Oliver Husain

Pandy Ramada’s Bendable Displex

January 19 – February 23, 2013

Opening Reception: Saturday, January 19, 2013 2:00 – 5:00 pm

I am only satisfied if my spectators, shivering and shuddering, raise their hands or cover their eyes out of fear of ghosts and devils dashing towards them.
Etienne-Gaspard Robertson, Paris, 1797

For our first installation of 2013 in the TPW R&D space, artist Oliver Husain was asked to consider the collective spaces of looking. In response, Husain sets a mutable stage for coming together to look, experience and think, and to discuss images and our expectations around presenting them.

With Pandy Ramada’s Bendable Displex, Husain uses the time and space of his installation as research into the interdependence of physical space, the way audiences feel in an environment, and how meaning is assigned to images and objects. While TPW R&D continues with its program of discursive events related to difficult images, Husain, following Marcel Boodthears’ idea of the exhibition as décor, dresses the space of the gallery in a decorative and slightly outdated fashion. Elements of Pandy Ramada’s Bendable Displex will be re-arranged by the artist over the course of the exhibition, coinciding with the different events and discussions being held at the R&D space. Plastic elements may one day appear as a theatre stage, a boxing-ring another, a talk show, a crowd management system or perhaps a shop display. As a culminating event, Husain presents a musical performance not to be missed.

Stay tuned at gallerytpw.ca as well on our social media pages for more information about all our related upcoming events. Responding to some of the concerns of Husain’s project, Toronto writer, director, and artist Alexander Wolfson contributes a series of posts to our growing research archive TPW R&D Online.

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Artist Biography

Oliver Husain is a filmmaker and artist based in Toronto. In 2012 his work was included in shows at MOCA Cleveland; Onsite OCADU and Nuit Blanche Toronto; and won awards at Lichter Festival Frankfurt and Short Film Festival Oberhausen. A retrospective of his films and videos was screened at Experimenta Festival, Bangalore. He exhibited at the AGYU in 2010, and had his first solo event in Toronto at Gallery TPW in 2007, titled "Two Half Reasons - One Night Only". Pandy Ramada is an Indonesian hotel heiress and textile designer. A fictional character, she has appeared in several past works by Oliver Husain.