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What It Really Is: Hanging Out with Transformation

Stalactites assembled from thousands of layers of paper, tiny mushroom dioramas cut from postage stamps and a shape-shifting cigarette carton are just a few of the projects that populate the most recent group exhibition at Toronto’s Red Bull 381 Projects. Titled “What It Really Is,” the show aims to survey the “diversity of sculptural practices amongst Canadian artists whose work displays a fascination with the world around them” and features an impressive roster of sculptors whose work prioritizes labour-intensive modes of production where everyday materials are transformed into ingenious new objects.

Kristi Malakoff Speisepilze/Giftpilze (Fairy Ring) 2008 Courtesy of the artist and Red Bull 381 Projects

As curator Nicholas Brown notes in his essay for the show, recent sculptural practice in Canada has shifted away from attempts to make perfect replicas of “real” objects that convince the gallery viewer of their status as something else. Instead, sculptors have shifted towards a type of work that mimics one form while simultaneously disclosing its identity as another manipulated material. Vancouver-based artist Liz Magor is renowned for adopting this approach, creating clever sculptural objects—like Carton III, a pile of women’s clothing that is also covert storage for cigarettes—that mimic found materials but which are, on closer inspection, moulded gypsum. Meanwhile, Toronto-based artist Kristan Horton’s stop-motion video, Cig2Coke2Tin2Coff2Milk, makes the process of alchemical transformation explicit by documenting a series of corner store goods that seem irrepressibly intent on manipulating themselves into one another.

Liz Magor Carton III 2006 Courtesy of the artist and Susan Hobbs Gallery, Toronto

At the same time, several projects obscure their original material status, prompting the viewer to transform the exhibition’s title and ask, “What is it, really?” Jennifer Rose Sciarrino’s Supposed Stalactites (Purple and Green Pendants), for instance, are colourful cave formations built from stacks of hand-cut paper, while Kerri Reid’s ongoing reconstructions of broken and discarded objects operate as a strange reversal of mass manufacturing. Here she offers a handmade series of somewhat obsolete everyday objects such as teacups, chair legs and wicker baskets.

But it is the work of Kristi Malakoff that perhaps best manifests the theme of the exhibition. Malakoff creates impossibly delicate dioramas and origami sculptures out of postage stamps and paper bills from international currencies. Meticulously created by hand, these sculptures retrain the viewer’s approach to “real world” items by demonstrating the limitless potential of everyday objects—which are simply, through another lens, raw materials awaiting inventive transformation. (381 Queen St W, Toronto ON)

Kerri Reid Broken Cup 2007 Installation view Courtesy of the artist and Red Bull 381 Projects

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