Ian Carr-Harris

Works and biography

Ian Carr-Harris is a Toronto based artist whose work has been exhibited nationally and internationally since 1971, including the Venice Biennale (1984), Documenta, Kassel, Germany (1987), the Sydney Biennale, Sydney, Australia (1990), and The Power Plant (2002). He is represented by the Susan Hobbs Gallery in Toronto as well as Program Gallery in London, UK, and teaches at the Ontario College of Art and Design, Toronto.  His publication history of reviews, articles and catalogue essays is extensive, and he is currently Toronto correspondent for the London (UK) magazine Contemporary.  He was a founding Board member of A Space and of The Power Plant, and has served on the Board of the Art Gallery of Ontario, He is currently on the Board of the web-based Centre for Canadian Contemporary Art…

At first sight—nothing.

Works

Carr-Harris is expert at finding the edges of power in simple things. His sculpture has been a journey to elucidate the politics of objects and their conformance to languages of control, which are shaping tools as powerful as any in a sculptor’s studio. So Carr-Harris lets his dark steeple aspire against a heavier than usual gravity and creates a contrasting foil by letting us see, when we look inside, a shadowed white church nestled within the black one…