Ron Terada – We Did This To Ourselves, JUNE 23–SEPTEMBER 3, 2023
Ron Terada We Did This To Ourselves June 23–September 3, 2023
The Power Plant, Toronto, Canada
Vancouver-based artist Ron Terada presents his first major solo exhibition in Toronto since 2018, including his monumental painting series TL; DR, 2017–2022, and a newly commissioned sign sculpture in the Fleck Clerestory that also lends its title to the exhibition.
TL; DR is a series of paintings featuring headlines generated from The Verge, an online tech-news source, and recasting them in the distinct font used by The New York Times. TL; DR is internet slang for “too long; didn’t read,” and Terada’s wry works speak to our shared sense of frustration when faced with the overwhelming experience of today’s often catastrophic news. The exhibition features the latest body of work in the TL; DR series: an epic cycle of 325 paintings that tells a story of 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ron Terada (b. 1969, Vancouver; lives/works: Vancouver) has developed a wide-ranging conceptual art practice over more than two decades, which includes painting, photography, video, and music, as well as publications, posters, billboards, and signage. Terada is a graduate of the Emily Carr College of Art and Design. In 2006, he was awarded the Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award, Visual Art, from the Canada Council for the Arts, and in 2004, he won the VIVA Award, Jack and Doris Shadbolt Foundation for the Visual Arts, Vancouver. Terada’s significant solo exhibitions include the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (2018); Catriona Jeffries, Vancouver (2017); Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2011). Recent group exhibitions include the Vancouver Art Gallery (2021, 2017); Kunstverein in Hamburg (2019); Kunsthalle Wien (2016); Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit (2013); 4th Guangzhou Triennial (2012); and CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco (2012).
