November 17 – December 22, 2012
Opening Reception: Friday, November 16, 6 – 9 p.m.
O’BORN CONTEMPORARY
131 Ossington Avenue,
Toronto, ON
T: 416. 413. 9555
E:info@oborncontemporary.com
www.oborncontemporary.com
Hours: Tue-Sat, 11-6 p.m. and by appointment
EYES WITHOUT A FACE / recent works by Noel Rodo-Vankeulen
O’Born Contemporary is pleased to announce “Eyes Without a Face”, Noel Rodo-Vankeulen‘s first solo exhibition with the gallery. The title, which references the mechanized and often detached character of the image, reflects Rodo-Vankeulen’s interest in the nature of pictures as a realm for visual, poetic and conceptual possibility.
Rodo-Vankeulen‘s work, disparate in both subject and style, seems to follow our chaotic and ever-changing economy of images. His photographs are never tied to one type of gesture. Instead, they span a range of working treatments from concept to print – straight photographs, scans and digital manipulations. He produces both singular and mini-serial works that often deny concrete readings, enlisting themes and motifs in constant flux. These works, many of which are rooted in common subject matter (sunsets, pictures of wildlife, lowfi studio arrangements, etc) use the ‘everyday’ as a starting point or ground for greater formal and referential visual structures. Here, through interventions such as multiple exposures or in camera filters, figuration bleeds into abstraction and photographs based on the traditional idea of the still-life, portrait or landscape begin to slip between genres.
Sometimes familiar and often strange, Rodo-Vankeulen’s “Eyes Without a Face” unfolds the dynamics embedded in all pictures. His photographs point toward an increasingly sophisticated visual oscillation present in today’s images – Acting out new structures of seeing and opening up new contextual spaces.
Noel Rodo-Vankeulen (born 1982) is an artist and writer who lives and works in Brampton, ON, Canada and holds a BFA in Visual Arts from York University in Toronto. Selected exhibitions include: “After Color” at Bose Pacia in New York, which traveled to galleries at Savannah College of Art & Design; “Where is Here”, part of the Flash Forward Festival; “Graphic Intersections” at the Umbrage Gallery in New York; “One Hour Photo” at The American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center in Washington, DC; and “Young Curators, New Ideas” at the Bond Street Gallery in New York. His work has been featured in various publications including UK-based Twin Magazine, Lay Flat: Meta, Daylight Magazine, and the book 100 New Artists by Dazed and Confused Arts Editor Francesca Gavin which is published by Laurence King.
Rodo-Vankeulen’s critical and editorial writing has been included in such publications as the Toronto-based Hunter and Cook Magazine, Foam International Photography Magazine, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s book Words Without Pictures and the second volume Lay Flat: Meta, an annual journal of photography.