Report from Toronto

Over the past decade or so, a slew of galleries have popped up in the west end of Toronto, giving the city’s art scene a much appreciated injection of vitality. The burgeoning contemporary art hub along the Ossington strip and west Queen West has garnered international attention and acclaim, and deservedly so. Here’s a quick round up of notable painting shows in Toronto this month.

With influences ranging from Ukranian Easter eggs to chandeliers to holograms, Maya Hayuk’s Multi Versus could be described as psychedelia for the 21st century. Organized chaos reigns on canvases splashed with vibrant rainbow hues, intermixed with freehand geometric line work. A member of artist collective Barnstormers (other members include Chuck Webster, Doze Green, and Ryan McGinness) and frequent collaborator with a variety of musicians including M.I.A., The Beastie Boys, and Animal Collective, Brooklyn-based Hayuk’s oeuvre also includes silk-screening, set design, video work, and internationally commissioned murals.

“Maya Hayuk: Multi Versus,” Cooper Cole Gallery. September 6-October 6, 2012.

Toronto-based Kim Dorland’s solo show at Angell Gallery is a powerful meditation on his family, rendered entirely in a pallet of vermillion, orange and yellow. The gallery’s press release elaborates, “The color red suffuses all of the works, deployed in a lovely way that somehow retains the traditional power ascribed to that hue but without its negative and violent associations seeming to be present.” Dorland is a frequent exhibitor at Angell, and also shows at Mike Weiss in New York.

“Kim Dorland: I’m An Adult Now,” Angell Gallery. September 27-October 27, 2012.

Acclaimed author and visual artist Douglas Copeland continues to expand his body of work involving hand painted slogans.”If you were to attach a stick to each of these slogans and carry them in the street, would they read as protest or would they read as complicit guilt?” Coupland muses, ” For example, twenty years from now, were I to look at a picture of someone holding up a slogan reading ‘being middle class was fun,’ would that read as a heartbreaking prescience or as rational acceptance of a by-then sociological certainty?” 100 of his sharply observed slogan pieces is on display at Daniel Faria until the end of the week.

“Douglas Copeland: Slogans for the Twenty-First Century,” Daniel Faria Gallery, September 27-October 6.

Continuing her exploration of the boundaries of representational and abstracted forms. emerging artist Rachel Vanderzwet debuts a series of new paintings at 129 on Wednesday. Luscious palettes and expressive brush work impart an energetic and youthful exuberance to her canvases.

“Rachel Vanderzwet: New Works,” Gallery 129 Ossington, October 3-27, 2012.