Our six favourite pieces from Come Up to My Room 2012 (including one we had to get on our hands and knees to see)
Our six favourite pieces from Come Up to My Room 2012 (including one we had to get on our hands and knees to see)
Walking from space to space at the Gladstone’s annual Come Up to My Room event (where the hotel surrenders its accommodations to be reimagined by a clutch of designers) is a bit like taking an absurd, down-the-rabbit-hole-type journey though the minds of several artsy archetypes. There’s the minimalist, who works with little more than white Styrofoam and LED lights; the maximalist, whose room is so packed with hundreds of abstract, laser-cut feathers it’s pretty well impossible to enter; the Parkdale hipster, whose half-shorn hair and acid-wash jeggings are more interesting than the art itself; and the conceptualist, whose work is likely very, very deep but will be likely be lost on everyone without a PhD in philosophy. That said, the show, which is on until this Sunday, is exuberantly creative, spectacularly strange, and well worth a visit. Our six favourite pieces after the jump.
Check out six great rooms from Come Up To My Room 2012 »
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- Gas tanks aren’t sexy, but the way Fugitive Glue has arranged and displayed these rusting canisters as though they’re objects of desire almost makes us wish we could have a couple to fashion our own DIY coffee or side tables. (Image: Karolyne Ellacott)
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- [R]ED[U]X LAB’s installation is incredibly obnoxious: the room is so full of laser-cut, Plexiglas spikes, stuck on the underside of an undulating canopy that swirls throughout the space, you have to crawl to get in (then get poked repeatedly once inside). We normally wouldn’t entertain being repeatedly poked, but the piece is so complex and intricately made, it’s impossible to ignore and worth getting on your hands and knees for. (Image: Karolyne Ellacott)
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- Where else will you see Bob Marley, William Shakespeare, Marilyn Monroe and Mother Teresa all in the same place? Gareth Bate’s <em>Jewel Net of Indra,</em> which features tiny hand-painted portraits in the middle of circular mirrors, encourages viewers to look at themselves in the context of great historical figures (we presume because he wants us all to feel very, very bad about ourselves). (Image: Karolyne Ellacott)
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- Ultimately, we aren’t sure we really understand WE-3’s <em>10,000 Untitleds</em> installation—it’s meant to reference hoarding and looks like it was a make-work project for someone with severe OCD. But the neatly arranged slips of almost identical paper gently blowing in the breeze of a room fan are kind of hypnotizing, and make the search for the layers of meaning mentioned in the program seem totally unnecessary. (Image: Karolyne Ellacott)
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- We like this one, built by designers Sonja Storey-Flemming and Rich D’Alessandro, because it reminds us of the spatial tricks (canted white walls that make for a skewed perspective) that Daniel Libeskind tried to pull of at the ROM—only not lame. (Image: Karolyne Ellacott)
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- With <em>Firmament,</em> Skanda Lin and Matthew Blunderfield (both U of T architecture students) have taken bits of old cellphones and computers and arranged them in the shape of a cloud. The striking, disturbing form gives a physical presence to the invisible sounds and signals caused by our ubiquitous modern technology. It’s deeply impactful, but we assume the irony will be lost on the distracted multi-taskers walking through the exhibit with one eye on their art and one eye on their iPhone 4s. (Image: Karolyne Ellacott)
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(Image: Come Up To My Room, Karolyne Ellacott)
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Walking from space to space at the Gladstone’s annual Come Up to My Room event (where the hotel surrenders its accommodations to be reimagined by a clutch of designers) is a bit like taking an absurd, down-the-rabbit-hole-type journey though the minds of several artsy archetypes. There’s the minimalist, who works with little more than white Styrofoam and LED lights; the maximalist, whose room is so packed with hundreds of abstract, laser-cut feathers it’s pretty well impossible to enter; the Parkdale hipster, whose half-shorn hair and acid-wash jeggings are more interesting than the art itself; and the conceptualist, whose work is likely very, very deep but will be likely be lost on everyone without a PhD in philosophy. That said, the show, which is on until this Sunday, is exuberantly creative, spectacularly strange, and well worth a visit. Our six favourite pieces after the jump.
Check out six great rooms from Come Up To My Room 2012 »
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(Image: Come Up To My Room, Karolyne Ellacott)){kind=link}