THE CURATED ART COLLECTION Rob and Cheryl McEwen Graduate Study & Research Building
JENNIFER MARMAN AND DANIEL BORINS Busy Beaver, 2022 Wood, metal, found logs Beaver: 46" (h) x 35" (w) x 96" (d) Commissioned by the Schulich School of Business
Jennifer Marman and Daniel Borins have collaborated in creating sculpture, installation, and media art since 2001. Their work is often interventionist, situating art within the context of everyday life, while also referencing aspects of both mass media and art history. Busy Beaver is a social sculpture, inviting students to sit on or gather around its logs as a respite from daily academic life. The beaver, Canada’s national animal, symbolizes industriousness, creativity, and the inherent intelligence of nature.
This faceted wood beaver has gnawed through the adjacent logs in a systematic and programmed manner, producing geometric carvings. The digital “byte” alludes to the paradox of intelligence in nature, compared with computer intelligence. Busy Beaver cleverly references new frontiers of innovation and creativity, while nodding to Canada’s natural heritage. Marman and Borins’ work is in collections such as the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and the Art Gallery of Hamilton.
Courtyard of the Rob and Cheryl McEwen Graduate Study & Research Building
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MERYL M cMASTER Edge of a Moment, 2017 Archival Inkjet Photograph 60" x 94.4" Edition of 3, AP1/2
Ottawa-based Meryl McMaster’s work looks to the past to make sense of the present. Exploring the confluence of her Indigenous (Plains Cree) and European (British and Dutch) roots, McMaster employs hand-crafted props, sculptural garments and performance in her contemplative and introspective fine art photography. Influenced by Cindy Sherman and Frida Kahlo, as well as Indigenous artists such as Rebecca Belmore and Shelly Niro, McMaster often places her own body within her works' narratives to address the ways contemporary, cross-cultural, multi-layered identities and world views are represented.
Edge of a Moment, commissioned by the Art Gallery of Ontario, presents the artist’s theatrical attempt to understand how a site where her ancestors sustainably hunted bison, beaver, and prairie chicken for over 6,000 years was also where her other ancestors brought the same species to near extinction within mere decades of settlement. McMaster’s images about complicated historical relationships have been exhibited at and collected by many public institutions, including the Canadian Museum of History, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.
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CARTER KUSTERA Amalgamated Inc., 2018 Acrylic on canvas 60" x 168"
This painting by Carter Kustera delineates the colourful diversity and internationalism of the Schulich School of Business. It encourages the viewer to question how our ethnic, class and cultural differences contribute to prosperity and success. New York City-based Kustera was born in Sault Ste. Marie and educated at OCAD University. He has been the recipient of many important accolades such as grants from the Canada Council, the Pollock Krasner Foundation, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. His work has been exhibited regularly since 1986, often at important institutions such as
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the Museum of Modern Art’s P.S.1 and the Aldrich Museum. The most prestigious art-world event, The Venice Biennale, has featured his work twice, in 1993 and 1997. Kustera’s work has true crossover appeal, reaching mass audiences through a computer animation project for U2’s “Pop Mart” world tour stage show, as well as a signature line of products sold in several major retail stores across the United States. Collections as diverse as that of the Progressive Art Collection, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, and the Vatican in Rome have acquired his work.
AYDIN BÜYÜKTAŞ Second Hand Car Part, 2016 C Print edition 2/5 49" x 68"
Bus Station, 2016 C Print edition 1/7 43" x 70"
Turkish photographer Aydın Büyüktaş deploys aerial drone photography and digital software mastery to distort real landscapes and inject an unsettling third dimension into an otherwise two-dimensional visual medium. His warped panoramic portraits of popular locations in cities around the world reference drawings by M.C. Escher and Christopher Nolan’s film Inception in their impossible, gravity-defying, and disorienting panoramic viewpoints. However, Büyüktaş’ primary inspiration comes from Edwin Abbott’s satirical novel Flatland, in which the characters’ perception of reality is limited by their own outlook.
These painstakingly-produced images encourage viewers to consider new perspectives and exploit new technologies to gain advantage. Büyüktaş, who lives and works in Istanbul, has received broad media attention for his bewildering images, which have been featured prominently on Instagram and in arts and culture magazines including Wired, The Sunday Times – Hypebeast, and The Sunday Times. His work has been shown in galleries in Toronto, London, New York, Miami, and Istanbul as well as at the Museum für Gestaltung in Zürich.
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RAJNI PERERA Siren, 2018 Acrylic paint on wood panel 48" x 96"
In this painting, commissioned specifically for the Schulich School of Business, Rajni Perera interprets four key values of this educational institution. From left to right, the female figures represent Globalization, Diversity, Innovation, and Sustainability. Often using colour and shape to create a symbolic language exploring gender, ethnography, and dream worlds, here Perera merges bodies with the aesthetics of indexical scientific diagrams and fictional storytelling to depict humanity as a dynamic and wayfaring species seeking to understand eternity as it also reaches for peace and prosperity.
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Born in Sri Lanka and based in the multicultural city of Toronto, Perera seeks to deconstruct and view the female body image through a non-European lens, often referencing Rajput and Mughal miniaturism, diasporic futurism, and science fiction. A graduate of OCAD University, her work has been exhibited in Toronto at the Art Gallery of York University and in Edinburgh, Tokyo, Colombo, Dubai, and Brooklyn. Perera has received grants from the Toronto Arts Council, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Canada Council for the Arts.
GEOFF M c FETRIDGE Up the Stairs, 2018 Acrylic on canvas 60" x 96"
Calgary-born, Los Angeles-based artist Geoff McFetridge is well-known for the graphic manner in which he reduces complex physical relationships into the fundamental elements of a highly simplified and legible visual language. His bold and colourful works straddle both the fine seam between representation and abstraction and the blurry line between fine art and commercial design. In Up the Stairs, McFetridge deploys the top-down perspective common in his work, resulting in anonymous yet expressive forms.
This aesthetic flattens 3D action into a graphic 2D picture plane similar to the way international corporations reduce vast concepts into easily understood iconic branding. While McFetridge’s commercial clients include major multinationals such as Apple, MTV, Pepsi, Hewlett Packard and Intel, his fine art career has simultaneously received international acclaim, with solo exhibitions of his artwork hosted in many cities such as Copenhagen, Basel, London, Toronto, Tokyo, and Berlin. He has been honoured with the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian National Design Award for Communication Design.
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KELLY MARK Everything is as it should be, 2018 Aluminum letters, brushed finish 5.443" (h) x 72" (w) x 0.5" (d)
Nothing is ever as it seems, 2018 Aluminum letters, brushed finish 5.443" (h) x 72" (w) x 0.5" (d)
Working in a variety of media including sculpture, video, installation, drawing, photography, sound, performance, and public interventions, Toronto-based artist Kelly Mark often produces overtly political statements or simply seeks to find humour in the repetitive mundane rituals of everyday life. Considered one of Canada’s most important conceptual artists, her text-based artworks, which waver between desired self-improvement and a recognition of failure, demonstrate the broad range of emotions we all navigate in our inner worlds. This laser-cut aluminum and steel work reveals another common theme in her work: the elusive
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vulnerability of life and the anxiety that surfaces as time slips by. Exhibiting widely since 1991, Mark’s pieces can be found in important corporate and institutional collections across Canada. Her multidisciplinary work has appeared frequently in nearly all of the important Canadian museums, including the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, The Power Plant in Toronto, and the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal. She represented Canada at the Sydney Biennale and Liverpool Biennale and is a recipient of numerous Canada, Ontario, and Toronto Arts Council grants.
HANK WILLIS THOMAS Visa, 2017 Mixed media including sport jerseys 72" x 94"
Hank Willis Thomas is an American conceptual artist based in Brooklyn, NY, whose work focuses on themes related to identity, commodity, and popular culture. In a purposeful reference to African American textile tradition, this quilt made from football jerseys underscores the powerful role of sport in society at the same time it pays homage to one of the many household duties performed by plantation slaves in American history. The composition and words emblazoned across this work allude to Stuart Davis’ seminal painting from 1951 titled “Visa” and echo the competitive sloganeering used in advertising. By appropriating the energetic branding aesthetic of major league teams and their international sponsors, Thomas highlights the colonial and geopolitical aspects of soccer, rugby and cricket, where African players
flock to western European leagues. Thomas’ work has been exhibited in many important international art institutions including the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, the Brooklyn Museum, the Musée du quai Branly in Paris, and the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town. Numerous public collections have acquired Thomas’ work, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington. He has been awarded the prestigious International Center of Photography Infinity Award as well as a Guggenheim Fellowship, and has received honorary doctorates from the Maryland Institute of Art and Portland's Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts.
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ZACHARI LOGAN Sandbar off Lake Ontario, 2018 Chalk pastel on paper 30" x 108"
Saskatchewan-based Zachari Logan’s meticulous depictions of flora and fauna offer a visual language that explores the relationships between identity, memory and place. His highly detailed representations of native and non-native wildflowers and weeds, growing on their own diverse accord without interference or assistance, signify a metaphorical space where human intervention such as roads and industrial farming meet a resilient botanical world. While the edge of an early-dawn or late-dusk sun crosses the distant horizon in this attenuated composition, a fertile shoreline is lit
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artificially, signifying an encroachment into the wilderness by a human presence. Logan’s drawings, ceramic sculptures, and installations have been exhibited across Canada and in cities including Athens, Barcelona, London, Milan, New York, Paris and Vienna. His work has been collected by the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Remai Modern in Saskatoon, and the Leslie-Lohman Museum in New York City. He has received grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, Saskatchewan Arts Board and the Peter S. Reed Foundation.
ALAIN PAIEMENT Fatras, 2015 Transfer by sublimation on aluminum, unframed: 80" x 130" Framed: 81" x 131" Artist Proof (edition 2, 1 AP)
Montreal-based artist Alain Paiement considers our world from above. As if viewed from an aerial drone or a near-Earth satellite, his photographic experiments with perspective offer high-resolution investigations of daily human enterprise. Paiement’s artwork re-assembles multiple points of view in space and time. Pursuing his interest in creating encyclopedic maps of architectural spaces and the activities that take place therein, in this work Paiement documents the accoutrements of mercantilism and consumption as found in the oldest open-air market in Brussels. This work also hangs in the Canadian embassy in Brussels.
Paiement was the first artist from Quebec to show at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City and he has had solo exhibitions at many important institutions including the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, the Canadian Centre for Architecture and the Darling Foundry. His work has been collected by the National Gallery of Canada, the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, and the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, and can be viewed elsewhere in the collection of the Schulich School of Business.
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The curated art collection at Schulich was guided by three objectives: where possible, promote young artists both domestic and international; select art with a business theme; and install art as an integral part of the building. Art is mounted throughout public areas where it can be seen and enjoyed by all. With the McEwen Building, a list of chosen artists were involved at the preliminary design stages and able to respond to a given location. In several locations, an art piece was commissioned to suit the context. The collection in the McEwen Building complements the collection in the Seymour Schulich Building and reinforces an aesthetic dimension that enhances good judgment, has emotional appeal, and enriches life experiences. There will be a time in the career of a Schulich graduate when they must resolve that elusive contrast between aesthetic judgment and practical application. Hopefully, our graduates will recall their days at Schulich where art offered an opportunity to cultivate a counterbalance to the pressures of the business world.
The Rob and Cheryl McEwen Graduate Study & Research Building, Schulich School of Business, by Baird Sampson Neuert Architects Inc., is a LEED Gold Certified Building and a winner of the 2020 Ontario Association of Architect Design Excellence Award, the 2020 SAB Magazine Award, and the 2019 Canada Green Building Council Award. This 6,700-square-metre building is recognized for its leading-edge sustainability features. It is designed to perform one-fifth below the Canada Energy Code and one-third below carbon emission levels for the same standard. This required a whole new approach to integrative design, not only in terms of building performance, but also with a focus on people, their comfort level, and air quality. Integrative design in this case involved incorporating artwork early in the design process to enhance the visual experience throughout the building.
June 2022