Gabor Szilasi: The Eloquence of the Everyday (installation view), 2014 © Clifton Li, Ryerson Image Centre
Gabor Szilasi: The Eloquence of the Everyday at the Ryerson Image Centre Main Gallery Summer 2013
Jun. 12, 2013
Gabor Szilasi: The Eloquence of the Everyday combines portraits, domestic and commercial interiors, cityscapes, and images of rural life. It also includes environmental portraiture, a genre of photography in which the setting— a person’s home, workplace, or even a public place—plays an essential role in describing the subject. The exhibition is organized into three geographically-based themes: Hungary, Rural Quebec and Montreal. The exhibition includes early images of Hungary in the 1950s, as well as those made since 1980. The photographs of rural Quebec date principally from the 1970s, while those of Montreal span the years from the late 1950s to the present. Within each section, architectural, town and city views mingle with portraits to reveal Szilasi’s belief in the centrality of community.
The Ryerson Image Centre (RIC) summer 2013 exhibitions explore themes of place, time, and immigration. Gabor Szilasi is on a constant quest to capture ordinary people and places of the present day. He finds beauty in the ordinary and is interested in documenting a society that is in constant flux. He has said, “I am not interested in the past or the future: I am interested in the present. Through the photographic image, I can directly record the signs of the past and the future as they appear in this moment.”
Gabor Szilasi: The Eloquence of the Everyday, organized by the Muse?e d’art de Joliette and the National Gallery of Canada, curated by David Harris, and presented by the Ryerson Image Centre in the Main Gallery June 19 – August 25, 2013, features more than 100 photographs taken by Gabor Szilasi over the past 50 years.
The public opening reception for Gabor Szilasi: The Eloquence of the Everyday will take place Wednesday, June 19, 2013, at 7:00p.m.
A Curator Walk-Through of Gabor Szilasi: The Eloquence of the Everyday, with exhibition curator David Harris, will take place on Wednesday July 24, 2013 at 6:00p.m.
The exhibition Arthur S. Goss: Works and Days, on view at the RIC in May, opens again on June 19 and will remain on view throughout the summer. Curated by Blake Fitzpatrick and John Bentley Mays, Arthur S. Goss: Works and Days is organized by the Ryerson Image Centre and presented in collaboration with the City of Toronto Archives, and in partnership with Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival. The exhibition presents several multi-image depictions of buildings and sites in the burgeoning city of Toronto. During his long tenure as Toronto’s official photographer (1911-1940), Arthur S. Goss created thousands of images that illustrate in fine detail the Victorian city’s ambitious, but often difficult, re-invention of itself as a modern Canadian metropolis. He has been best known for his eloquent pictures of slums, destitute immigrants, and other dark elements of this historical passage. This exhibition reveals a lesser known aspect of Goss’s professional work, but one that occupied his time and creative energy more fully than any other: the routine production of visual documents for the use of various city departments and agencies.
A Curators Walk-Through of Arthur S. Goss: Works and Days, with exhibition curators Blake Fitzpatrick and John Bentley Mays, will take place on Wednesday August 14, 2013 at 6:00p.m.
Here and There: Photography and Video Works on Immigration, on the Salah J. Bachir New Media Wall at the Ryerson Image Centre in May, will re-open to appear June 19 – August 25, 2013. Curated by Dr. Gaelle Morel, Ryerson Image Centre’s Exhibitions Curator, Here and There: Photography and Video Works on Immigration spans from the 1950s to today with photographs from the Black Star Collection and photographic, new media and video works by contemporary Canadian artists. The different works deal with voluntary and hopeful immigration to Canada in the 1950s, refugee shelters in the United States and Canada today, and first generation of immigrants now settled in Canada. Artists include Sara Angelucci, Ruth Kaplan, Shelagh Keeley, Meera Margaret Singh and Andrew Suri.
Two exhibitions will be seen in the Ryerson Image Centre’s Student Gallery this summer. First,
Ken Woroner: Hardscrabble will be on view June 19 – July 14, 2013. Now known as Golden Valley, Hardscrabble was the name European settlers gave to the small northern Ontario community upon their arrival in the 1870s. These two names neatly bracket the combination of struggle and promise present in this rural location and its starkly beautiful, economically challenging terrain. Straddling a divide between subjective concerns and empathetic engagement, the series of photographs taken by Ken Woroner in Hardscrabble blends the personal with the documentary. Woroner’s images of Golden Valley focus on the struggle to survive – the hardscrabble. Kieran Dick: Bleigießen [lead casting] opens July 24 and will be on view until August 25, 2013. Kieran Dick: Bleigießen [lead casting] presents an exaggerated moment from a German New Year's Eve tradition of pouring a spoonful of molten lead into cold water. Upon contact, the lead solidifies to form an abstract shape that is used, along with symbolism and imagination, to tell one's fortune for the new year. Containing elements of family tradition, science, technology, minimalism and documentary, the video presents a moment to contemplate the future.
These exhibitions have been financially assisted by the Ontario Cultural Attractions Fund, a program of the Government of Ontario through the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sport, administered by the Ontario Cultural Attractions Fund Corporation