She Made Ads. Then She Made Art Out of Them By: Brandon Kaufman In 1927, the gravely ill German art historian Aby Warburg began constructing dozens of burlap-laced wooden panels, each devoted to a different theme in the history of Western culture. They ranged from “Astrology and mythology: projections of the cosmos” to “Superlatives of the language of gestures.” To each, he pinned photographs, diagrams, sketches, and other miscellanea, juxtaposing …
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Geoff McFetridge Invites You to Slow Down in ‘Grasslands’ By: Keith Estiler There’s a quiet power lingering throughout Geoff McFetridge’s latest body of work at Toronto’s Cooper Cole Gallery. Channeling the charged stillness of the late Alex Colville’s photorealistic paintings, McFetridge brings a similar sense of motionlessness to the rural scenes and tranquil environments of Grasslands. The exhibition features rolling landscapes inspired by the Canadian prairies where the artist was raised. It’s …
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The artist rewriting the ABCs for an era of infinite scrolling By: Chris Hampton One hundred years ago, German theorist Aby Warburg began assembling his legendary Bilderatlas Mnemosyne. The art historian aggregated newspaper clippings, ads, photos of ancient statues, postcards, stamps, coins and reproductions of Renaissance paintings — more than 1,000 objects in total — to trace the evolution of visual motifs from antiquity to modern times. “It looks like …
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The Memory Plain By: Evan Pricco I know when I write on this site I generally write about paintings and how paintings make you feel about the world, but when I write about Geoff McFetridge I generally feel like I am finding ways to write about ideas. I’m writing about writing almost, as the Canadian-born, Los Angeles-based artist has arrived at his craft through an almost author’s mind. In a sense, these …
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Errant Patterns, Speculative Stories: Nour Bishouty at Museo Universitario del Chopo By: Fabiola Iza Prior to Nour Bishouty’s first exhibition in Mexico, I had never encountered her work in person. Everything I had read about her practice led me to expect an investigation of archives and documentary forms: works concerned with the gaps and omissions of historical records, skeptical of archival images presented as transparent evidence. Walking through the ground-floor galleries of Museo …
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Paul P.’s Disappearing Figures By: Foyer Staff The cornerstone of artist Paul P.’s multivalent practice is the head-and-shoulder portraits he appropriates from underground queer magazines produced during a period bracketed by the beginning of gay liberation in the late 60s, and the advent of the AIDS crisis in the early 80s: an era marked by aesthetic highpoints and provisional freedoms. In the early 2000s, while exploring the collection of the …
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Can watching films in galleries transcend the theatre experience? By: Kate Taylor This summer, Toronto provides an invigorating opportunity to consider the counterintuitive project of screening films in art galleries because there are powerful examples playing on continuous loops at two different institutions. One is The Bubble Boy at the AGO, an exhibition of Marcon’s short but unsettling domestic dramas featuring puppets and prosthetics; the other is Baby Blue Benzo, a …
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The Very Best Things to See at London Gallery Weekend 2026 By: Emily Dinsdale The Fugitive Marvels of Sunset by Paul P at Maureen Paley until 25 July Alongside hazy skies, gathering clouds, colonies of bats and crashing waves, faces emerge from the fugue-like state of dawn or fade into enveloping dusk in Paul P’s luminous paintings. Drawing inspiration from gay porn magazines of the 1960s, 70s and 80s, as well …
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Art shows to leave the house for in June 2026: SARA CWYNAR, BABY BLUE BENZO BETA, TORONTO, CANADA By: Ashleigh Kane Canadian artist Sara Cwynar transforms the gallery into a collision of showroom, film set, and digital archive. Anchored by the Canadian premiere of her film Baby Blue Benzo (2024), the exhibition spirals outward from the world’s most expensive car into a wider meditation on capitalism, image culture, and the manufactured logic of desire. …
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A Partial Reading: in conversation with multidisciplinary artist Nour Bishouty By: Magdalyn Asimakis Nour Bishouty is an artist based in Toronto who works across sculpture, the moving image, works on paper, and writing. Having encountered her work at various exhibitions and screenings in Toronto including at Cooper Cole, GTA21 at the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto, and Toronto Palestine Film Festival, and having had the fortune of discussing Nour’s work …
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