Eldon Garnet DOMINION and CATEGORIES OF DISAPPEARANCE

Eldon Garnet creates photography that
is predicated upon constructing a series
of images to frame an abstract narrative
about our current social, political
and economic environments. In
Dominion, as in much of Garnet’s work,
the polarities of beauty and threat,
rapture and effrontery, confront each
other. Pushing the boundaries of photographic
depiction, Garnet presents
metaphoric constructs for the individual
condition, which is fragile and precarious
in our current cultural moment.
He creates iconic images that are
lyrical yet threatening – the individual
in a struggle against an undefined
violence, or the body under attack. In
one image, two men fight violently, set
against the background of Mies van der
Rohe’s iconic Toronto Dominion Centre;
in another photograph, a lone man
immersed in a river struggles with the
heavy current. We are confronted with
the hope of a future in the difficulty of
the moment.

Based in Toronto, Garnet has
established an internationally recognized
artistic practice, working as a
multi-media artist and writer since
the 1970s. Surveys of his sculptures
and photographic work have been
held at the National Gallery of Canada
(CMCP) in Ottawa, the Museum of
Contemporary Canadian Art in Toronto
and the Centrum voor Fotografie in
Amsterdam.