December 14 - 31, 2008

Flurrious

...a flurry of activities presented by Modern Times Stage Company

Opening Reception: N/A

Featuring a staged reading of Hallaj, the new play by Soheil Parsa and Peter Farbridge, Sashar Zarif, Pirouz Yousefian, Goossun Art-illery (Copenhagen/London) and more.

Full event schedule at moderntimesstage.com

Tickets FREE - $10, seating at all events is limited
info / reservations contact 416.214.1428 or info@moderntimesstage.com

Arta Gallery is once again proud to present an abstract and figurative show by Toronto based and international artists. Each work will consist of purity associated with reduction of the consistent materials of a medium, of paint and canvas, which are seen as pure. In the end, these tensions are integral to abstraction which is best defined as a category that manages such contradictions. This in effect holds them in suspension, or puts them into dialectical play.

EVENT LISTINGS

Wednesday, January 14, 8pm

Sufi Time Arts Trio
A dance, music and poetry performance inspired by Sufi spiritual practice with Sashar Zarif and Pirouz Yousefian.
Arta Gallery, Distillery District
Tickets: $10

Wednesday, January 21, at 8pm

Aurash
The award-winning play translated and adapted by Soheil Parsa and Brian Quirt receives a staged reading directed by Guillaume Bernardi featuring students of Glendon College's Drama Studies program.
Arta Gallery, Distillery District
Tickets: $10

Thursday, January 22 - Friday January 23, 8pm

Hallaj: Advance Preview
A staged reading of the new play by Soheil Parsa & Peter Farbridge. Inspired by the legendary Sufi mystic's confrontation of the social and political institutions of 10th century Baghdad, the cast and creative team present this first public showing of the work's development to date.
Arta Gallery, Distillery District
Tickets: $10

Saturday, January 31, 2pm

Goossun Art-illery
Work Demonstration & Forum on Theatre Anthropology
With visiting Artistic Director Vahid of Goossun Art-illery (Copenhagen/London)
Lower Ossington Theatre, 100A Ossington Avenue
FREE Admission

December 4 - 18, 2008

Winter is Red

Danusia Applebee, Paul Brandejs, Ellen Cowie, Mick Fin, Chantelle Gobeil Kamelia Pezeshki, Pauline Thompson, Sam Wilson

Opening Reception: Thursday, December 4, 5-7pm

A group exhibition that brings together striking creations by innovative artists who reinvent the things we come across everyday. Reusing materials and making ethical artworks does not mean good design and aesthetics are abandoned. In fact, these artists are captivated by the bits and pieces which surround them and given them new life in truly spectacular ways. Emerging and established artists.

November 15 - December 2, 2008

In the Wheels of Polyvalence&Value

Ania Biczysko Helena Ogorzelec Wojtek Biczysko Ryszard Litwiniuk, Eva Kolacz

Opening Reception: Saturday, November 15, 7-9 pm

Please come and join us and enjoy some wine, cheese, good conversation, and take the first look at the new collection by Canadian/Polish Art Initiatives.

November 1 - 13, 2008

Late in the Day

Xosrow Abtahi, Elizabeth Hack, Marzena Kotapska, Laurie Percy, Chad Riedl, Lauren Satok, Vanessa Vaughan

Opening Reception: Saturday, November 1, 5-7 pm

Arta Gallery is proud to once again present a group exhibition highlighting emerging and established artists. Ranges of vivid colours, textures, and collage will be incorporated in to each paintings as artists assess the idea of figurative and abstract work in individual perceptions. This multi-disciplinary exhibition also brought together artists who have assimilated strategies of sensation into their work - reminders of feeling, seeing, perceiving and knowing. Creative and innovative orchestration of art works, generating new experiential contexts.

October 4 - 16, 2008

Bedriška Uždilová

Part of the Scotiabank Nuit Blanche 08

Opening Reception: Saturday, October 4, 6-9 pm

Arta Gallery is proud to present for the first time in Canada and part of Nuit Blanche, a solo exhibition by internationally acclaimed artist Bedřiška Uždilová. As a graduate from the Prague Academy of Graphic Arts as well as University of Paris, she received first prize at the Autumn Saloon in Paris, and first prize at the International Fair at Forte dei Marmi in Italy when she was only nine years old. Her paintings are real and based upon real impressions, experiences, and upon viewing non- typical parts of landscapes and human faces and everything that forms the natural art of our environment.

The viewer will be invited to decipher what is on the surface of everyday life. The paintings are artistically attractive with brisk color combinations, variability of lines and suggestive compositions. Her work is linked up with the French and Czech "Classical Modern Arts".

September 20 - October 2, 2008

Impulses of the Jamaican Soul

Charles Campbell, Philemon Campbell , Thelma Carey-Thompson, Neville Clarke, Cecil Cooper, Karl 'Jerry' Craig, Janice Garel, Norma Harrack, Wayne Headley, Carl Abrahams, Joshua Higgins, Patsy Mair, Gene Pearson, Phillip Supersad Tafui, Heather Sutherland Wad.

Opening Reception: September 20, 2008 5-7pm

Art Celebrating 46 Years of Independence

September 6 - 19, 2008

Unmonumental

Kuba J. Bryzgalski

Opening Reception: September 6, 2008 6-9pm

Inspired by Easter Island, Kuba Bryzgalski engages in post-modern dialogue with monumentality. While monolithic stone heads point tourists to the past of the island, Bryzgalski directs theatrically monumental symbols towards an unmonumental vision of the future.

August 23 - September 4, 2008

A Sweep of Grey

Jeff Adams, Joanne de Boehmler, Peter Chung Hamid Karimi, Sue Metz, Julie Waterhouse

Opening Reception: August 23, 2008 5-7pm

Features a varied collection of emerging and established artists, both locally and internationally. Styles will range from traditional to contemporary. The collection will appeal to those looking for art for the first time and to the more experienced and discerning collector.

August 21 - 24, 2008

Lady with a Lapdog

Lemaz Productions & Phoenix Theatre

Opening Reception: August 21, 22 & 24 at 8pm

An adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s short story star Jane Milman and Peter Nelson

July 17 - 24, 2008

Iranian Art Today

Aydin Aghdashloo, Reza Bassiri, Khosrow Bayat, Bahram Dabiri, Mohammad Ehsaei Babak Etminani, Mohammad Javadipour, Sirak Melkonian, Gholamhossein Nami and Nasser Ovissi

Opening Reception: July 17

Iranian artists are playing a growing important role in today’s art world. The "Iranian Art Today" is an exhibition of contemporary art by internationally acclaimed Iranian artists who live in Iran as well as those living abroad. The diverse group of artists represented in this exhibition presents a vibrant, challenging and powerful collection of artworks in painting, sculpture, photography, and graphic arts. The unity between the artists in this exhibition is their engagement in the cultural dialogue of place and identity as well as past and present.

The exhibition not only brings together important examples of outstanding works by a group of leading contemporary artists living inside Iran, but it also examines how they reconnect through their works with the generation of the artists who live abroad.

Including the entire spectra of artists or styles was not possible owing to limitations; yet this exhibition presents a unique opportunity for viewing a selection of Iranian modern and contemporary art and to understand its ongoing link with centuries of tradition.

June 27 - July 10, 2008

Luminary Spot

Craig Beal, David Brown, Cliff Kearns, Toni Marvin, Michelle Montague and Yuja Yokoyama

Opening Reception: Friday, June 27, 6-8pm

Arta gallery is pleased to present a selection of contemporary and figurative paintings by various artists. Get caught up in enigmatic adventures of figurative and contemporary paintings. The fragments of recognizable imagery will compel the viewer to go further into a dreamlike quality and the search for an unidentifiable narrative, although the narrative work will elude the viewer, the conscious beauty will develop and will be suspended in time.

June 14 - 26, 2008

Out of Africa

Rosa Guasch

Opening Reception: Saturday June 14, 6-8 pm

From the forests and highlands we come, we come" (Out of Africa by Karen Blixen)

If every moment of our lives turns into memory, Rosa's ultimate aim is to enrich memory with permanence, and these recent paintings are the culmination of her travels across Africa during the summers of 2006 and 2007.

Using exalted and contrasting colors, through the abstract use of stains and agile strokes, Rosa has created compositions in which colors and forms originate from her perceived reality; and figurative scenes of African tribes, landscapes, shorelines, or other moments that emotionally moved her through the journey.

May 23 - June 13, 2008

Orange Light

Behzad Adineh, Shirin Hosseinvand, Shafagh Azhandeh

Opening Reception: Friday, May 23, from 5-7 pm

Please join us as we welcome a new exhibition featuring photography by Behzad Adineh and paintings by emerging artists Shirin Hosseinvand and Shafagh Azhandeh at Arta Gallery. Each image will carry limitless and refined quintessence of harmony and simplicity. Art for personal revelation can only be conveyed by such images created from mysteriousenergy and saturated with the intrinsic mood of colours, space and light.

May 16 - 22, 2008

Pursuing the Light

Loys de Fleuriot

Opening Reception: Friday May 16, 5-8 pm

A feature photography gallery presentation of Pursuing the Light

May 3 - 15, 2008

CONTACT Photography Festival 2008

Gabor Gasztonyi, Jennifer Goodwin, Lawrence Hislop, Svjetlana Ignjatovic and Dana Wilson

Opening Reception: Saturday May 3, 4-6 pm

Photography is synonymous with memory and history. But what exactly is the nature of this relationship? Photography can replace memories in order to create and preserve moments in life. Therefore photography becomes something that is touched, whether in reality or the viewer's imagination, and helps drag its perception into the immediacy of the present. Such use raises questions about the differences between memory and photographs in retrieving the past and acting as momento mori.

April 19 - May 1, 2008

A Time To Keep

Ann Barkley, Gary Hesketh, Mo Jamal and Eugene Nicolcev

Opening Reception: Saturday April 19, 4 - 6pm

Arta Gallery is pleased to once again feature a varied collection of emerging artists from both local and international backround. The aesthetic experience of such enigmatic visions will create and embrace a profound sense of the infinite and will affect the peaceful state of being. All the ephemeral elements will manifest their true through a majestic and palpable visuality.

April 5 - 17, 2008

Watching the Bright

Erika Deery, Kendall Hurley, Myriam F. Levy, John Page, Raymond Quenneville and Diana Harding-Tucker

Opening Reception: Saturday April 5, 5 - 7pm

Arta gallery offers a selective collection of original abstract paintings by established contemporary artists. Each Artist has a language of their own, create their own sense of expression and the out come has a life of its own. Artists will be in attendance during the reception.

March 1 - 13, 2008

Transcendent Spirit

Erika Baempfer Deery, George Calle, Maria Gushue, Cliff Kearns, Caroline McCormick and Farah Tafreshi.

Opening Reception: Saturday March 1, 4 -6 pm

This exhibition features artists who work with layers of texture and colour to achieve pieces that become timeless exploration of shape, form and space. Transcendence of the discarded elements versus the completed image will be the main objective for the show. Nonverbal and non-articulate communication with colour will stimulate the viewer and lead the spirit into another world of vision.

February 23 - 29, 2008

Foluke

Opening Reception: Saturday, February 23, 4-6 pm

Arta Gallery is pleased to present a collection by Foluke. As an artist Foluke is mindful of the cosmic relationship between the artist and the dynamic state of equilibrium of the universe. This collection is influenced by the ancient civilizations, commencing with Egypt, as well as the pre-colonial art of the Americas particularly South America during the Aztecs and Inca period.

February 9 - 21, 2008

Peaceful Coexistence

IRiKO and Peter W

Opening Reception: Saturday, February 9, 5-7 pm

Arta Gallery is proud to present this exhibition of an unusual artistic collaboration. IRiKO, an established painter of atmospheric images, is represented by several works from her new series In the Spirit of Romanticism, and Peter W, a young emerging artist, is represented by vibrant and dynamic paintings that embody the thrill of painterly action.

These two creative individuals, an aspiring artist and his mentor, coexist peacefully in their mutual respect for one another's freedom of expression, as well as in their embrace of their artistic differences.

Also an exhibition designer, IRiKO has conceived this display of paintings with a view to creating a synergy that highlights the complexities and refinements of her own mature art, while celebrating the intuitive and natural artistic sensitivities of Peter's evolving vision.

January 24 - February 6, 2008

Kindred Spirits

Otto Donald Rogers, Sasha Rogers and Paula Murray

Opening Reception: Thursday January 24, 5-7 pm

Group exhibition.

January 10 - 20, 2008

08 in the Corner

Kim Atlin, Nie Jian Bing, Dominic Couturier, Edward Falkenberg, Lynne Fernie, Andrew Lui, Graham Metson, Doug Robinson, Sylvain Louis-Seize, Ivo Stoyanov, Mai Thu Van and Nancy Zboch

Opening Reception: Saturday January 12, 2-4 pm

Group exhibition.

December 22 - January 10, 2008

Outside Is Winter

Aliza Aexander, Jane Clark, Monika Deery, Seungyun Im, Olga Kotova, Nicole Lemelin, Sheena McGoogan, Eugene Nicolcev, Marie Scott and Irene Yk Cha

Opening Reception: Saturday December 22, 5-7 pm

Arta gallery is proud to present a vibrant selection of paintings for our group show "Outside Is Winter". The artists will present an array of paintings which will embody opposing styles - naturalistic representation and geometric abstraction dominated by immense tranquility.