Sign Language: A Brief Explanation of t...

Exhibition Essay by Randy Gladman.  Displayed as wall text as part of “Ryan McGinness: Aesthetic Comfort,” Artcore Gallery, Toronto, September 23 – November 15, 2008. Popular understanding of human history is often given chronological shape by dividing the time we have spent on this planet into various eras defined by our most significant technological innovations. The Stone Age, for instance, marks a broad prehistoric time when humans made their first technological advances, widely using stone for toolmaking. As our ancestors discovered the benefits...

Ryan McGinness – Aesthetic Comfort

Ryan McGinness Aesthetic Comfort Curated by Randy Gladman September 27, 2008 – November 15, 2008 For Immediate Release Artcore / Fabrice Marcolini is pleased to announce Ryan McGinness’s first solo exhibition in Canada. Aesthetic Comfort presents a major painting and sculpture installation by this internationally recognized, New York City-based artist. Ryan McGinness makes work that occupies the stylish space where art and graphic design collide. Influenced by Andy Warhol and mixing digital technologies with more traditional crafts like silk screening and...

The Best Contemporary Art Galleries in T...

By Randy Gladman.  Originally published on BlogTO.com, July 23, 2008 When it comes to the topic of Contemporary Art, it often seems there are only two kinds of Torontonians. There are the culture-junky downtowners who try to visit the galleries at least a couple times a year, in an effort to find unique gems for their collections and to remain cognizant of the heartbeat of the city. And then there is everyone else, the other 98% of our neighbours who don’t know that there are galleries in the city other than the ROM and AGO and wouldn’t have the faintest idea...

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: Text Art

By Randy Gladman. Originally published in Contemporary, Text Art Special, vol.21, Issue 13, 2008 We interact with technology hundreds of times a day. We dial telephone numbers, scan our food through supermarket check-out lasers, change the television channel and move our mouse to surf to another web page. We click, slide, dial, push, swipe, turn and type on our machines to communicate our contextual commands, and we take for granted that the device will understand our desires and provide an expected result. The point of interface, where our bodies meet our machines, is at...

Kristine Moran: Dissolution Plan at Ange...

By Randy Gladman.  Originally published in Canadian Art Magazine, Vol. 22, No. 3, Fall 2005 In her second solo exhibition, Kristine Moran sharpens the focus in her sci-fi paintings, zeroing in on the ideas of utopian theorists from the 20th century—Jane Jacobs, Robert Moses, Constant Nieuwenhuys and Buckminster Fuller—to present inner-city landscapes from an imagined alternative present. While still sprinkled with her signature airborne vehicles and extravagant explosions, these works ponder idealistic urban environments and the social interactions of their...

Ryan McGinness; Art and Entertainment

By Randy Gladman.  Originally published in Strength: Skateboard Culture Magazine, January/February 2002 A small TV in a corner of the gallery projects a video of your worst nightmare. Office hell: A shallow space with white walls and whiter lighting, a nondescript table, and a generic clock, hung low on the wall so it appears in the tight camera angle view. The time is apparently twenty-one minutes past the hour and a skinny dude in a white business shirt sits at the table in obvious discomfort. He looks bad. Hurting bad. As he rubs his hand across his clean-shaven...