To And From: Alan Brandoli @ Toronto School of Art Gallery, May 28 – June 6th

Preparator, archival inkjet print, 50x 73 inches, 2010

Alan Brandoli’s exhibition “To and From” on display in the Toronto School of Art  Gallery and building lobby until June 6^th includes several large scale photographs and a street front video projection that pose questions about how personal and institutionalized accumulations of history perpetuate certain ideologically driven memories that conflate our individual subjectivity with artificial social constructs.

The three larger panoramic photographs taken in Toronto’s Royal York Hotel present the establishment’s venerable spaces as backdrops that lend authority and theatrical flair to corporate conferences, group pep talks and various social events. In this sense culture, whether in the form of modern Canadian paintings, blank projection screens, or colonial décor is positioned as the legitimizing staging device for commerce and public rituals.

One of the photographs displays a painterly composition depicting a decorator working on a palette of colour, fabric and materials in front of a painting of a colonial treaty ceremony. There seems to be an ironic parallel between the choreographed imperialist painting and the preparator’s fastidious concern for historical continuity. The photograph’s composition and lighting also underscore a self conscious eye for westernized pictorial conventions and seems to raise considerations about the cultural content behind such image construction.

To and From, digital video projection, 74×106 inches, 2010

In the front display window a male figure repeats a virtual walk to and from a vanishing point while ignoring the human activity that surrounds him as he makes his way through a sun washed park. Again there seems to be a concern for the operations of pictorial space here.

Asked by Brandoli to focus on the specifics of his own future without any affectation of acting, the anonymous walker in the projection moves from a distant point towards the viewer until he reaches the virtual edge of the picture plane to stand on the brink of the window’s ledge and fix his gaze on the camera and, thereby the viewer for several minutes before turning and re-enacting the walk over and over again on the digital loop.

This seemingly natural and literal act of walking is portrayed as a condition which is complicated by the artificial setting within the park along with the presence of a palpable psychological component enacted through the figure’s fixed gaze and his disconcerting inattention to his surroundings. Various associations emerge while viewing the work including the relationship between virtual space and the subjective space of consciousness to our own, street level reality as the male figure’s gaze seems to press against the conventional boundaries of the display window.

Brandoli also cites the immanent G20 Summit, the precarious financial markets and the recent conflicts in Gaza, as events that indirectly informed the work as it was made during TSA’s Independent Spring Residency Program.

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