Group Exhibition Signals and Sentiments
- Sebastián Benitez
- Petar Boskovic
- Shelby Fenlon
- Maggie Groat
- Karen Henderson
- Maxwell Hyett
- Jimmy Limit
- Mickey Mackenna
- Josée Pedneault
Signals and Sentiments is a two-part exhibition that examines how gesture functions as a mechanism for the production of identity. In CDCC’s third-floor gallery, the exhibition takes the form of an intimate group show for which five Toronto-based artists—Sebastián Benítez, Petar Boskovic, Shelby Fenlon, Maxwell Hyett, and Mickey Mackenna—consider the inner workings of the gestural urge. Placing a varied selection of sculpture and photo-based objects in context with each other, exhibition curator Katelyn Gallucci investigates how seemingly divergent artistic gestures might fundamentally derive from inadequacies of language, disposition, desire, and whim. Additionally, three site-specific installations in the building’s expansive stairwell spaces address the exterior and transitory properties of gesture. Extending themes of self-discovery, the relationship between perception and memory, and the search for emotional connection through time, these dynamic spatial interventions by Maggie Groat and Jimmy Limit (working in collaboration), Karen Henderson, and Josée Pedneault condition the viewer’s bodily response as much as they embody gestural acts and intentions.
Curated by Katelyn Gallucci
Maggie Groat is a visual artist who makes images and objects from found and salvaged materials. Groat’s recent projects, including STSTS (Western Front, Vancouver), Deep time, portals, particles & pulls (Armory Street, Toronto), flowers also gardens, gardens also seeds (AKA, Saskatoon) and The Future is Dark…I think (La Datcha, Project Space Festival, Berlin), engage with outdoor space through considering researched based, deep time approaches to working site-specifically. Her work has been included in several group exhibitions including LIVING ENTITIES as part of the Momenta Biennale de l’image, Illusion of Process at the Art Gallery of York University and the travelling exhibition Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts. In 2015 and 2018 her work was recognized on the Sobey Award long-list and in 2018 her exhibition suns also seasons at Kitchener Waterloo Art Gallery received the OAAG award for Exhibition of the Year. She is the editor of two artists’ anthologies, The Lake (Art Metropole, 2014) and ALMANAC (KWAG, 2017) and has taught at Emily Carr University, Algoma University, and the University of Toronto. She lives and works in the Niagara region of Ontario, the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee, Chonnonton, and Anishinaabeg.