15.02.2014 | 20.04.2014
THE COLLABORATIONISTS | JENNIFER MARMAN, DANIEL BORINS
Opening Reception February 15 at 8 PM
Sponsored by KPMG
Jennifer Marman and Daniel Borins are Toronto-based artists who have been working together for over a decade. This exhibition is their largest solo show to date and is comprised of major installations and kinetic sculptures, paintings and multidisciplinary works. Drawing from aspects of modernist art, with a focus on abstraction and contemporary information technology as a subject, their works transform art historical tropes in a refreshing and playful manner.
The aesthetic of minimalism is used as part of a strategy of critique, whether of form and function, or of systems of information. Underlying each piece is the artists' examination of contemporary issues related to the control and transmission of knowledge, ranging from the abstraction of information in Filp Through to the physical allusion to digital data in Black Boxes.
In Black Boxes, visitors enter an austere room, indistinguishable from so many other office spaces but for a row of large, faceless servers humming ominously, caged behind wire mesh and churning endless data. The operations these monoliths perform are entirely unknown, hidden behind a minimalist façade, however in light of recent controversies surrounding the leaking of confidential information by figures such as Edward Snowden or Julian Assange, one might suspect a host of sinister activities. Information is currency in an economy of uncertainty, only it would seem that disinformation is equally potent and the counterfeit mechanisms of capitalism or the idealistic failures of modernism are equally corrupt. For Marman and Borins, the work in this exhibition signals an urgency to reveal as much as it conceals and not repeat our mistakes as suggested in their work Input Output, where the secrets held within its black shell are spit out at us and regurgitated over and over in ceaseless futility.
As the title suggests, The Collaborationists combines the artistic act of collaborating with the narrative insinuations of collaborating with the enemy. A series of confrontations ensues: the artists position works that face and efface each other and connote and quote each other.
We wish to thank Georgia Scherman Projects (Toronto) and Tierney Gardarin Gallery (New York) for their support. Funding assistance from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, and the City of Lethbridge. This exhibition is curated by Ryan Doherty, Melissa Bennett and Linda Jansma.
Jennifer Marman and Daniel Borins have practiced sculpture, installation and media art in Toronto since 2000. Marman is a graduate of the University of Western Ontario. Borins is a graduate of McGill University. Both Marman and Borins are graduates of the Ontario College of Art and Design in 2001 - where they first met and began collaborating together. They have exhibited widely including the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Albright Knox Gallery, Buffalo, Galeria OMR, Mexico City; and James Cohan Gallery, New York.
The exhibition is organized and circulated by the Art Gallery of Hamilton and the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in collaboration with the Southern Alberta Art Gallery and the Art Gallery of Windsor.
