Remnants at Towards – Art Viewer

Artists: Liam Crockard, Dorian FitzGerald, Nadia Gohar, Nicolas Lachance

Exhibition title: Remnants

Venue: Towards, Toronto, Canada

Date: October 31 – December 5, 2020

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Towards, Toronto

Towards is pleased to present Remnants, a group exhibition featuring work by Liam Crockard, Dorian FitzGerald, Nadia Gohar, and Nicolas Lachance.

~~~~

The artists in this exhibition share an interest in how time, memory, and material culture coalesce to shape our understanding of the world. Through their work, they explore both absence and presence, highlighting the often ephemeral and transitory nature of our experience.

Nicolas Lachance’s practice explores the tension between image, mark making and surface. In this two-part installation, Lachance has created cast paper sculptures from disused industrial metal shelves. Working with carbon paper, he meticulously crafts near perfect facsimiles, with decades of wear and tear and accumulated debris transferring from the original structures to the cast pieces. Through this process, he examines the material history of these objects and how memory imprints itself upon these surfaces.

Liam Crockard’s practice is rooted in an exploration of labour and the often invisible socio-economic systems and structures that underpin much of contemporary western societies. In his work Classifieds (2016–2020), Crockard has gone in and removed all of the advertisements from various contemporary art magazines. Initially started as an informal exercise examining the relationship between paid and editorial content within these publications, the resulting skeletal pages quickly became compelling formal objects in their own – highlighting the often tenuous relationship between critical engagement and the commercial enterprises that underwrite such publications.

Dorian FitzGerald’s painting Sotheby’s Lot 901, A Large Batch of Empty Boxes, From the Collection of Oskar Dieter Alex von Rosenberg-Redé, 3rd Baron von Rosenberg-Redé (2018), is a small scale painting based on an image from a Sotheby’s auction catalogue. Born in Zurich in 1922, Oskar Dieter Alex von Rosenberg-Redé was the youngest son of an aristocratic family who had fallen on hard times. Following the tragic deaths of both parents and his elder brother, he moved to America and entered a relationship with the married Chilean millionaire Arturo López Willshaw.

In the late 1940’s Baron de Rede relocated to Paris and took up residence in the Hotel Lambert, a luxurious mansion built in the mid 1600’s which had endured decades of neglect. Over the next 50 years, he would slowly restore the Hotel Lambert (with the help of close friend Marie-Hélène de Rothschild) while making it the site of some of the many parties he eventually became famous for. Regular attendees included Salvador Dali; Yves Saint-Laurent; Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor; and Brigitte Bardot. An avid collector and committed aesthete, following his death in 2004, Sotheby’s held a two day sale of Baron de Redé’s estate which included eighteenth-century French furniture, works of art and fine books, as well as gold and silversmiths’ work, porcelain and glass, and assorted memorabilia.

Nadia Gohar’s practice explores the ways in which material culture can become a repository for often overlooked or marginalized histories. The two paintings A Gallon and A Gallon (red) both depict cisterns, traditional receptacles for storing and transporting water. The earliest versions of these vessels date back approximately 12,000 years ago and were crucial in the development of farming and the establishment of more permanent communities. For Gohar, water becomes a metaphor that is prevalent throughout her practice – referencing a more circuitous, transitional, and at times ephemeral understanding of history, movements, and culture.

Remnants, 2020, exhibition view, Towards, Toronto

Nicolas Lachance, Untitled (Blue, Green and Grey – 6 units), 2018, Paper pulp, pigment, fiberglass ribbon, rust, dust and magnets 76 x 36 in. (193 x 92 cm)

Remnants, 2020, exhibition view, Towards, Toronto

Nadia Gohar, A Gallon (red), 2020, Oil on canvas, 18 x 16 in. (46 x 40.5 cm)

Remnants, 2020, exhibition view, Towards, Toronto

Nicolas Lachance, Untitled (Blue, Green and Grey – 4 units), 2018, Paper pulp, pigment, fiberglass ribbon, rust, dust and magnets 37 x 72 in. (92 x 183 cm)

Remnants, 2020, exhibition view, Towards, Toronto

Nadia Gohar, A Gallon, 2020, Oil on canvas, 18 x 16 in. (46 x 40.5 cm)

Remnants, 2020, exhibition view, Towards, Toronto

Dorian FitzGerald, Sotheby’s Lot 901, A Large Batch of Empty Boxes, From the Collection of Oskar Dieter Alex von Rosenberg-Redé, 3rd Baron von Rosenberg-Redé, 2018 Acrylic on Paper, 21 x 17 in. (Framed) (53.5 x 43 cm)

Remnants, 2020, exhibition view, Towards, Toronto

Liam Crockard, Classifieds, 2016–2020, Unique archival print on lasercut acrylic, 31 x 23 in. (78.75 x 58.5 cm)