Double Happiness Projects launches its inaugural contemporary art fundraiser in support of the Toronto People With AIDS (PWA) Foundation -
Thursday, July 5th 2018
7:00 PM @ DHP
Extended Viewing (POst-Gala)
July 9-13, 2018
Public Preview
Double Happiness Projects (DHP)
Wednesday, July 4th 2018
1:30 PM - 9:00 PM
163 Sterling Road, Studio No.125
Toronto, ON
M6R 2B2
$18 Single Tickets <<Click here to Purchase (limited Tickets Available)
$60 for 4 Group Tickets <<Click here to Purchase (limited Group Tickets Available)
$18 Donations <<Click here to Donate
tickets include canapés, open bar featuring a selection of beers and wines, along with rad tunes+vibes.
In our 1st edition of the PHAT silent auction, artworks by national, emerging and local artists were chosen through a curatorial advisory committee. The works were generously donated by the artists and align with the mandate of Double Happiness Projects' mandate of incubating and exhibiting works that are both accessible and critical.
This year's edition includes works by: Jamie Bradbury, Jason Deary, Chris Foster, Layne Hinton, Zachari Logan, Andrew Maize, Greg McCarthy, Creators of Objects, Steve Papadopoulos, Gabriel Parniak, Ed Pien, Jenna Faye Powell, Darren Rigo, and Xiao Jing Yan.
Participating artists also receive a portion of the sales. In this year's edition, the net monies raised will be donated to the Toronto People with AIDS (PWA) Foundation through its 20th annual Friends for Life Bike Rally. Toronto PWA offers an array of meaningful support services for individuals living with AIDS and HIV in Toronto.
Absentee Bid Forms are available upon request.
This year's auction generously supported by:
Event Rental
Chairman Mills
Beer Brewery
Henderson Brewing Co.
Winery
Château des Charmes
Catering
Daniel et Daniel
Media
Akimbo
Framing
Superframe
Art Printing
Jeremy Does Art Prints
Curatorial Advisory Commitee
David Liss (MOCA Toronto Canada)
Leah Resnick (NGC)
Music
Alex Tribe
Official CATALOGue for #PHATAF2018 inaugural Year's Collection
JAMIE BRADBURY (Central Saint Martins (U.K.) M.F.A. 2010) has been engaged in a multi-disciplinary practice in visual arts, music, and independent research. Participating in conferences at McGill, Concordia, NSCAD, and Oxford University he’s explored the power relationships continually played out through forms of representation. His written work has been published in academic journals, whilst his visual works have been exhibited throughout North America, and Europe (Arte Fiera, Santorini Biennale, AACDD Festival London, Art Toronto, and AQUA Miami). He’s appeared in publications such as Canadian Art, Voir Magazine, CBC news, and Garageland, first coming to national prominence in Canada, participating on the T.V programme Star portraits. His works are
held in private and public collections such as the Portrait Gallery of Canada, Debbie Moore M.B.E, and the ALDO collection. Jamie was recently shortlisted for the Salt Spring National Art Prize.
www.studiojamiebradbury.com
JAMIE BRADBURY
The Haunted Boy
2009
Conté on Black Canson paper
11" x 14", Framed
Estimated Value: $550
Exploring the intersections, and multiplicity of identity formations that both adhere to, along with challenge contemporary expressions of Masculinity. New and difficult questions continue to be raised about the legitimacy of the use of gender pronouns, along with the continued diversification within intersectional identity politics. To what extent are these identifications contingent on former, reductive, understandings of gender expression? Is the idea of Masculinity itself an archaic idea, or can it continue to serve a purpose within evolving identity expressions? What does contemporary Masculinity look like, and how it expressed today?
JASON DEARY
Blue Gate
2018
Watercolour, colour pencil on linen over panel
18" x 14", Display-Ready
Estimated Value: $1,400
"I make abstract paintings that represent an investigation of fragmented memory through a wide variety of adopted and invented painting languages and an exhaustive exploration of technique and material. I am interested in painting as a means of recording time, action and thought. The paintings serve as a meditative thinking space both while being made and in their final form. I am interested in how we can hold onto, reveal and record memories of the past in order to understand the present and imagine our future. I work exclusively in a black and white palette, making works that nod to various means of documentation such as photocopies, old textbooks and photographs. My paintings explore balancing presence against absence, confusion against clarity, spontaneity against calculation and try to collect what they can while also demonstrating (and accepting) loss.
Most recently, I have been working through the above themes and ideas (particularly memory, collection and loss) with watercolours. The soft, ghostly marks and hazy liquid transparencies in contrast against a rigid painted armature further explore my interest in presence and absence, collection and loss. In these works the paint drips and stains immediately but can also be washed away and lost.
I have been researching how painting and drawing is used as a therapeutic activity for those suffering from cognitive disorders or diseases, such as Alzheimer’s. My water-colour works in particular borrow from one such popular activity my father engages in, the colouring book. These works begin as a rigid, straight edged and measured framework. I then fill each and every section with varying speed and application in an almost meditative state. They borrow from popularly administered drawings exercises and pattern recognition memory tests for their compositions. These paintings act as and resemble windows, gates, armatures or fences. They are symbols for something attempting to protect and preserve while also allowing things to slip through. Change, movement and loss all exist alongside retention.
The work in this auction is indicative of the newest direction my practice has taken and what will be shown at my next solo exhibition."
JASON DEARY is a visual artist with an MFA from OCAD University and a BFA from the University of Windsor. He was a work study candidate at the Banff Centre and has had multiple exhibitions across Canada including FIELD Contemporary in Vancouver, Avalanche Institute of Contemporary Art in Calgary, Forest City Gallery in London, Idea Exchange, Cambridge. Deary was a recent recipient of grants from Toronto Arts Council, Ontario Arts Council and Canada Council. His work is in numerous private and corporate collections in Canada. In the fall, Deary will participate in a group exhibition in Windsor Ontario and then present a new solo exhibition at Birch Contemporary in Toronto.
CHRIS FOSTER is a multidisciplinary visual artist and designer based in Toronto. His artwork takes many forms including public installation, sculpture, design, printmaking and collaborative projects. Working across disciplines, his work engages conversations about material culture, the built environment and spaces in transition. He received a Bachelors of Fine Art from the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design (NSCAD) in 2008. His clients have included Ontario Place, the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto Artscape, Long Winter and the Summer Works Theatre Festival. Foster's work has been exhibited throughout Canada and can be found in public and private collections internationally.
CHRIS FOSTER
Scaffold #4
2018
Intaglio print with Chine-collé on paper
7" x 12", Framed
Edition of 5
Estimated Value: $400
'Scaffold #4' is part of an ongoing series of prints and sculptures that explore scaffolding, abstraction and the build environment.
LAYNE HINTON
Aquaducts
2018
Intaglio print with Chine-collé on paper,
10"X 13", Framed
Edition of 6
Estimated Value: $400
'Aqueducts' is a continuation of Hinton's interest in architecture, imagined spaces, and geometric structures. This work explores the reduction of architectural forms to their most basic corners and edges, an attempt to define shapes through simple wire forms and to investigate the way they become inverted in the process.
LAYNE HINTON is a multidisciplinary artist and independent curator based in Toronto. Through analog projection, sculpture, installation, video, drawing, and printmaking, her artwork examines architectural forms, geometric structures, and the way in which line, light, and shadow play with these spaces. Continuing her exploration of space, Layne is a curator for Art Spin, an organization that presents site-specific projects and exhibitions in unique spaces in transition.
ZACHARI LOGAN is a Canadian artist based in Regina, Saskatchewan who works mainly with large-scale drawing, ceramics and installation practices. Logan evolves a visual language that explores intersections between masculinity, identity, memory and place. Engaging empirical explorations of landscape, figuration, and overlapping art-historic motifs, Logan employs a strategy of quotation, mined from place and experience. His work has been exhibited widely, in group and solo exhibitions throughout North America, Europe and Asia and can be found in public and private collections worldwide, including the National Gallery of Canada, Leslie-Lohman Museum in NYC, Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), Remai Modern and McMichael Collection of Canadian Art. Logan has attended residencies in Paris, London, Calgary (ACAD’s Artist in Residence Program), rural Tennessee, Vienna (Museums Quartier: Quartier21 Program), the International Studio and Curatorial Program (ISCP) in Brooklyn, Wave Hill Botanical Gardens, Winter Workspace Program in the Bronx and artist in residence at the Tom Thomson Shack on the site of the McMichael Gallery.
ZACHARI LOGAN
Sweet Peas from Wildflowers Series
2018
Red pencil on mylar
4.5" x 7", Framed
Estimated Value: $1200
The series of drawings that this work is a part of, the “Wildflower Series” represent an imagined encroachment on the body, a regrowth or overgrowth if you will. These symbolize a state of embodied desire, while reflecting the reality of human dependence on plant life, often in the form of human limb(s) representing portions of stems, root-systems or feature of a flower such as stamen or pedals, reflecting the reality of human dependence on plant life.”
ANDREW MAIZE
Marker Drawing Series (Six Fold)
2018
Prismacolor marker drawing on Stonehenge paper, earth-magnets
26" x 7 1/8", Hanging-Ready
Estimated Value: $153.42
The Marker Drawing Series is an exploration in process, colour and notions of time and space. The physicality of permanent makers led to questions of the possible alternative parametres to create drawings. In these drawings, the ink is drawn from the markers through stacked paper; creating images using gravity, the fibres of the paper and the chemicals in the markers.
ANDREW MAIZE's process oriented approach explores language, colour, movement [gravity/time/space] and the patterns of human systems. The material or performance is a catalyst for larger conversations – the expression a result of connection to space, community and place – taking seriously both the conceptual framework and materials as a starting point, to engage the audience in political, psychological, historical and geographical contexts.
As an arts educator and organizer, Maize is involved in collaborative projects such as White Rabbit Arts, the Circus of the Normal and the Lunenburg School of the Arts. He studied poetry, children’s literature and music history at Fanshawe College in 2005 and received a BFA Interdisciplinary from NSCAD University in 2011. In 2015 and 2016 he was a finalist in the RBC Painting Competition.
GREG MCCARTHY was born in Prince Rupert, British Columbia. McCarthy is a multidisciplinary artist living and working in Toronto, Canada. His work often deals with the ethics of archiving and the role of photography in forming a visual narrative for history. McCarthy received a BFA from OCAD University and is a founding member of OKAY Collective an art collective based in Toronto, focused on publishing and promoting the works of emerging artists. His works have been featured in Magenta Magazine, Art With Heart, Edition Toronto and have been collected by various private collections and The National Gallery of Canada.
www.gregmccarthy.ca
GREG MCCARTHY
Crowd Study 07 from The Distance Between a Handshake Series
2015
Silver Gelatin Print
3.5" x 5", Framed
Estimated Value: $700
Using the discarded archive of a lithographers union, from the early 30s to the late 50s as a starting point, The Distance Between a Handshake is an ongoing series that proposes alternative uses for an archive. Through various alterations to the prints, it questions the collective ownership of historical documents and the role of the archivist in presenting them.
The pieces become redacted and altered in ways that subvert the original intentions of the photographer and create newer images through the destruction of themselves. Archival preservation practices are purposely subverted with the intention that over time the interaction of the artist with the archive will inevitably cause damage to the original photographs leaving further traces of the intervention into the archive.
CREATORS OF OBJECTS
Found Object 1, Weight
2018
Cast salt and resin
12” x 12” x 8”, Display ready with floating ledge
Estimated Value: $500
CREATORS OF OBJECTS is a design company that produces original artworks and design pieces in small production runs, collaborating with the custom interior design industry (Gluckstein Home, Powell & Bonnell) to bring concepts and sketches to reality. Principals Joanne Byrne and Jonathan de Swaaf bring their knowledge of art and industrial design along with over two decades of experience working with a vast array of materials, processes and executions. Current specialties include making modern mirrors the traditional way by hand-gilding glass with precious metal leaf, as well as casting resin furniture pieces and home accessories.
COO's aesthetic is comprised of the best artist tradition mixed with the lines and materials of the contemporary. Through this approach COO aims to create simple, refined and ornate pieces -- often in juxtaposition -- that never go out of style.
STEVEN PAPADOPOULOS is Canadian visual artist living in Toronto. Graduated from the OCADU with a BA in Drawing and Painting, whilst also obtaining a MFA from the Glasgow School Of Art in the UK. Papadopoulos has participated in exhibitions in both Toronto and the UK. Most recently selected to participate in exhibitions such as the Plus Art Festival 2018, as well as the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition 2017. His scope of interdisciplinary endeavours includes drawing, painting sculpture/installation video and sound work. In recent years, Steven’s practice has evolved, cultivating a more focused look on the sphere of abstraction. Employing painting and drawing, he maintains an ongoing analysis of his fascination with line, colour, geometric form and repetition.
www.stevenpapadopoulos.ca
STEVEN PAPADOPOULOS
Eidos
2018
Clear gesso, white gesso on panel
12” x 10”, Framed
Estimated Value: $550
"I seek to explore a visual language in my work exploring abstraction, using line, colour, geometric form, and repetition. Through imagination, cognitive intuition, as well as everyday visual experiences, and observation, I aim to evoke an emotional response through the use of the language of abstraction.
Currently, my process stresses production, interaction with colour, and the surface. Beginning with Drawing and Painting, multiple layers are created, with each layer interacting, and informing the next until the composition is resolved. I look to engage the viewer and form a dialogue between distilled shapes, line and colour. This feeling is deepend in the physical presence of the work, as the subtle interactions, depth of materials/media and accumulation of contrasting elements assembled over the surface begins to form."
GABRIEL PARNIAK
Interlock I (For Lombardi)
2018
Pencil on collage digitally scanned and pigment printed on cold press
8" x 10", Unframed
Varied Editions of 4 Available
Estimated Value Each: $100
“Powerful figures, world leaders, perform gestures sometimes deliberately, but also unconsciously and it is here that we, the observers, can glimpse something of the mental character of the leaders...”
- David McNeill, “Gestures of Power and the Power of Gestures,” University of Chicago Centre for Gesture and
Speech Research, 2008
More sinister sides of the story would indicate that Mark Lombardi was assassinated, and that Carl Andre is a murderer. The brokers of power and control comprise a web of connections so dense that it appears mostly impenetrable. Damning truths remain stacked away in the evidence locker, while the interrogation lamp glares into the face of someone hoping not to be discovered. Institutional gatekeepers always guard secret bunkers. Mark Lombardi’s journey into the evidence locker may have gotten him killed, while Andre’s assertion that, “She went out the window” is the only truth that interrogators would ever hear. (Where is Ana Mendieta?)
An homage to both Mendieta and Lombardi, these small drawings centre on the re-tracing of a single gestural line, hinting at the inextricable connectedness between figureheads, gatekeepers, and a global “elite” with a vested interested in stashing away the evidence. The details of this connectedness will almost certainly remain hidden from view and stricken from the public narrative at any cost.
GABRIEL PARNIAK is a multidisciplinary artist and designer living and working in Toronto. His work spans print, collage, multiples, sculpture, and installation. Parniak collects, alters, and manipulates found printed matter and objects in order to explore the emotive effects of context, material, ritual, and design within news media, art, and consumer culture. Much of Parniak's work centres on the act of obscuring and altering the iconic as a visual mode of critiquing and questioning the assumed authority, truths, and value(s) normally ascribed to his subjects, be they objects or images, individuals, or groups of cultural and sociopolitical influence.
Taking conceptual cues from Dada and Pop Art, as well as borrowing elements of Minimalism and commercial design, Parniak creates spaces and images with a visual and emotional legibility which invites multiple readings. By infusing a specific brand of visual humour and exposing layers of conceptual connection between subjects, Parniak's work balances between serious social critique and absurdist satire. By co-opting and subverting the context of his source materials, and applying a highly distilled aesthetic sensibility, Parniak produces projects
to evoke conversation and contemplation on human interaction and representation in the 21st century.
Gabriel Parniak earned his BFA at NSCAD University in 2013. His work has been shown nationally and abroad and has been collected privately and publicly in Canada. He has participated in The Roundtable Residency (Toronto, ON.), and the Boarding House Arts Incubator Residency (Guelph, ON.).
ED PIEN lives and works in Toronto. He has received a BFA from Western University and a MFA from York University. Pien has shown extensively in venues that include the Drawing Centrr, NYC; the Victoria & Albert Museum; The Canadian Culture Centre, Paris; The Goethe Institute, Berlin; The Art Gallery of Ontario; Musée des beaux arts; Musée d’art contemporain; Oboro, Montreal; Axenéo7, Gatineau; Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, Victoria; The Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon; Musée des beaux-arts, Montreal; Songzhuang Art Centre, Beijing; the National Art Gallery of Canada; and at MASS MoCA, Massachusetts. He has participated in the Montreal Biennale; the Sydney Biennale; the Moscow Biennale; the Beijing Biennale, as well as the Curitiba Biennial, Brazil. The artist is represented by Birch Contemporary, Toronto, Pierre-François Ouellette Art Contemporain, Montreal, Galerie Maurits van de Laar, The Netherlands.
ED PIEN
Yellow Bat
2016
Intaglio Print
25 cm x 29.3 cm, Framed
Artist’s Proof Edition, Edition of 21
Estimated Value: $550
Part of a series realized at Atelier Alain Piroir, in Montreal. Bat is mostly detested and considered as grotesque in the West; yet in the Chinese culture, it is seen as harbinger of good fortune. Yellow Bat is a continued exploration on the notion of Otherness.
JENNA FAYE POWELL
Wonder Bread II
2017
Acrylic and graphite on clay
5.25” x 6” x .5”, Hanging-Ready
Estimated Value: $375
This series of work was produced at the Vermont Studio Centre in 2017, as a part of Powell’s Blue Monday project, which offers the question: can something be doubly fictitious? Taking inspiration from the phenomenon of finding religious portraits and iconography in toasted bread, Powell paints scenes of sublimity on sculptures mimicking sliced bread, as a nod to popular brand name Wonder Bread — and to discuss anomalous occurrences where fiction, humour, and sanctuary intersect.
JENNA FAYE POWELL (b.1987) is an artist, writer, and arts administrator based in Toronto, Ontario. Powell has attained a MFA degree from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University (2012), as well as a BFA degree from the University of Western Ontario (2009).
Powell has exhibited nationally in various solo and group shows; selected exhibits include Brave New Worlds at Museum London, the Windsor-Essex Triennial at the Art Gallery of Windsor, and Blue Monday at Robert McLaughlin Gallery. Powell was a finalist for the 2012 RBC Painting Competition, and recently completed a residency at the Vermont Studio Centre.
Powell currently works at Arsenal Contemporary Toronto / Division Gallery, with administrative and curatorial experience in the not-for-profit, charitable, and commercial art sectors.
DARREN RIGO is a Toronto-based artist who creates work inspired by the absurdity in everyday life. His practice reacts to location as a source of inspiration while considering the endlessly evolving nature of photography. He received a BFA from OCAD University where he majored in photography and recently completed residencies at AIAV (Japan), Leveld Kunstnartun (Norway), AIRY (Japan). His work has also been included in the collections of the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton and the Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts in Japan. Local public installations of his work commissioned by SickKids Hospital, Daniels Corporation and Plazacorp Investments are currently on view around Toronto.
www.darrenrigo.com
DARREN RIGO
Bore from The Woods Series
2011
C-print on Artcare foamcore, in custom walnut frame with regular glass
18" x 14.75", Framed
Edition 2 of 5
Estimated Value: $600
"I grew up on Fred Rigo’s Farm, or at least that’s what it said on our mailbox. Fred Rigo is my grandfather and the hundred-acre parcel of land that he bought and later built a house upon for my family was more of a weed lot than a farm. There were no animals and the fields were left untended for years before I was born, but it was a marvelous place to grow up. As a child I would explore the woods and swamps pretending I was on a quest for a treasure, a lost civilization or on an odyssey home. Along the way I would encounter monsters, thieves, steep cliffs, and bottomless pits, all of which were just exaggerations of the features I discovered around the property. A gnarly tree became a giant to fight. A series of stones became the only way across a raging river. A hunter’s shelter became a hermit’s camp. I always persevered in the end and made it home for dinner."
XIAO JING YAN
Under the Willow Tree
2017
Stainless steel
Framed
Edition 7 of 50
Estimated Value: $250
The willow tree represents strength and stability; its structure and trunk stands firm to withstand the greatest of challenges. Its branches are flexible and strong; they bend without breaking. The tree gives us a sense of belonging, safety, hope, and healing. In traditional visual depictions of the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy, Guanyin, she is often shown seated on a rock with a willow branch in a vase of water at her side. It is believed that the willow branch has the power to ward off evil spirits.
The cicada is an insect thought to live only on wind and rain drops; it symbolizes the simple life and an incorruptible personality in ancient Chinese literature. Since it lives underground for years before shedding its skin, the cicada is often considered a magical creature, and it is believed that it can connect the three realms of heaven, earth, and humanity; it is regarded as a symbol of rebirth and immortality.
The figures created here are wearing the cicada wings and resemble the western fairies. These hybrid ethereal creatures or sprites are scattered around the willow tree branches and constructing an mythological atmosphere.
XIAO JING YAN is a Chinese Canadian artist working and living in Markham, ON. Yan is known for her intricate sculptural installations that explore the intersections of the natural and cultural worlds. She received an M.F.A on Sculpture from Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 2007, USA and a B.F.A from Nanjing Arts Institution in 2000, China.
Yan’s work has been exhibited in galleries and museums internationally. Yan has exhibited at Royal Ontario Museum, Canada; Suzhou Museum, China; Varley Art Gallery, Markham; Durham Art Gallery, Durham; Katzman Contemporary, Toronto; The Latcham Gallery, Stouffville; Mississauga Art Gallery, Mississauga; Lonsdale Gallery, Toronto; TRUCK Contemporary Art, Calgary; Plug In Contemporary, Winnipeg; Surrey Art Gallery, Surrey; Glenhyrst Art Gallery of Brant, Brantford; Artspace, Peterborough; and many more. Her work was also featured at Art Toronto twice in 2012 and 2014. Richmond Art Gallery in BC will present her solo exhibition in September 2018.
