Howie Tsui, Manic Ram (detail), 2009, ink, acrylic and Chinese paint pigments on mulberry paper, courtesy of the artist

Wim Delvoye, Cement Truck, 2004, stainless steel, corten steel, courtesy of the artist and Olga Korper Gallery, Toronto

Diana Thorneycroft, The Doll Mouth Series (2004-2005), C-prints, courtesy of the artist and Art Mûr, Montreal

The grotesque is a notoriously difficult concept to define. Although often linked to the abject and sublime, it is a unique æsthetic category, one that calls into question the very idea of categories. Foremost among its many fluid characteristics is a tendency to infect reality with the mythic, creating a disturbing interzone of strange hybrids, metamorphosis, and modes of proliferation (baroque) and compression (Gothic), as well as reversals and inversions (carnival, kitsch). Exploded View focuses on five artists whose work explores this bizarre æsthetic dimension, a borderland between organic and inorganic, person and thing, living and non-living.

Concepts of transgression are central to the work of Ottawa artist Howie Tsui. Combining Western underground æsthetics with styles and images borrowed from traditional Asian visual art, his intricate paintings explore horror narratives, linking them to identity politics, cultural assimilation and fear.

Often using narrative structures akin to myths or folktales, the work of Jennifer R. Angus explores the domestic unconscious. Made from thousands of insect specimens collected from harvesters in Southeast Asia, her elaborate installations oscillate between beauty and horror, nature and artifice.

Diana Thorneycroft's Doll Mouth Series uses visual compression to explode a seemingly harmless subject. Focusing on the unaltered mouths of baby dolls, her images transform innocent playthings into highly charged socio-cultural topographies, provocatively blurring the lines between toy, commodity, fetish, and taboo.

A master of paradox, Belgian artist Wim Delvoye focuses on undermining the distinctions between art and life, often conflating high and low forms of cultural production, such as processed meat and baroque marble floors, industrial machinery and Gothic cathedrals.

Aganetha Dyck's The Masked Ball explores concepts of nature and civilization, delicacy and monstrosity. Made by placing found porcelain ornaments in beehives, these sculptures present a pastiche of 18th-century rococo fashion congealed in the exquisite, yet disturbing “lacework” of the bees.

– Emily Falvey, Exhibition Curator

Events

Opening
Thursday 25 February at 5:30 pm

Talk with artist Jennifer R. Angus (in English)
Friday 26 February at 12:30 pm

Family Workshop with artist Howie Tsui (in English)
Saturday 6 March at 1 pm - 4 pm

Exhibition Walkthrough with curator Emily Falvey (in English)
Friday 12 March at 12:30 pm