SPRING EXHIBITION OPENINGS featuring Simon Starling + Sadie Benning at Toronto's Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery

SPRING EXHIBITION OPENINGS Friday 29, February, 8-11 PM FREE Simon Starling: Cuttings (Supplement). A mollusc-infested remake of Henry Moore’s ‘Warrior with Shield’ (1953–54) provides the focus of The Power Plant’s Spring 2008 program. Produced by Britain’s Simon Starling, the steel rendition of Moore’s sculpture was submerged in Lake Ontario for 18 months, until overrun with zebra mussels. The startling work-‘Infestation Piece (Musselled Moore)’-prompts viewers to reflect on cultural and environmental contamination, and on the reception of Moore’s work in Toronto.

‘Infestation Piece (Musselled Moore)’ anchors Starling’s exhibition ‘Cuttings (Supplement)’. His largest show since winning the 2005 Turner Prize and the exhibition ‘Cuttings’ at Basel’s Museum für Gegenwartskunst, ‘Cuttings (Supplement)’ features nine major works from 2002–07, including ‘Island for Weeds (Prototype)’ (2003) and ‘Bird in Space’ (2004). Along with exploring ideas of foreignness, these works trace concepts of non-linearity in modernist art and in cultural and economic history.

Simon Starling (b. 1967 in Epsom, England) is a graduate of the Glasgow School of Art. He won the Turner Prize in 2005 and was shortlisted for the Hugo Boss Prize in 2004. He lives in Copenhagen and is Professor of Fine Arts at the Staedelschule, in Frankfurt. He has exhibited widely including the Bienal de Sao Paulo (2004) and the Busan Biennal (2006) and represented Scotland at the Venice Bienniale in 2003.

‘Cuttings (Supplement)’ is proudly sponsored by Exclusive Presenting Sponsor BMO Financial Group; Lead Donors Jay Smith and Laura Rapp; and Support Donor Jeanne Parkin.

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Sadie Benning: Play Pause

Concurrently this spring, The Power Plant presents ‘Play Pause’ by American artist Sadie Benning. Known for her intensely personal coming-of-age teenage works, this two-screen projected video installation, directed in collaboration with Solveig Nelson, comprises hundreds of drawings that weave in and out of public and private urban spaces in a post-9/11 world. The video spans a day-in-the-life of an anonymous American city and the search for everyday pleasures and play by its gender-bending cast of characters.

'Play Pause' premiered at the Wexner Art Center and screened at DIA, New York, prompting its inclusion in The Village Voice’s Top Ten Experimental Films of 2007.

Sadie Benning (b. 1973 in Madison, Wisconsin) started making films at age fifteen with a Fisher-Price Pixelvision camera. In 1993 those works appeared in the Whitney Biennial. In addition to her film and video practice, she is a former member/co-founder of the band Le Tigre.

'Play Pause' is programmed by and presented in conjunction with the 21st Images Festival, April 3-12, 2008. For more information please visit www.imagesfestival.com

OPENING RECEPTION FOR BOTH EXHIBITIONS: FRIDAY, 29 FEBRUARY 2008, 8-11 PM
Opening Reception Sponsor: GROLSCH PREMIUM LAGER

Exhibitions run until 11 May, 2008.

The Power Plant
231 Queens Quay West
Toronto