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His work is beautiful and dreamy with a very modern and contemporary feel. Some of the pieces actually gave us a chill. We also love that he is originally from Vancouver, where we spent most of our gay life so far, before moving to the big city of Toronto. His work has a very west coast feel to it, and you can see it come through in the textures and mood, almost a bit damp and cool. Check out the Facebook gallery night page here. 

Seth Flukers Page

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Abandon

Abandon

by Jeff Bark

This American born Photographer caught our attention last month at the Nicholas Metivier Gallery while we were diligently doing our research (thats code for being very hung over and wandering around galleries while trying not to knock art off the walls....beans, you know you have been there).

His stunningly poetic works captured our attention right away, and not just because there was a huge naked man in the first one we saw. At first, we weren't really sure if we were looking at a photograph or a painting, or some weird bastard child of the two mediums. The images have a surreal otherworldly feel to them, leaving you wondering how he transported himself to this amazing mystic land to photograph these images, and managed to make it back in time for his gallery opening. There is a luminous dream like quality to the light in his work and the subjects are often ominous and intriguing. There are undercurrents of themes tied to troubled adolescence, human vulnerability, and the physical and emotional decay of consumerism. Its not until you emerge yourself deeper into the photos that you realize the subjects are captured in a perversely mysterious action, exposing themselves to you and driving you deeper into mystery.

Jeff Bark is currently represented by three Galleries. The Charles Cowles Gallery in NY, the Michael Hoppen Gallery in London, and the Nicolas Metivier Gallery here in Toronto, where he had his most recent show. Quite impressive we do have to say, for an artist who has only been on the scene for a couple of years. The show here in Toronto ran in collaboration with the NY gallery show, and later this fall, the London gallery will be showing his work.

www.jeffbark.com

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Talk about vessel envy, Local Toronto artist makes us wish we could be reincarnated as a red vase

Why do we suddenly want to be filled up with water and hold a bunch of fresh flowers.... Maybe its because we are a little envious of the red vase pictured above in the brilliant new work by local Toronto artist Chris Curreri . Talk about vessel envy, we know what we want to come back as in our next lives, and its not Madonna...

In his first set, entitled Puppet (minds out of the gutter boys), his provocative and intriguing photos explore the relationships and interactions between two vessels, the human body and the unchanging red vase. While the human body as a vessel changes and reacts to its surrounding environment, the red vase remains immobile and fixed. As the human vessel interacts with the red vase, it adapts to the unchangeable solid object and explores possible relationships with it. This play between the two vessels discusses how we as humans change and adapt to what is unchangeable around us, both physically and those things that exist in the intangible realm.

The second set of photos, entitled Handle, further explores this theme of interactions between animate and inanimate objects. The openings to the red vases, which simulate orifices of the human body, are prodded, entered and fully encapsulate the human hand. This interaction can be taken on all sorts of levels, so let your minds run wild with this one. Personally, our minds went straight to the interactions between inanimate sex toys and the human bodies they are inserted into. It also reminds us of a crazy night we spent in a back alley with a bottle of gin and some go go boys in NYC a few years ago, but thats a whole other story....Is it hot in here....

Check out the amazing works in person showing right now at the Diaz Contemporary Galley , located at 100 Niagra Street. The show runs until may 9th, so hurry up and get over to the gallery if you want to check it out, or be checked out. Im sure there will be tons of hot artsy homo types loitering around, just waiting to bump into their next spring romance, or make out session behind the gallery.... Spring is in the air boys.

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