Artist: Brandon Poole Curator: Yuluo Wei Exhibition text: Kate Whiteway Time: March 4 – April 17, 2022 Location: San Sheng Art Space
Arranged as a series of nested diptychs, One through the Other is a commissioned site-specific video, photo, and sculpture installation in the fashion and lifestyle showroom San Sheng Art Space. Taking its context as content, the exhibition opens with an appropriated image from San Sheng’s Instagram account of an influencer holding the 2009 Mark Lewis Venice Biennale catalogue. The catalogue, as prop for a marketing campaign, establishes the working thematics of the exhibition: the tensioned position of art as, and in the service of, commodity.
Searching this tension, One through the Other oscillates from its consideration of San Sheng Art Space to engage the neighbouring floral shop as site of reflection and refraction, pursuing the question of art’s relation to commodity through colocation—where, to borrow Biennale Commissioner and Curator Barbara Fischer’s observation on a Mark Lewis work, “both pictorial spaces are beheld equally, one through the other, perceptually pulsating back and forth in tension.” [1]
Throughout the exhibition, half of the site will continue to function as fashion showroom, welcoming customers to observe, browse, and shop alongside the adjacent installation. In addition to the daytime viewing hours of the exhibition, a rear-projected video will play on the window of San Sheng Art Space at night.
[1] Fischer, Barbara. “On Location.” Essay. In Mark Lewis: Cold Morning: Canada 2009: 53rd International Art Exhibition – La Biennale Di Venezia, edited by Barbara Fischer. Toronto, ON: Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, 2009.
Ann’s Flowers’ Arrangements (crop), 2022, video projection, silent Courtesy of the artist
Screenshot and crop from @sanshengca, courtesy of the artist
About the artist
Brandon Poole is an artist and lecturer based in Montreal, QC. Having previously trained in journalism and philosophy, his research-based practice moves by way of interviews and fieldwork to interrogate the entwined histories and speculative futures of media, simulation, and the image. He received a Master of Visual Studies from the University of Toronto and a Bachelor of Fine Arts, with honours and distinction, from the University of Victoria. His work has been shown at the Toronto Biennale, the University of Toronto’s Art Museum, Presentation House Gallery (Vancouver, BC), and Fifty Fifty Gallery (Victoria, BC).
About San Sheng Art Space (SSAS)
San Sheng Art Space is the only hybrid platform located in Markham, Ontario, featuring a rotating, curated selection of designs and independent artworks. We consider art and fashion as the bridge between culture and commerce. The site is employed as an open space displaying exceptional pieces for visitors to view and sample. On a regular basis, it also facilities art and cultural projects for local communities.
The exhibition is made possible through the generous support of 333 Industrial Arts (Arbutus Real Estate Ltd.)