May 2023
Spectra brings together new work by innovative members of Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography in an exhibition that represents a variety of different photographic concepts. As the name suggests the work demonstrates the many possibilities that are open to contemporary photographers and celebrates the diversity of artistic practice revealing the ways seemingly disparate work can intersect. Spectra, a changing collective of members, has been an active participant in CONTACT since its inception.
Alex Coley, Alex Neumann, Ana Šašić, Annie Tong, Atia Pokorny, Changhao Li, Danielle Goshay, David Scriven, Eliza Moore, Eric Garsonnin, Emma Juliette Sherland, Gerald Pisarzowski, Huw Morgan, Katherine KY Cheng, Kye Marshall, Laura Honsberger, Lilianne Schneider, Linda Briskin, Paula Razuri, Shelley Wildeman, Sumaya Osman, Tania Dos Santos, Zoi de la Peña
Curated by Holly Chang
May 6th - 28th, 2023
Artscape Youngplace
Hallway Galleries, 2nd and 3rd Floors
180 Shaw St, Toronto
Mon- Fri: 9am - 5pm
Sat-Sun: 9am - 6pm
Artist Talk
Saturday, May 13th at 11am & 1pm
Curated by Holly Chang
Untitled #1, 2023
Alex Coley is a photo-based artist from Toronto. She holds an Honours Bachelor of Arts in Visual Studies from the University of Toronto and a graduate certificate in Photography from NSCAD University. Her photography practice is process-based, often interdisciplinary and references the history of photography. To Alex, there is honesty to be found in work that is laborious and tangible. She has exhibited at Gallery 44, Queen West Art Crawl, Gladstone Hotel and Gallery 1313. After a decade departure, she returns to her practice with a refreshed lens and permission to change.
earth47_07_417, 2022
A first generation Canadian, born in Montréal, now living in Toronto, Alex Neumann’s camera-based art has been exhibited in Canada as well as in Europe.
He has been associated with artist run galleries both in Montreal and Toronto - Véhicule Art (Montréal) Inc., The Workshop (Concordia University: Coordinator), Toronto Photographers’ Workshop/Photography Gallery, Harbourfront (founding member, chairman of Exhibition Committee) and Gallery 44.
More recently, he worked as a web development coordinator at York University. Past work included free-lance photography, and teaching photography at University of Toronto and Sheridan College, Dundas Valley School of Art, and Toronto Board of Education.
Before, 2022
Ana Šašić is a writer, photographer, and urban professional based in Toronto, interested in work exploring personal and collective meaning rooted in public space and the symbolism of the everyday. Her play This Coast Was New was performed at the Hamilton Fringe Festival 2022, and she has exhibited at Gallery 1313, John B. Aird Gallery, and the Geary Art Crawl. This year is her 30th anniversary of being new to Canada.
Unwinding like the Mountains Around Him, Quba, Azerbaijan, 2021
A graduate of Sheridan College in applied photography, Annie Tong lives and works in Toronto as a professional photographer. Annie’s photographic work explores a variety of themes within documentary-style portraiture. Intrigued by the beauty of the ordinary, Annie looks to “the everyday of life” for her inspiration. Whether as a traveler seeking to understand a day in the life of others, or as a healthcare photographer in search of ordinary life in otherwise extraordinary circumstances, her photography strives to be both uneventful and familiar.
The thread of the Moirae, 2023
Atia Pokorny, a native of Prague, has lived and worked in Toronto since 1982. In her photography practice, she draws on a lifetime of professional engagement with art and architecture. She is a visual storyteller and her common theme is examination of memory, of what is remembered and what is imagined. She likes to experiment with various techniques, such as manipulating her photographs by cutting and folding or by transforming them into two- or three-dimensional collages or installations. As a member of Gallery 44, she has exhibited in the Members’ Gallery and in numerous group shows.
二，2022
Changhao Li is a Toronto-based interdisciplinary artist and art historian on the academic track, pursuing a MA degree at OCAD University. He holds an Honours Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy and Art History degree from the University of Toronto. Changhao’s primary research interest is in East Asian aesthetics. His photographic works explore the Chinese concept of spiritual resonance in contemporary western art forms. While working with digital and analog mediums, Changhao inquires about the connection between liquidity, technicity and the predictive turn in Song dynasty Chinese Ceramics and contemporary photography.
Page of Wands, 2023
Danielle Goshay is a Canadian/American artist, writer, and mentor based in Toronto whose practice includes experimental digital and film photography and alternative process. Goshay studied at Pittsburgh Filmmakers media arts center. She has exhibited work in Pittsburgh and Toronto and has been published internationally.
This is where he lived, 2022
David Scriven is a lens-based emerging artist living in Toronto’s Little Portugal neighbourhood. Grounded in documentary photography, to date his photographs have explored decay and renewal in the urban ecosystem. In October 2022, David showed work on the impact of the crosstown subway in Toronto, as part of a curated group show, entitled of place or position or posture at the MacKendrick Gallery, Toronto. He has also participated in a number of Spectra Open Call Contact Photography Festival group exhibitions at Artscape Youngplace, Toronto. In 2022 he exhibited images from a work in progress - a series of five photobooks called City Block. In November 2021, he self-published a photo book entitled Alexandra Park that captured a year in the complete demolition and rebuild of the Toronto west-end community housing project. Other group shows include a Work in Progress, at the Production Space, Gallery 44 in Toronto, and Dualities at ViewPoint Gallery in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Simulated Flavour, 2022
Eliza Moore is a self-taught documentary and art photographer based in Toronto. Her career in urban design, architecture and project management allows her to observe and document development and conservation in the city, the infrastructure behind it, and other topical issues. Current works in progress are set in the Toronto waterfront and around the Great Lakes. Moore’s work has been shown at Gallery 44 and the Rectory Gallery on Toronto Island, and in numerous group exhibitions in Toronto and Montreal.
Similkameen Valley, 2022
Eric Garsonnin is a dilettante who goes from topic to topic depending on what ghost from his past is chasing him at the time. Sometimes he succeeds in imaging the ghost.
Collision (Right), 2020
Emma Juliette Sherland is an emerging bi-racial artist based in Mississauga, Ontario. Her work is focused on processing her own negative experiences with violence and mental health issues through art-making, specifically on photographic and printmaking processes. She graduated in 2020 from Art and Art History, a joint program between the University of Toronto Mississauga and Sheridan College. Since then, she has founded The Take Action Gallery, an online gallery for current students of the Art and Art History program and has established a presence with the community.
Untitled No. 1, 2018
Gerald Pisarzowski has one foot in the corporate world and the other in the creative one. Being in two worlds provides him with a unique perspective that fuels his inquisitiveness and informs his photographic interests. He likes the craft of photography, the abstract quality of black and white images, working with film cameras and making hand-coated platinum prints.
He has had a number of solo and group exhibitions in Canada, the United States and Europe. His work has been published in Black & White Magazine and his prints are included in corporate, private collections and public galleries most notably the National Gallery of Canada, City of Toronto Archives, Alliance Francaise and the Museum of Fine Art Houston.
I've wanted to be a doctor since I was 5 years old. The stethoscope is a symbol of achieving my dream, 2023
Huw Morgan is a professional photographer based in southern Ontario. Morgan has had solo shows at Gallery 44, and at the Kawartha Art Gallery. He has also exhibited in group shows at Gallery 1313 (Spectra), Gallery 44, Twist Gallery, Rails-end Gallery, Elaine Fleck Gallery and, most recently, Kawartha Art Gallery where his photo Dahl Forest Wetland won an award of merit. His next solo show is in April at the Colborne Street Gallery in Fenelon Falls and will be part of the Peterborough Spark Festival. He is currently working on several art photography projects, including “Near and Dear,” featuring intimate portraits of hands and objects.
A Glance Towards the Sky, 2023
Katherine KY Cheng is a photographer and video journalist, based between Hong Kong and Toronto. With a background in International Relations and Critical Development Studies, she’s driven to explore themes of the climate crisis, social resistance and diasporic cultural identity. Most recently, her work has appeared in the Globe and Mail, CBC and the Wall Street Journal. She’s a member of Room Up Front, a BIPOC mentorship programme for emerging photojournalists. Her work has been exhibited across Nepal, South Africa, and Hong Kong.
Iris Intimates (i), 2021
Kye Marshall is an eclectic composer and cellist who brings to her photography practice her experience, vision and discipline of a professional musician. As a photographer, she focuses on finding abstraction in nature. Currently, she is exploring iPhone photography, taking courses and exploring the many intriguing apps and editing possibilities. Marshall is mainly self-taught but has studied with Freeman Patterson and Andre Gallant. She has her work in multiple private collections, has had solo shows at the Axis Gallery, Canadian Music Centre, Fairview Library, The Window Box, Yorkville Library and has participated in many group shows. Marshall’s opera Pomegranate is being presented by the Canadian Opera Company in June 2023.
Liquidate, 2023
Laura Honsberger is a visual artist based in Toronto who works with textiles, photography, and found items. She holds a Bachelor of Design from Toronto Metropolitan University and has studied Arts Administration at Humber College. Her practice is heavily influenced by working in the garment manufacturing industry and its labour-intensive methods of production. Honsberger’s current work studies how a body adapts to, and is formed by constriction and pain.
Time capsule #5, 2022
Lilianne Schneider is a self-taught photographer, born and raised in Peru, now living in Toronto since the late 1980s.
She is influenced by the rich experimental film scene in Toronto and her various travels abroad. They have forged her sensitivity for the environment that surrounds her. She is constantly looking for photographic subjects in the streets where society and the richness of the cultural landscape converge.
Photography opens her mind to experiment and recreate the scenes that might go unnoticed to others.
Her work has been shown by the Patrons for Arts of Peru at Toronto City Hall, at the Gallery of the Peruvian Consulate in Toronto and has been featured in group exhibitions at Columbus Centre (Toronto), PIX FILM Gallery, Spectra 2019 and Spectra 2020 at Gallery 1313, 365 exhibits (2018 and 2019), Low-Res show (2019) at Gallery 44 Centre of Contemporary Photography, and Covid-19 Portraits (2020), Coming Home (2020) and Brave New World (2020) Group Online Exhibition at Gallery 1313. Spectra 2021 and Spectra 2022 at Artscape Youngplace.
A Still Life (i), 2022
Linda Briskin is a writer and fine art photographer. She is intrigued by the permeability between the remembered and the imagined, and the ambiguities in what we choose to see. She is also interested in the relationship between text and image. A fictional encounter between the objects on the printer’s tray in A Still Life (ii) and their owner, Miss Emma has been published in The Ekphrastic Review. 5 July 2022.
Recently, her photographs have been published in PhotoEd, Persimmon Tree, Montréal Serai, ilanot Review, Humana Obscura, The Hopper, and Flare Journal, including a photo-essay Liminal Animism in Canadian Camera. Briskin’s work has been included in numerous online juried shows: recently in She (Texas), Intimate Landscapes at Collex Art and Winter Magic (Massachusetts). In 2021 and 2022, her photographs were chosen for the Herstory exhibit sponsored by Manhattan Arts International.
Small Structures – Tiny Scene, 2022
Paula Razuri is a photographer and writer who considers the themes of nature as retreat, solitude, and emotional expression. She has a literary background and experience in stand-up comedy, and sometimes combines analog photography with poetry in her personal projects such as a recent zine titled “I Miss Everything.” She also uses her camera skills to make comedic videos that centre around herself and the delusions of self-involvement. She is influenced by documentarians and social justice movements.
Dogwood on Patterned Red Crepe, 2021
Shelley Wildeman is a Canadian photo-based artist. Her passion for photography parallels her journey as an art director. She has been a member of Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography since 2003. Shelley has shown in a number of solo and group shows, including in the CONTACT Photography Festival. Shelley’s work was showcased in the online art magazine Omen in 2012. PhotoEd magazine ran two feature articles of her work in 2010 and 2018, and also featured her work in their Winter 2022/23 digital edition.
Untitled (1), 2022
Sumaya Osman is an emerging photographer based in Toronto, Ontario. Identifying as a Black/Muslim woman, Sumaya explores issues surrounding her intersecting identities in terms of how they shape who she is, and how she lives her everyday life. She also explores her creativity by being experimental with her work and striving to express herself in different ways through her visual stories. She is primarily interested in shooting portraiture and documentary-style images.
rise and fall I, 2023
Tania Dos Santos (b.1982) is a Montreal based visual artist who focuses on long-term projects that involve the application of photography and video. Her work explores identity and transformation. In 2017, Tania wrote and directed Miłość (Love) a short film about a complex sexual relationship between a couple, which premiered at SHORT to the Point festival in Bucharest (2017). In 2019, she directed and designed the set for Affixing a collaborative stage performance about memory and trauma in Montreal. In 2021, Tania completed her second short film Metamorfose Imperfeita, which depicts the process of individuation through performative dance in three tableaux, which premiered at Festival Filministes in Montreal (2022). Spectra is her first time exhibiting in a gallery.
Ice Cream Cart, 2022
Zoi de la Peña is a mixed-race, emerging photographer that has recently started to re-develop her practice after a long hiatus. In particular, Zoi is focused on returning to analog photography, her first love. She uses photography to present and communicate with the emotion of a moment. Zoi has been a member of Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography since 2021. This is her second exhibition.