event

Charles Street Video presents Art Thieves
Video Installation by CSV member
Gunilla Josephson

TMAC Toronto Media Arts Centre, 32 Lisgar Street, 2d floor [Dovercourt and Queen], along side the SummerWorks Performance Festival 2018.  

Gallery Hours:
Friday Aug 10th 12pm-6 pm
Saturday Aug 11th 12-6pm
Sunday Aug 12th 12-6pm
Monday Aug 13th 12-9pm
Tuesday Aug 14th 12-9pm
Wedn Aug 15th 12-9pm
Thursday Aug 16th 12-6pm
Friday Aug 17th 12-6pm
Saturday Aug 18th 12-6pm
Monday Aug 21st 12-5pm
Tuesday Aug 22nd 12-5pm
Wedn Aug 23rd 12-5pm
Thursday Aug 24th 12-5pm
Friday Aug 25th 12-5 pm
Saturday Aug 27th 12-6pm

Art Thieves
18 minutes. Stereo mix
Concept, production Gunilla Josephson
Performers Anna-Lena Johansson,
Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay
Camera Lewis DeSoto

Gunilla Josephson casts a critical eye on the orthodox consensus that looking at art is good for you but that only some people know what art is and is not.

A couple of art specialists arrive in the late baroque melancholy of a semi-abandoned art museum somewhere in France. They set up camp in the museum, catch fish from the windows, have dinner with a bird and proceed to examine the collection. Using a variety of peculiar instruments they measure, dissect, excavate and interfere with the art. Amongst the gilded frames and forlorn second-rate art collection a small museum guard with a very large dog wanders by, somebody cycles through the galleries, a voyeur stalks and peeps, an employee sweeps, while floors creak, doors open and close, somebody sings and the art transforms. Who are the Art Thieves? What is their task? Were they sent? By whom? What are they doing with such determination? Are they there to expose the hidden internal assumptions and contradictions and to unsettle/sabotage the apparent significance and unity of an art institution? Are they saboteurs? Art specialists? Artists, or curators?

A Case of Life Imitating Art.
Shortly after Art Thieves was filmed with permission February 3-5. 2007 at an art museum (anonymous) in Normandy, France, I got the news that the Director of the gallery had been fired and charged with art theft. Consequently I was asked to withdraw the video scheduled for a solo exhibition of the video for Festival les Boréales in Caen, Normandy, opening November 21, 2008.
As a result the show features instead a printed series of a Wanted Poster for the lost Art Thieves (video), designed by PARK STUDIO in London, UK, http://www.park-studio.com


Artist Statement
My approach to moving image incorporates the aesthetics of painting/sculpture and the conventions of film style, while pushing the boundaries of both. I am interested in the intersection between structure and chaos within the realm of video as a form of media art. Juxtapositions such as: order and disorder, the planned versus the improvised, as well as the relationship between the performer and the amateur. My work within and outside of these intersections transcends the boundaries and rules governing how moving images are meant to be viewed. This subversion behaves as a visual language that further enhances the meaning of the work for the viewer, once it is decoded. From the actions of the performers, through my own use of the video camera, as well as the editing process, I am working to disrupt norms. My aim is to challenge systems, actively resist the tyranny of orthodoxy and have my work serve as a commentary on this process. In the production and post-production process, I work in a way that exploits unbridled emotion and marries it to abstraction. I challenge the accepted conventions of art as an entertainment that is well-behaved.

Artist Biography
Gunilla Josephson is a Swedish artist who lives and works in Toronto since 1993. She has a BA in Social Science from Stockholm University and a MFA in 1986 from The University of Fine Arts and Design. 

Josephson’s videos have been featured in MEETINGS - Video and Performance Festival 2017, Jutland, Denmark; in VOICES: Artists on Art, Harbourfront Galleries, Toronto; at Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art [solo]; Rodman Hall art Centre [solo] in Saint Catherines, Ontario, at Ryerson Centre, Toronto, at SAW Video in Ottawa,; at The Winnipeg Art Gallery, at MSVU Art Gallery in Halifax, Nova Scotia; in the video screening series ‘Canadian Experimental Films & Videos of the 1990’s’; highlighted in The UK/Canada Video Exchange at South London Art Gallery, London, UK; at the Hull Centre for Time-Based Art; at LUX Cinema, London, UK, at The Stuttgarter Winterfest; The Kassel Dokumentarfilm & Videofest, Germany, 2001; International Short Film Festival Oberhausen [Awarded the Festival Prize]; at Toronto Images Festival, Toronto in 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2009; in Canadian Currents at the Goethe Institute, Toronto; The Independents, Cinematheque Ontario; at Video Inn, Vancouver; Cinematographe Montreal; Video Archaeology Festival, Sofia, Bulgaria, Moderna and Femmedia-International Film and Video Festival, both in Stockholm, Sweden.