The Power Plant

As part of the 2010 CONTACT Toronto Photography Festival, we co-present Good News Bad News (2008), a mural by the Swiss artist Olaf Breuning installed on the south facade of The Power Plant. Shot in Trento, Italy, Breuning’s multifaceted tableau vivant depicts a crowd of people whose bodies and faces are completely covered by newspaper, as if shielding themselves. The piece reflects how the ubiquitous flow of press coverage, news and gossip impacts upon personal and collective identity.

Good News Bad News is part of a series of public installations of photography in CONTACT 2010: Pervasive Influence that utilize the codes of advertising, the language of consumerism, the stylization of marketing campaigns, and the force of propaganda within the urban landscape. CONTACT fosters and celebrates the art and profession of photography with an annual month-long festival in May and newly initiated year-round gallery programming.

Olaf Breuning will also be participating in The Power Plant’s summer exhibition, Adaptation: Between Species (18 June–12 September), an international group show exploring encounters and identifications across the species.

Summer 2010 Program Guide