In a small ground-floor apartment on St. Patrick Street, just a few minutes walk from the AGO, Bonny Poon is running Conditions, one of the most exciting new galleries in Toronto.
The gallery's inaugural exhibition, a group show titled "Amnesia," features internationally recognized artists Bruce LaBruce and Jacqueline Fraser alongside emerging stars like Brittany Shepherd. The work here spans painting, sculpture, and video, and responds to what Poon calls the "pitfalls of representation in art and, by extension, history."
"Amnesia" exemplifies what makes Poon a great curator. Her keen eye and broad taste are not limited by borders or generations. Placing artists from different eras, movements, and countries alongside one another, she reveals both continuity and rupture.
What's most impressive, though, is Poon's gloriously recalcitrant, doit-yourself mentality. Poon eschews the traditional white cube gallery with its blank walls, polished floors, and precise lighting because, she says, it has a way of "imposing 'universal' esthetics and codes." Beyond the financial unfeasibility of acquiring a white cube gallery, Poon objects to the dictates of how art is shown in these spaces. Windowless and siloed, these galleries cut off art from the world.
At Conditions, art and life are inseparable, both out of necessity and principle. Poon lives and works at the gallery space. A piece in the show by the New York-based artist Dani Leder hangs above her mattress; there's an assemblage by the Toronto artist Craig Spence in her bathtub.
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