimile: 416 504 8064 www.susanhobbs.com

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