Within the traditions of Western aesthetic thought, the idea that art can imitate or recreate reality has been a central part of the theorization of the nature of artistic expression. The history of pictorial representation, in fact, is based on the idea that artists can create illusions of the natural world--windows into another reality. The knowledge that a painting is not actually a window (or a sculpture is not actually a person) is based on our understanding of the conventions of representation and presentation--of what things are and how they are seen--or how we make them seen. In some cases the illusion of reality, or the trompe l'oeil, can be so effective that we mistake the imitation for the real thing--we lose our sense of real time and space.

It is in such a place that the artists in FUN HOUSE reside. FUN HOUSE features the work of nine Canadian artists who play with artistic convention, both pictorially and materially, and challenge our expectation of reality and the objects within it. Utilizing age-old strategies of illusion and substitution, they transform the everyday--reshaping and re-imagining it--recreating the world around them.

Rhonda Weppler and Trevor Mahovsky cast cars in aluminum foil; James Carl sculpts furniture in Styrofoam and Kevin Yates intricately carves banal objects in wood. Brandon Thiessen's installations take the representational, documentary function of photography to the limit, while BGL and Patrick Bérubé transform space itself--disrupting our expectation of the gallery--re-making it as a fun house.

James Carl, take-outs, 1995-ongoing. White marble, life size

Kevin Yates, This room has no walls, 2006 (detail). Poplar wood, sulpey, fabric, hair. Photo: Bettina Hoffmann, Courtesy Susan Hobbs Gallery, Toronto

Exhibition Related Programming

Artists in Dialogue
Saturday, September 22, 2 pm

Discuss the exhibition FUN HOUSE with artists BGL, Patrick Bérubé, James Carl, Brandon Thiessen, Rhonda Weppler, Trevor Mahovsky and Kevin Yates