exhibition: louise noguchi and june pak

JUNE PAK & LOUISE NOGUCHI | SOMEWHERE
ALEESA COHENE | SOMETHING BETTER

SATURDAY 7 MARCH 2009 – SATURDAY 18 APRIL 2009
OPENING RECEPTION: FRIDAY 6 MARCH 2009, 8:00 PM - 10:00 PM
MEMBERS ONLY MEET + GREET 6:30 PM – 7:30 PM


JUNE PAK & LOUISE NOGUCHI | SOMEWHERE
In conjunction with the Images Festival, LOUISE NOGUCHI and JUNE PAK are presenting three works at YYZ that employ pre-existing film footage from films such as The Wizard of Oz, 3-iron and Enter the Dragon. Through the use of video and installation, their work pays particular attention to cinematic scenes that isolate social and psychological spaces. Intrigued by the intangible, the artists are drawn to the way film translates subconscious states of inner conflict and dislocation into a language of visual metaphors. These metaphors are external to the film’s characters and lie within the film’s location, props, sound effects and music to convey the internal mood of a character or to heighten the tension of a situation. In each of the works on exhibit, Pak and Noguchi are not so much interested in the characters of the film but instead are looking at how the background information acts as an element or character of its own.

JUNE PAK was born in Seoul, South Korea and now lives in Toronto, Canada. She holds a BFA from York University and an MFA from the University of Windsor. Her time-based and digital media projects explore the human-ness found in the fragmented Self. She currently teaches time-based media and interdisciplinary courses at the University of Western Ontario and the Ontario College of Art and Design. Pak's single-channel videos and media installations have shown at various venues throughout Canada, the US and Europe since 1996.

LOUISE NOGUCHI was born in Toronto and studied at the Ontario College of Art and the University of Windsor where she received her MFA. Using photography, sculpture, video and other media, Noguchi’s concepts confront the spectator’s notions of identity, perception and reality. Her work has been exhibited at the Power Plant (Toronto), The Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver), Neuer Berliner Kuntsverein (Berlin), and the Deutsches Museum (Munich). Noguchi is represented by Birch Libralato in Toronto.


ALEESA COHENE | SOMETHING BETTER
Through carefully editing fragments of unrelated scenarios sourced from existing film, sound, image, music and dialogue, Toronto-based artist ALEESA COHENE develops unique stories, characters and scenes that aim to expand emotional consciousness.

In her project, Something Better, a striped pattern of saturated colours leads you through the gallery to a darkened room in which three synchronized monitors present different members of a family. Each screen introduces several film actors who soon merge into three shifting personae: father, mother and child. The three characters interact in a microcosm where they hear each other but don't listen, look but don't see and share relationships that are simultaneously distant and intimate. Something Better looks at the space of communication between individuals and expresses to what extent our relationships to others are constructed through mirrors of ourselves.

Since 2001, Toronto-based artist ALEESA COHENE has been producing videos and video installations that seek to occupy the oppositional zone between ideas and emotion, cultural belief and personal integrity. Her work has shown in festivals and galleries across Canada as well as in Brazil, Germany, Holland, Russia, Scandinavia, Turkey, and the United States, and has won prizes at Utrecht’s Impakt Festival and Toronto’s Images Festival. She has participated in artist residencies in Canada, the Netherlands and Denmark. She is currently pursuing a fellowship at the Kunsthochschule für Medien (KHM) in Cologne, Germany. Her work is distributed by Vtape in Toronto.

Something Better is a coproduction with the Impakt Foundation in Utrecht, Netherlands, in the framework of Impakt Works 2007, and has been made possible with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and the City of Utrecht.

Exhibitions are programmed by and presented in conjunction with the 22nd Images Festival, 2-11 April 2009. For more information please visit imagesfestival.com.




YYZ ARTISTS’ OUTLET
140-401 Richmond Street W.
Toronto, ON M5V 3A8

T: 416.598.4546
F: 416.598.2282
E: yyz@yyzartistsoutlet.org
W: www.yyzartistsoutlet.org

GALLERY HOURS
TUESDAY – SATURDAY, 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM
OPEN UNTIL 9:00 PM THURSDAY 2 APRIL 2009