This City is an exhibition of new collage, sculpture and poetry by Toronto-based artists Jenine Marsh and Alex Turgeon. Populating space with slips of language and material, their works investigate oppression and creation within gendered and monetized urban life. A text by the artists follows.
November 12 - January 14, 2023
COOPER COLE, Toronto, Canada
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet.
A city is a city is a city is a city. Defined in an instant, a city is bound to its parameters of scale. A city is constantly malleable and monumental in its multiplicity. In self reflection it looks inwards, towards the navel, doing somersaults ad nauseum. A city has a sense memory that is tattooed across boroughs, along boughs, and is captured in the plans and elevations of the night’s vertical watch. It smells of fables formed from delicate gardens, while roots grow out saccharine labyrinths of power. It is a brush that blooms in the corner of mouths, wilting under oppressive domes of perspiration. A city is as vast as the exponential grifts contained within, hoarding tensions and pent up releases. A city is as viscous as mud with an oil slick simmer, parading gasoline rainbows with hallowed pots for feet. It is as stiff as two boots spread wide, like Helios, stretched towards the sun, and from between its colossal statuary, coins will shower as gold.