Charcoal Chess Tournament and Pre-Game Artist Talk with Lee Walton

Friday, April 24, 2015, 6pm-Midnight

A program of “This Area is under 23 Hour Video and Audio Surveillance”

Co-presented with the Hart House Chess Club

Lee Walton invites chess players of all levels to play in the Charcoal Chess Tournament – a unique experiment celebrating the beauty of chess and art.

This tournament is real chess – but with a twist! All games will be played on paper, rather than physical chess pieces on chessboards. To start each game, players simply draw pieces on the paper. To make a move – just erase and re-draw the piece in another square. When you capture your opponent’s piece, you get to erase it off the board. The gallery will take care of all your needs – you can just show up and channel your inner Bobby Fischer!

The drawings document the action of each game through smudges, erasure marks and scrawling chess pieces lined up along the page. The tournament examines drawing in multiple ways as a tool for the communication of abstract ideas through the representation of symbols; recording process of history and time through physical material and mark-making; translation of meaning across different languages (art and chess); and politics of aesthetics and authorship.

Rethinking Systems: Play and Media
A Pre-Game Artist Talk with Lee Walton
Thursday April 23, 2:30-4pm
East Common Room, Hart House

Join Lee Walton in a talk about the use of humour, games and strategic mapping in his artistic practice.