Winter Program takes flight at Power Plant
Toronto Star, December 21, 2006

by Peter Goddard

Birds are big in the three diverse shows the Power Plant has for its "Winter Program". And there's even a bird's-eye view on them all.

First the bird's eye view. It belongs to Power Plant director Gregory Burke and to chief curator, Helena Reckitt. New to the city and to their jobs, they've arranged an interplay of work from a superlative group of mostly local artists, possibly for their own education as well as ours.

The learning curve happens on a fast track, starting with the juxtaposition of the many architectural issues. A backyard nuclear site is explored in Kristan Horton's Walnut Nuclear Power Station: First Issues, (2006), a cheekily hand-drawn comic book, complete with thought bubbles. These ideas are contrasted with those in the pair of re-imaged, historically significant buildings-the Tate Modern gallery in London and the Power Plant itself - from established Toronto artist/teacher Ian Carr-Harris.

IBM 360/85 (Landscape Proposal, 2006), from Daniel Young adn Christian Giroux completes the Horton-Carr-Harris equation of re-imagined architecture. Arranged precisely in a simple glass-topped case, IBM 360/85 is mixed media model showing the potential for the use of topiary plants in an office setting.

Running contrapuntally is work from Kelly Mark and Oliver Husain, both exploring human interaction, Tania Kitchell's fine photography and sculpture, and Paulette Phillips's Crosstalk (2006). A seven-minute long film loop, Crosstalk shows passersby seemingly staring at a horrifying event that has happened long ago. Scott Lyall's installation, pedadgogical fidelity (2005) is a historical-charged installation with material relevant to the history of the work in the show.

Then there are the birds.

Images of a crow, duck and heron are part of Toronto artists Martin Bennett's Static Image series (all 2006) of roughed-up paintings positioned around the main gallery's walls. Based on a simple snapshot, each had much of its painted surface scratched away by hand for something that resembles sandblasted Aubudon imagery. Urban wear and tear on real little critters is not half so pretty.

Luis Jacob's From Stream to Golden Stream (2006), riffs on the flight of 60 sculpted geese in Michael Snow's Flightstop installation in the Eaton Centre. With Jacob, there are 30 stuffed pigeons suspended from a Power Plant ceiling. Seen from the gallery's second floor landing Jacob's handsomely arranged flock seems to have swooped in from Lake Ontario. Seen from directly underneath, however, and one begins to ponder the offal problem suggested by the Toronto artist's title.

There there's the infinity of fierce, angular black birds fluttering through Carlos Amorales's Useless Wonder (2006). Although based on The Narrative of Arthus Gordon Pym of Nantucket, the 1838 Edgar Allen Poe adventure yarn. Amorales's animation - the Amsterdam-based artist's Canadian debut - owes more to Vincent van Gogh's ominous late painting, Wheat Field with Crows (1890) witih a nod to Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 film The Birds.

Amorales's animation, sometimes imploding into pulsing, twisting birds of colour strips, depends entirely on rhythmn. The same thing can be said of the third part of the "Winter Program", Aleksandra Mir's Organized Movement - A Video Diary (2004).