Open Gallery brings architecture to Beach streets
[attach]1985[/attach]If you’re going to gawk at a fishbowl, the fish should be doing something interesting.
That’s the mentality Bob Abrahams adopted when he started an art gallery at his architecture firm in the Beach.
“We’ve got a great storefront location, and normally architects don’t have storefront locations,” said Abrahams, who created Open
Architects in 2005. “And we thought, what can we do rather than having people looking in and seeing us working at our desk?”
So Abrahams started the gallery, called Open Gallery, as a way to reach out to the community. He’d like to see it become a landmark in the neighbourhood — a place where people can talk about art and architecture.
“Most people don’t hire architects. You only renovate your house once, maybe. But people do walk along retail streets, pop in and look
at things. And it’s a way for us to come out of the ivory towers and just be regular village folks.”
He said his gallery is unique because it focuses on architecture, and he’s hoping the art will help create an awareness of the connection between cities, people and buildings.
“We all use buildings but not too many people think about it,” Abrahams said.
“There’s a higher-level dialogue about architecture that never happens much.”
Art is a way to start this dialogue, he says, because it’s something people can relate to.
“(It’s) very sensually engaging. People see it, they get it, it’s right there, it’s immediate.”
The gallery celebrated its first show on July 1, displaying paintings by Toronto artist Kyle Clements, whose collection focuses on urban landscapes.
Clements said he was inspired to paint city landscapes when he started attending the Ontario College of Art and Design in 2002. He grew up in a rural town an hour north of Toronto and was overwhelmed at first by busy city life, he said.
“The buzz and rush and energy were really exciting and inspiring,” Clements said. “So I started working on a series about capturing the energy and excitement of life in the city.”
The collection began as his thesis at OCAD but he continued working on it after he graduated in 2006.
Clements then lived in South Korea for a year teaching English in a small town, but he also spent a lot of his time exploring Seoul and taking pictures.
Most of his work on urban landscapes focuses on signs.
“You have all these billboards, flashing signs and neon and they’re all screaming for my attention at once,” he said, adding he was constantly distracted whenever he went outside. “I started walking around without my glasses on, so all I saw was sort of a field of blurry colour.”
And this blurriness is reflected in his paintings of city landscapes.
“From a distance it looks fairly representational. You can tell what it is,” he said. “But as you approach and get closer, the image
breaks up into just texture and brushstrokes.”
Abrahams said the response to the show has been positive. Most of the people who have visited the gallery have been curious pedestrians, like a young couple who wandered into his studio one night.
It was 11 p.m. on July 8 and Abrahams was cleaning up after the gallery’s opening reception. They didn’t look like typical gallery-goers, Abrahams said.
“They spent half an hour carefully looking at each work and asking questions about them. And that’s exactly what we hope to get out of it, to bridge that gap between the snob culture of art galleries…and regular folks.”
The show ends on July 31 but Abrahams plans to make this project a regular feature of his studio, showing new art each month.
He has a few artists in mind already — one who makes architectural jewellery and another who creates sculptures using building materials, like rebar and electrical conduit.
Open Gallery, 454 Kingston Rd., 416-694-0008.