A lot beneath the surface at showcase of both art legends and newcomers
London-based artist’s exhibit taps into the search for self
Opening I Am Not an Answer: A four-hander at Cooper Cole, this show features artists from opposite ends of the generational continuum: Zoe Barcza and Georgia Dickie on the younger end, and Robin Peck and Gerald Ferguson on the elder. The latter two are legends, Ferguson having been on the bleeding edge of conceptualism at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in the 1960s and ’70s (he died in 2009) and Peck a student at NSCAD in the ’70s, a quietly imposing figure in the history of Minimalist sculpture here. Alongside Dickie, whose amalgamations of castoffs teeter between tragedy and comedy, and Barcza, whose paintings appear as cool geometric ab- straction riven by violent interventions, there will be much going on beneath the surface.
Opening Friday at 6 p.m., Cooper Cole Gallery, 1134 Dupont St., coopercolegallery.com Ongoing Sky Glabush, What Is A Self? This significant museum survey for the London, Ont.-based artist is aptly named. I can think of almost no artist more devoted to the search for his creative identity, and none to more gleefully arrive at the simple fact that it’s an endlessly moving target. Glabush, who made his name some years ago as a highly skilled realist painter of mundane landscapes in and around his hometown, has gone wildly off in every direction: from abstraction to sculpture to collage to the throwing of pottery, all of which he does with equal enthusiasm, each piece containing, though barely, his explosive energies and palpable de- sire to know more with every gesture.
One of the best of the best working today and not to be missed.
At Oakville Galleries Gairloch Gardens, 1306 Lakeshore Rd. E., Oakville, until March 13, oakvillegalleries.com Miles Gertler, Superlith: Gertler, an architect by training, concerns himself less with the actual, or even the possible, than the speculative. Works here read as dystopic fantasylands of civilization-building endeavours either gone awry or, through the long lens of history, seem strange, wrong-headed and inexcusable. You can take it as a parable for our time: anyone caring to make a real-life list of such things need look no further than our own backyard. Gardiner Expressway, anyone?
At Corkin Gallery, 7 Tank House Lane, Distillery District, until March 20, corkingallery.com