Steve Rockwell at Sheff Contemporary

by Hugh Alcock

A new gallery has opened in Toronto – Sheff Contemporary – located in a surprisingly airy basement on Danforth Ave. Given the number of commercial galleries that have closed in recent years, its opening is in itself something to celebrate. Its inaugural show highlights the work of Steve Rockwell. The gallery’s owner, Saeed Mohamed has known Rockwell many years, and has always been greatly impressed by his work.

The space, Mohamed explains, is important in the sense that he understands how art is ineluctably an in-person experience. Indeed, it the experiencing of art in the gallery setting that is a central idea of Rockwell’s work. At the same time, Mohamed is not committed to keeping the gallery in one location. Rather, he appreciates that it is the people – artists, audience, buyers etc. – who together are the essential elements of this experience. Art, he feels, is often elitist and he is keen, instead, to promote art in a way that makes it more relatable to the public, who like himself, may not be connoisseurs in the traditional sense. His hope is to foster an inclusive crowd of art enthusiasts who will facilitate this aim. He sees his role as providing the space and the opportunity to experience art. Certainly judging from the crowd who showed up for the opening reception, he’s off to a good start.

Installation view of Steve Rockwell Meditation on Space at Sheff Contemporary, 2025. Photo: Hugh Alcock
Installation view of Steve Rockwell Meditation on Space at Sheff Contemporary, 2025. Photo: Hugh Alcock

Rockwell’s show is about art. It is, one might say, second order art. Moreover it is a breed of conceptual art, based on performance of a peculiarly inconspicuous kind. Rockwell’s work invariably has some story behind it. For instance, in one of his black and white paintings, one confronts an image of the artist himself, arms fully spread, with bright light radiating from his torso, titled My Spirit Lives Here! (1996). Nearby is another image of him, titled Blackout, which in contrast to his effulgent self, has him shrouded in darkness – his features barely discernible.

My Spirit Lives Here! 1996, acrylic on masonite, 32 x 32 inches (Inspired by the January 2, 1996 visit to the Ernie Wolfe Gallery in Santa Monica, California). Courtesy of the artist
My Spirit Lives Here! 1996, acrylic on masonite, 32 x 32 inches (Inspired by the January 2, 1996 visit to the Ernie Wolfe Gallery in Santa Monica, California). Courtesy of the artist

These two paintings are part of a series of five, on the theme of meditating on various spaces in galleries, that is ostensibly based on a story akin to that in the Bible of the conversion of Paul on the road to Damascus. A journey from the infidel’s blindness to the light of faith. But any such story line surmised by the viewer, it turns out, is post hoc. The order of the paintings was chosen long afterwards. Each is a record of some event he experienced while executing a performance he titled Meditations on Space. It involved him showing up in some reputable gallery in Switzerland, France, Toronto, Los Angeles or New York, announcing to its custodians that he was there to meditate on the gallery space. Most acquiesced and let him be. But part of the performance concerned his interactions with people and with the space itself. While in the Ernie Wolfe Gallery, Los Angeles, for instance, its owner shouted out to Rockwell ‘This is where I live. My spirit lives here!’, hence the title of the painting mentioned above.

Meditations on Space, 1996, acrylic on masonite, 32 x 32 inches (Inspired by the September 20, 1995 visit to Galerie Jamile Weber in Zurich, Switzerland). Courtesy of the artist
Meditations on Space, 1996, acrylic on masonite, 32 x 32 inches (Inspired by the September 20, 1995 visit to Galerie Jamile Weber in Zurich, Switzerland). Courtesy of the artist

While these works are not literally biblical in derivation, they do touch on big questions – on life and death specifically. In Blackout we see a grainy barely discernible image of Rockwell’s face. It inspired by an episode while visiting and meditating on a gallery space when he was suddenly plunged into darkness, due to a power outage of course. In his depiction of this event Rockwell chose to render himself, despite the almost total darkness, as a comment on our perception of darkness. As Rockwell points out, normally – at night, closing our eyes etc., – we do not in fact experience total black. Instead we ‘see’ what are sometimes called phosphenes, namely internally generated patterns. The image of his face that we see imitates this experience. Only death leads to true blackness in this sense. Likewise, light is obviously associated with life. Hence Rockwell’s choice of painting in black and white – emblematic of pure light and darkness, i.e., life and death.

Blackout, 1996, acrylic on masonite, 32 x 32 inches (Inspired by the October 3, 1995 visit to Galerie Lahumiere in Paris, France). Courtesy of the artist
Blackout, 1996, acrylic on masonite, 32 x 32 inches (Inspired by the October 3, 1995 visit to Galerie Lahumiere in Paris, France). Courtesy of the artist

Rockwell’s performances on the theme of galleries goes back to about a decade earlier. In 1988 he decided to drop by at 64 of Toronto’s galleries, and ask their owners or administrators to fill out a form indicating in which direction their main entrance faces – north, east, south or west. Using the information he received he built a model, displayed on the wall, representing each gallery as a compartment on a square grid. A small aperture on the respective wall of each indicates the direction of the entrance. Here one is reminded of Sol Le Witt’s work, e.g., his permutations of the edges of a cube. The appearance of the material art object is entirely determined by the rules underwriting its construction. Indeed, Le Witt has been a major influence on Rockwell. This year Rockwell repeated the performance. In the updated version he struggled, sadly, to find 64 galleries in the city.

Gallery Space, 1988 (left) and Gallery Space 2025 (right) both house paint on mahogony panel and card, laser transfer text, 14 x 14 x 2 inches. Photo: Hugh Alcock
Gallery Space, 1988 (left) and Gallery Space 2025 (right) both house paint on mahogony panel and card, laser transfer text, 14 x 14 x 2 inches. Photo: Hugh Alcock

Rockwell’s original motive for this earlier gallery performance was to find a way to introduce himself to the various galleries, and learn how they operate. This kernel of an idea became an abiding theme for him. As well, it is illustrative of Rockwell’s entrepreneurship, his willingness to go out and introduce himself and his ideas, more importantly, to people. As testament to the footwork this performance demanded, he has chosen to encase, and thus preserve, the very pair of shoes he wore walking around the city.

Gallery Space (Shoes), 1988, acrylic, wood floor, shoes, 14 x 14 x 15 inches. Courtesy of the artist
Gallery Space (Shoes), 1988, acrylic, wood floor, shoes, 14 x 14 x 15 inches. Courtesy of the artist

Here we see Rockwell’s wit – humour and sharp intelligence – shining through. Although physically the work occupies a modest amount of space, it brims over with ideas and reflections on the nature of art itself. Clearly Rockwell loves art, both the making of it and as its cultural wealth. Not to be missed as well is an array of collages he has meticulously produced – small works on paper – that investigate the margins of pictures and images. Beautiful work altogether.

Installation view with collages, each 2025, dArt pages with oil, 7 x 8.5 inches. Photo: Hugh Alcock
Installation view with collages, each 2025, dArt pages with oil, 7 x 8.5 inches. Photo: Hugh Alcock

*Exhibition information: Steve Rockwell, Meditations on Space, June 5 – 30, 2025, Sheff Contemporary, 1276 Danforth Ave, Toronto. By appointment only (416-792-7792).

Sylvia Galbraith at Abbozzo Gallery

by Emese Krunak-Hajagos

Seeing the description for Sylvia Galbraith’s Loretta’s Place in the catalogue for CONTACT 2025 I was hooked right away. Then I received an email from Abbozzo Gallery promoting Galbraith’s exhibition and the image looked as though it was in 3D—projected on the wall of the gallery. But when I finally visited the gallery, I saw the actual artwork—a large photograph on the main wall. I stood rooted in front of it, forgetting about the place and time— I just floated into its magic world.

There are two different worlds combined into that one image of a rather abandoned looking room with a bed frame, as though someone had just departed or the room was waiting for a new occupant. There is a rug on the floor and wood we expect to see on the floor now on the ceiling. But what makes this image unique is the upside-down landscape on the walls. Galbraith used a camera obscura when photographing the landscapes in Newfoundland, so the inverted images are inverted. But it is much more than that. Neither the room nor the rural landscape is interesting in its own. However, through combining them in this way, they undergo a metamorphosis. The interior opens and the landscape becomes part of the room, but not like a picture on the wall. Grass grows, buildings emerge, and we no longer know when the inside ends and the outside begins. Inside and outside become one, a mesmerizing symbiosis.

Sylvia Galbraith, Loretta’s Place, 2019, archival pigment print, 60 x 90 inches. ©Sylvia Galbraith, courtesy of Abbozzo Gallery
Sylvia Galbraith, Loretta’s Place, 2019, archival pigment print, 60 x 90 inches. ©Sylvia Galbraith, courtesy of Abbozzo Gallery

The Exhibition Statement mentions that the artist was “particularly interested in relationships between buildings and people”. However, none the photographs include people. Galbraith talks about people in their absence, like poetry does. The objects and landscapes resemble history, social status and there are real landscapes in their physicality. But what is physical? Can it be modified by our perception or even by the technique of the camera obscura? When does reality end and our dreams and memories start filling the place? In these photographs you can no longer separate them, they merge, creating an illusion that overshadows any possible reality. Looking at them you find yourself in a very different world, where interior and exterior no longer exist; an ethereal place has been created.

The title of the exhibition What Time Is This Place?, is very important. The photographs depict the rural landscape of Newfoundland in reality, as an outpost with common buildings. How do those people get here? Why? Is it an escape or a conscientious choice? Do they fit in or misplaced? We can guess their history, past and present and their social status. In Loretta’s Place the bottom of the walls in the room are sky-blue, the landscape is green, the buildings are yellow and white while the floor, the bed and the ceiling are dark, creating a dramatic contrast. The bed made me think of possible interactions between objects and people. It is just the frame, hinting at the absence of a person. But what does an absence really mean? Years ago, when I moved into my apartment, there was abandoned furniture in it that an old person left behind. For some time, I felt the presence of him, like a imprint of his memory was still there. The same is true for Galbraith photographs. Loretta might be a poor person, in a small, rural place, who still needs to buy a mattress and bed clothes. Very little else can fit into that tiny place. I think she is somewhat misplaced. This room can’t be the place she dreamed about.

Gary’s Place, Living Room (2019) is a comfortable space with a couch and framed pictures on the wall, that are overlapped with the landscape. A piano at the wall suggests that he is a music lover. His story is very different from Loretta’s. I am aware that I am creating my own narrative here, and I am sure everyone else will do the same. It is a good thing to be so deeply involved in the image.

Sylvia Galbraith, Gary's Place, Living Room, 2019, archival pigment print on Hahnemuhle Gloss paper, 24 x 36 inches. ©Sylvia Galbraith, courtesy of Abbozzo Gallery
Sylvia Galbraith, Gary’s Place, Living Room, 2019, archival pigment print on Hahnemuhle Gloss paper, 24 x 36 inches. ©Sylvia Galbraith, courtesy of Abbozzo Gallery

Some of the photographs give away their locations, like Main Road with Boats and Butterflies (2022), where the landscape is dominant. It is a nicely painted room with an antique lamp and books on a dresser, suggesting that the person who lives in it can afford beautiful, expensive things. The landscape depicts a harbor and a more populated area, a village or a small town. Butterflies fly out of the landscape, further confusing the viewer about where the landscapes ends and the interior takes over. The ceiling is another photograph that looks like a rock with some grass. It is not easy to decipher what we see or where we are.

Sylvia Galbraith, Gary's Place, Living Room, 2019, archival pigment print on Hahnemuhle Gloss paper, 24 x 36 inches. ©Sylvia Galbraith, courtesy of Abbozzo Gallery
Sylvia Galbraith, Main Road With Boats and Butterflies, 2022,
archival pigment print on Hahnemuhle Gloss paper, 24 x 36 inches. ©Sylvia Galbraith, courtesy of Abbozzo Gallery

Morning in the Red Cliffe Kitchen (2024), located in a town, where the only thing you can see is the wall and windows of the neighboring building, giving me the feeling of a suffocating, little space. Everything is old—almost grandmotherly—the stove, the couch, covered with a blanket, a chair with a pillow, the lace curtain. As in all Galbraith’s photographs, the colors are important. The vibrant reddish brown on the left contrasts the white stove, the shining kettle and the white fence, creating a quiet interior.

Sylvia Galbraith, Morning in the Red Cliffe Kitchen, 2024, archival pigment print, 40 x 60 inches. ©Sylvia Galbraith, courtesy of Abbozzo Gallery
Sylvia Galbraith, Morning in the Red Cliffe Kitchen, 2024, archival pigment print, 40 x 60 inches. ©Sylvia Galbraith, courtesy of Abbozzo Gallery

Each photograph combines the inside of a living area with the surrounding landscape, focusing on the interaction between them. Every place has a strong impact on the people occupying them. Our personality is formed by our surroundings, whether it’s a busy city with noisy traffic or the countryside with a lake or ocean. According to that we become busy, hurried or eccentric, peaceful.

Our influence on the landscape can be positive or hurtful. I also believe that we may influence the buildings we live in. Whatever we do—work, cook or play the piano—our happiness or sadness leave a print on the walls and our memories live on in them. These photographs capture these ideas beautifully. As gallery manager, Blake Zigrossi said, they are more than photographs, they are “meta-photographs”, metaphors of our life.


Sylvia Galbraith, What Time Is This Place?, May 9 – June 7, 2025, Abbozzo Gallery, 401 Richmond Street West, Suite 128, Toronto. Gallery hours: Tue – Fri 11am – 6pm, Sat 11am – 5pm.

Danielle Frankenthal: Playing with Light

by John Mendelsohn

What need do we have for words when we have paintings, particularly the kind of lyrical and abstract works that Danielle Frankenthal offers us in her current exhibition? These are often extravagant, gestural works that are abundant in high color and visual movement. What challenges the writer is to order his thoughts about paintings that seems to ask us to forsake cognition in favor of pure sensation.

Danielle Frankenthal, Mist #2, 2024, acrylic paint, oil stick on acrylic resin, 48 x 48 in.
Danielle Frankenthal, Mist #2, 2024, acrylic paint, oil stick on acrylic resin, 48 x 48 in.

But despite the pleasures of innocent, sensuous looking that these paintings afford, our enquiring mind is nonetheless activated. First, there is the question of the unusual support of these works – square sheets of clear acrylic resin that are joined into a single box. Acrylic paint and oil stick have been applied to the inner and outer surfaces of the plastic panels, resulting in a kind of painterly diorama or stage set that deploys multiple scrims. The effect is to deconstruct the traditional layering of a painting into discrete planes, that coalesce into a comprehensible, if unstable image.

Danielle Frankenthal, L'Heure Bleu, 2023, acrylic paint, oil stick on acrylic resin, 50 x 50 in.
Danielle Frankenthal, L’Heure Bleu, 2023, acrylic paint, oil stick on acrylic resin, 50 x 50 in.

This effect of suspended marks is essential to these paintings, creating a kind of holographic presence in which the painted gestures shift from planar to dimensional space. Our second question is how this curious phenomenon is part of Frankenthal’s expressive endeavor. The exhibition has work from two series, Clouds and Gardens. The former benefits from the floating quality of the multiple planes of depths in the paintings, to evoke fugitive color and atmospheric vapors.

Danielle Frankenthal, L’Apresmidi d’une Faune, (Diptych), 2024, acrylic paint, oil stick, metal gilding on acrylic resin, 50 x 50 in.
Danielle Frankenthal, L’Apresmidi d’une Faune(Diptych), 2024, acrylic paint, oil stick, metal gilding on acrylic resin, 50 x 50 in.

A prime example is Mist 2, with its upper expanse the color of agitated fog, above a lower, coppery register. In the Clouds paintings, at times light is conjured literally through the use of pearlescent and metallic pigments. The many qualities of light constitute a continual focus in Frankenthal’s work, here intimating the diffused illumination of dawn.

A painting of the Gardens series, L’Apresmidi d’une Faune, is a diptych whose title simultaneously suggests the Mallarmé poem, the Debussy symphonic work which it inspired, and the ballet of the same name by Nijinsky. The double painting repeats, with variations, a pastoral setting with a mottled sky, a gilded glow of light, and a violent red passage that suggest the satyr’s sensual exploits. Leaping arabesques in black oil stick capture the sense of intoxicated dance.

Danielle Frankenthal, Garden 3, 2024, acrylic paint, oil stick on phosphorescent acrylic resin,
50 x 50 in.
Danielle Frankenthal, Garden 3, 2024, acrylic paint, oil stick on phosphorescent acrylic resin, 50 x 50 in.

Garden 3, with its turbulent sky, rising land, and turquoise vegetation, is the most recognizable landscape of the series. It becomes a terra incognita by an overlay of wild, wind-blown lines and the use of phosphorescent acrylic resin. This glow-in-the-dark effect reminds us that this artist is both a seeker after original expression, and part of a lineage of painting that draws its inspiration from nature, stretching back to Monet, and moving forward through Joan Mitchell and Helen Frankenthaler.

Danielle Frankenthal: Playing with Light, Curated by Lilly Wei, through April 5, 2025, L’SPACE Gallery, New York, 524 W. 19 St., New York, NY

Light: Visionary Perspectives at the Aga Khan Museum

by Emese Krunak-Hajagos

The entire Aga Khan Museum was designed around light, so as its 10th anniversary approached the curators decided to celebrate it with an exhibition entirely about light.

Light is central to the museum and visitors experience it right away upon entering the building. In the hallway, To Breathe, Korean artist Kimsooja’s site-specific installation takes us to a different dimension, a dimension of magical light. The windows are covered with diffraction grating film and as daylight passes through it reveals rainbows throughout the space. The magic of this work is in making the invisible visible. Coloured light always amazes and fills us with joy. This kind of play with light can be found on many levels of the museum, shining through windows and creating its own ‘artworks’ on walls and floors.

Kimsooja, To Breathe, 2015, Site-specific installation consisting of diffraction grating film. Commissioned by Centre Pompidou-Metz. Courtesy of Institut français/Année France Corée and Kimsooja Studio. Photography Credit: Jaeho Chong.
Kimsooja, To Breathe, 2015, Site-specific installation consisting of diffraction grating film. Commissioned by Centre Pompidou-Metz. Courtesy of Institut français/Année France Corée and Kimsooja Studio. Photography Credit: Jaeho Chong.


There is nothing better than light as the focus for the anniversary exhibition. There are so many kinds: the light of the sun, the moon and the light inside us, the light we absorb and the light we radiate. The exhibition titled, Light: Visionary Perspectives, is an amazing combination of scientific and spiritual approaches, involving both historical and contemporary visions.

Tannis Nielsen’s, mazinibii’igan / a creation (2020) is the first piece I see. The Anishinaabemowin word ‘mazinibii’igan’ means “a drawing, a sketch, or a design.” It is a continuous video installation with many possible beginnings and endings. The installation is a result of Tannis Nielsen’s research into electromagnetic energies. She discovered that residual radiation stems from the Big Bang, believed to be the origin of the universe.
Stepping into the installation I am enveloped by darkness. It must be the beginning of the universe when nothing existed. Then some weak light grows, and I hang on to it with hope, as any little light is better than total darkness. Suddenly bright lights with impressive soundtracks surround me and it is almost too much, but I lose myself in this otherworldly installation and stop thinking. It surrounds me. As the story told by Elder Marie Gaudet (Turtle Clan Anishinaabe from Wikwemikong), a knowledge keeper and practitioner of healing songs and ceremonies, the installation invites us to reimagine creation. So, it seems I am inside the process of the creation that started, as the narrative says, with a single light emerging from the darkness. Am I swallowed by this installation? I feel I’m in the middle of it, totally absorbed by the darkening and lightening universe. It is a very complex world where dark, light, sound, narrative and music work together perfectly as I become part of the creation. It feels so good, uplifting and I am happy and amazed. Will I ever be able to leave it or do I want to stay inside and see what comes next? It is pulsating with energy, and I feel absorbed in it, an almost physical sensation. It is also very spiritual and mesmerizing. It was hard to distance myself from this installation and I needed some time to re-enter reality.

Tannis Nielsen, mazinibii’igan / a creation, 2020. Digital video, artist’s own footage and derivative. Story and narration by Marie Gaudet. Courtesy of Tannis Nielsen. Photography credit: Aly Manji
Tannis Nielsen, mazinibii’igan / a creation, 2020. Digital video, artist’s own footage and derivative. Story and narration by Marie Gaudet. Courtesy of Tannis Nielsen. Photography credit: Aly Manji

What I saw next, I can barely call ‘reality’ as Anish Kapoor’s two mirrors, facing each other from opposite walls, playing a game with me, challenging my perception. It is about what we see or what we think we see. Long ago Muslim philosophers thought that the light came out from our eyes. In the main floor exhibition room, the book Opticae Thesaurus addresses this idea. The title of the book is a Latin translation of Kitab Al-Manazir (Book of Optics) by 10th-century Muslim scholar and mathematician Ibn al-Haytham. He revolutionized the field by arguing that sight is made possible by light traveling to the eye, rather than by light emanating from it. His discovery influenced the western world as well and led to the development of the camera obscura and, ultimately, the modern camera.

Kapoor’s two mirrored disks, one made of steel and the other of wood and lacquer, remind me of our eyes. From their concave surface they show a view we don’t expect, seeing ourselves and the space in a different way. It is very complex. First, from a distance you see yourself upside down, then, as you get a closer look, you are standing on the ground again. The mirror is creating its own reality. Mirrors in art often denote self-reflection, so what’s happening here? Which one of the images is real or is all just visual illusion? As Bita Pourvash, Associate Curator, Aga Khan Museum says, “we also must understand that we don’t only see with our eyes but with our mind and heart and how they are connected in creating an image.”

I visited the exhibition a day before it opened, and the light was somewhat erratic, some areas a little darker. Stepping out of the view of the mirrors and looking back as they were reflecting on each other I wondered if, somehow, they communicate with each other in the dark when no one is around, sharing their experiences of us and how their tricks confused us.

Anish Kapoor, Mirror (Mipa Blue to Organic Green), 2016. Stainless steel and lacquer. On loan from George Yabu and Glenn Pushelberg. Photography credit: Connor Remus.
Anish Kapoor,Mirror (Mipa Blue to Organic Green), 2016. Stainless steel and lacquer. On loan from George Yabu and Glenn Pushelberg. Photography credit: Connor Remus.

The title A Thousand Silent Moments (Rain Forest) reminds me of Gabriel García Márquez’s book, One Hundred Years of Solitude, that also takes place in a rain forest. It is a magical story like Anila Quayyum Agha’s. Inspired by objects and paintings in the museum collections, American-Pakistani artist, Anila Quayyum Agha, created a lacquered steel and LED installation. On the walls and on the floor, we see a series of laser cut patterns of flowers, leaves and animals from various cultures and historical periods projected from the glass box in the middle of the room. A bright green light surrounds me. At first, I thought, how peaceful. Indeed, it is beautiful; it is paradise or the garden of Eden — harmony is created. Then I recognize that my shadow becomes part of the installation, appearing on the floor and on the walls. The installation is built on contrasting elements: light and shadow. They play, they change as the movement continues. It reminds me of lying under a large tree on a summer day, looking at the light coming through the leaves. It is, like this installation, wonderful and peaceful; I could enjoy it all day long. However, we all know that where there is light, there is shadow, as shadow can’t exist without light. As I walk further into the room and look in every possible direction, I become even more aware of my shadow becoming an interactive part of this installation. There is a very intense movement of images and light, everything is changing. The harmony I felt at first, suddenly breaks. I feel the opposing forces, light and shadow, including my own, as though they are in a dialog. As Quayyum Agha says about her work, “light and pattern are intentionally utilized to create ‘perceptually soothing and conceptually challenging environments.”

Anila Quayyum Agha, A Thousand Silent Moments (Rain Forest), 2024. Laser-cut resin-coated aluminum, Light Bulb. Lacquered steel and LED bulbs. Commissioned by the Aga Khan Museum. Photography Credit: Aly Manji.
Anila Quayyum Agha, A Thousand Silent Moments (Rain Forest), 2024. Laser-cut resin-coated aluminum, Light Bulb. Lacquered steel and LED bulbs. Commissioned by the Aga Khan Museum. Photography Credit: Aly Manji.

The tower-like installation, The Matriarch: Unraveled Threads, by Montreal-based Cameroonian-Belgian artist Mallory Lowe Mpoka contains more than 300 panels. The artist decided to create it when her grandmother passed away and she unexpectedly became the matriarch of her family.

The lighthouse is built from various materials and uses many mediums, like analog photography, screen printing, photo transfer, embroidery on dyed cotton and linen with red earth pigments, acrylic, paper, and steel. The fabric came from her family’s workshop in Cameroon and was dyed there with the earth. The photographs come from different sources, combining self-portraits with images from ancestral archives as well as contemporary portraits. The stories created by them are hypothetical, and do not follow any linear timeline. Together they create a circle, much like a tribal circle, where the main idea is to be together, belonging to the tribe and its history. The artist addresses the idea of how family continues to live in you and in generations to come. Not just your genes but your memories and cultural inheritance include more of the past, present and future than your individual time allows you to experience. The responsibility is to remember, share and pass down your cultural and historical inheritance. As the lighthouse guides people safely to shore, your guidance can influence coming generations to remember who they are and to make the right choices. It also reminds me of the symbol of a single candle shining in the dark. While there may be other lit candles as well, they can’t take away the light from yours. The images are illuminated from inside the lighthouse. Light, besides being a physical element in this artwork, also becomes a metaphor for enlightenment of the heart and mind.

Mallory Lowe Mpoka, The Matriarch: Unraveled Threads, 2021-2024. Analog photography, screen printing, photo transfer, embroidery on dyed cotton and linen with red earth pigments, acrylic, paper, and steel. Courtesy of the artist. Photography Credit: Rory Kearney-Fick.
Mallory Lowe Mpoka, The Matriarch: Unraveled Threads, 2021-2024. Analog photography, screen printing, photo transfer, embroidery on dyed cotton and linen with red earth pigments, acrylic, paper, and steel. Courtesy of the artist. Photography Credit: Rory Kearney-Fick.

Phillip K. Smith III’s Two Corners is a 3D work of colour-choreographed large reflective panels placed in two opposing corners of the room. It is a very intensive experience as I become a part of it when stepping into its universal space, surrounded by its ever-changing colours and interplaying light. Infinity is the right word to describe this installation. When I turned from one wall to another it seemed to open, giving me the feeling that I could walk further without any limit. The desert-like landscape horizon is confusing. I think it made me understand what a mirage really is. The changing of colors further deepens this impression. There is a blue sky filling the room for a short time, then the redness of a sunset or the greenness of fields. Sometimes the colors appear at the same time overlapping and framing each other. This shiny orgy of colors is bigger than my ‘perception’ and addresses the unconscientious layers of my brain. They instill different moods and feelings, turning my attention to these underrated territories of our minds.

Phillip K. Smith III, Two Corners, 2022. Aluminum, glass, LED lighting, electronic components, unique colour choreography. Courtesy of artist. Photography Credit: Aly Manji.
Phillip K. Smith III, Two Corners, 2022. Aluminum, glass, LED lighting, electronic components, unique colour choreography. Courtesy of artist. Photography Credit: Aly Manji.

As Marianne Fenton, Special Projects Curator, Aga Khan Museum summarized, “The installations and objects in the exhibition explore our shared humanity, encouraging us to experience light through the perspectives of these artists who have captured its emotional, spiritual, and physical presentations.” The exhibition, Light: Visionary Perspectives focuses on the power of light over darkness. Exploring both historical and contemporary understanding and creative interpretations of light. It shows us the possibility of new, hopeful horizons.

Images are courtesy of Aga Khan Museum.

*Exhibition information: Light: Visionary Perspectives, till April 21, 2025, Aga Khan Museum, 77 Wynford Drive, Toronto. Museum hours: Tue & Thu – Sun 10:30 am – 5:30 pm, Wed 10 am – 8 pm.

Three Short Takes on Exhibitions in New York

by John Mendelsohn

Jen Mazza: Vicissitudes of Nature
January 10-February 22, 2025
Ulterior Gallery, New York
www.ulteriorgallery.com

Christopher Hart Chambers: Passages
January 23-March 11, 2025
Crossing Art, New York
www.crossingart.com

Louisa Waber: The World Inside This One
January 21- March 7, 2025
TenBerke Architects
events@tenberke.com

In her exhibition, Jen Mazza has assembled a kind of rebus made of quotations, both visual and literary. “Rebus” implies that from the images and words – variously painted, written, and sculpted – something will be spelled out. Maybe the desire to make sense is the red herring in this mystery, but nonetheless clues abound.

The original sources for the works are all from the past, starting in the Renaissance, on up to the early 20th century. This range of time periods lends an archival, antiquarian air to the exhibition. But rather than creating a cabinet of curiosities, Mazza’s poetic conceptualism works like poetry itself, placing one image adjacent to the next, and allowing their energetic conjunction to conjure something new in our consciousness.

Jen Mazza, Portent 1, 2024, oil on canvas, 67 x 87 x 2 in. (170.2 x 221 x 5.1 cm) 
Photo by Jason Mandella, Courtesy of Ulterior Gallery and Jen Mazza (c)Jen Mazza 
Jen MazzaPortent 1, 2024, oil on canvas, 67 x 87 x 2 in. (170.2 x 221 x 5.1 cm) 
Photo by Jason Mandella, Courtesy of Ulterior Gallery and Jen Mazza (c)Jen Mazza 

In a 2021 interview, Mazza said that, “After all, anytime that we engage an historical work, we are engaging with the past as if it pertains to us.” So, we as viewers must be alert to how these couriers from an earlier time might actually be speaking to us about our relationship to the natural world, history, and most importantly to change as an existential constant.

The exhibition’s title, Vicissitudes of Nature, points to life’s unpredictable contingencies. This sense is embodied in the artist’s rendering of Ruskin’s diary script, his words describing the weather, including “Terrific Thunder”, “brighter”, “beauty”, and “Worse and worse”.

Water and its evocative possibilities are a recurring presence throughout the exhibition – in an expanse of sea, in diagrams of nautical navigation, in the name of a ship, and in passages from Virginia Woolf’s novel The Waves.

This feeling of watery, shifting fortunes is embodied in the exhibition’s largest work, Portent 1, a painted excerpt of Titian’s The Submersion of Pharaoh’s Army in the Red Sea, a 12-block woodcut. In Mazza’s version the Israelites and the Egyptians have both been effaced, with only the rippling waves remaining visible.

Jen Mazza, Terpsichore (1760), 2022, oil on canvas, 40 x 60 in. (101.6 x 152.4 cm) 
Photo by Jason Mandella, Courtesy of Ulterior Gallery and Jen Mazza (c)Jen Mazza
Jen MazzaTerpsichore (1760), 2022, oil on canvas, 40 x 60 in. (101.6 x 152.4 cm) 
Photo by Jason Mandella, Courtesy of Ulterior Gallery and Jen Mazza (c)Jen Mazza

The sailing ship HMS Terpsichore delivered from Southern Africa the first zebra publicly displayed in Great Britain, the sole survivor of a pair that had been transported. In Terpsichore (1760) Mazza faithfully reproduces George Stubbs’s painting of the animal, while in Terpsichore (1847), the painting’s subject is a white silhouette – both are reminders of the empire’s colonial exploitation.

Christopher Hart Chambers paints paradise in the form of flowers, leaves, and branches, densely layered in atmospheric space. He evokes a world in bold motifs, distillations of growing things blooming and intertwining.

This world of organic energy is both observed from real life, and echoes how in many cultures nature becomes art, bringing the life of plants into human discourse as a charged spiritual, aesthetic, or decorative presence. In Chambers’s work we sense as a model flowers and branches depicted in the art of China and Japan. Equally apparent is the lineage of modern painting, ranging from Matisse to Alex Katz, that seeks to create simplified abstractions of nature’s complexity. In Chambers’s hands, the patterns of nature take on logo-like silhouettes, perhaps a distant recollection of this painter’s early days in the Street Art movement in New York.

Christopher Hart Chambers, Fertile Circus, 2024, oil on canvas, 60 x 72 in., Photo credit: Shayomi Srivastava
Christopher Hart ChambersFertile Circus, 2024, oil on canvas, 60 x 72 in., Photo credit: Shayomi Srivastava

One striking work is Fertile Circus, a fugue of overlapping rhythms, formed by glowing depths of yellow light, that alternate with vertical passages of olive green and aqua. Overlaying this background are black tree trunks sprouting semi-transparent scarlet flowers. Wafting in front of the trees are wavering bands of turquoise and lavender. Closest to us are vertical sine curves in a soft green, and a large central stem with leaves that seems to create a negative space for us to enter.

Christopher Hart Chambers, Chocolate Forest, 2024, oil on canvas, 60 x 72 in., Photo credit: Shayomi Srivastava
Christopher Hart ChambersChocolate Forest, 2024, oil on canvas, 60 x 72 in., Photo credit: Shayomi Srivastava

In the painting Chocolate Forest, black, spear-like leaves ominously dominate the soft-focus space beyond, over which play a sign of hope – twisting stems and small, red flowers.

The artist’s touch is ever-present in these works, in the delicate mists of colored space, and in the impasto, scumbling, and glazes of oil paint. These painterly techniques work in contrast to the flat, solidly colored trees and tendrils.

Color is the prime vehicle for feeling in these works. It exists on a spectrum from jewel-like tones, to color tamed with the admixture of white, to black that serves as a stark counterpoint.

Taken together, the elements of Chambers’s paintings coalesce into an enchanted vision, a psychedelic realm that encompasses dualities – the nuanced and the graphic, the buoyant and the haunted.

The World Inside This One, written across one of Louisa Waber’s pieces from 2023, serves as the title of this exhibition. These words might be guide to entering into the many small works on paper and the paintings shown here. Through drawing, watercolor, and acrylic, Waber evokes a psychic realm to which the visual is an opened portal.

Louisa Waber, Untitled, 2024, watercolor on Arches archival watercolor paper, 10 x 7" (plus frame) Photo by Louisa Waber
Louisa Waber, Untitled, 2024, watercolor on Arches archival watercolor paper, 10 x 7″ (plus frame) Photo by Louisa Waber

This portal takes many forms, but certain commonalities emerge. A small sheet of paper’s surface flooded with a wash of color, as a spidery structure floats across it. A bold form emerging from a dark atmosphere, along with a tracery of lines. A quilt-like grid holding a grid of color and emptiness. Vivid brushstrokes supporting a bramble of angled lines.

These are just a few of the recurring motifs, but together they constitute an ongoing, seemingly diaristic series of documents that record states of feeling. Like visual seismographs, they are sensitive to the fluctuations of mediums under the artist’s touch. They variously convey a sense anguish, searching, release, and fierce energy, along with a desire to construct a matrix to hold all the emotions that have been awakened. It seems that above all there is an insistence on the artist’s voice to speak, whether emphatically or quietly, without censorship.

Louisa Waber, How Do You Know?, 2024, acrylic, marker, and ink on canvas, 20 x 16" Photo by Louisa Waber
Louisa Waber, How Do You Know?, 2024, acrylic, marker, and ink on canvas, 20 x 16″ Photo by Louisa Waber

A prime example is the painting How Do You Know? from 2024, with its spare, cobalt blue brushstroke that curves back on itself, like the vestige of a whirlwind. On top of it are drawn blood-red lines, a jury-rigged, high-wire act above the maelstrom.

This work is part of a heritage that has many strands. There is the history of Expressionism, in its many forms, with its faith in painterly physicality. The example of Paul Klee is a recurring one, with his intimate evocations of the dream-world that is just beyond the everyday. And there are other precedents, like Louise Fishman, who especially in her early work combined outspoken feminism and abstraction.

In the end, what makes these paintings and drawings original is how this particular artist grants us access, through a kind of direct transmission, to the drenched landscape of her inner world.