The Launch of This Is My City Festival, in conjunction with OYR's High Performance Rodeo:
A provocative exhibition at MOCA Calgary discussing the aspects of street life, prostitution, homelessness, gentrification, urban renewal and a displacements of marginalized communities:
OUT OF THE SHADOWS: NEW YORK-CALGARY
Bernard Safran, George Webber and John Dean
January 5 - January 25, 2012
Free admission – donations welcome.
PLEASE JOIN US FOR THE OPENING of the exhibition Out of the Shadows: New York-Calgary and the launch of This is My City Festival on Thursday, January 5, 2012 at 5:30 pm at the Museum of Contemporary Art-Calgary.
Elizabeth Malyon, daughter of the late Bernard Safran and the Executive Director of the Bernard Safran Estate, and the exhibiting photographers: George Webber and John Dean, will be in attendance. A wine & cheese reception will follow the official part. Free admission.
Curated by Jacek Malec, MOCA's Managing Director/Associate Curator and Marcella Ducasses, MOCA's former Administrator, "Out of the Shadows" discusses several aspects of street life - vanishing communities, urbanization, gentrification, prostitution, homelessness, the working class and the elderly - through the expressive corpus of work of three eminent artists: Bernard Safran (1924-1995) - a New York-born graphic artist, painter and photographer, George Webber and John Dean - two Calgary-based veterans of documentary photography.
The lower gallery features a selection of paintings and photographs by Bernard Safran from his seminal New York City Project documentating the unvarnished reality of, and a complex insight into, everyday life in three of New York's boroughs: Manhattan, Brooklyn and Harlem - a premiere presentation of his work in Western Canada. The upper gallery showcases a companion presentation with documentary photographic works by John Dean (East End/Three-Hundred Block Series from 1975-1980) and George Webber (Calgary Series from late 1970s to 2011) reflecting similar subject matter in Calgary. Their observations offer the viewer a dramatic urban reality we often reject, preferring it to remain hidden, revealed only in shadows.
MOCA's "Out of the Shadows" special exhibition has been devised as a flagship presentation and contribution to the city-wide festival: "This Is My City". "This Is My City" is an interdisciplinary festival of arts from the margins - has been initiated by the Department of Arts & Culture of The City of Calgary in partnership with the This Is My City Art Society. The Festival is dedicated to showcasing works of art that provoke discussion on the impact of gentrification and 'urban renewal' and the subsequent irreversible changes in the social fabric of communities. From January 5 to May 3, 2012, several exhibition projects, performances, public debates and panel discussions will be held around Calgary at the participating venues.
Sponsors & Partners: The Museum of Contemporary Arts-Calgary Society, Estate of Bernard Safran, The City of Calgary, This Is My City Art Society, The Nickle Arts Museum, The City of Calgary Civic Art Collection, Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Calgary Arts Development, Iron Lava Corp and Walls Alive.
The Museum of Contemporary Art-Calgary is located at #104, 800 Macleod Trail SE in Calgary (adjacent to the Municipal Building). The Museum is open to the public Tuesday to Friday from 11 am to 5 pm and Saturday from 12 pm to 4 pm. The Museum is closed Sundays, Mondays and statutory holidays. Free admission. Donations are welcome !
Museum of Contemporary Art Calgary
#104, 800 Macleod Trail S.E.
Calgary, Alberta, Canada T2G 2M3
Ph. (403) 262-1737
Fax (403) 262-1764
