The Monte Clark Gallery is pleased to announce the first solo exhibition in Toronto of the Vancouver photographer Howard Ursuliak.

Howard Ursuliak: A Sadness Without the Object

18 October - 17 November, 2002
Opening: October 18, 6pm
Artist in attendance

Ursuliak presents a realist vision focused on a melancholic apprehension of the economy. He searches for his pictures in the sort of small family-run shops that line East Hastings and Kingsway in Vancouver. This sector of the economy is usually associated with recent immigrants and includes laundromats, corner stores, pawnshops, and strange little businesses that seem not to do any business, often for generations. The particular nature of these kinds of spaces is well known to most city dwellers but is rarely recognized or considered. These sites feel exhausted, like old, underpaid workers - they are the opposite of the hysterical cheer and optimism that one finds in the new 'superstores' and the suburban malls. Often decades-old commodities can be found on dusty shelves or pathetically few objects will be displayed, conjuring images of scarcity in the Eastern Bloc or other "backward" economies. These pictures evidence the desperation of the need to identify, to participate in the economy, if only in the most half-hearted manner. The loneliness in these images is Ursuliak's subject, not the objects or spaces depicted, which are the necessary agents of its representation.

The Monte Clark Gallery, with spaces in Toronto and Vancouver, represents leading Canadian and international contemporary artists, including Roy Arden, Graham Gillmore, Anna Hunt and Scott McFarland.

Gallery hours are Wednesday through Saturday, 11-7pm, Sunday, 12-5pm. Monte Clark Toronto is located at the intersection of Queen West and Niagara. Please contact the gallery for images and further information.