artist lecture: jon sasaki

Art and Art History Presents

Jon Sasaki

Tuesday 24 November 2009
12:30 – 1:30 p.m.

Sheridan, Lecture Hall B124
1430 Trafalgar Road, Oakville, ON L6H 2L1

Working in the vein of “romantic conceptualism,” John Sasaki utilizes primarily performance-for-video, objects, installations and interventions in work that mixes humour and pathos, often with gently antagonistic results. Cyni­cism, futility and tragedy are taken as starting points, then countered with dry, comic delivery. Often structured like the familiar “shaggy dog joke,” much of this work is a deadpan escalation of expectations, followed by an anticlimactic punch line. It is a celebration of futility and resignation.

Sasaki’s work has been pre­sented in solo exhibitions at Centre Clark (Montreal), Gallery TPW (Toronto), The New Gallery (Calgary), and Latitude 53 (Edmonton). He has participated in recent group exhibitions at VOX (Montreal), the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery (University of Toronto), the Owens Art Gallery (Mount Allison University, Sackville, NB) Simon Fraser University Gallery (Burnaby, BC), as well as the 2006 and 2008 editions of Toronto’s Nuit Blanche. Upcoming solo exhibitions will be presented at Jessica Bradley Art + Projects (Toronto), The Doris McCarthy Gallery, (University of Toronto at Scarborough) and 126 (Galway, Ireland). Sasaki was an active member of the Instant Coffee art collective between 2002 and 2007. He lives and works in Toronto.



Image: Toronto's Official Y2K Mascot, Autumn (2008), HDV, 4:33, looped