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Art Gallery of Ontario announces Patti Smith Solo Exhibition

The Art Gallery of Ontario is to present a solo exhibition by legendary musician and artist Patti Smith through an intimate exhibition featuring over 75 works of photography, objects and film, on view from Feb. 9 to May 19, 2013. Best known for her profound influence on the nascent punk rock scene in the late 1970s and 80s, the exhibition will provide a rare opportunity to experience a different side of this rock icon through her inspired expression in the visual arts.

The first presentation of Smith’s works in Canada, Patti Smith: Camera Solo will highlight the continual connections between Smith’s photography and her interest in poetry and literature. The exhibition, originally curated by Susan Talbott, director and CEO of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut, features approximately 70 black and white photographs taken with Smith’s vintage Polaroid camera, presented here as gelatin silver prints. Sophie Hackett, AGO assistant curator of photography, will oversee the exhibition’s installation alongside Talbott.

For more than four decades, Smith has documented sights and spaces infused with personal significance. Her visual work possesses the same unfiltered, emotional quality prevalent in her poetry and music lyrics. The allure of her works lies in their often dreamlike imagery; their modest scale belies their depth and power.

“In the era of digital imaging and manipulation, Smith’s works champion the use of photography in its most classical sense: as a tool to document a ‘found’ moment,” explained Talbott. “Their diminutive scale and diffused lighting emphasize the subtleties and the importance of each subject, as in Arthur Rimbaud’s Utensils or Robert’s Slippers, where the objects are tightly-cropped and detached from their surroundings.”

The exhibition will also feature Equation Daumal, a short film directed by Patti Smith and shot by Jem Cohen on 16mm and super 8 film.

Of the more than 70 photographs included in the exhibition, most are from Patti Smith’s personal collection, with a few from the collection of Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art and some loans from private collectors. Several objects from the Patti Smith archive will also be on display, including Pope Benedict XV’s slippers and Smith’s Polaroid Land 250 camera.

Patti Smith (b. 1946) began as a visual artist and has been making drawings and taking photographs since the late 1960s. In recent years her practice has expanded to include installation. The artist has been represented by Robert Miller Gallery since 1978. In 2008, Smith was the subject of Patti Smith Land 250 at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporaine, Paris, and Written Portrait – Patti Smith at Artium Centro-Museo Vasco de Arte Contemporáneo, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain. Strange Messenger: The Work of Patti Smith, a three hundred-work retrospective, was organized by The Andy Warhol Museum in 2002 and traveled to numerous venues including the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, and the Museum Boijsman Van Beuningen, Rotterdam. Her work has also been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum Eki, Kyoto; Haus der Kunst, Munich; Triennale di Milano, Milan; Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels and the Pompidou Center in Paris. Just Kids, a memoir of her remarkable relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe during the epochal days of New York City and the Chelsea Hotel in the late sixties and seventies, won her the 2010 National Book Award in the nonfiction category. Her 1975 album Horses, established Smith as one of most original and important musical artists of her generation and was followed by 10 releases, including Radio Ethiopia; Easter; Dream of Life; Gone Again; Trampin’ and her latest, Banga. She continues to perform throughout the world and in 2007 was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In July of 2005 she was presented with the prestigious insignia of Commander of the Order of the Arts and Letters, an esteemed French cultural honor. In May 2011, Smith won the Polar Music Prize, Sweden’s most prestigious music award.

This exhibition was organized by the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut. An accompanying catalogue, co-published by the Wadsworth Atheneum and Yale University, will be available at shopAGO. Toronto is the last stop on the exhibition’s tour, arriving at the AGO after a highly regarded showing at the Detroit Institute of Arts, in Detroit, Michigan. www.ago.net

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