Three artists at the CONTACT Photography Festival Toronto
The Goethe-Institut is proud to again partner with North America’s largest photography festival, the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival, now in its 23rd year, and support German-born Vancouver artist Birte Piontek‘s work in the Photobook Lab exhibition at Scrap Metal Gallery as well as Berlin-based Danish artist Peter Funch‘s billboard project around Ryerson University. The Goethe-Institut and CONTACT are also partners in the Power Plant’s summer exhibition featuring Berlin artist Mario Pfeifer.
Birthe Piontek and Peter Funch will be in attendance and sign books at the CONTACT Photobook Fair on 5 May at 1pm.
Born and raised in Germany,
Birthe Piontek moved to Canada in 2005 after receiving her MFA from the University of Essen in Communication Design and Photography. Piontek’s art practice explores the relationship between memory and identity, with a special interest in the topic of female identity and its representation in our society. Piontek teaches in the Audain Faculty of Art at Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver and is a member of the Piece of Cake Project. The exhibition will present a number of her prints and her very recent book, just published by Gnomic Press and launching at the LA Book Fair.
Peter Funch, 42nd and Vanderbilt (2009–16); two billboards on Church and McGill Streets; two billboards on Victoria and Dundas Streets; two billboards on Church and Lombard Streets.
Over a nine-year period, Danish-born, now Berlin-based photographer Peter Funch created a typological photographic study of pedestrians in New York City at the intersection of East 42 Street and Vanderbilt Avenue. The series of uncanny diptychs confront viewers with environmental portraits of anonymous commuters, frozen in place and isolated from the bustling crowd. Although each pair of images appears to have been captured only moments apart, in reality they may have been taken weeks, months, or even years apart. Presented on street-level billboards in Toronto's downtown core, Funch's seminal project addresses the daily loop in which pedestrians inadvertently find themselves while commenting on the unsettling politics of bodies in public space.
Mario Pfeifer, If you end up with the story you started with, then you're not listening along the way (2019); south façade of The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery.
Born in Dresden, Germany, and based in Berlin, Mario Pfeifer explores conventions of film and media. The text in Pfeifer's newly commissioned banner at The Power Plant speaks to an important thread in his practice, about looking and seeing the familiar differently and opening up to the unfamiliar. His large-scale banner mirrors the environment in which it is presented, evoking questions about the Canadian landscape while also questioning the politics of land and territory.
Toronto's month-long
Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival in May engages established and emerging Canadian, American, and international artists to activate urban spaces across the city. CONTACT Executive Director Darcy Killeen said, "CONTACT's public installation program began in 2003 with four venues in the city and has grown to now include 16 venues, plus a series of billboard installations across the country. CONTACT's public installations are one of our signature programs and highly anticipated by the international photography community and residents of and visitors to Toronto."
Part of the Goethe-Institut's focus on shaping the Future.
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