Join us for the premiere of an online program featuring a conversation between Tim Whiten and Erika DeFreitas at Whiten’s Toronto studio.
About this event
During this recorded talk, Whiten and DeFreitas discuss their creative process, reflect on influences, and share recent work related to their shared interests in metaphysics, art and ritual practices.
Co-presented by the McMaster Museum of Art (M(M)A) and the Robert McLaughlin Gallery (RMG), this special event is hosted in conjunction with the collaborative survey Elemental currently on view at their respective venues.
Elemental is a multi-venue collaborative retrospective bringing together four Ontario presenters, including the Art Gallery of Peterborough (AGP), Art Gallery of York University (AGYU), McMaster Museum of Art and the Robert McLaughlin Gallery. Celebrating Tim Whiten’s broad and prolific career as an image maker and educator, the exhibitions draw on over fifty years of Whiten’s creative production devoted to studying the nature of consciousness and the human condition through material transformations. Curated by Chiedza Pasipanodya (AGP), Liz Ikiriko (AGYU), Pamela Edmonds (M(M)A) and Leila Timmins (RMG), and showing between 2022 and 2023, this series of separately curated exhibitions are thematically united by the classical elements of air, water, earth, and fire – referencing Whiten’s interest in alchemical processes.
Elemental: Ethereal is on view at the McMaster Museum of Art until May 13, 2022 and Elemental: Oceanic is on view at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery until August 28, 2022. The exhibitions at AGP and AGYU are forthcoming.
About Tim Whiten
Tim Whiten was born in Inkster, Michigan in 1941. In 1964, he received a B.S. from Central Michigan University, College of Applied Arts and Science, and in 1966 completed his M.F.A. at the University of Oregon, School of Architecture and Allied Arts. After immigrating to Canada in 1968, he taught in the Department of Visual Arts at York University for 39 years. An award-winning educator, he was also Chair of the University’s Department of Visual Arts where he is currently Professor Emeritus. Since 1962, he has had work presented in exhibitions throughout North America and internationally and it is included in numerous private, public, and corporate collections, such as the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (both the de Young and the Legion of Honor/ Achenbach Foundation for the Graphic Arts). Based in Toronto, Tim Whiten is represented by Olga Korper Gallery.
About Erika DeFreitas
Erika DeFreitas’s multidisciplinary practice includes performance, photography, video, installation, textiles, drawing and writing. Placing emphasis on gesture, process, the body, documentation and paranormal phenomena, DeFreitas mines concepts of loss, post-memory, legacy and objecthood. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally including: Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery; Platform Centre for Photographic and Digital Arts, Winnipeg; Gallery TPW, Toronto; Project Row Houses and the Museum of African American Culture, Houston; Fort Worth Contemporary Arts; and Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita. She is a recipient of the 2016 Toronto Friends of the Visual Arts Finalist Artist Prize, the 2016 John Hartman Award, and was longlisted for the 2017 Sobey Art Award. DeFreitas holds a Master of Visual Studies from the University of Toronto.
