Explore GTA24 at Toronto’s Museum of Contemporary Art
Venture down the winding streets of Toronto’s West End to find the Museum of Contemporary Art — a small but mighty structure, filled with dazzling installations from top to bottom. With just two decades under its belt, MOCA is a young institution. Thanks to a knack for curation, though, the museum has built fair bit of prestige in its brief history. In 2019, Mark Dion’s The Life of a Dead Tree christened the new MOCA space with a tremendous, wide-trunked specimen, begging the age-old question: ‘What is art?’ Meanwhile, artist Jeffrey Gibson took an inventive approach to community with 2022’s site-specific installation for MOCA and the Toronto Biennial of Art, I Am Your Relative. The artist composed a visual archive of BIPOC and queer voices from an open call for submissions, drawing attention to the idea of storytelling as representation.
Today, MOCA isn’t resting on its laurels. The 2024 triennial exhibition (GTA24) features a slew of installations by artists from across the Greater Toronto Area; fifteen fresh commissions combine with works from the 1960s to paint an intergenerational portrait of solidarity among artists in the area. The doors unlocked for a press preview on March 21st, and SHARP was lucky to be on the list.
Visiting artists and admirers were jam-packed inside all three floors of the museum, crowding the walls for an in-depth look at the intricate displays. It’s a bohemian space: artwork covers the white walls, casting shadows over shiny concrete floors. In the summer of 2015, MOCA ditched its dwelling on Queen West to set up shop on the first three floors of an old factory in the Lower Junction, dubbed ‘the Auto BLDG.’
The museum’s architecture alone is worth a trip: picture a classic red-brick facade up top, complete with an array of rectangular windows and vintage panes. Below, massive glass walls open up the lobby, warming the retrofit space with plenty of natural light; exposed concrete pillars punctuate all three floors, a remanent of the Auto BLDG’s industrial past. Sunlight slips through the door behind you, lighting up sculptures and paintings, photographs and poem-infused videos, found-object sculptures and comic-style sketches. The range of media proves that Toronto’s art scene hasn’t just recovered from the pandemic lull — it’s gotten stronger.
Museum of Contemporary Art: Greater Toronto Art 2024
Esery Mondesir, Una Sola Sangre (still image), 2020. Photo courtesy of the artist.
Museum of Contemporary Art: Greater Toronto Art 2024
Timothy Yanick Hunter. GTA24 installation view, MOCA Toronto, 2024. Photo by LF Documentation, provided courtesy of the artist and MOCA Toronto.
Museum of Contemporary Art: Greater Toronto Art 2024
Sukaina Kubba, T80.0040, 2021. Ink on acetate. 16″ x 11″. Photo courtesy of MOCA.
Museum of Contemporary Art: Greater Toronto Art 2024
Michael Thompson, Red Hot, 2024. 48 in x 72 in, Oil on Canvas. Photo by SHARP.
Now that we’ve gotten the gushing over with, let’s get into the actual exhibition. Billed as a “constellation” of creatives, GTA24 left no stone unturned — or perhaps more accurately, no media untouched. Throughout the gallery, exhibits tore down barriers to form: What Happens to a Dream Deferred (2019), a short film by Ésery Mondésir, bears the fingerprints of poetry; Toronto-based artist Sukaina Kubba recalls the pattern of a Persian rug with a fractured series of wall-based work. On the line between drawing and sculpture, Kubba doesn’t tread — she erases.
As we toured the space, a team of handlers buzzed in the background; plastering, hanging, adhering. The place dripped with anticipation. Galleries are often lumped in with libraries — perhaps unjustly so —as serious, silent places. Visit any major art museum, and you’ll see parents frantically hushing their children as they march through the halls. Under MOCA’s converted canopy of concrete pillars, however, you’ll find a contagious energy; it’s an enthusiastic hum, more like a salon or cafe than a lecture hall. Electric currents of creativity roll off the artwork, flowing through the factory’s vintage fixtures and fusing past with present.
Museum of Contemporary Art: Greater Toronto Art 2024
Sin Wai Kin, A Dream of Wholeness in Parts (still), 2021. Photo courtesy the artist, Chi-Wen Gallery, Taipei and Soft Opening, London.
Museum of Contemporary Art: Greater Toronto Art 2024
Michael Thompson, Mirror Match Shine, 2023, oil on canvas. Photo by LF Documentation, provided courtesy the artist and Franz Kaka, Toronto.
Museum of Contemporary Art: Greater Toronto Art 2024
Left to right: Tim Whiten, Sin Wai Kin. GTA24, installation view, MOCA Toronto, 2024. Photo by LF Documentation, provided courtesy of the artist and MOCA Toronto.
In fact, GTA24 is all about opposites. For instance, take filmmaker Wendell Bruno’s contribution of three short videos, all made in the ’90s. While the videos preserve their vintage perspective, they’re resurfaced in a contemporary context, forcing a conversation of time and topic. Elsewhere, Michael Thompson treads a fine line between sketchbook-style realism and dreamy abstraction with a series of works. Inspired by a family connection to the automotive industry, Thompson reckons with the labour and materials of a rapidly-changing field.
On the second floor, these themes crescendo in the work of Toronto-born, Brooklyn-based artist Catherine Telford Keogh. Standing with a few visitors, she walks us through her work — a staggering spiral that resembles a factory line, dotted with plastic tubs of, well… nobody can be 100% sure. To create the sculpture, Keogh collected samples from ponds, pouring the waste into tubs with along with ComposiMold®, a biodegradable mold-making substance for artists. “It’s sort of a science experiment,” she explained.
Reclaiming old materials with new technology, Keogh’s artwork captures the essence GTA24. Here, modern art holds a mirror to the past and present; the exhibit asks visitors to consider where we are, and — equally important — how we got here.
Curated by Kate Wong, Ebony L. Haynes and Toleen Touq, GTA24 is now on-view at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto.
Featured Image: MOCA Exterior. Photo by Gabriel Li, provided courtesy of Gabriel Li.
