Evan Penny: Re Figured at the AGO

Stretch #1 - Evan Penny
(owned by the AGO)

Our last stop at the AGO on Thursday was at the Evan Penny: Re Figured exhibition in the Contemporary Art section on the fourth floor. I've been trying to decide how to accurately describe what this show was like; I've concluded that the best thing to do is to show several photos that I took, comment on how they made me feel at the time of viewing, and let you, the reader, check out the AGO's description of the exhibition and Evan Penny's own website for more detailed information with respect to his intent. What I can tell you is that Penny has taken the realistic sculpture techniques of Duane Hanson to a whole new level. The pieces challenge the idea of what is "real" to the viewer; some of them—such as Stretch #1, seen here—are done in kind of a "Photoshop in real time" method, where the dimensions are skewed and manipulated while maintaining the original aspect ratio, such as one would do with a photograph. In other cases, Penny creates a completely fictional person (using no model) in hyper-realistic form and then photographs the sculpture, posting these photos next to the pieces themselves. In most of these instances, it is almost impossible to tell—after the conversion to 2D—that the "person" in the photos has never existed. (I found that the effect was the greatest in black and white photos.) In still other cases, Penny has used real-life models and recreated them in incredible detail, right down to blemishes, age spots and stray wisps of hair.

Catrinas and Floor Burger: Our AGO Visit, Part II

Sarah and the ofrenda

On the way out of the Frida & Diego show—after passing through the obligatory gift shop, of course—we came upon a vividly-coloured room that was an homage to the Mexican celebration, Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). The two long walls were painted in a blue tint that was very close to that of La Casa Azul, the Frida Kahlo Museum in Mexico City, while the end walls were a brilliant yellow. On the right-hand side as we entered there was an ofrenda for Frida and Diego, an altar to honour the departed pair where visitors to the exhibition could leave their own personal offerings. Note the propensity of yellow marigolds; the Aztecs called them zempoaxochitl, or "flowers of death". The AGO supplied paper flowers for visitors to write their own messages on and then leave on the altar if they wished. The ofrenda itself was created and constructed by Carlomagno Pedro Martínez, Mexican artist and artisan.

Frida and Diego at the AGO

The entrance wall, appropriately painted in azul

Sarah took the day off from work today so we could finally get to the Frida & Diego: Passion, Politics and Painting exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario (it closes on Sunday). Sarah is a huge fan of Kahlo's creative and life accomplishments and had already attended a talk by Hayden Herrera back in early December but had not yet walked the show itself. We were trying to time it—as we did with the Picasso exhibition—to minimize the crowds around us; for the most part, we accomplished this except for two large school groups that came in just after us and which we managed to avoid (more or less) by hanging back a bit in the first two rooms. There was a third tour, however, that we managed to keep in our sights for most of our time there: an AGO staffer had about six young schoolkids in her charge and was taking them from room to room, sitting them down and giving activity-based talks to them which were absolutely captivating.