The inexhaustable image. Photographs by Angela Grauerholz at Olga Korper Gallery

Three Chairs

Parking Lot

Marble Lobby

                                                     
     

Although  Angela Grauerholz's large-scale
photographs are mostly of vast and empty-looking  spaces, the overall effect is somewhat  melancholy and poignant, like a remembrance of things past. The faded grandeur of the interiors denotes  a loss the viewer can't quite bring into focus; memories of-  world events? personal affairs? From what are our memories constructed?  This is a great exhibition in one of the most beautiful private gallery spaces in Toronto.
(Angela Grauerholz has also created an unusual  interactive archive consisting of  four thousand documents about Modernity, though that description does not do justice its  innovative and poetic quality: www.atworkandplay.ca.)

"Oblivion" Celia Neubauer at General Hardware Contemporary. Toronto

Photo Gallery by QuickGallery.com"> This is an  exhibition of nine postmodern oil  paintings which combine organic landscape elements with hard-edged geometric forms. Celia Neubauer studied in England and the massed cloud-like structures , suffused with gold light, and subtly layered with  pale hues remind me of a Turneresque bank of clouds after rain. The  geometric shapes are a sharp intrusion  of a less romantic world, like glimpsing this magnificent vista over the hood of a moving car.  But this is too literal a description. Her work is delicate and rather enigmatic.  I like best the work "Launch" which I found more forceful than the other works, because of the  stronger contrasts of  visual elements. The exhibition is at General Hardware Contemporary until  August , 2014.

Kwe by Rebecca Belmore

Photo Gallery by QuickGallery.com

Justina Barnicke Gallery, Hart House, University of Toronto. Until August 19, 2014. Admission free. This exhibition consists of five videos, four  sculptures and four photographic works. It's worth taking the time to watch the videos. They record different performances Belmore has enacted. I liked "X, Performance", from the exhibition Mapping Resistances, photographed by Elizabeth Thippawong. It made me feel uneasy because I wondered if this indigenous woman doing something unusual outside a store would  provoke a hostile reaction from onlookers. Belmore creates strong symbols and powerful imagery.