Toronto Gallery Weekend: Where to Go and What to See

When exploring the Toronto Gallery Weekend, organized by AGAC (galleryweekend.ca), let’s familiarize ourselves with a few key neighborhoods that are quickly evolving in the ‘hyper’ real estate market in Toronto: Dupont/Junction, Wallace/Dundas, and Lower Toronto (Downtown).

Wallace/Dundas

Dundas Street West is one of the few uninterrupted east-west routes that weaves through several neighborhoods following train tracks that cut through like The Junction and Little Portugal. Historically Toronto galleries have situated themselves near to the Museum of Contemporary Art– which is only a 5-minute walk from the closest streetcar stop at Dundas St West.  

Along Dundas, a notable place to start is MKG127, a storefront gallery with an excellent reputation that seamlessly blurs into the neighboring storefronts. Founded by Michael Klein, it’s known for its curated lightbox, which stands out amidst the many mom-and-pop shops. During the weekend, MKG127 will showcase new sculptural works by Michael Dumontier, featuring metal mesh shaped into leaves, creating moiré patterns that change with the viewer’s interaction. Dumontier’s work often explores the fragile line between nature/culture dualities through his choice of materials and placement.

Around the corner is the Daniel Faria Gallery which is presenting “Seventeen Grams of Longing” by Iris Häussler, a two-part exhibition that debuted earlier this year at PSM in Berlin. The exhibit features fragile sculptural mobiles populated with paper cutouts of birds, reflecting nature, a recurring theme in recent Canadian art.

At Patel Brown Gallery, ceramic artist Julie Moon will present new wall-based works that blur the line between painting and ceramics, showcasing her innovative approach as a ceramicist. Towards Gallery is generally, a good spot to find solo shows of young artists and this show of new paintings by Kareem-Anthony Ferreira, is a good example. His paintings combine textiles, paper, and paint to create richly layered compositions inspired by photos from a recent trip to Trinidad.

Nearby, are the established galleries Olga Korper and Stephen Bulger who both have strong photography programming. Olga Korper Gallery will showcase photographic work by Katherine Takpannie, focusing on her Inuit family history with Itiitiq | ᐃᑏᑎᖅ, featuring figures in nature with masks representing animals symbolic of the Indigenous peoples of the Arctic. Meanwhile, Photo-Dealer, Stephen Bulger Gallery will present an ongoing photo series by Louie Palu titled Distant Early Warning, which documents the growing militarization of the Arctic and its effects on Indigenous communities.

Nearby in the West End: Dupont / Junction

The Dupont/Junction area offers a funkier mix of galleries and alternative spaces, showcasing a diverse and experimental art scene. Zalucky Contemporary, directed by Juliana Zalucky, is a commercial gallery that opened in 2015, that focuses on presenting and promoting emerging and mid-career artists working in various media. It represents an eclectic roster of artists and remains a key player in the West End’s art scene. A similar gallery program can be found at Christie Contemporary, (not to be confused with Christie’s), which presents a more intimate approach to contemporary art. Currently, it’s exhibiting new minimal abstract paintings by Larissa Tiggelers, an artist based in Regina, Saskatchewan, known for her exploration of minimal abstraction in art.

Franz Kaka, directed by Aryen Hoekstra, is located in a small upstairs loft but has developed an international reputation through participation in fairs like Frieze and NADA and cutting-edge exhibitions. On view is Jennifer Carvalho, Carvalho’s paintings are exercises in selective rendering, where tender gestures of historical significance slide into the present moment. In referencing Antiquity and Renaissance imagery culled from the pages of well-trod textbooks and web-sourced imagery, Carvalho’s practice is like art historical archaeology, combing through narrative passages of information and time gone by. Oddly cropped and collapsed into shallow spaces, her paintings are interpretations estranged from their origin, unconventional and phantasmic. The exhibition extends Carvalho’s ongoing investigation of how the present is shaped by images from the past and builds upon her critically acclaimed solo exhibitions with Helena Anrather in 2021 and 2023 (NYC). 

Hunt Gallery presents a solo show by Dana Slijboom entitled “Group Show”. Slijboom is a Toronto-based painter, her practice engages both digital and traditional techniques to explore the contradictions of contemporary image-making through their playful oversimplification and usage of archetypal figures. Meanwhile, the plumb is a basement-level project space, While  Beauty Supply is a 170 sq. ft. exhibition space located on the second floor of our house in downtown Toronto. 

These galleries and spaces highlight the West End’s vibrant mix of contemporary art and experimental presentations.

Lower Toronto is the harbourfront neighborhood and is home to The Power Plant Contemporary one of Toronto’s more important venues for contemporary art and where several galleries are positioned along Queen St West- including Paul Petro, Corkin, and General Hardware- along with Susan Hobbs and United Contemporary.

Lower Toronto: Paul Petro Contemporary Art on Queen Street West presents a large group show entitled “Watershed” that looks at these relationships and considers bio-diversity in the balance of climate-change. Here “The shoreline presents as a place of constant re-enactment. Rich in bio-diversity at its best, this junction of water and vegetation is known as the riparian zone and functions as a barometer of lake health, supporting a vast array of animal, insect, bird, aquatic, and, by extension, human life.”