Original Exhibition Text:

Critical Distance and the Toronto Art Book Fair are pleased to present GENERATORS, curated by Anthony Stepter and featuring Erika DeFreitas, Edie Fake, Marc Fischer/Public Collectors, Dina Kelberman, Nellie Kluz, Sanaz Mazinani, Eric Oglander, and Leah Wellbaum.

How do we see art in the age of image and information overload? Is a gallery the best place to look, or is the internet’s efficiency and long reach a better tool for engaging with the ideas artists are interested in? What about the reliable old standby, printed books?

The artworks on view in this exhibition highlight the fluidity of media in contemporary culture. Each project in Generators is guided by a single idea, approach, or rule. These frameworks generate troves of material for the artists to assemble and present in a manner that invites viewers to make connections that might otherwise go unnoticed. Many of the artworks draw from, or exist as, both printed media and digital spaces. These transmutations afford artists and viewers illuminating points of entry for exploring the unique properties of both printed and digital narratives without being constrained by traditional definitions of the archive and the artist’s book.

Selected from a joint call for submissions issued by CDCC and TOABF, Generators celebrates the astonishing diversity of outcomes that can arise from intentionally constrained modes of collecting and creating. The exhibited works circulate through a variety of platforms, from humble Tumblrs to museum exhibitions. By focusing on projects that start with simple ideas but evolve to open up wide ranging possibilities for engagement and display, Generators pushes against notions of presentation that privilege one form of media over another.