Curator's Selection: The Constructed Landscape

The Curator's Selection for April features work inspired by our built surroundings. Feats of engineering, technology and urban planning have allowed us to turn the city into a subject that is as architecturally beautiful as it is functional. The six artists featured in our selection utilize imaginative perspectives to showcase the constructed landscape and its potential to inspire exciting visions for the future.

A heightened perspective demonstrated in the aerial photography of Jeffrey Milstein lets us see the unseen patterns that buildings, streets and green spaces make when smartly conceived by our urban planners. Looking up at, down on, and through the iconic architecture of Toronto and New York allows Chris Temple to paint the city with rich colour and feeling. And from a removed distance, Ferit Kuyas' lens captures both the grace and pollution of the gritty megalopolis of Chongqing, China.

Getting up close to the textured and varied surfaces of the city offer an opportunity to see ordinary architectural elements with new eyes. The flattening of the recognizable pitch, tiles and chimneys of the buildings in Michael Wolf's "Paris Rooftop" series renders the Haussmannian architecture as an abstract composition composed of shapes and lines. Rustication, debris and residue characteristic to the facades of West Coast industrial buildings become a rich palette of texture and colour in Anthony Redpath's high resolution photographs. By manipulating the context in which we see the ephemera of everyday and by protracting our interaction with it in his "Wandering" series, Chris Shepherd finds a way to engage and build relationship with the sometimes alienating space of bustling downtown Toronto.