Info
2024 calendar
Address
903 Lansdowne Ave (Laneway garage)
Toronto, Ontario
newsletter
Arvo Leo, An orchid giving excess moonlight back to the moon, 2018, cyanotype on paper, power cables, nightlights, 60 x 30”
dawn draws, dusk drops (II): Arvo Leo, Garrett Lockhart, Bea Parsons, Suzanna Zak
January 27 - Feburary 26, 2023
Arvo Leo grew up around 147.28 million kilometres away from the Sun, and around 384, 400 kilometres away from the Moon, and depending on the year, would occasionally find himself losing his own shadow inside the shadow of Mt. Elphinstone or inside the shadow of Mt. Taranaki. Arvo currently lives in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
In 2021 Arvo was an artist in residence at Artis Zoo in Amsterdam where he had a small studio near some penguins. During this time of relative confinement and isolation he would often visit the elephants and giraffes, to observe their beauty and to collect their poo. Arvo would then wheelbarrow the poo across the street to use as local fertilizer in a flower meadow he was developing for the local bees, butterflies, bacteria, fungi, worms, and birds.
In 2019 Arvo’s solo exhibition Sun Windows Moon Tendrils at Hotel Maria Kapel in the Netherlands also culminated with the creation of two small flower gardens on both sides of the building’s entrance. The gardens were created by accident really. With a kind of Matta-Clarkian fake-estate energy & Smithsonian non-site movement, the old sidewalk bricks were carefully lifted out of the sidewalk by a man on the roof, using a piece of string, who was being helped by a group of bats, fish, beets, and seaweed working down below. This communal effort allowed the suffocated earth to breathe once again and become a home for various plants and pollinating visitors. And as the gardens were growing outside, visitors inside the building could discover these bricks in buckets of water, and were allowed to take a wet brick over to a hole in the floor and exchange it for cannabis flowers that would rise up from the subterranean world.
Arvo has made exhibitions and screenings in places such as UCCA, Beijing (2022), Bologna, Amsterdam (2021), Vleeshal, Middelburg (2021), Hotel Maria Kapel, Hoorn (2019), Nanaimo Art Gallery (2018), Le Crédac, France (2017), Contour 8 Biennial, Mechelen (2017), Vancouver Art Gallery (2016), Berlin Film Festival (2015), Kunstverein München (2015), Palazzo Grassi, Venice (2015), and the Gothenburg Biennial (2015).
Garrett Lockhart is an artist and letter carrier currently investigating the home, the body, and the heart. Recently, they mounted a solo exhibition at Pumice Raft (Toronto, CA), and group exhibitions at Joys (Toronto, CA), Hunt Gallery (Toronto, CA), and April April (Brooklyn, USA). They will participate in a group exhibition at South Parade (London, UK) in the summer of 2023.
Bea Parsons is a printmaker, drawer, and painter, originally from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, now living and working in Montreal. She holds a BFA from Concordia University in Montreal and an MFA from Columbia University in New York City. She is a full-time professor of Painting and Drawing at Concordia. Her practice has primarily focused on black and white monoprints and, most recently, coloured pencil drawings on archival paper. Her haunting and seductive world is filled with characters, landscapes, and symbols culled from a wide variety of sources, from the personal, to the esoteric, to the art historical. A highly recognizable and intimate style of graphic and abstracted motifs congregates in these compositions, creating a pleasurable and emotionally charged pictorial atmosphere.
Parsons is represented by McBride Contemporain in Montreal and recently had solo exhibitions at Franz Kaka in Toronto and Tappeto Volante in New York City. Her works have been acquired by the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, Musée de Joliette, Hydro-Québec, Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, Royal Bank of Canada, Scotiabank and Equitable Bank.
Suzanna Zak is an artist based in New York City working across the mediums of sculpture, photography, and installation. She received her MFA from the Yale School of Art in sculpture in 2019 and her BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in photography in 2012. In 2021, she served as research assistant and photographer for the Mountain Legacy Project, where she worked alongside scientists & conservationists to collect climate change data in the Canadian Rocky Mountains utilizing repeat photography. Her most recent solo exhibitions were, Coming Home to the Ice Age, held at Bad Water, in Knoxville, Tennessee, and, Flesh of Earth, at Prairie Gallery in Chicago.
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
January 27 - Feburary 26, 2023
Arvo Leo grew up around 147.28 million kilometres away from the Sun, and around 384, 400 kilometres away from the Moon, and depending on the year, would occasionally find himself losing his own shadow inside the shadow of Mt. Elphinstone or inside the shadow of Mt. Taranaki. Arvo currently lives in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
In 2021 Arvo was an artist in residence at Artis Zoo in Amsterdam where he had a small studio near some penguins. During this time of relative confinement and isolation he would often visit the elephants and giraffes, to observe their beauty and to collect their poo. Arvo would then wheelbarrow the poo across the street to use as local fertilizer in a flower meadow he was developing for the local bees, butterflies, bacteria, fungi, worms, and birds.
In 2019 Arvo’s solo exhibition Sun Windows Moon Tendrils at Hotel Maria Kapel in the Netherlands also culminated with the creation of two small flower gardens on both sides of the building’s entrance. The gardens were created by accident really. With a kind of Matta-Clarkian fake-estate energy & Smithsonian non-site movement, the old sidewalk bricks were carefully lifted out of the sidewalk by a man on the roof, using a piece of string, who was being helped by a group of bats, fish, beets, and seaweed working down below. This communal effort allowed the suffocated earth to breathe once again and become a home for various plants and pollinating visitors. And as the gardens were growing outside, visitors inside the building could discover these bricks in buckets of water, and were allowed to take a wet brick over to a hole in the floor and exchange it for cannabis flowers that would rise up from the subterranean world.
Arvo has made exhibitions and screenings in places such as UCCA, Beijing (2022), Bologna, Amsterdam (2021), Vleeshal, Middelburg (2021), Hotel Maria Kapel, Hoorn (2019), Nanaimo Art Gallery (2018), Le Crédac, France (2017), Contour 8 Biennial, Mechelen (2017), Vancouver Art Gallery (2016), Berlin Film Festival (2015), Kunstverein München (2015), Palazzo Grassi, Venice (2015), and the Gothenburg Biennial (2015).
Garrett Lockhart is an artist and letter carrier currently investigating the home, the body, and the heart. Recently, they mounted a solo exhibition at Pumice Raft (Toronto, CA), and group exhibitions at Joys (Toronto, CA), Hunt Gallery (Toronto, CA), and April April (Brooklyn, USA). They will participate in a group exhibition at South Parade (London, UK) in the summer of 2023.
Bea Parsons is a printmaker, drawer, and painter, originally from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, now living and working in Montreal. She holds a BFA from Concordia University in Montreal and an MFA from Columbia University in New York City. She is a full-time professor of Painting and Drawing at Concordia. Her practice has primarily focused on black and white monoprints and, most recently, coloured pencil drawings on archival paper. Her haunting and seductive world is filled with characters, landscapes, and symbols culled from a wide variety of sources, from the personal, to the esoteric, to the art historical. A highly recognizable and intimate style of graphic and abstracted motifs congregates in these compositions, creating a pleasurable and emotionally charged pictorial atmosphere.
Parsons is represented by McBride Contemporain in Montreal and recently had solo exhibitions at Franz Kaka in Toronto and Tappeto Volante in New York City. Her works have been acquired by the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, Musée de Joliette, Hydro-Québec, Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, Royal Bank of Canada, Scotiabank and Equitable Bank.
Suzanna Zak is an artist based in New York City working across the mediums of sculpture, photography, and installation. She received her MFA from the Yale School of Art in sculpture in 2019 and her BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in photography in 2012. In 2021, she served as research assistant and photographer for the Mountain Legacy Project, where she worked alongside scientists & conservationists to collect climate change data in the Canadian Rocky Mountains utilizing repeat photography. Her most recent solo exhibitions were, Coming Home to the Ice Age, held at Bad Water, in Knoxville, Tennessee, and, Flesh of Earth, at Prairie Gallery in Chicago.
