Skip to content Skip to main navigation

On Paper 2: Ideas of Order

A spectrum of colored linocuts on wall

Works by:

Barbara Astman, Cathy Daley, Arthur Handy, Ron Martin, Bernie Miller, Kim Moodie, Mitch Robertson, Jeannie Thib, Bill Vazan, Tim Whiten

On Paper 2: Ideas of Order

October 24–December 16, 2006

Curated by Liz Wylie

University of Toronto Art Centre

This exhibition is the second in an on-going series that gives viewers a look at the University’s holdings of works on paper, which normally, due to their fugitive natures, must be kept in dark storage. For On Paper 2 each of the students enrolled in the Department of Fine Art’s exhibition course selected one of the artists in the show to research and then write about. Their signed texts are on the labels installed in the galleries. Our thanks are extended to these students, and as well to each of the donors of the works of art.

The exhibition’s subtitle, Ideas of Order, is the title of a 1936 book of poems by Wallace Stevens, and refers in this case to these artists’ responses in their work to what Stevens terms the “slovenly wilderness” of the chaos that surrounds us all. In various media, but each using paper as their support, the ten artists in the show are intent on making sense of things: whether it be the limitations of art supplies and the condition of art and art making, or the confusion and proliferation of female fashions and identities, to photographing the landscape so it reads like the globe that is the planet. Images of the body, of technology, of friends’ faces paired with garden plants, and even abstract gestures, makes for an exhibition of contemporary art that is widely varied in appearance and style. But each artist seeks to find and convey an underlying order to their experiences. As Canadian artist Ron Shuebrook wrote several years ago: “…artists have only the sum of their subjective observations of being-in-the-world to verify the truths of their creative acts. They will seek to make order with what is at hand.”

Opening Reception

Tuesday October 24, 2006
University of Toronto Art Centre


Title Image: Jannie Thib,Untitled, 1997. Linocut, 55.6 x 44.5 cm.