May 20 - October 29, 2000
Curated by Barbara Fischer
The Blackwood Gallery presents its first-ever, campus-wide exhibition at the University of Toronto at Mississauga. Entitled logocity, this summer-long project includes artists whose work makes reference to and/or directly utilizes urban sign structures, such as banners, large-scale lettering, backlit billboards and inflatable signs. The artists' works are situated in various in- and outdoor locations on the campus of UTM, from stairwells to exterior wall surfaces and on the roof top of the Kaneff Center. Most of the sculptural works will remain on view from May 20 through to October 29. Some photo-based works will be shown in the Blackwood Gallery through June 25 only.
The artists' works focus on the physical properties and sculptural aspects of urban signs, and on their functions and forms of public address. Drawn to the quirky and often spectacular nature of these new mediums, the artists' diverse projects tend to invert the relation of addresser and addressee, and message and receiver, while underlining the qualities of that exchange. Their works open up the territory of meaning, sometimes by blanking it out altogether, at other times by defusing the ends of communication or by taking direct aim at strategies like targeting and branding. With critical observation and often a sense of humor, they put forward questions rather than answers, puzzles rather than certainties, and present actual situations rather than the promise of yet to be realized purchases.
*2001 OAAG Exhibition of the Year Award
