The Power Plant

_We Can Do This Now _responds to Toronto’s art scene at a time when the excitement over new buildings for the city’s arts organizations is creating a climate of expectation.

Recognizing this spirit of the time, the exhibition draws on ideas of potential and possibility by focusing on what constitutes a strong arts community and how artistic ideas are generated and sustained. Curators Gregory Burke and Helena Reckitt resist the attempt to survey local artistic tendencies. Instead they select work by a limited number of Toronto-based artists from several generations in order to explore themes of contemporary art production, presentation and reception. They also seek to trace a set of relationships and attitudes before they have crystallized into an identifiable art movement or set of formal properties.

Some artists consider practices of collaboration and collectivity that have been important to the art scene in Toronto, while others posit art institutions as potential incubators of contemporary art. Rather than aiming to define or historicize Toronto’s aesthetic legacy, the exhibition speculates about the possibilities for art and artists at a moment when the city’s identity as a cultural centre is widely debated. The exhibition also seeks to rupture the sense of Toronto’s art world as a self-enclosed entity, including cameo appearances from artists working outside the city.