‘FLUIDRIVE’. Images by Curtis Wehrfritz. Pikto Gallery, September 24th – October 20th 2010. Opening Reception: Friday Sep 24th, 2010.

Deus ex machina

I am interested in the photograph as a story telling device; a kind of machine that works like a personal divining rod. This work features staged story elements. The lyrical content is drawn, cast and art directed and shot until the idea arrives. The process is more like a painting then other forms of photography and film I have pursued in the past.

The series of work, entitled "fluidrive" is focussed on the use of ritual. I am interested in a lyric image that can be revisited by the viewer in the way one re-visits the feelings created in a song or prose. The daguerreotype is kind of a reliquary that you can hold in your hands and use like a prayer box. The fact that these "mirrors" last forever and have the ability to render subjects almost as a hologram put us in a discussion with our own memories.

My fascination with the use of the modern daguerreotype began after living with this project for a couple of years. Dags are distinct in that Images float eerily below the glass within a mirror of your own reflection. I love the experience of a person who whispers something valuable in your ear.  Modern Daguerreotypes: "momento mori" which translates as "remember you die": I was introduced to Daguerreotype process by searching out Mike Robinson. He is a Toronto native who is world re-knowned for his expertise in the field. The process dates to the earliest form of photography and is named after one of the two inventors. Pure silver clad plates are hand polished and buffed until they are almost flawless mirrors. Light sensitive halogens are created by exposing the silver plates in fuming boxes of Bromine and Iodine.

These plates are then exposed in the camera and developed in the fumes of Mercury. Modern techniques isolate these processes within chemical hoods, a process that was not available to early practice, often with deadly results. Daguerreotypes are at once highly elusive and high resolution. They also are extremely archival and images from the past haunt us with the almost 3-D renderings of people such as Emily Dickonson and Abraham Lincoln. Although Daguerrians were common to most large cities their works were always quite expensive to produce and they remain quite rare to this day.

Website - www.fluidrive.ca

Upcoming Events at Pikto

Upcoming Community Events at Pikto

Free Events

Power and Ease of Apple Aperture 3
Louis Au
Sunday, August 15th 2010, 1pm-2pm. At Pikto lab

Join us at Pikto for a one hour session with Louis Au discussing the new conversion software Aperture 3. Aperture 3 is Apple's latest pro photography tool for raw-conversion and photo management. The program features a RAW-focused workflow and is designed to be an all-in-one raw capture post-production tool for pro photographers. In this demo, you will be introduced to Aperture's editing workflow, raw conversion capabilities and sharing work on or offline

DETROIT
Ian Willms
Opening reception Friday, August 27 2010, 6pm-10pm. At Pikto Gallery

The photographs in "Detroit" have been captured with an inexpensive and technologically primitive plastic camera called the 'Holga', originally produced en-masse in the 1980's for working-class families in China. The photographs have a ghostly quality that closely resembles the photographic aesthetic of the 1920s- a time when Detroit was at its economic peak

Pikto's Top Pick Community Party.
Friday, November 12th, 2010. 6pm - 11pm. At Pikto Studio.  Join the Pikto team and friends at The Pikto Studio, The Distillery District, Toronto. The Pikto's Top Pick Judges will announce the competition winners on the night. Photography chat and drinks will commence.

Pikto's Top Pick. A Competition for Photographers.  Deadline October 1st.
Submission details here

Artist Talks.

Brent Foster. Friday, September 10th 2010. 7pm-9pm. Pikto Studio. Cost: Free

Visual Journalist Brent Foster will be at the Pikto to talk about his work and answer questions Brent Foster (b. 1982, Canada) is a photojournalist and multimedia producer who splits his time producing editorial content, and photographing weddings with the same approach as his newspaper, and magazine work. Foster was a staff Visual Journalist at the Los Angeles Times before leaving to pursue a freelance career. Foster is an Eddie Adams workshop alumni, and has received numerous awards including being selected as a finalist for the 2009 Magnum Expression Award, two National Press Photographers Association 'Best of Photojournalism Awards' for Multimedia, and a nomination for Canadian Photojournalist of the Year through the News Photographers Association of Canada. His clients include TIME.com, The New York Times, Canadian Geographic, Human Rights Watch, and The Globe and Mail.

Robyn McCallum. Friday January 28th 2011 7pm-9pm

Robyn McCallum is a Toronto-based artist and curator. Born and raised in Ottawa, Robyn moved to Toronto to study at the Ryerson University School of Image Arts, from which she now holds a BFA. She currently works at Bau-Xi Photo, a new photography gallery in Toronto. Robyn uses humour as a means for social critique and usually deals with issues of gender and representation. Her recent work has been published in The Magenta Foundation's Flash Forward, and exhibited internationally at Sid Lee Collective's Starving Artists in Amsterdam.

Johan Hallberg-Campbell. Friday February 11th 2011 7pm-9pm

Documentary Photographer Johan Hallberg-Campbell will present and talk about his newest work 'The Old Firm' which he will begin shooting in Glasgow, Scotland in September 2010. Johan Hallberg-Campbell is an award winning freelance documentary photographer based in Toronto, Canada. He was born and brought up in the Highlands of Scotland near Loch Ness. Since 1996 he has been traveling, living in Scotland, Sweden, England and Canada. After many trips to Canada, he made the country his home, emigrating in 2006 where he now works on his personal projects and assignments. Johan is also the current Curator at Pikto Gallery in Toronto. He graduated from The Glasgow School of Art in 2002 (B/A Honours in Fine-art Photography).

New Pikto Workshop sneak peek

2009 World Press Winner Carlos Cazalis is signed up and ready to teach a workshop at Pikto. Keep your eyes peeled for more details soon. Until then let me introduce his website: http://www.cazalis.org/default.htm

Ian Willms ‘Detroit’ August 23 – Sep 23rd. Opening Reception Friday August 27th.

"Detroit" is meant to stand as a document of a massive failure on the part of short-sighted capitalism in the Western World. Focusing on the themes of social decay, the commodification of Detroit's working poor, racial discrimination, industrial relics and the scars of unsustainable corporate progress, and the deaths of both the domestic automobile and the American Dream; I have documented the wounds upon both Detroit and her residents. The photographs in "Detroit" have been captured with an inexpensive and technologically primitive plastic camera called the 'Holga', originally produced en-masse in the 1980's for working-class families in China. The photographs have a ghostly quality that closely resembles the photographic aesthetic of the 1920s- a time when Detroit was at its economic peak.

‘Chemistry Of Attraction’ Images by Yuliya. Show Date: July 21st – August 21st. Opening Reception: Friday July 23rd, 6pm – 10pm

I draw my own reality

For me art is me. I cannot imagine myself without creating.

I love to draw traditionally as well as computer graphics. When I draw in traditional medium my favorite tool is finest brush, acrylic and ink pen, smallest size I can find. The uniquness of the style I developed is that I do not use pencil or a sketch: I start with a plain paper with ink pen from the line and artwork grows and develops by itself, this is the magic I love the most in it! That is why I call this style Linear Magic.

For my digital artworks I love to use wacom tablet and Photoshop. I tend to mix drawing technique and collage of real photographs to realize my idea when I create on the computer to alter reality the way I see and feel it.

I like to use every tiny space of the canvas I have, I always feel there is so much there to say more! The most I like to show communication between my characters, relationships between them and every tiny detail of the environment. I treat environment as a character as well. I prefer to use very bright and light colors in my art although sometimes palette changes towards pastel and soft parts of the spectrum.

The best I like about my art is that it is always with me, it is me and the more I develop it the more horizons are opening in front of me in every part of life. For me all of my artworks are successful as they are my imagination, fantasy and emotions in the moment of creation. Captured in artwork.

In everything I do I try to create Golden Mean.

Hahnemuehle 425th Anniversary Exhibition World Tour. Pikto Gallery, July 2nd – 18th.

Hahnemühle Anniversary Collection

The winning images on tour in 2010
From 7100 photo award entries 41 winning images were chosen to become part of the Hahnemühle Anniversary Collection.

Erin Riley ‘Seats of Power’ Exhibition Date: Tuesday June 1st – July 1st. Opening Reception: Friday June 4th, 6pm-10pm

Seats of Power

Photography exhibition

By Erin Riley

In response to my request to photograph his chair, James Lockyer, a lawyer with the Association For The Defence of the Wrongfully Convicted, wrote, “This has to be a joke.  If it is, I like it.  If it isn't, .... Besides which, I should warn you that I sit in a particularly uninteresting chair.”

The ubiquitous chair. Utilitarian object. Object of design. Symbol of power. Chairs are everywhere. We spend many hours a day sitting in chairs, at work and at home. Chair imagery pervades our everyday language and is embedded in a network of cultural symbols. The chair as metaphor appears in such common uses as: Chairman of the Board, to have a seat on the stock exchange, the witness chair, to be on the hot seat. Descartes wrote about the seat of the soul. The title of Chair is bestowed upon high-ranking academics at universities. But why the chair? What is it about chairs? And why should we care?

Seats of Power is a collection of portraits of the chairs upon which sit political, business, cultural, spiritual, and media icons in Canada – from the grassroots, to municipal, provincial, and national levels of prominence. The work asks the viewer to consider whether these chairs, both individual seats and institutional ones, are worthy of those who use them and how they function as symbols of power, hierarchy, and status. By examining the objects themselves, what if anything, can we learn about the individuals who occupy them, or the expectations, responsibilities, or promise (or lack thereof) a chair can inspire?

The photographs in this body of work employ the deliberate strategy of using the language of commercial photography. Chairs are photographed on a white seamless background, posed in a standard ¾ profile, similar to what one might see in an Ikea catalogue. Removing the chair from its surroundings is a way to isolate the chair and to focus attention on the chair itself, so that it may be examined for its thingness. Looking at the individual chairs, you starting to notice that each chair contains subtle and unique characteristics – wear patterns on the arms, impressions left in the leather backing by the last person to sit there, a tag left attached to the chair.

Among the many generic ‘task’ chairs in the collection, which is interesting in and of itself, there are a few chairs that standout. Richard Florida, author of The Creative Class, sits in a green Eames chair. The Minister of Finance sits in an Aeron chair designed by Herman Miller. The Catholic Archbishop sits in a gothic throne. Louise Binder’s peacock upholstered chair has been ravaged by her cat. Warden Theresa Westfall’s chair was made by one of the current inmates at the penitentiary. And it has been interesting to learn that the thrones sat upon by members of the Supreme Court of Canada were designed and built by Eatons.