November 20, 2008 – January 11, 2009
Curated by Séamus Kealy
I WAS SHOT IN THE BACK
Paintball Performance at the Blackwood Gallery, Kaneff Building.
Sunday November 16th, 1 – 3pm
FREE Contemporary Art Bus Tour
Sunday November 23rd, 12 - 5pm
Tour departs OCAD (100 McCaul St) at noon for Doris McCarthy Gallery (UTSC), Koffler Gallery, Art Gallery of York University and the Blackwood Gallery. Please call the Koffler Gallery at 416.636.1880 x 270 by November 21st to book a seat.
*Artist Tilo Schulz will give a talk.
Forty years after the global 1968 uprisings, German artist Tilo Schulz has arranged a performance and exhibition that involves student action, 1950s–style abstract painting, and local Cold War politics. On the University of Toronto Mississauga campus, a large-scale event involving students stages the construction of 'revolutionary' abstract paintings through the use of paint-ball guns. Meanwhile, in the gallery, an exhibition revolves around this event and the subsequent images in the context of relevant histories, as well as around the legend of Mississauga resident Igor Gouzenko, Canada's first true Soviet spy who only ever appeared in public wearing a hood.
The November 16th event is free and open to the public. In response to political realities, the guns are aimed towards a new aesthetic instead of drawing blood. Results of the event will produce the exhibition, which will be on display until January 11th, 2009.
Student uprisings
have always arisen in response to new powers and policies being implemented
on different socio-political levels, including the university level.
In post-war times, rigid policies trickled down from Cold War politics
within university administrations and faculties. Today, a top-down,
market-oriented structure dominates many university systems, where students
are questioning the role of the university in creating a new society.
Amongst students’ grievances today are the distribution of funds
throughout the university which tend to reinforce a powerful hierarchy,
high tuition fees, poor transportation systems perpetuating overuse
of the car, the exclusion of many from a university education, the university’s
intimate relationship with corporate powers and militarism, and the
complexities of a university bureaucracy set to serve itself before
students.
- Séamus Kealy, former Curator of the Blackwood Gallery
Tilo Schulz has been working as an artist and curator for almost two decades. He has recently had celebrated solo shows in institutions such as Secession in Vienna, Magazin4 in Bregenz and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Leipzig. The Blackwood Gallery is proud to present his first exhibition in Canada.
