Students lay claim to Toronto’s art scene

John Nyman
Arts Editor
This month, Queen West’s Twist Gallery is hosting the 2010-2011 academic year’s super-show for friends and fans of York University undergraduate artists in a variety of media. “We Are Here To”, the Visual Arts Students Association’s (VASA) annual juried student show, has taken over a huge gallery space with a collection of almost infinitely varied yet astoundingly cohesive pieces.
Chosen from around 100 submissions, the exhibition contains about 25 artworks from visual arts students in their second to fifth years. The works include abstract paintings, portraits, photographs, sculpture and audio-video and mixed media pieces.
Despite the strength of individual works and the wide variety of media and styles employed, several of the exhibition’s attendees maintained the show reflects a unique kind of wholeness.

“There are sort of cohesive, returning elements to it,” said Miles Stephen Nikander Forrester, one of the contributing artists. “It’s like a novel – it’s well-rounded.”
Ana Paula Gonzalez Urdaneta, another contributor, agreed. “All the works really speak to each other in a really intimate way. It’s like a narrative.”
It would be impossible to choose a true standout from the exhibit, but Urdenata’s addition is noteworthy. Her painting Con Agua – Spanish for “with water” – portrays the intricately detailed face of a woman doused with water. The subject’s passionate expression, displayed at larger-than-life scale, is eerily placed in the mundane, everyday situation of taking a shower, while the sheer visual expertise of the work draws viewers in. The portrait greets visitors as they first enter the gallery.
Sara Moffatt’s Alpine offers a different take on portraits, using a seemingly flat realist style with some deceptively crucial details. The figure, a bearded man in a plaid shirt, is painted on wood to give the work a rough and rural feel. The exhibition’s other studies of human subjects include dark, haunting works of experimental photography by Alethia Caraccioli, Monika Wahba, Briar Murawski and Sheri Granite.
“We Are Here To” contains some pieces tailored for fans of certain genres or styles as well. Lana Kamaric’s Familiar Illusions is a bold surrealist picture showing a room blending into a mountain scene through a purple curtain. The exhibition also includes two large abstract canvases: Amanda Bolous’ The Soup looks like a pink and blue cross between a Dr. Seuss landscape and a microscope image of lung tissue, while Stanislav Guzar’s Untitled Alizarin is filled with colourful, angular shapes.
While smaller gallery spaces limited the kinds of work VASA could show in past years, the venue of “We Are Here To” has opened the door to artwork beyond traditional media, including sound and video installations. Forrester’s “Song of the Super-Self” may be the weirdest of these pieces and perhaps the most original of any in the gallery: the video shows two men in a pose which looks at first glance like an extended kiss. In fact, the subjects are moaning into a small microphone held in their mouths – the noises can be heard through headphones provided alongside the display.
Though each artist is inevitably focused on their own work, the coming together of so many different styles and visions in “We Are Here To” makes the exhibition a high point for York’s visual arts community this academic year.
“[The exhibition is] not only reinforcing how strong of a community we are; it’s also reinforcing the community itself at the same time,” said Billy Garland, VASA’s president.
Garland’s comment reflects an exhibition that is focused both inwardly and outwardly. For York’s fine arts community, “We Are Here To” is a collective triumph. To the rest of the university, and to the downtown arts scene in which the exhibition is situated, it’s a proud display of what York’s best student artists
can do.
‘“We Are Here To”’ is showing at the Twist Gallery at 1100 Queen Street West until March 29. Viewing hours are Tuesday to Sunday, 11 am – 6 pm.