In the Main Gallery, Modern Fuel presents Correspondences, an exhibition of select works by the artist Abbas Akhavan. For the past five years, the domestic sphere has been an ongoing area of research in Akhavan’s work. Much of it explores the relationship between the house and nation state, and how the trauma and systemic violence enacted upon civilians can be inherited and re-enacted within the family lineage – the home becoming a forked space between hospitality and hostility. Correspondences is a work produced during a residency undertaken by the artist at a conflict resolution firm in Vancouver. It offers a précis to the exhibition which proposes that modes of transmission and communication can also be the means of destruction and annihilation.

abbas akhavan was born in Tehran, and currently lives and works in Toronto. His practice ranges from site specific ephemeral installations to drawing, video and performance. His recent works have focused on spaces just outside the home – the garden, the backyard, and other domesticated landscapes. Akhavan’s work has been exhibited in galleries such as Vancouver Art Gallery and Artspeak (Canada), Kunsten Museum of Modern Art (Denmark), Le Printemps de Septembre —à Toulouse (France), Botkryka Konsthall (Sweden), The Third Line (Dubai, UAE) and KW Institute for Contemporary Art (Germany). Recent residencies include Foundation Marcelino Botin with Mona Hatoum (Spain), Axenéo7 and Video In (Canada), The Delfina Foundation (Dubai) and The

Watermill Center (USA). Currently Akhavan is preparing for a group show at ABC Berlin Contemporary (Germany) and Belvedere Museum (Austria), with upcoming solo exhibitions at Artspeak, Peel art gallery, The Darling Foundry (Canada) and a project for Performa 11 biennial (USA). Abbas Akhavan is represented by The Third Line Dubai, UAE.

The opening reception with Abbas Akhavan and Michael Amar is presented in conjunction with Culture Days 2011, a nation-wide celebration of the arts in Canada.

for more information, contact:Michael Davidge/Christine Mockettmodern fuel artist-run centre

21 Queen St. Kingston, ON K7K 1A1

(613) 548-4883modernfuel@bellnet.cawww.modernfuel.org

Correspondences Abbas Akhavan

In the Main Gallery1 Oct until 29 Oct, 2011Opening | Saturday 1 Oct at 7pm

coming up at modern fuel: In October: Artist Talk and Screening with Mansoor Behnam (Saturday, Oct. 29). November: Vapours concert with Disguises (Toronto), Dreamcatcher (Montreal), and Alcrete (Kingston) (Saturday, Nov. 5th). In the galleries: Ordinary Language and Empire (opening Nov. 12th).

The contradiction in August 2006 resonates with the incongruity of communication and conflict apparent in the installation of objects and images entitled Correspondences. The product of a residency at Stratagem Pacific Consulting, a conflict resolution firm, all three items represent attempted communication. Each individual component manifests modes of transmission that become means of destruction. A pigeon with beautiful iridescent plumage is indicated as a carrier or homing pigeon by the capsule attached to its leg. Lying on its back and bound to a weathered brick, the pigeon is dead and rendered an ominous projectile, connoting bricks thrown through windows with threatening messages attached. At centre is both a message in a bottle and a Molotov cocktail. The forlorn romantic attempt at communication of stranded castaways is combined with guerrilla explosives, the violent resort of the socially and politically dispossessed. The final object is an image that depicts a mountainous horizon line with what appears to be smoke signals against a beautiful blue sky, but could easily be interpreted as universal signifier of nuclear destruction, a mushroom cloud, dissipating. As well as being a striking sculptural installation the piece frames the possibility of miscommunication and the dire consequences inherently possible. As with Derrida’s essay reflecting on modern warfare “No Apocalypse, Not Now” the missives in Akhavan’s sculpture become missiles. Communication targeted with intent and desired consequence, as both an act of hostility and a motion toward connection. It is in this dichotomic crux, and others like it—decadence and destruction; hospitality and hostility; celebration and annihilation— that the conceptual fertility of Akhavan’s work is cultivated. The varying forms of violence and potential destruction in the work by Akhavan at Modern Fuel, in Correspondences and August 2006, become expressions of shared humanity while epitomizing social and cultural disjuncture.

matthew Hills is an independent curator and culture worker based in Kings-ton. He is a member of xcurated curatorial collective and co-director of the up-coming APP Kingston.

Missives and Missiles

essay by matthew Hills

Abbas Akhavan’s August 2006 begins with a fade in to a downward focus on pavement. The surrounding din of the crowds in the street is punctuated by successive explosions. The handheld camera shakes in symphony with the explosions and the increasing pace of the camera operator. Panning up to capture bystanders to the left and right of the now rapidly moving camera, the surroundings can be distinguished as a city street. A mother pushing a stroller races by. Disorienting as the initial perspective of the video is, the familiarity, bred by the twenty four hour news cycle, of civilian witness footage resonates immediately as the first documentation of conflict or catastrophe. As the camera turns upward to the night sky, the flashes of light accompanying the percussive explosions outline the buildings, reinforcing the impression of violence on a grand scale. Police officers stand tranquilly in the street and the distinguishable conversations of bystanders begin to undermine the initial sensation of panic and potential trauma. This is accompanied by a flagging of pace. The camera approaches and enters a crowd with their focus skyward. Fireworks can now be distinguished through the gathering and between the crowded urban horizon. As the sustained focus upon the fireworks becomes more intense and singular, surrounding sounds die down. The explosions of light and trails of smoke that mars the night sky become abstract and the upward focus fades to black.

Created during Akhavan’s graduate studies at the University of British Columbia, August 2006 uses Vancouver’s international firework competition Celebration of Light as an examination of commemoration and trauma. On a public scale fireworks serve as celebratory expressions of nationalism and excess. Born in Tehran, Akhavan’s initial reaction to the festival was alarm, prompting for him a consideration of the “temporal and geographical fold... happening between war and celebration” in spaces that he has called home. The connection, at times contradictory, between conflict and celebration is amplified by Vancouver, a city where mass celebration has a long history of becoming violent and destructive. Toronto based, with a growing international profile fuelled by a series of residencies abroad, Akhavan’s work examines the relationship between the domestic on a personal scale and shared experiences of the nation-state. Intriguing themes and images reoccur throughout his early practice often forming striking images or sculptural poetry, laundry or linen seen from below for instance. Fireworks are another reoccurring trope, examined as explosive devices gleefully deployed in communal or commemorative celebration. In his later Exposures series, Akhavan used handheld fireworks to create drawings. The Exposures drawings physically register the violence of fireworks through smoke and burn marks left on the page. By bringing them down to an individual scale, the fireworks in Akhavan’s work are made to signal danger and heighten their inherent potential for destruction.

In the State of Flux1 Oct. to 29 Oct., 2011Opening | Saturday 1 Oct. at 7pm

Modern Fuel presents, in its State of Flux Gallery, a new series of drawings by Michael Amar entitled Solar Flares and Spires. Amar states that the images are about “faith in science and religion.” In them, the spires symbolize religious traditions while the solar flares represent the scientific search for meaning, as light symbolizes an ability to “see.” The realm of reason and the incomprehensible converge at a crossroads in these drawings.

Michael Amar has been a practising artist and visual arts instructor for more than thirty years. He has taught in Toronto at Central Technical School for twenty years and is now semi-retired and living in Prince Edward County. A recipient of grants from the Ontario Arts Council, Canada Council and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, his work is in private and public collections, including the University of Toronto, Canada Council, and Agnes Etherington Art Centre. His primary area of work is an inquiry into the nature of abstract painting.

Solar Flares and SpiresMichael Amar