Art Metropole

Based in Toronto, James Carl is one of the city’s leading artists. He creates small- and large-scale sculpture, made from a wide range of materials, from cardboard to marble, to venetian blinds. In the early 1990s Carl entered the art scene in Montreal by crafting expensive consumer goods (washing machines, stoves) from inexpensive materials such as found cardboard, only to place the finished sculptures back on the streets where their materials were originally retrieved. In a subsequent body of work, Carl carved replicas of disposable electronics out of marble – a traditional sculptor’s material with connotations of permanence. Most recently, Carl constructs large-scale, amorphous sculptures by intricately weaving brightly coloured venetian blinds in a series titled jalousie.

Carl has exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally. Most recently, the first major survey of his work, entitled do you know what, was presented at the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery at the University of Toronto, the Cambridge Galleries Queen’s Square and the MacDonald Stewart Art Centre in Guelph. Other recent shows include: jalousie at Galerie Heinz-Martin Weigand in Karlsruhe, Germany; negative spaces at Florence Loewy in Paris; plot at Vancouver’s Contemporary Art Gallery, and bottom feeder at Mercer Union in Toronto. Carl earned his MFA from Rutgers University and has degrees from McGill, the University of Victoria and the Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing. His work is in public and private collections across North America and Europe. Currently, Carl is an Associate Professor of Studio Art at the University of Guelph.

Nestor Krger’s studio practice consists of on-site painting installations that create on echo of the presentation space through strategies of mirroring and duplication; digital animations that superimpose an internal rhythmic structure with architectural models and simulated natural environments and recently a series of spatiotemporal sound works. His work has been exhibited nationally including the Power Plant, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the National Gallery, the Contemporary Art Gallery and at Optica in Montreal and internationally, including Germany, Sweden, France, South Korea and in the United Arab Emirates. His work is represented by goodwater gallery in Toronto and can be found in a number of private and public collections. He teaches Drawing and ‘Media Convergence’.

Derek Sullivan was born in 1976 in Richmond Hill, Ontario. He received a BFA from York University and an MFA from the University of Guelph. His multiple National Gallery Catalogue 2004 was included in the exhibition Art Metropole The Top 100 at the National Gallery of Canada (2007). Recently his work was featured in the group exhibitions We Can Do This Now at The Power Plant in Toronto (2007) and Gasoline Rainbows at the Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver (2007). He is represented by Jessica Bradley Art + Projects, Toronto.