T he Monte Clark Gallery Toronto is pleased to present a group show titled
My So-Called Life, curated by Daniel Faria.

March 24th – May 1st, 2005
Opening reception: Wednesday, March 23rd from 6-8 pm

My So-Called Life features six artists whose works explore the struggle of ordinary adolescents to live up to society’s expectations as they come into their own. It takes as its inspiration the eponymous American television series in which, through the candid, intimate tone of a teenage narrator (portrayed by Clare Danes), issues of sex, drugs, love, sexual orientation, identity, and relationships – familial, intimate and platonic – were tackled.

From painter Derek Root’s depiction of the Vienna Boys’s Choir in ‘a preparation for the performance of adulthood’ to Larry Clark’s disaffected teenagers that pose seductively and Danny Lyon’s images of urban ‘tribes,’ the works in the exhibition draw on aspects of the process of maturing, encompassing angst, rebellion, ennui and regret. They further examine and deconstruct the youthful posturing and self-consciousness that belies an ever-fragile perception of self. In his digitally manipulated tableaus of a teenage boy New York based artist Anthony Goicolea uses himself as his teen model. Justine Kurland presents scenes of youths celebrating “the state of girlness”. And in Douglas Coupland’s Dead Grads the desire for eternal youth is glorified while emphatically reminding us of its fleetingness. All the works serve to articulate the singularity of a multifaceted, complex, universal rite of passage.

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