AutoPlasmic

Toronto-based Michael Davidson has been invited to develop an artist/curatorial project; in turn inviting artists Mario Scattoloni (Canadian, living in Barcelona) and Jacques Oulé (French, living in Toronto), and to include his own recent mixed media works on paper.

Although the work by all three is photographic and photo-based, the proposition for Autoplasmic is neither medium-based nor formalist. It is, rather, an inquiry of an ontological dimension—the relationship of artist to “being” and “making.” Davidson cites Barnett Newman’s 1945 essay The Plasmic Image: “it can be said that the artist, like a true creator is delving into chaos [and] it is precisely this that makes him an artist [trying] to wrest truth from the void.” The exhibition will include works selected from the McMaster collection, including Paul Klee, Katsura Funakoshi, David Haughton, Peter Nadin, Gerhard Richter, August Rodin and Don Van Vliet.

Michael Davidson was born in London, Ontario in 1953. He graduated with a BFA from the University of Guelph, and currently lives in Toronto.  He has exhibited in solo, two-person and group exhibitions in Canada, the United States, England and Switzerland, and has work in the collections of Art Gallery of Peel, St. Michael’s College, MacLaren Art Centre, The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, and the Tom Thomson Art Gallery. Davidson originated the exhibition TRANSlinear, mounted at the McMaster Museum of Art in 1999, and which toured to nine galleries across Canada.

Jacques Oulé was born in the village of Soubise, France, in 1958. He grew up in Aix-en-Provence, lived in Paris, and moved to Toronto in 1981. Oulé was trained as a chef in France and has traveled widely. He has pursued an interest in photography for twenty years, questioning its content and his position in it, and has immersed himself with its range of technique and possibilities.

Mario Scattoloni was born in Toronto in 1960. He graduated with a BFA from York University and currently lives and works in Barcelona.  Scattoloni has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in Toronto and Barcelona, and is a member of 15 x 100, an international photography collective. Since the early 1980s he has also worked on film and video productions as an art director, production designer and cameraman in Canada, the United States and Europe.

The McMaster Museum of Art acknowledges the individual support received by the artists; from the Ontario Arts Council for Michael Davidson, and from the Canada Council for the Arts for Mario Scattoloni.

List of Works in Exhibition:

Michael Davidson

Chalice, 2008, from the series Egressus Vermont, mixed media on paper, 56 x 76 cm

Grand Army of the Republic, 2008, from the series Egressus Vermont, mixed media on paper, 56 x 76 cm

From the suite Egressus Vermont, 2008
all mixed media on paper,  each 56 x 76 cm: Fowler’s Temple; In Halos; Piedmont
Gihon; Mount Mansfield; Near Stargazer Field

Jacques Oulé
Untitled from the Rouge series, 2009, colour photograph, 43 x 56 cm
#1 from the Rouge series, 2009, from the project COMMA; colour photograph, 43 x 66 cm
Eight examples from the series Rouge, 2009; seven colour and one black and white photography, each 33 x 43 cm
Buddha No.3 from the series Unmoved, 2009, from the project COMMA; colour photograph, 33 x 43 cm
Seven examples from the series Unmoved, 2009, colour photographs, each 42 x 56 cm

Mario Scattoloni
Four examples from the series Gracia Portal, 2009, color photographs, both 33 x 48 cm
The Children, 2009, colour photograph, 81 x 117 cm

from the McMaster Museum of Art Collection:

David Haughton (British 1924-1991)
Backyard nd, (c.1959), Ed. 20/50, etching, 47 x 45 cm, Wentworth House Art Committee Purchase, 1962.

Katsura Funakoshi (Japanese b. 1951)
Moon on the Northernmost, 1995, painted camphor wood and marble, 87 x 57 x 28 cm (excluding stand), Levy Bequest Purchase, 1996.

Paul Klee (Swiss 1879-1940), Ohne Titel [Spatial architecture, Tunisia], 1915, watercolour and bodycolour on card, 16.4 x 20.5 cm, Levy Bequest Purchase, 1992.

Peter Nadin (British b.1954)
Untitled, 1994, oil pastel and mixed media on paper, 100 x 65 cm. Promised gift from a Toronto collection.

Gerhard Richter (German b. 1932)
Mirror Painting (Blood Red 736/6), 1991, pigment on glass, 95 x 86 cm, Levy Bequest Purchase, 1997.

Auguste Rodin (French 1840-1917)
Victor Hugo, De Face, 1886, drypoint etching, 3rd state, 22.5 x 15.8 cm. Purchase; date unknown.

Don Van Vliet (American 1941-2010)
Lycanthrope’s Pig, 1984, oil on plywood, 122 x 96.5 cm. Gift of Gordon Eberts, 1992.