For her sixth one-woman photo exhibition, noted Toronto photo artist May Karp has chosen a controversial subject.
Photo artist May Karp.
StreetSpeaks, which runs from Sept. 6 to 27 at the Moore Gallery, features Karp’s colourful photographs of graffiti, which focus on graffiti as an art form.
Karp says that her photographs document good graffiti art and that she is showing this art on gallery walls where it belongs.
“In Paris, some 30 years ago, I saw graffiti as an art form for the first time. It covered the banks of the Seine River,” she recalls.
Karp says the rounded shapes of the graffiti she saw were not the typical unappealing scrawl that we are all familiar with. Instead, they were lyrical and sensual.
From that moment in Paris, she began thinking of graffiti as art, as well as artists’ motivation for creating them.
Over the past two years, in her travels to Spain, France, Portugal, the Canary Islands, the United States and throughout Canada, she has searched for graffiti and photographed them.
Karp, a retired businesswoman who has always been interested in architecture and design, began taking pictures in earnest in the 1990s. For her 65th birthday, she donated her first photo exhibit to Baycrest Centre.
With encouragement from other artists and friends, she has mounted five other successful one-woman exhibitions at the Moore Gallery. These included photographs of landscapes, flowers, people and architecture.
Karp’s photographs are in numerous institutional and corporate collections, including Canuck Properties; Alex Chapman Design; Metro Toronto Condo Corp. #802; and Torys LLP; and in private collections in Canada, the United States, India, Israel, England, France and Japan.
“You might find this show different from the others,” she says. “When you see it through the eyes of these young artists, you will understand that change is here.”
She notes that throughout history, drawings have been made on rock and on walls as a form of communication.
“Today, graffiti is still a form of communication, but it is much broader in its subjects. Some are personal to the artist and how the artist sees the world. Some are protests. Some are slogans. Some are commentaries on the political scene. And some are just satirical.”
Karp says that in certain cities, graffiti art is appreciated and encouraged by local authorities, with public space allocated for this artistic expression.
In other places, graffiti remains an outlawed art form and are painted over or erased by the authorities. Also, the elements destroy graffiti. “Photos are the sole testament to their existence,” she says.
She believes that talented people should have designated public places in which they can display their art.
StreetSpeaks bears witness to masterpieces produced by what have become known as the “art orphans” from around the globe. Photographs like Karp’s preserve this type of art for the future.
The Moore Gallery is located at 80 Spadina Rd. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.The opening reception for StreetSpeaks takes place on Sept. 6, with Karp in attendance.
For more information, call 416-504-3914 or e-mail [email protected].
