Taking its conceptual starting point from Rem Koolhaas’ Junkspace, which advances the concept of junkfood to our built environment, this exhibition investigates the world of “total design” to reflect on contemporary image practices involving advertising, design and commodity fetishism. Inspired by Early Netherlandish Painting, the large-scale collage works feature fantastical imagery, depicting fragile and elaborate ecosystems where designed objects and furniture appear like animate beings with a will and agency of their own.
Presented in partnership with:
Juan Ortiz-Apuy was born in Costa Rica in 1980 and now lives and works in Montreal since 2003. He has a BFA from Concordia University, Montreal (2008), a Post-graduate diploma from the Glasgow School of Art, Scotland (2009), and a MFA from NSCAD University, Halifax (2011). Ortiz-Apuy often describes his installations as encyclopaedias of sorts that string together ideas and themes seemingly unrelated to each other, like in an erratic web of references, in which at points these sources exchange and come together, and at others they fall apart. Through juxtaposition, assemblage and collage, specific moments, ideas and materials are carefully woven together in these installations through a suggestive network of associations. Drawing from literature, theory, popular culture, design, and art history, he intends in this way to create a system that at one point begins to follow its own logic, vocabulary and energy. His work has been exhibited across Canada and internationally. Recent exhibitions include The MacLaren Arts Centre, SPOROBOLE Contemporary Art Centre, Gallery Birch Libralato, ARTSPACE, Eastern Edge, A Space Gallery and Quebec City Biennial: Manif d'Art 7. In 2011 he was the recipient of the Halifax Regional Municipality Contemporary Visual Art Award. Ortiz-apuy is represented by gallery antoine ertaskiran.
