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Art Art & Books

Threesome thrills

SHARY BOYLE, SARAH SZE AND JOANA VASCONCELOS at Scrap Metal Gallery (11 Dublin), to February 22. Saturdays noon-5 pm or by appointment. 416-588-2442. Rating: NNNN


In Locating Ourselves, three artists who represented their countries at last year’s Venice Biennale – Shary Boyle (Canada, of course), Sarah Sze (the U.S.) and Joana Vasconcelos (Portugal) – play with aspects of space, culture, gender and nationality.

A feminist sense of fun permeates the work of Vasconcelos, who gained notoriety when Versailles refused to exhibit her tampon chandelier. Her eye-popping sculptures can contain kitchen utensils, irons and doilies. Luso Tetris is part of a series in which snake-like tubular soft sculptures interpenetrate rectangular structures covered in traditional Portuguese tiles, setting up dichotomies of male/female, earth/sea, organic/synthetic and high/low culture. Bright-coloured crocheted knobs and bumps recall sea creatures as well as sexual protrusions.

Sze achieves amazing structural complexity in found-material assemblages that at first glance look like strung-up junk. In the graceful Disappearing Act, she also explores earth/water and organic/synthetic themes, using a characteristic vocabulary of interacting boxy and circular forms.

Dangling from a large chrome arc or balancing on a glass shelf is an assortment of stuff: small white boxes containing bits of blue tape, tattered globes made of scrap paper, drinking glasses, blue plastic strips, polished stones, plumb bobs, metal clips and spherical nests made of sticks. It’s a poetic work that rewards those who give it time, allowing it to reveal new details and questions.

While these two pieces really speak to each other in the space, Canadian Artist, Boyle’s wall of porcelain plaques portraying her imaginary family tree, seems the odd woman out. She does share with Vasconcelos a love of low culture and a twisted view of national identity. Canadian Artist, made for the BMO Project Room, is one of Boyle’s less visually striking, more narrative pieces, perhaps better appreciated through the wild background material she’s gathered on the Canadian Artist website.

Boyle is ours and we love her, but it’s exciting that Scrap Metal has brought the fantastic Sze and Vasconcelos to town.

art@nowtoronto.com

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