Contemporary Toronto Artists: Artists I-L

Lima-born, Toronto-based artist Luis Jacob's installation "Habitat," detailed here, was realized in 2005 at Toronto's Art Gallery of Ontario. The extensive work comprises six interconnecting rooms for meeting, yoga, DJing, reading, sleep and one devoted to the contrast between hard and soft, which feature ceramic objects presented under museum vitrines.

"The installation Chysto, Chysto, Chysto (Ukrainian for Clean, Clean, Clean) is a meditation on the power of historical events that, for the artist, have lingered long after their occurrence. This history includes the ravages perpetrated by Communist and Nazi regimes on Ukrainian soil, the birthplace of the artist's parents. The crafted objects placed within the pristine environment of Chysto, Chysto, Chysto make reference to Ukrainian heritage, history and culture. The viewer experiences two worlds in Jacyk's installation: one associated with lived experience and the other an artistic invention." - From the publisher

Tim Jocelyn (1952-1986) was a brilliant, articulate, and innovative artist who rose to prominence in the tumultuous Queen Street art scene of the late 1970s and early 1980s. His fascination and facility with fabric led him first to the manufacture of unique and beautiful fashion accessories, but he branched out into other areas, making brilliant and provocative banners, furniture coverings, and screens. Jocelyn turned increasingly away from fashion to enter wholeheartedly the avant-garde art world. Tim Jocelyn's partner and fellow artist, Andy Fabo, was a founding member of the influential ChromaZone group. It was as an associate of the group that Jocelyn became curator of the Chromaliving show in 1984.

Catalogue of an exhibition held at The Power Plant, March 9 to April 22, 1990. Essay: Alan C. Elder.

"'In Numbers: Serial Publications by Artists Since 1955' is a survey of serial publications, dating from 1955 to the present day, that have been produced by artists from around the world...'In Numbers' documents the history of each publication (its inception, production, distribution, and significance) together with a thorough, completely illustrated bibliography for each title." -- From the publisher.
Includes work by G.B. Jones and Bruce LaBruce.

Memoir of Bruce Labruce. "LaBruce confesses everything -- starting from his humble origins as an editor of the zine J.D.s, which begat the queercore movement, to making super-8 movies of naked punks and skinheads and telling true stories of love and lust in the mosh pit." -- From the publisher

The story of a skinhead, his lover, and their social and private lives.

Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Gallery, September 19-November 24, 2002.

Catalgue of an exhibition at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery, January 19-March 3, 2002.

Catalogue of an exhibition held at Oakville Galleries at Centennial Square, Dec. 9, 2000-Jan. 28, 2001.

Catalogue of an exhibition at The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, 22 Nov., 2008-11 Jan., 2009; Art Gallery of Peterborough, 15 May-12 July, 2009; Thames Art Gallery, 18 Sept.-25 Oct., 2009; and Kelowna Art Gallery, 29 May-18 July, 2010.

Recording of a lecture.

Featuring a work by Canadian artist Nobuo Kubota entitled "Waves", which won a $10,000 grant awarded in 1993.

A live performance by musician/sculptor Nobuo Kubota at the Western Front Gallery in British Columbia.

Features architect, sculptor and musician Nobuo Kubota in a sound-sculpture performance using both traditional musical instruments and sound-making devices constructed from ordinary objects.

Catalogue of an exhibition held at Owens Art Gallery, March 3 to 25, 1975.

A keen observer of the absurd, Patrick Kyle's stories defamiliarize the machinations of life, work, and art with droll dialogue and his angular, humanely geometric drawing and sci-fi settings that recall set design more than satellite images. Kyle's figures may be foreign and his settings strange, but his stories resonate deeply.

Looking for an inexpensive live/work space, an anonymous character settles on a supernatural apartment that has a seemingly unlimited number of identical rooms and manifests distracting illusions and other psychological hurdles. The story unfolds in vignettes that voyeuristically document the character's domestic activities in an increasingly disorienting environment.

A monograph on the work of American-Canadian artist Suzy Lake. Lake's work uses a range of media to explore ideas of identity. In collaboration with the Art Gallery of Ontario.

Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Macdonald Stewart Art Centre, Guelph, Ont., Nov.3-Dec. 8, 1991; W.K.P. Kennedy Gallery, North Bay, Ont., Mar. 5-Apr. 6, 1992; Toronto Photographers Workshop, Toronto, Ont., Oct. 17-Nov. 21, 1992. Forward: "Issues concerning authority and mismatched power relationships have been an ongoing theme..."

Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Art Gallery of Hamilton, September 17 to October 17, 1982. Introduction: Glen E. Cumming, Director.
Includes artist's statement, plates, biography, exhibitions, list of works, collections.

Catalogue of an exhibition held at Mendel Art Gallery, February 13 to March 2, 1980. Allan MacKay, Curator/Director. Essay: Bruce Ferguson.
Includes footnotes, plates, biography, exhibitions.

Catalogue of an exhibition held at Galerie Gilles Gheerbrant. Essay: Chantal Pontbriand. Includes illustrations, biography.

"Gordon Lebredt: Nonworks 1975-2008 collects Lebredt's unrealized proposals from a thirty-three-year period —a major retrospective of a body of work that exists only as possibility. Designed and typeset by Lebredt himself, and edited by Lin Gibson, the book contains more than 125 works presented as drawings, schematics and sketches rendered in pencil, ink, spray paint and type, as well as texts by Ian Carr-Harris, Gary Michael Dault, Lin Gibson, Andy Patton, Yvonne Lammerich and Yam Lau and a prologue by David Court and Josh Thorpe." - artmetropole.com

100 Crushes compiles five years of queer comics by Elisha Lim, including excerpts from Sissy, The Illustrated Gentleman, Queer Child in the Eighties, and their cult series100 Butches, as well as new work. It's an absorbing documentary that travels through Toronto, Berlin, Singapore, and beyond in the form of interviews, memoirs, and gossip from an international queer vanguard. Lim's work celebrates the dignity and power of being neither straight, nor white, nor cis-gendered. In 2011 they also successfully advocated for Canadian gay media to adopt the gender neutral pronoun "they."

"Nina Levitt has long explored the roles women played in Allied intelligence operations during the Second World War. Inspired by documents, photographs and films from Canadian, American and British archives, she has created the two multi-media installations documented here. Thin Air focuses on the experiences of two Jewish agents who worked for the British military. Relay recreates the information sent and received from various spies using suitcase radios and working alone in great danger. Two essays are accompanied by archival illustrations." - From the publisher

"In his descriptive analysis of Levitt’s video installations “Gravity” and “Duet,” Sloan suggests the artist uses found imagery from pop-culture and other non-art sources as a means of historical engagement. The author also reflects on the tensions between stillness/movement and utopia/nostalgia within Levitt’s appropriation of cinematic structures. Palmer’s response to the artist’s work relates concepts of distance and gravity to experiences of being queer. Both authors reflect on the spatial metaphors within Levitt’s video installations." - From the publisher

Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, September 23, 2005 - September 23, 2006.

Exhibition held from Oct. 19 to Nov. 18 1989 in Montreal. Text by Sandra Paikowsky.

Catalog of an exhibition held at Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Nov. 13, 2003-Apr. 4, 2004 and Winnipeg Art Gallery, Mar. 5-May 29, 2005.

Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Palm Springs Desert Museum. Introduction: Frederick W. Sleight, Director. Essays: Thomas Albright, Arthur Bardo, Charles Delloye.

"At his most ambitious, however, is Lexier’s More Than Two (Let It Make Itself), a curatorial project that displays over 200 new and recently created artworks and objects by 101 artists/duos/collectives in and around Toronto. Encompassing artists at varying stages of their careers, Lexier presents his take on the wide-ranging, multi-generational portrait of a robust Toronto art community. In seeking to celebrate this expansive community, Lexier brings to The Power Plant an incisive look at the networks of creative production that surround it." -- From the publisher

"A Week At A Glance is a one-year project by Micah Lexier made specifically for Rodman Hall Art Centre. Beginning on the first Monday of 2011, four objects are displayed in the gallery's project space, which has been converted, per the artist's specifications, into a custom-built vitrine. Each Monday, one object is removed and replaced by another object drawn from Lexier's personal collection of everyday items. After fifty-two objects have cycled through the installation, three of the four objects presented during the first week are reintroduced, one per week, during the last three weeks of the installation. The project concludes on the first Sunday of 2012 with a display that is one move away from the first, creating a complete loop that brings the project back to its beginning. This bookwork is a size-as reproduction of all fifty-two one-week displays." -- From the publisher

"Micah Lexier: I’m Thinking of a Number is a survey of the artist’s invitations, posters, bookworks, multiples, t-shirts, coin, catalogues, prints, boxed sets, magazine projects, and other works in multiple format produced between 1980 and 2010." -- From the publisher

"This book is a document of Micah Lexier’s project, David Then & Now, which took place in a series of bus shelters in Winnipeg in the summer of 2005. The project consisted of a 48 different images placed in the spaces normally occupied by bus shelter advertisements. Each bus shelter image consisted of a pair of images, taken of the same person 10 years apart. Each of the people being depicted in the images had the first name of David. The original images were taken in 1993 for a project entitled A Portrait of David which consisted of 75 different men and boys named David, one for each age, from age 1 to age 75. David Then & Now updates that project and is a document of what a decade looks like as seen in the changes that each individual went through over that 10-year period of time." -plugin.org

Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal from June 17 to September 20, 1998.

Catalog of an exhibition held at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, Jan. 30 - Apr. 10, 1994.

Catalogue of the exhibition, Micah Lexier : Site Specific Installations Re-presented, held Aug. 30 - Oct. 5, 1991 at the Surrey Art Gallery.

"In an artist's book/catalogue that takes the form of the elements in Lexier's photographic sculptures, Tousley and Fleming examine his "portraits of relationships" raising issues of individual and social identity, the metaphor of measurement, and the themes of family and knowledge." -eARTEXTE